Why Eating Fermented Foods Will Help You Lose Weight

Eating fermented foods has been making a huge comeback among people in-the-know these days. Most of these foods have a sour and savory flavor, and although sour is not a taste we’re accustomed to in our modern diet, these foods are in fact delicious and extremely good for your body. The reason is simple. Fermenting anything, especially vegetables, creates healthy probiotic bacteria that are essential to a healthy and functioning digestive tract.

Sustainable Weight Loss Depends on Healthy Digestion

You can be eating all the healthy foods in the world, but if the digestive tract isn’t working right, your body isn’t going to see a dime’s worth of benefit. This is why probiotics are thought to be even more important than vitamins.

By promoting friendly intestinal bacteria, fermented foods help…

• Aid digestion
• Support immune function
• Increase B vitamins (even Vitamin B12)
• Facilitate omega-3 fatty acids,
• Produce digestive enzymes, lactase and lactic acid
• Fight off harmful bacteria and even cancer cells
• Expel toxins and heavy metals from cell tissue.

How does this help with Weight loss?

All of the health benefits listed above help reduce the overall inflammation of our body, which is is particularly important when it comes to weight loss.

You may have heard of the conditions called ‘leptin resistance’ and ‘insulin resistance’. One of the factors that causes these fat-gaining conditions is inflammation. Inflammation, more specifically ‘proinflammatory cytokines’ which are the hormones that cause inflammation, activate your body’s FAT triggers. These inflammatory hormones cause the cells of your body to become resistant to ‘leptin’ and ‘insulin’, the two most important fat regulating hormones. Anything that can reduce chronic inflammation helps address one of main causes of obesity.

Studies are coming out all the time now linking unfriendly gut bacteria with obesity. It’s no surprise then that more and more physicians are using probiotic therapy to treat obesity, diabetes, depression, and heart disease as well as a host of other conditions.

What Are Fermented Foods?

Fermented foods are foods that have been through a process of fermentation in which natural bacteria feed on the sugar and starch in the food. This process has been used for centuries to preserve food, and we now know that it also creates beneficial enzymes and various strains of probiotics. When most people think of fermented foods, things like pickles, marinated peppers, mushrooms, cucumbers, artichokes, and even cheese might come to mind. While these foods were traditionally fermented and incur some form of fermentation, they are not the type of beneficial fermented foods that assist in digestive health and weight loss.

Warning! Not All Fermented Foods are Created Equal

Most canned or jarred foods in the supermarket (and even cheese) are processed for mass consumption through a process called pasteurization. Pasteurization is a heating process that kills bacteria. This is useful when prolonging the shelf life of a product but not useful when trying to preserve the healthy bacteria that is so essential for your digestive health.

The Best Fermented Foods For Weight Loss

That’s just one example, and there are so many other fantastic healthy foods that are easy and fun to make. Get creative, have fun, dip your toe in the water, (or brine as the case may be) and start, healing your gut, your body, your mind, and solve your weight problems.

The key with all foods and the relationship to weight loss is to keep inflammation down in the body. Fermented foods are one of the best ways to ensure that your digestion is healthy and resilient. A resilient body is more able to respond to changes in your life, environment, or food choices and still help you sustain a healthy weight. Since food is the best way to assimilate nutrients, versus supplements, eat your fermented foods every day for healthy weight loss.

Are You Starving for Salt?

Starving for any kind of food is going to make your body gain weight. This is true for several reasons…

First, when we’re deficient in any nutrient, our bodies stay hungry until we get the specific nutrients we need. This can cause incessant junk food cravings, exhaustion and chronic stress, all leading to more weight gain. As we talk about all the time in The Gabriel Method, sometimes the answer is not less food but more of the types of foods our bodies are really craving.

And one of the things we’re usually chronically deficient in is… salt.

Not table salt, not the type of salt that you get from french fries and processed foods. That acts almost like a poison in the body. Besides it’s just sodium chloride— two specific minerals.

What you’re actually starving for are the trace minerals found in real salt, like Himalayan salt crystals from the glaciers of the Himalayas or Celtic salt or sea salt. These all have trace minerals that our body has to have for all its cellular processes.

It’s all about the Minerals

Many people are unaware of the mineral deficit in the modern day diet. The culprit? Processed foods made from crops grown in soil that has been literally burned clean of minerals by chemical fertilizers.

