ATHE_Transcript_Ep 418_YT 13
[00:00:00] Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Thanks so much for joining me. This is ask the health expert. In each episode, I put the power of health in your hands and share ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut detox and lots more. So you can look and feel better fast if you'd rather watch the video. Hey, I did put on my makeup and do my hair.
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There are four things I use as my go-to is to crank up metabolism, get healthy and help with faster fat loss and they may surprise you, But the results won't. Do you want to keep up with things that will help you get healthy and then bonus lose weight and keep it from coming back, I'll make sure you don't miss out.
Just hit like, and subscribe to this [00:01:00] channel and you'll be good to go. So metabolism now, you can't have a conversation about health and weight loss and getting healthy without talking about metabolism. Let's jump into my four tried and true strategies to boost your metabolic rate, to help you heal and drop the pounds. now first,
let's talk about what you eat and drink. Quality matters. The quality of the food you eat directly affects everything about the way your body functions, including your metabolism. After all you are, what you eat and you are what you eat, ate, meaning if you are eating animal products and those animals were.
Garbage food. Guess what you're getting now. Even if you think you eat well, you may not be eating foods that can actually support your metabolism, help you get healthy and help you lose weight to make that happen. You need to eat thermic the thermic effect of food means that the food takes a lot of energy to [00:02:00] metabolize thermic foods help you rev up your metabolism, have more.
Think more clearly reduce your risk of disease and improve your digestion. They also keep you full and burn more calories. So when you eat more of these foods, it makes it easier to burn fat and lose weight, or at least not to gain it. And the good news gets better because the thermic effect. Energy burned above and beyond your basal metabolic rate.
Basal metabolic rate is the amount of calories your body uses. If you're a total rest, you're doing nothing. So you may not know this, but there's a hierarchy of macronutrient breakdown when you eat your body starts digesting first by digesting alcohols, then protein then carbohydrates. And then finally fats.
Now, when you eat a mix of all the macros protein, carbs and fat, your body might burn anywhere from five to 15% more energy to digest your food. So this means you can't get away with grazing [00:03:00] all day long to keep your metabolism high, because that thermic effect of food is the same, no matter how often you eat.
All that matters is how much, and when you eat and the balance of macronutrients you consume. So if you were doing this whole thing, I'm going to eat all day long to keep my metabolism high. Nope. That is not what the research shows. It's actually the plate that you're eating that protein, fat and carbs.
That makes the difference. Okay. So if you're thinking now, huh? I could boost fat burning just by eating more foods with high thermic effect. That's the right answer. If you're eating a lot of foods that trigger thermogenesis, you're increasing your calorie burn, and that can give you the weight loss jumpstart you've been looking for.
So what are some of the best thermic foods you can eat here? Goes number one, protein. This by far is definitely number one. Here's what I want you to think of when you're thinking protein, I'm really talking [00:04:00] about clean lean animal protein here, wild fish, pastured pork and chicken grass fed beef and lamb.
Bison veal, these types of things. And again, the operative word here is clean. You are what you eat ate, but we know that protein is the most thermic of all of the macro nutrients next. You may not think too much about what you drank, but here's, what's crazy. Water can have an amazing impact on your metabolism.
There've been a lot of studies on water and weight loss, and whether it boost your metabolism. Well, it turns out the legend of cold water burning more calories versus warm waters is a myth, but one study showed that drinking 500 milliliters of water. Didn't matter about the temperature increased metabolic rate by wait for it.
Percent. Now this was inside of about 10 minutes and maxed out about 30 to 40 minutes, but still I will take that. Won't you now, no matter what you [00:05:00] drink way drinking water raises. Resting energy. And here's, what's also important. If you are just mildly hydrated, even 1%, it can raise stress hormones. So water is so key to do in that increase in your metabolic rate, just by drinking water could be an easy way to beat back weight gain.
And it's also great for detoxification too. All right. Number three. Spices. Spices can have a great thermic effect. So let's talk about a couple of the different ones that are really important here. Let's start with ginger. Now. Research shows that ginger is good for digestion and increases your metabolism, and also helps you feel full.
It decreases your hunger levels and calms and soothes your digestive tract. And you can add ginger powder to hot water or meals or take it as supplements. Now next step cinnamon. Now, whatever you do with cinnamon, like it is just absolutely delicious. It makes everything smell and taste just a little bit cozier.
Why is [00:06:00] cinnamon so important? It boosts your metabolism and improves your digestion. And most importantly, it helps control and lower blood sugar responses to meal. It's also a great alternative to salt on your roasted veggies. You wouldn't have thought of that, would you? And it's one that I love for adding some natural sweetness rather than.
