I’ve heard many a doctor state that inflammation is the root cause of illness. If you’re having a hard time losing weight despite doing all the right things — it now looks as though inflammation, resulting from inadequate nutrition, may also be to blame for your frustrations when trying to lose weight.
No doubt, losing weight can be a complicated task. And advice on weight-loss diets can be rather conflicting, adding to that complication. But there’s one rule of health that is now coming to the forefront for effective weight loss.
One of the first things dieters do is eat less, sometimes at the risk of not getting the nutrition their body needs. Therein lies the problem: Research at the University of California, Berkeley, has shown that missing out on key nutrients makes it practically impossible to lose weight and here’s why…
According to these scientists, the simple long-term solution to slimming your waistline is getting enough essential nutrients, especially the ones that reduce inflammation in your body. And they demonstrated this by feeding participants two nutrient bars daily for two months to ensure they were getting all the well-balanced nutrition they needed.
The results were plain and clear: Some of the study participants lost weight — without any other changes to their diet or levels of exercise. All it took was eating nutrients.
Focus on nutrition to lose weight
Now, the bar that the Berkeley researchers used is not available for sale to the general public, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get the same results simply by improving your nutritional deficiencies.
For successful weight loss you should make a well-rounded, nutrient rich diet your one essential goal. That means:
- Eating more fruits and vegetables — especially green, leafy vegetables.
- Eat more poultry and especially fish for those inflammation-reducing omega3 fatty acids
- And avoid the temptation of cheap, processed meat like the hot dogs and burgers served at fast food restaurants.
I can testify that I experienced great results with my weight, similar to what happened in this nutrient bar study, when I went on the paleo diet. As soon as I stopped eating gluten, said goodbye to processed snacks and avoided processed meats, I lost five pounds in the first three days of the diet. That was without any other change in my lifestyle. I didn’t exercise more. I didn’t eat less food.
Urgent: Simple, sane strategies that shed pounds for good
My rapid, initial weight-loss was mostly fluid that I was holding as part of my inflammatory reaction to gluten. But in giving up the gluten, I replaced it with more fruits and vegetables that were rich in vitamins, minerals and nutrients — the very ones contained in the ‘wonder’ bar used in the study — and upped my intake of omega3s with fish.
Fats help squeeze nutrients from foods
Omega3s are found in a lot of healthy fat food sources. That’s why it’s absolutely key not to remove healthy fats from your menu. The ‘low-fat diet’ is a wrong-headed myth. The right fats can actually help your body absorb more nutrients from the foods you eat — and we now know how important that is for successful weight loss.
According to Katherine Tallmadge, RD, spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, “You need a little fat to absorb vitamins A, D, E, and K and other nutrients.” So when eating salad, be sure to use a dressing with an olive oil (my preference) or canola oil base to help you soak up as much of the nutrition on your plate as possible.
And to further punch up nutrient absorption, top your salad with a boiled, poached or even fried, egg. Why an egg? A recent study showed that eggs help you get more carotenoids from vegetables and carotenoids are a very strong antioxidant that — you guessed it — help reduce inflammation.
Eventually, eating this way enabled me to lose about 20 pounds. Will a change in nutrition work for you? Maybe it’s time to find out.
