When we’re trying to lose weight, the most common mistake is to become obsessed with the scale without considering all the work it’s doing behind the scenes. Mónica Hacha, a food technologist, has issued an important warning on this via her YouTube channel, explaining that to achieve changes you don’t have to eat less; instead, you should focus on adopting healthy habits that protect the body. “When we set out on a slimming diet, we have to be clear that what we need is to reduce the amount of body fat. We’re not at all interested in losing muscle mass,” warns the specialist. She says this because attempting to lose fat simply by stopping eating ends up being muscle loss, something that does not benefit the body at all nor does it resemble the results we expect. That’s why the expert is clear: we must work on slimming in the right way, because, contrary to what many believe, it is possible to lose fat and gain muscle.
To achieve this, the expert proposes a fat-burning treatment based on three pillars that must be in perfect balance: nutrition, physical activity and high-quality rest. In fact, she places special emphasis on sleep, a factor we tend to overlook: “If you have poor nutrition, little exercise, and poor rest, you’ve got there a magical formula for weight gain as well.”
Moreover, the technologist dismantles the myth of “miracle diets” based on starving oneself, assuring that these do not work, since when you drastically cut food intake the body switches into “save mode,” which only spends energy. “We switch to save mode instead of spend mode,” she explains. To lose fat, the goal is to keep the body in spend mode through a light caloric deficit. In other words, you must burn more energy than you ingest.
Although all this may sound somewhat complicated and confusing, especially when compared with internet myths, the truth is much simpler than it seems. You should not starve yourself; you simply need to learn to eat better. That said, you should not forget the rest part nor the exercise, which should include both cardio and strength training.
The five foods that will help you speed up your metabolism
To make things even easier and help the body burn fat more readily, Mónica Hacha proposes adding five very common foods to our daily routine.
The first is coffee, which thanks to caffeine and compounds called polyphenols boosts our metabolism and helps us burn fat when consumed in moderation. Second is green tea, which has a strong ability to wake up the metabolism; drinking it adds virtually no calories, yet it makes our body expend much more energy. The third ally is spice, such as chili pepper, since spicy foods accelerate metabolism and improve fat elimination naturally.
On the other hand, proteins, such as meat, fish, or eggs, are essential because the body spends a lot of energy simply to digest them and, furthermore, they directly feed the muscle so that that internal furnace keeps burning calories day and night. Finally, the expert recommends apple cider vinegar; although it does not magically melt fat, it does “improve the processes involved” in losing weight because it helps regulate blood sugar. Her tip to maximize its benefit is to use it to dress a green salad and eat it just before the rest of the meal.
