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)
With America turning another year older, we needed a fucking patriotic cocktail. Actually, scratch that—we needed two. But like, instead of the usual alcohol + fruit/mixer = drunk, we decided to add in our good friend kombucha, who always seems to come through for us in times of hangover tough shit. You may think the fermented tea tastes a little weird, but this is America, where we experiment with weird vinegar-flavored things and see what alcohol we can add to make it better.
If you shop hard enough, you’ll find plenty of flavored kombuchas which give you the health benefits plus not-gross flavor. So you can get your July 4th party on knowing that you’re like, better than everyone else. And that’s really what’s it’s all about.
Blueberry Mojito
– 1 cup blueberries
– 6 oz. white rum
– A bunch of fresh mint
– 2 tsp. sugar
– Juice from 2 limes or like, some bottled stuff if you’re povo
– 6 oz. kombucha — we used LIVE Soda Pomtastic Blueberry because it’s like, blueberry flavored and doesn’t taste like vinegar and feet but still has kombucha goodness
Got all your patriotic shit? Good. Blend or otherwise smash your blueberries, mint, and sugar together until everything is like, relatively smooth. Stir in the lime and rum until everything is niiiiice and mixed. Divide the mixture between two glasses and top the rest with the kombucha. Add some ice and fuck yes, America.
Kombucha Mimosa
– 1 bottle Champagne or prosecco (as you do)
– 2 bottles berry-flavored kombucha — we used LIVE Refreshing Rhuberry
– 1 ½ cups orange juice
Have you made a mimosa before? Cause like if you haven’t idk why you’re on the site. Probably as a dare. Or you’re a Russian spy. Anywho, grab a big pitcher and combine the Champagne, kombucha, and juice. Stir to combine, pour into glasses, and garnish with berries. Like honestly I shouldn’t have to explain this to you. There’s nothing like a mimosa to kick off a day of explosions and hot dogs for America.
It’s Monday which means you either spent the last 48 hours in a desert dressed like a slutty homeless person, becoming one with the music or you just spent the last 48 hours crying over Snapchat watching other people party it up in the desert and wishing your were that slutty homeless person becoming one with the music. Either way I’m sure your body is like, one Chainsmokers song away from giving out completely. And like, it’s hard work living your best Instagram life surviving festival season. We need to take care of ourselves, girls. And what better way to rejuvenate our bodies than by drinking more?? *breaks out into cold sweats*
Because I don’t treat my body like a temple—if anything, more like a PF Chang’s, or more accurately, the back alley behind a PF Chang’s—I try and get my daily dose of health the only way I know how: through drinking the latest fad diet drinks. I’ve already told you about how I would gladly become a side-piece to the man who invented Dirty Lemon, aka the drink that lets you drink yourself pretty, but kombucha might be giving him a run for his money.
And if you’re sitting there thinking, like, WTF is kombucha? I knew there would be at least one of you. Kombucha is a concoction of bacteria, tea, and sugar that we’re supposed to pretend is V good for us when really we only love it because it looks good AF in our Instagram photos.
But people are always trying to bring me down by using “facts” and “science” as an argument for why I can’t just reset my body by taking the easy way out. So because I love proving people wrong (Hi, Mom), I decided I would take it upon myself to get to the bottom of this kombucha discussion. Is it actually good for me or am I just drinking mold for nothing? Here’s what we know:
THE BAD
Apparently aside from being trendy AF kombucha also has alcohol in it. Hmm I knew I tasted something I liked. After all, kombucha is a fermented drink and depending on how long it’s fermented for it can contain between .5 and 3 percent of alcohol, which some are claiming can have long-term adverse side effects on your body. I’m convinced that the only reason people are saying this is a “bad thing” is because the Cady Herons of the world don’t want us to have nice things and are trying to tarnish kombucha’s good name.
Sure, Jan.
So what you’re saying is that we can get low-grade fucked up in public and no one can say shit because we’re technically drinking tea? And this is a bad thing because?? Tbh if you can’t handle .5 to 3 percent of alcohol in your beverage then you shouldn’t be sitting with us in the first place. That’s, like, less than a shot and doesn’t even come close to the amount of Bailey’s that frequents my coffee most mornings. Grow the fuck up and drink like an adult.
THE GOOD
So moving on to the positives (though it’s still unclear as to what the negatives were here…), the ingredients found in kombucha are actually super good for your skin. Through the natural fermentation process, it’s naturally enriched with highly beneficial vitamins such as B1, B2, B3, and B12, as well as a ton of repairing acids. Beauty products with kombucha as their main ingredient have been proven to lighten, brighten, smooth, repair, plump, and protect skin. So if you’re struggling with, say, uneven skin tone, dark spots, hyperpigmentation and/or sagging skin then it’s either a really hard Monday or you just got back from Coachella. Either way kombucha enriched beauty products are literally designed to fix those issues. And they say we can’t have it all.
FINAL VERDICT
So just to recap here, not only will this make me look healthy on my Instagram story, but kombucha will also make me, like, really pretty and I get to drink alcohol in the process? As if I needed one more reason to flirt with hipsters visit a Whole Foods.