Sugar cause we don't use sugar. Right? All right. Then there's turmeric. Now turmeric has been around for centuries. It's that flavoring Curry dishes and has this active component called curcumin and curcumin is a super powerful anti-inflammatory. It's been linked to weight loss and to prevention of obesity and diabetes, and it could help with cognitive decline.
And then finally, Cayenne now there's something in cayenne called Capsaicin. And Capsaicin can help increase your ability to burn fat and calories by stimulating body heat. It literally raises your body temperature. I mean, not for long, but it still does it. [00:07:00] It's also found in chili peppers so they can give your metabolism a little bump too. Now the hotter, the.
The bigger, the metabolic zap. Capsaicin also suppresses your appetite and helps cut cravings. So add some heat. One of the things that I love to do, especially in my chocolate loaded smoothies, add a little bit little sprinkle of cayenne, just a little. Or I'll do these lemon juice drinks with a little bit of lemon juice, a little bit of Stevia and a little bit of cayenne.
Great for your metabolism. All right. Now, the second way to boost your metabolism after food and drinks is you got to build more lean muscle now, right out of the gate, more lean muscle will give you a. Basal metabolic rate. That means that you're going to burn more calories just going about your daily business, right.
It also is going to help you manage your blood sugar because muscles, one of the first places we start becoming more insulin sensitive. Of course, muscles are important [00:08:00] for having healthy joints and great bones and controlling body fat. And remember, think of muscle like metabolic Spanx. It's going to hold everything in tighter and support a healthier metabolism along with it.
If you're losing weight, but you're not losing fat. I always say if you're losing weight, but not losing your waist because it's not just what you weigh, it's what you, what your weight is made up of. So if you're losing weight, but not fat odds are you're losing precious muscle. And that's making you worse.
Not better. That's not helping you become healthier. That's making you something called TOFI thin, outside fat inside. This is not where you want to be. You do not want to try to maintain your weight by diet alone and be a fluffy person. You want to be solid. Like a rock building muscle can also help you lose weight faster and keep it off.
Right. And makes you look better naked by the way, too. Just had to throw that in there. When you make building lean muscle part of your strategy, you can [00:09:00] actually speed up weight loss and make sure you don't gain it back because your body, your muscle needs to spend more calories just to stay on your body.
So muscle not only helps you burn. But it also let's face. It makes it easier to stay active and exercise can also impact the thermogenesis of your food. Wild, huh? I mean, high intensity interval training can actually increase the thermic effect of food. And so can resistance training by the way. So you're getting this crazy one, two punch with this now, to be fair, it doesn't increase it much, but the effect of it can last up to five hours after your.
So if you're working out and then you have a highly thermic food afterwards, like say maybe a little protein smoothie, a loaded smoothie after your workout, not only will all that protein help you repair muscle, it will also give you that extra bang for your buck and maximize fat burning. So the best exercises for this resistance training, obviously you want to lift weights.
That's the single best way [00:10:00] to build more muscle and high intensity interval training. Elevates growth hormone. All right. The third metabolism booster is something called neat. Neat stands for non-exercise activity. Thermogenesis. You've been seeing me do it right now. If you see me like fidget move, blah, blah, blah.
That's neat. It's the energy we burn for everything that's not sleeping, eating, or exercise. It's the walking, the talking, the taking the stairs, the parking farther away, the standing, instead of sitting fidgeting yard work, it all counts. And while it may not seem like a lot, it turns out that neat can have a big impact on your metabolic rate and calorie burning.
A study published in 2016, followed more than 12,000 British women for 12 years and found that fidgeting fidgeting may reduce the risk of death associated with excessive sedentary time. So, fidget. You got to get moving again, like stand up desk, get a dog, right, move [00:11:00] more and finally, fourth, you got to improve your insulin sensitivity.
So insulin sensitivity is how your body hears, how your receptors hear the message of insulin. The more sensitive your body is to insulin. The less your body has to pump out. If you've got more insulin. Or longer, it basically locks the doors to your fat cells. So you cannot burn off stored fat for fuel.
Plus it creates inflammation, hypertension, all sorts of other problems can lead to diabetes. So you want to improve your insulin sensitivity. And when you do, you'll lose fat more easily, you'll have lower risk of disease. You'll have better brain function, fewer cravings and less hunger. What's not to love there.
Right? So. When your insulin resistance, just the opposite. You are going to struggle with being able to lose fat. If you lose weight, you won't lose your waist and you end up losing muscle that's because again, when insulin is high, you're more [00:12:00] likely to store calories and fat as fat, less likely to burn them.