Studies have shown that U.S. soils have lost 86% of their mineral content in the past 100 years. Since there are 103 known minerals and at least 18 of these are required for good health and the only way to get minerals is from the earth, you can see why this has become a serious health problem. With a depleted food source, it’s all too easy to lose the minerals in your body.

Why are minerals so important? Minerals are the chemical building blocks of the body. They are essential for all cellular and hormonal processes and are particularly important in the proper functioning of enzymes. Without minerals, enzymes don’t work efficiently. If the enzymes don’t work, digestion doesn’t work, calcium isn’t getting assimilated into the bones, muscles can’t be built, energy can’t be produced and on and on.

But in terms of your eating habits—well, if you’re not getting a proper balance of minerals, you stay hungry all the time.

Myths about Low Salt Diets

Recent studies about the low-salt diets question some of the current dogma about salt. Ironically, they found that a low salt diet can cause the body to switch FAT programs on, putting you into fat storing mode, sometimes causing insulin resistance, elevated triglycerides, and stress hormones that cause leptin resistance which in turn causes you to eat and keep on eating.

For years we’ve been hammered with the idea that salt is bad for you; the same way we were told fat is bad.

Now science is finding out that this is not really correct. In fact, consuming fat is essential.

You just need the right type of fat. It’s the same situation with salt. You need salt but it should be salt that has lots of trace minerals. Then it becomes a good thing for your body.

So what you need to do is simple! Go to a health food store and spend about 10 dollars on a good, healthy salt. It will last you for months. Sprinkle it on your food. Also, if you drink a lot of water (which I always recommend) then you might want to put a little bit of healthy salt in your water, and so you’re not depleting yourself of trace minerals.

The Gabriel Method is all about feeding your body and your mind everything it needs, and in this case, your body needs trace minerals for cellular processes.

When you do that, you’ll find that you’re not as hungry, not craving junk foods anymore, and you’ll have more energy. You’ll feel less stress because your body won’t be stressed by lack of minerals and you’ll lose weight much easier.

Looking for a nutritional boost? Cheap and easy, sprouts offer the kind of health benefits worthy of the name “superfood”.

So, what’s great about sprouts?

1. Sprouts are a “living food.” Unlike other fruit and vegetables, which lose a significant amount of vitamins by the time they reach your table, sprouts continue to produce nutrients after being harvested.

2. Sprouts Have a Higher Nutritional Content Than Any Other Food. A sprouted seed, bean or nut has many times the nutritional value than the non-sprouted version.Replacing the lettuce in your salad with sprouts will give you 5 times the protein, 6 times the Vitamin C and 7 times the B Complex Vitamins.

3. The Most Enzyme-Rich Food You Can Find. Enzymes act as a catalyst for the chemical reactions in our bodies while helping us digest essential nutrients in our food. A sprouted seed, nut or bean has a whopping 43 times the enzyme power when compared to the non-sprouted variety.

4. Sprouts Are High in Anti-Oxidants. Anti-oxidants protect our DNA from damage and slow down the effects of aging.

5. Sprouts Are Rich In Chlorophyll. Chlorophyll cleanses our blood and detoxifies our system. It has the ability to regenerate our bodies on a cellular and molecular level.

If you’re new to sprouts, the easiest way to incorporate them into your diet is by adding them to salads. You can also try adding raw sprouts to smoothies and juices.

Sprouts also make a great garnish to meat based dishes like fresh salmon and organic beef. They can also add a nice crunch to stir fries and soups – just make sure you add them within the last 15 minutes of cooking.

Growing Your Own

Sprouts can be purchased cheaply at most grocery stores, but if you’re looking for an even fresher and more affordable option, growing your own is easy.

1. Choose a container: a simple glass jar covered with a mesh screen and a food grade rubber band works well. You can also purchase multi-tiered plastic containers that hold multiple seeds, beans, or nuts.

2. Soak your seeds, beans or nuts for 8-12 hours. Make sure you add 4 parts water to one part seed. Rinse.

3. Repeat rinse 2 times a day. Be careful to keep your sprouts drained because they rot if left in water.

4. Keep sprouts moist but not wet, grow at room temperature, allow plenty of air and be sure not to overfill container.

If you are looking for an easy, affordable superfood option, give sprouts a try!

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