For Natural Weight Loss, Really Focus on Eating Whole Foods. It Helps Tremendously.
At Healthy Nest, we achieve natural weight loss by eating delicious, whole foods. After surveying the latest natural weight-loss research, nutrition scientists agree with us that to achieve sustainable natural weight loss you need to toss the processed ingredients and trade them in for single-ingredient whole foods.
If you’re just starting to make some changes to your diet on your natural weight-loss journey, here are some easy, achievable steps you can take right now to reach your weight-loss goals.
Be Mediterranean Minded
Smart snacking is a crucial puzzle piece to a healthy diet. Being prepared with foods rich in monounsaturated fats, like nuts, seeds, avocados and olives will set you up for success. These foods are filled with monounsaturated fats, which have been linked to a plethora of health benefits, including the prevention of tummy fat. Since we now have NO reason to be fat phobic anymore, embrace them into your diet and sub them for cheese, chips and dried fruit. These foods are tasty and satiating, provide many health benefits and can be used as a snack or an add on to most meals. Healthy Nest suggests almonds, walnuts, cucumber with tapenade, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds/butter.
Eat More Protein (Pro Protein)
First, increasing protein in your diet helps to limit sugar and carbs intake, which are two big culprits for weight gain or not being able to shed pounds. Protein also increases your fat-burning potential and helps to reduce your appetite. To get a little nutrition-nerdy, protein decreases a weight-regulating hormone called ghrelin. Ghrelin is the hunger hormone that acts like a “Gremlin” and sends your brain signals when you are hungry and need to eat. Higher levels of ghrelin are the cause for phantom snacking impulses, and upping your protein suppresses ghrelin levels. Protein is super filling, which also means less snacking and fewer calories for you. Some fun protein alternatives to meat and fish are protein shakes, lentils, nuts and seeds.
Eat Soluble Fiber
Soluble fiber gives you a great bang for your buck because it increases feeling of fullness, controls blood sugar levels and slows carbohydrate metabolism (and it tastes great!). Soluble fiber is able to absorb large quantities of water, which makes you feel full and also helps clean up your pipes for optimal digestion. Sources of soluble fiber include oats, flaxseeds, avocados, Brussel sprouts (along with other cruciferous vegetables) and blackberries.
Include More Healthy Fats
At Healthy Nest, we are cuckoo for coconut and other healthful fats. Coconut oil and coconut milk are a few examples of the beneficial types of fat that should be making an appearance in your diet. You might be wondering how eating fat can help you lose fat? We actually need a lot of fat to get through natural weight loss. A couple of factors play into this. First, when you eat healthy fats, you stop eating or crowd out other kinds of unstable, not-good-for-you fats. The science says that we readily use some fats and store others. Further, some fats are inflammatory while others are anti-inflammatory. We want you eating the right kinds of fats. The quality and composition matters! Coconut & olive oil are two different kinds of fats, but both are beneficial to the body — meaning the body will more readily absorb, digest and use these fats as fuel instead storing as fat. The accelerated metabolic conversion helps feed our muscles and organs the fuel it needs. Moral of the story: Eat more good-quality, healthy fats.
In Conclusion
There is no substitute for eating whole, single-ingredient foods. Whole foods are filled with important nutrients that help increase our metabolic function that leads to natural weight loss that lasts forever.
We hope these tips help to give you insight into your natural weight-loss journey. If you have more questions, or feel that you already follow this advice but are still struggling, Healthy Nest Nutrition has more answers and insight for you. You can schedule a 20 minute complimentary consult to see if our personalized natural weight loss program is the right choice for you.
Sources & References:
- How To Lose Weight Fastl 3 Simple Steps, Based on Science- https://authoritynutrition.com/how-to-lose-weight-as-fast-as-possible/
- The 30 Best Ways to Get a Flat Stomach: https://authoritynutrition.com/the-30-best-ways-to-get-a-flat-stomach/
- The Health Benefits of Fiber- http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/11/25/9-fiber-health-benefits.aspx
- The Benefits and Truth About Monounsaturated Fats-https://draxe.com/monounsaturated-fat/
Hi! I’m Robin, the founder of Healthy Nest Nutrition. I am a board-certified holistic nutritionist in Denver, Colorado. My passion is helping people find the right diet for their bodies and then showing them how to make healthy nutrition doable and delicious!
