It’s pretty damn tempting to buy every skinny tea and diet plan you see on Instagram, but honestly there’s no real trick to fat burning unless you’re eating a balanced diet and working out regularly. It took us a while to accept this tragic reality, but after trying every diet on social media and experiencing continual disappointment, it might be the hard truth. With that being said, there are definitely some foods that have certain compounds and nutrients that could help you burn fat more easily—fat burning foods, if you will. We did some research to find the superfoods that have been proven to help with weight loss, and we’re currently ordering each one in bulk. Here are the fat burning foods you to add to your diet.
1. Cayenne Pepper
Pepper has a compound in it called capsaicin, which has been proven to spike your metabolism and boost your body’s ability to convert food into energy instead of storing it as fat. Spicy foods also tend to suppress your appetite, which is one of the reasons why you may be super full after eating something spicy for lunch. According to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, you just need to add a pinch of cayenne pepper to your meal and it’ll help your body burn fat after you eat. So like, pass the pepper.
2. Black Beans
Just in case you needed that extra push to order Mexican for dinner tonight, black beans may be one of the coveted fat burning foods, although that burrito might not be. If you ask me, black beans should be trendier than they are, because they’re low-key magical. In fact, some researchers say they’re equivalent to a fat-burning pill, but like, much more legal (some disagree, but over all, adding beans to your diet as part of a healthy weight loss regimen can help you lose weight). Black beans are filled with slow-digesting fiber that feeds the bacteria in your gut and trigger a chemical called butyrate, which basically helps your body burn fat more efficiently.
3. Grapefruit
It may be time to stalk up on grapefruits ASAP. In a 2006 study, scientists realized how magical grapefruits are when they asked a group of participants to drink apple juice everyday and another group to drink grapefruit juice everyday. It turned out the grapefruit people lost more weight and their bodies’ metabolic rate sped up dramatically, and the apple juice people went home in shame (I paraphrase). Not only are grapefruits rich in bioactive compounds that help break down body fat and regulate your blood sugar, but they also lower your body’s insulin and speed up your metabolism. Game changer. Just don’t douse it in sugar, duh, because that defeats the purpose of fat burning foods.
4. Bone Broth
You may have seen your favorite health bloggers sipping on homemade bone broth recently, but this trend actually has a ton of scientific proof behind it. Bone broth is filled with vitamins and collagen, and its nutrients can also help reduce inflammation in the gut, which often leads to weight loss. By healing the gut and filling our bodies with good bacteria, bone broth can make you less bloated, be better protected against sickness, and promote fat loss in the body.
5. Eggs
People used to think the cholesterol in egg yolks would make you fat, but actually the opposite may be true. The egg yolk myth started decades ago, but it turns out we were wrong back then and we’re like, much smarter nowadays (cue the video of people eating Tide pods in 2018). Eggs are packed with protein and vitamins, and the cholesterol in the yolk has no real impact on cholesterol metabolism in your body. Some evidence even shows that eggs may raise levels of HDL cholesterol in your body, which helps prevent heart disease. The protein and healthy fat combination in eggs will keep you full for longer and have been linked to fat loss, so like, it may not help you burn fat as expressly as some of these other fat burning foods, but eggs may help you lose weight overall. Bottom line, you can stop pretending you like egg whites.
6. Anything Fermented
Fermented foods, like sauerkraut, Kombucha, kimchi, kefir, tempeh, and miso are all foods that could majorly help your body burn fat. This comes back to the whole idea of the good bacteria in your gut. By improving your gut health, you help your digestion work better and boost your body’s immunity. Nobody’s promising that if you start drinking Kombrewcha you’ll lose three pounds overnight, but these foods are super healthy for you and they just get your system working better, which could very likely help you lose fat, as long as you’re not like, eating the sauerkraut on a hot dog. You’re on your own in that case.
Images: Trang Doan / Pexels; Elle Hughes, Charisse Kenion, / Unsplash; Tiburi, Edwina MC / Pixabay; Giphy (2)
When we look back over the sad, failed history of dieting, one thing came to mind: “wtf.” Diets alone are really fucking stupid, given the fact that most, if not all, are unsustainable. If you cut out a whole food group, eventually you’re either going to slip up and eat from said forbidden food group OR crave it so much you go crawling back sans self-control or dignity. Same for any diet that considers soup your now only source of food. Do yourself a favor and eat HEALTHFULLY without restricting yourself to crazy, weird shit. By “crazy, weird shit” we mean any of the below aka the 10 worst diets of all time. Think of it like Nike, only the complete opposite i.e., just don’t do it.
1. The Tapeworm Diet
In today’s batshit crazy news, we learned that there literally used to be a tapeworm diet. Back in Victorian times, when a woman’s biggest issue was fitting into a corset and pretending to not be interested in banging her husband, some medical professionals decided that swallowing a goddamn tapeworm was the answer to pesky chubbiness. We shouldn’t have to explain why this is a terrible idea, but yeah, it is. To add to that, people are still buying janky capsules with tapeworm eggs inside/drinking the tap water in Mexico on purpoe. Earth to Matilda: This is really fucking dumb. Why doesn’t it work? Because the damn tapeworm lives in your fucking intestines, eats all your food, can result in malnutrition, AND yes, you can die.
