Can You Explain How Sweet Potatoes and Squashes Are Good Foods for Fat Loss?

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I was a bit surprised about sweet potato and squashes being good foods for fat loss. While these are great slow carbs, I wouldn't necessarily put them in the fat burning category. Would be great to hear why. This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times Best selling author, celebrity nutrition expert and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert.

Mag.

The health coach from Instagram asks, I was a bit surprised about sweet potato and squashes being good foods for fat loss. While these are great slow carbs, I wouldn't necessarily put them in the fat burning category. It would be great to hear why. All right, well, this is a bigger vision thing that I'm going to explain to you, so I will be right back to explain. Kind of the bigger vision of what we need to do to get our body to be a great fat burner.

I'll be back.

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One of the big things that I teach in the virgin diet and the sugar impact diet is to eat by the plate. And here's what the plate looks like and then I'm going to tell you why. Well, I'll tell you why as I'm telling you about the plate. First of all, the plate has protein, fat and fiber from lots of non starchy vegetables and a little bit of slow low impact carbs. Now the protein which are things like grass fed beef, grass fed lamb, pastured pork and chicken, wild seafood, eggs if you are not intolerant, pastured eggs if you are not intolerant, if you've done the virgin diet and you've gone through and found your hidden intolerances and, and you've connected dots. Am I making that clear? And then some of the vegan sources like the vegan protein powders, the rest of those, if you're a vegan, remember it's either going to be a crossover between fat and protein or a crossover between carbs and protein. Healthy fats are things like coconut, avocado, olives, nuts and seeds. And then you get of course some healthy fats and things like cold water fish, then non starchy vegetables, self explanatory and slow low impact carbs, which is just a small part of that little area. And those are things like low sugar impact fruits, squashes, I'm like a big fan of squashes, beans, things like that. So now let's talk fat burning and sugar burning. One of the big things I talk about now, the reason I put that play together, one of the big things I talk about in the sugar impact diet is being a fat burner, not a sugar burner. And that we want to make this transition from being a sugar burner to a fat burner. And one of the ways we need to do that is by having balanced blood sugar that's at the lower end, 70, 80, not riding up at 90 which increases 5x's your chance of dementia and the way we do that is by eating by that plate. Because the protein in the fiber slow down stomach emptying, keep ghrelin suppressed. The fiber, of course, slows down the blood sugar response. The fat triggers release of some chemicals to tell the brain you're full. Altogether, we get much better blood sugar response, which is super duper duper important. Now if we don't have the big insulin, the big blood sugar spike, and the big insulin spike, we're keeping insulin low, we're keeping blood sugar normalized. Then your body can, then you can go, you know, five to six hours between meals. You can do a 12 to 16 hour overnight fast. You can get into fat burning. You can easily access stored fat for fuel. If your insulin's high and you're, you're turning, you're basically shutting the doors to your fat cells. So that is why it's really much more of that bigger vision of how do we get your blood sugar bal insulin low, insulin sensitive, so your body can access stored fat for fuel. There are a couple things that can help you with fat burning, so I'm going to give you some of those too. Number one is coffee. We don't think about this, but coffee can help with fat burning. So, you know, we know that having a cup of coffee before exercise, especially if you're a fasted state and it's plain black, can help with fat burning and improve your exercise performance. Cayenne pepper, spices can help with fat burning. I really wish that I liked them more. I have been drinking this lemon juice with cayenne, but I'm kind of a spice wimp, so. But they can help with fat burning. And then of course, MCT oil, it's one of the easiest things to burn, so that can help. And getting the fructose out, getting the fructose down as low as possible. So it's interesting when you look at sugars, they're not all created equal. And I always say, you know, it's not about eating no sugar, it's about knowing which to choose and which to lose. And, and when you look at these sugars, you can either mainline them, honey, fructose, like you're mainlining it in, or you can make it slowly from the foods you eat. Now fructose is really interesting. And fructose agave is 90% fructose, or there's crystalline fructose, and then there is fructose and things like corn syrup. There's fructose and fruit, but remember the fructose and fruit it's got fructose and glucose and fiber and nutrients as opposed to the juice with no fiber. So when you eat something with fructose in it, the fructose goes straight to the liver. It's the only organ that can metabolize it. And if there's not enough room for it to be stored as glycogen there, it's turned into fat. Assume that there's not enough room. The liver is a little small place. This is why we have fatty liver. So if you're eating fructose, it's making fat. It's also raising your. It can raise your blood pressure, it can raise insulin, it can cause leaky gut, and it's more glycating, more aging than any other sugar. It doesn't mean don't eat fruit, but don't drink fruit juice, eat dried fruit, all that kind of stuff. Definitely not fat burning. And it shows that if you eat sugar, especially fructose after a workout, you can shut down that fat burning from the workout. So the last thing you want to do is have like a big juice after a workout. Oh, my goodness. So one of the things that I do is get people to go through in the sugar impact diet to taper down and then take a two week transition, bring fructose to basically zero. So your body desensitizes to it. Because the more fructose you eat, the better you get at transporting fruit fructose to the liver. I don't want to be good at that. I do not want to be a good fat maker. Right. I don't want to be a sugar burner and I don't want to be a good fat maker, which you are, because the more fructose you eat, the better you get at it. So that is the one big shout out I can say is really watch that, because that can shut off fat burning. That can create insulin resistance. The more insulin resistant you are, the higher the insulin is, the worse you are at burning fat, the more you are a sugar burner. All right, This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

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