You cannot use stored body fat for fuel easily. This is not the way that we want to be. Plus you also get hit with cravings and hunger, because again, you can't access that stored fat for fuel. Now you're probably wondering, now they've said this. Well, how do I become more insulin sensitive? Great question.
Number one. Biggest thing is. In fact, even one poor night of sleep makes you more insulin resistant. Of course, the longer it goes, the worse it gets. So sleep is key critical seven to nine hours of quality sleep a night. That's why you want to make sure that you track it, what you measure and monitor. You can improve that.
You're getting that deep. Super important exercise. Of course, building that muscle. One of the first places you can start to restore insulin sensitivity is in your muscles. That is one of the key things that muscle that exercise does for you. And number three is [00:13:00] lowering stress. So stress. Really messes with your ability to regulate your blood sugar when you're stressed out, your body thinks, oh my gosh, run from that tiger and dumps breaks down muscle dumps, blood sugar, dumps muscle as sugar in your bloodstream.
So you will have fasting blood sugar if you're under stress. Right? So let's look at some activities, go back to my video that talks about how to handle stress better. And then. You got to lose a few pounds now again, I always talk about how you need to get healthy, to lose weight, not the opposite. And I know that's what you're trying to do in the first place, but as you do lose belly fat, which is why you always want to take your waist measurements, that's going to help you improve.
Insulin sensitivity. Okay. So super important as you're losing weight, to make sure that you're losing your waist so that you will become more insulin sensitive and lower your risk of diabetes five, you're going to want to eat more soluble fiber. Now, most of the things that you're going to eat high fiber.
[00:14:00] Lentils and nuts and avocados. They have a blend of both insoluble and soluble. The soluble is key here because it improves insulin sensitivity while helping feed the good bacteria in your gut. So think about all the different things that you eat when you're eating by the plate of protein, healthy fats, and then fiber from plants.
That's going to be helpful here. And speaking of plants, we want to make sure that you're getting all the colorful fruits and veggies to your diet. You know, they say eat by the rainbow. Why? And I'm not talking Skittles or. You eat by the rainbow because each of those different plants, blueberries and red peppers and red onions and avocado, all of those different colors actually have different plant nutrients, phytonutrients, antioxidants, and they all have different, incredible functions that help heal your metabolism.
Obviously, I'm going to tell you to cut down on the sugar impact. Remember all carbs except fiber turn into sugar. So we are really trying to make sure that we're making sugar slowly from the foods we eat [00:15:00] rather than mainlining it. So we're going to take that down because one of the fastest ways to become more insulin resistant is to crank up the carbs and sugar.
Because when you do that, your body is going to raise its blood sugar and raise insulin. So let's cut that way down. Now supplements that can help here. These are called the four horsemen of blood sugar balance. These important minerals that should be in your multi, that you're taking chromium, magnesium, zinc, and vanadium.
Now you're going to want to take extra magnesium. You're not going to get enough in your multi-vitamin for that. I take three before bed, and then of course optimizing your vitamin D we check 25 hydroxy vitamin. And you're gonna want to optimize vitamin D take D3 with K1 and 2. That is super important for insulin modulation.
So really key critical fish oil helps restore insulin sensitivity as does lipoic acid and berberine is super important for blood sugar control. So all of these can make a major, major difference here. [00:16:00] Now here's a couple other little fun. One-offs cinnamon, cinnamon, like, you know, who hates having to add cinnamon to things?
You can throw it into your loaded smoothie. You can put it into your coffee, can put it on oatmeal. Cinnamon is great for blood sugar control helps lower the blood sugar response to a meal. Same with lemon. So drinking, putting a couple tablespoons of lemon. And water before a meal can help lower the blood sugar response to meals.
Same with apple cider vinegar. You can either use vinegar and salad dressings or take two tablespoons, put it into green tea before a meal and speaking of green tea. I love green tea for helping with insulin sensitivity and blood sugar control. And it's also great for your gut microbiome and restoring the good bacteria in your gut.
All right. And these are all easy ones who wouldn't love those ones. Alright. There ya go. I hope you got some good tips on this video for boosting your metabolism and keeping it healthy. And don't forget to like, and subscribe this so that you keep the healthy lifestyle tips. Come in, See ya next time.[00:17:00]
For more info on this and other health topics I cover or to rate and review, find me on Instagram, Facebook and my website, JJvirgin.com. And don't forget to subscribe to my show. So you won't miss a single episode. Go to subscribetojj.com. Thanks again for being with me this week. .