Losing weight has been and will continue to be one of the hottest topics in the health industry. Why? Because everyone wants to be slender, toned, and look and feel great about their body.
But what if you’ve been trying to lose weight for some time and the scale just won’t budge?
Inflammation may be to blame!
What is Inflammation and Why Does It Matter?
If you’ve ever injured yourself, you’re probably familiar with inflammation. You bang your knee or twist an ankle and it swells up. Eventually, your body heals and the inflammation dissipates. That inflammation is your body’s immune response to outside impact, but your body can have the same response to internal invaders. What many people don’t think about is that these invaders can include food.
The problem with foods that cause this immune response is that if you continue to eat them on a regular basis, your body never gets a chance to “heal” and return to a normal state, leading to chronic inflammation.
Chronic inflammation causes tons of other health issues, including weight gain, drowsiness, digestive issues, skin problems and tons of other diseases, including possibly cancer.
What Causes Inflammation?
The good news is that many of these conditions can be prevented by reducing the inflammation in your body, and to do so, you need to know what causes inflammation in the first place.
- Sugar – Sugar is one of the leading causes of inflammation in the body. When your body has too much glucose from eating excessive sugar, it is not able to process it quickly enough, producing cytokines. These messengers are pro-inflammatory, or help cause inflammation. Sugar also inhibits the white blood cells, weakening your immune system and making you more susceptible to disease.
- Fried Foods – Besides the vegetable oils these foods are fried in, frying or cooking food at a very high temperature creates AGE‘s or advanced glycation end products. Cutting out these compounds has been shown to reduce inflammation.
- Refined Flour/Gluten – Refined flour has been stripped of slow-digesting fiber, so your body is able to digest it faster, causing a faster spike in your blood sugar and insulin level, and consequently causing inflammation. Gluten is not an easy substance for our bodies to digest and gluten found in store-bought breads, etc. have not been processed long enough to allow the yeast to partially digest some of the gluten. When your body has to do all the work, it starts to break down the lining of your stomach, causing inflammation.
- Dairy – The biggest cause of inflammation when it comes to dairy is because of an allergy or sensitivity that you may or may not know you have. Many people are intolerant to dairy and don’t even know it, but every time you are exposed to it, it causes inflammation in your gut.
- Grain-Fed Protein – Most conventional meat is produced from grain-fed cows, chickens and pigs. The problem with this diet is that it’s not as natural for the animals to eat and they have to have antibiotics as a result to prevent them from getting sick. Those antibiotics can cause inflammation when we eat those meats. On top of that, the corn and grains in the food itself that the animals eat cause inflammation.
- Artificial Sweeteners/Additives – Artificial sweeteners produce a similar response as sugar, except instead of being too much sugar, your body just doesn’t know how to digest them at all because they’re not natural. This build up increases the cytokines. Artificial additives like food coloring are also difficult for your body to digest and cause inflammation.
How to Reduce Inflammation
So now that we know a few common things that cause inflammation in your body, let’s talk about how to reduce it. First and foremost, simply avoiding the foods we’ve already discussed will help reduce the inflammation in your body because they aren’t adding insult to injury and compounding the inflammation already in your system.
However, there are also foods you can eat that specifically help reduce inflammation. Eating these on a regular basis can help keep it down.
- Turmeric – Turmeric is one of the most effective foods because it contains curcumin. It’s natural antioxidant abilities help it to reduce inflammation and help your body in a ton of other ways. To read more about turmeric and curcumin, check my article, Turmeric: Why It’s The New Health Craze.
- Ginger – Ginger has been known to help with belly aches and nausea, but it also reduces inflammation in the gut. This helps your body digest food naturally.
- Salmon (fatty fish) – Salmon and other fatty fish contain omega-3 fatty acids, or healthy fats, that reduce inflammation. Fish oil supplements would be a good alternative if you’re not a fishy person or can’t get healthy fish where you’re located.
- Avocado – Avocado also contains healthy fats and works in a similar to the healthy fats found in fish.
- Walnuts (and other nuts) – These contain healthy fats as well and the polyphenolic compounds and phytochemical substances found in walnuts are especially effective at reducing inflammation.
- Berries – The antioxidants in berries help them to reduce inflammation, because they fight free radicals in the body, which cause inflammation. Blueberries are the most effective because they also contain vitamin C, which boosts its free radical fighting ability.
- Celery – Celery is another surprisingly excellent source of antioxidants. The dietary fiber found in celery also helps you feel fuller longer and leads to weight loss.
Ready, Set, Go!
Now that you know the effect that inflammation can have on your body and on your weight loss efforts, and you know what foods can help reduce inflammation in your body, you have everything you need to get off that weight loss plateau you’ve been stuck on and get on to a happier, healthier you. Overall, focus on a balanced diet of whole, natural foods and appropriate portion sizes, and you can reach your weight loss goals in no time!