Superfoods like berries, grapefruit and pumpkin can help you lose weight quickly!
Look, there’s no shortage of books (and articles) telling you what not to eat if you want to lose weight. But information on what you should eat to control your weight? Not so much.
The truth is you can lose weight eating just about any food, as a nutrition professor famously demonstrated when he lost 27 pounds on Twinkies. But, as the old saying goes, “Just because you run through a dynamite factory with a lighted match and live through it doesn’t mean you’re not an idiot.”
Not So “Super” Foods…
So, although you can lose weight eating almost any food—including Twinkies—some foods make it really difficult to do so. Why? These foods create their own self-sustaining cravings, a fact all too well-known to anyone who’s ever found herself consuming six bowls of cereal while watching reruns of Friends.
Processed carbs—like cereal, desserts, pasta and bread, potato chips—play havoc with your blood sugar, the appetite centers in the brain, and, ultimately, your waistline.
But some foods do just the opposite, packing a ton of nutrition into a relatively small number of calories and filling you up at the same time. Plus, every one of them has the added advantage of stabilizing your blood sugar, making it far less likely that you’ll go on a waist-busting binge.
Make these 10 superfoods part of your daily diet and watch the fat burn and pounds come off!
Glorious Grapefruit…
Remember the old “grapefruit diet?” Turns out there may actually be something to back up grapefruit’s reputation as a fat fighter.
In a study from the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, researchers studied the effect of grapefruit on weight loss and found that eating half a grapefruit before meal actually helped people drop weight. The researchers studied the effect of grapefruit capsules, grapefruit juice, and real grapefruit. All three seemed to help, but the folks eating the real grapefruit got the best results.
The mechanism isn’t completely understood, but the results speak for themselves. As an added benefit, grapefruit contains cancer-fighting compounds like liminoids and lycopene, and red grapefruit has been shown to help lower triglycerides.
Plus, half of a grapefruit has just 39 calories!
Sensational Sardines…
I call sardines one of the greatest health bargains of all times, and it’s definitely a boon to anyone wanting to lose weight. Why? Let me count the ways!
First, it’s loaded with protein, which helps stabilize blood sugar, makes you feel full (and less like overeating), and helps stimulate metabolism. Second, it’s a great source of omega-3’s, which boost mood and strengthen the cardiovascular system, not to mention making hair, skin and nails look better!
Third, sardines are convenient, easy to find, and cheap! And because they’re very low on the food chain, they’re remarkably free of contaminants.
Great Pumpkin…
You may only know this vegetable for its central role in Thanksgiving celebrations, but it’s one of the great weight loss foods of all time.
Plain old canned pumpkin is absolutely loaded with fiber—each ½ cup serving has a whopping 8 grams and only a mere 40 calories. Dozens of studies confirm that high fiber intake is associated with a host of health benefits, not the least of which is weight management.
And here’s the deal: it’s the easiest food in the world to prepare. You can sweeten it with some xylitol (or erythritol), sprinkle it with blood-sugar lowering cinnamon, throw in some nutmeg and some nice healthy almonds, and make it into one of the best-tasting weight loss treats around. It’s filling and delicious.
Glorious Grass-Fed Beef…
I’ll be honest with you—meat is a great weight loss food, but it’s hard to recommend it when it so often comes with a nice unwanted helping of antibiotics, steroids, and hormones. Get grass-fed and avoid the problems while getting all the terrific benefits. (Hint: Buffalo burgers are a good alternative if you can’t find grass-fed beef).
Higher protein diets are associated with weight loss for a variety of reasons. Protein stimulates the metabolism, helps you feel fuller longer, and helps decrease the desire to overeat.
High-protein breakfasts are one of the best weight loss tricks in the book (try a buffalo burger for breakfast sometime and see what I mean!). And grass-fed beef has demonstrably higher levels of anti-inflammatory omega-3’s and lower levels of pro-inflammatory omega-6’s—a big plus for hard training athletes.
Bountiful Berries…
Berries are one of those non-controversial items that virtually every nutritionist agrees on. They’re on everybody’s and anybody’s list of superfoods.
They assist in weight loss in a number of ways. They’re very low in calories, very rich in nutrients, high in fiber and, best of all, have a very low in impact on your blood sugar.
Research confirms that blueberries especially deserve their growing reputation as that their brain food — feeding blueberries to rats actually slows their age-related mental decline3. Blueberries contain pterostilbene, a plant compound recently shown to have cholesterol-lowering properties. Their ORAC value (antioxidant rating) is the highest of any fruit.
Tip: Try them frozen with a little almond milk and a sprinkling of almond slivers. They taste like sherbert!
