THE MYTH OF  A FAT BURNING FOODS

At least once in your life you had a chance to read a flashy headline from some famous fitness magazine recommending you to eat exclusively special selection of fat burning foods that will rapidly accelerate your metabolism and melt all the excess body fat from your waistline.

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These foods are popularly called fat burning foods.

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List of fat burning foods goes quite long and it can include everything from avocado, berries and salmon all the way to butter, cottage cheese and coconut oil.

 

The main question remains, do fat burning foods really do what some so called experts claim that they do? Is there any food or combination of foods that can magically make all your belly fat melt away?

 

Short answer is no, no single food or combination of foods have the ability to increase your metabolic rate to such a high extent to single handedly take care of all your excess weight problems.

 

 There are no fat burning foods- there are only fat burning amounts, and some foods just make it easier for a person to stay in a caloric deficit long enough for a fat loss to occur.

 

Let me elaborate a bit on this.

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In a most simplest terms the only way to lose excess body fat is to create caloric deficit and stick with it long enough for a visible fat loss to occur.

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Caloric deficit simply means that your overall caloric intake is lower than your overall caloric expenditure.

You can create caloric deficit by consuming less calories through food or by spending more calories through physical activity.

The best thing would be to do both, moderate caloric deficit combined with some form of physical activity like resistance training, walking etc.

 

Now remember how i stated that you need to create the caloric deficit and than stick with it long enough for a visible fat loss to occur?

This is the main catch behind magical properties of fat burning foods.

 

Certain foods make it easier for a person to create and then to maintain that caloric deficit due to 2 main reasons:

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- It has low calorie content

- It positively influence hunger and satiety levels

 

And guess what, the foods that are low in calories and can keep you least hungry after your meals are by default whole, minimally processed high protein and high fiber foods like fruits, veggies, legumes, lean meats, fish and low fat diary products.

That’s right – the same foods that people often give magical fat burning properties

 

Its not that that foods somehow burn excess fat , it is just that they are relatively low in calories, highly satiating so its very hard to overeat them.

 

You basically end up eating in the caloric deficit without even noticing it

 

The ability of the food to make you feel full while allowing you to stay in the caloric deficit is the main factor that stands behind its fat burning magic 

 

And why all of these matters?

 

It matters because people get impression that as long as they eat “fat burning” foods they will lose the excess fat regardless of total amount of foods they are eating.

And that is not true!

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Although whole and minimally processed food is harder to overeat it is still very possible to overreach your daily caloric allowance if you are extra careless with your total food intake.

No matter what kind of food you are eating you always need to take into consideration your total daily caloric needs and to adjust your food amounts accordingly.

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If your goal is fat loss, the main thing is to adjust your total daily caloric intake so you are in caloric deficit and then 80-90% of that caloric intake to be comprised of whole and minimally processed foods.

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In that way you will control your hunger and maintain the good health while keep losing excess body fat