2. The Cabbage Soup Diet
Any diet that literally has you eating one food for an extended period of time is a terrible goddamn idea. Can you imagine how insanely crazy you’re going to feel on Day 7 of eating cabbage soup? It doesn’t even SOUND appetizing. Yes, vegetables are good for you, but eating just cabbage soup will make you drop a ton of weight and then instantly gain it back when you stop dieting. Next.
3. The Grapefruit Diet
As is the case with No. 2 on the list, eating just grapefruit for an extended period of time is an awful, awful idea. Can you even IMAGINE your new aversion to citrus after a few days of this shit? Yes, you should be working things like grapefruit into your diet—shit, have one every morning for all we care. But if you go on replacing every meal with this sour af fruit, you’re going to fail in the long run. You’ll crave steak, fruit snacks, and all the carbs. Also if you’re on the pill it could fuck up your medication and you could end up pregnant. JUST SAY NO.
4. The Cookie Diet
This sounds like my kind of fucking diet, since my spirit animal is and always has been cookie monster. However, upon further investigation, we can’t believe this was ever—or even still is—a thing. Dr. Siegal, whose medical degree we question, came up with a diet that entails eating one to two cookies every few hours along with a 500-calorie meal of the dieter’s choice. The catch? The cookies are made of some bullshit ingredient (probably from Sweden and isn’t legal in the U.S., like phentermine) that is apparently going to make you lose weight. So, not only will the cookies taste like shit, but you’ll start hating cookies. Additionally, this won’t make you adjust your shitty eating habits AT ALL. Since, ya know, you’re training your brain into thinking cookies are the answer. Which, in this case, they are not.
5. Cigarette Diet
This sounds like a theme from Mad Men. Apparently, back in the 1920s, tobacco companies started pushing their cancer sticks as a means of controlling appetite. Nicotine does, in fact, suppress your urge to eat, but at the cost of having disgustingly smelling clothes, hair, and hands. Is the cancer worth dropping a few pounds? Gonna go with no on this one.
6. The Apple Cider Vinegar Diet
Ok so yes we were all obsessed with the Master Cleanse a few years ago because we were really fucking stupid. How fast did you gain back all that weight? I’ll hold while you crunch the numbers. Drinking a combination of apple cider vinegar, cayenne pepper, maple syrup, and other bullshit may have you drop a few pounds at first, but, like OF COURSE YOU WILL, YOU’RE NOT EATING ANYTHING. I could drink Blue Gatorade and Ensure and drop weight, too. To add to that, enjoy your gastrointestinal discomfort brought on by the whole drinking vinegar thing. Not to mention the terrible, terrible gas. Sexy.
We tried the Master Cleanse (and lived). Read Memoirs Of A Master Cleanse here!
7. Detox Diets
Hey! You know how you have a liver and kidneys? The job of those apparently ignorable organs is to DETOXIFY YOUR BODY. So, these fucking diets touting extreme regimens like liver flushes, body cleanses, colonics, etc. are literally (and I mean literally) full of shit. Your body detoxifies itself all the goddamn time. Sure, if you want to add a few veggie juices and whole foods to your diet after a week of bingeing on pizza, it’ll “detox” you in a mild way. But having shit literally sucked out your butt and calling it necessary is the shittiest shit we’ve ever heard.
8. The Air Diet
I can’t even believe I have to address this, but, it’s a thing. Probably started by Gwyneth Paltrow and her ungodly shitty GOOP blog (Hey, Gwyneth—are you going to go ahead and rescind that jade vagina egg post? No? Cool). How’s it work? Dieters literally sit with an empty plate, fork, and pretend to fucking eat. Um, can’t think of a faster way to a) starve and b) develop a high-key eating disorder. Man and betch do not live on air and sunlight alone. There need to be nachos and chocolate. On second thought, anyone who does this probably has a great future in miming.
9. The Clay Diet
Something else probably piloted by Diet and Lifestyle Professional, Gwyneth Paltrow, is the clay diet. Apparently, you stir clay—yes, literally clay—into water and drink it. Why? Because it’ll totally detoxify your organs, of course! Wow, I can’t even begin to wrap my head around how thrilled mothers of toddlers everywhere will be when they find out that, yes, their children can continue eating mud for health benefits. Seriously, whoever came up with this one: Go fuck yourself.
10. “Miracle” Diets
Any diet that starts with “miracle” or “what doctors don’t want you to know” is probably going to be really fucking stupid. Additionally, any diet that tells you to drink green tea or chug acai juice or roll in memberberries to prevent eating more than 500 calories per day is going to make you gain double the weight back in the long run. Your metabolism will actually slow down, so when you do start eating like a human being again, you’ll get fat. Congratulations, idiot.
May all of your diets fail and may you eat like a normal human being. Amen.
