Fat burning food

On the quest to reduce some kilos, it could help to put more focus to nutrition and sleep as Jason pointed out in his comment earlier. From the start of this project in August last year (2008) to the current day, I lost about 7 kg, from 81.5kg to now stable at around 74.5kg.The progress on the weight front was pretty front loaded, i.e. I lost the majority in the first several months and almost nothing in the last three months. Only this week with the flu caught on badly, another kilo went down the drain… well it literally felt that I coughed and sneezed it out. A previous blog entry covered the estimated optimal weight to a marathon runner. And according to that, there are still 4kg to go for me. This will not happen until the Rotterdam Marathon in 2 weeks, but over the spring and summer towards the project goal the Berlin Marathon.

Let’s look at food, up to now I’ve been mainly applying common sense, reduced the size of the portion at lunch in the company restaurant or left out fast food, chocolate and other fat rich foods. It sometimes drives me crazy, especially in the evenings when sitting in front of the computer, trying to get the blog entry together while not really progressing. Then this craving for oral satisfaction makes me run around the apartment on the search of gummy bears, cookies or other sweet things. Lately crisp bread has been a successful substitute

Before tuning the whole diet towards long distance running needs - something that’s planned for April - one a bit more systematic approach is to see after having metabolism stimulating foods in the nutrition. Here some extracted hints from a list on the German “Die Welt” online edition.

• Apples help to egest fat
• Algae activate the metabolism
• Grapefruit raise the energy production
• Ginger activates the body heat production
• Iodine, e.g. in salt activates the metabolism
• Tea and coffee (caffein & theine)  activate the fat based metabolism (lipometabolism) and body heat production
• Herbs and spices are real vitamin bombs for the metabolism
• Magnesium activates metabolic enzymes
• Taurin in energy drinks vitalizes and activates fat burning

The first four could be helpful, they’re not that common in the nordic diet. The rest are already somewhat covered. With energy drinks one has to be careful, some, the non-light ones, also contain a lot of sugars. In case you have more, let people know here on this forum.

Tags: food, nutrition, optimal weight