How to Use Fat-Burning Spices to Reduce Inflammation with Nagina Abdullah

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Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Welcome and thanks so much for joining me. This is Ask the Health Expert. Here. I put the power of health in your hands and give you access to the top people in health and wellness. In each episode, I share safe ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut, detox, and lots more. So if you want to get healthy and get off the dieting for life merry go round, I'll give you strategies.

That will help you look and feel better fast.

I am excited, excited to have this guest on today. I met her two and a half years ago. Oh my gosh, it took me this long to get Nagina Abdullah on the show. She is the sister of Maneesh and Ramit Sethi. Maneesh is my buddy who has Pavlok, that little device that shocks you, he calls it, where your willpower shocks you into doing the right stuff. And Nagina is a health coach. She's a health coach, she says, for ambitious women. She founded the website Masala Body and everything is around how to use spices and foods to reduce inflammation. And she has some really cool information about some special spices that can help you balance your blood sugar, drop the belly fat, and boost your metabolism. Sound good? I mean, I love it when you can add rather than take away. So Nagina's been all over the place, Business Insider, People, Huffington Post, Fox News. And she's also a busy mom of two plus, has a degree from UC Berkeley in molecular and cell biology and worked at one of the top four consulting firms for some of the biggest healthcare providers in the country. And that's sort of where her struggle began. So she'll tell you all about this when she comes on. And before I bring her on, I just want to share one of my favorites with.

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Sweet Ray Ban Meta glasses available at Ray Ban stores and other authorized retailers. All righty, Nagina. Welcome to the show. I'm super excited to have you here, and I don't know why it took so long to get you here.

I'm so excited to be here too, jj. Thank you.

I know it's what, like, two and a half years later, you're finally on my podcast. My gosh, what's a girl gotta do? Beg and plead. So this is going to be very fun because we've never really dove into spices and stuff, and so I'd love to kind of talk about how you got into what you're doing now, which is all everything around inflammation, reducing inflammation. Like, how'd you get here?

So I had struggled with my health in terms of my weight and my energy for my entire life.

Your entire life?

My entire life. It was something that I always had to focus on really, really closely. And I never felt the way I wanted to feel. And I never actually had the body that I thought was possible. I was hoping it was possible, but I thought it was because of genetics. I could never feel confident about myself. And as I got older, I started working in a very demanding job. I was a consult for a top four consulting firm in New York. I was traveling all over the place. And then I had two kids after that. And so as I came out of having two kids, I had a lot of extra weight on my body, and I knew that I had not been very successful with getting it off even before I had kids. So I didn't know if it would really ever happen for me. And because of my very busy schedule, I couldn't go to the gym for hours a day because I knew I'd be working too much. So I decided to start with food Food and to figure out how I could get healthier and feel better about myself. Because I just didn't want to look at myself in the mirror and think, who is that? Who am I looking at? And I didn't want to have to throw all my clothes out and not fit them anymore. I needed to get into some kind of shape. And so I started looking at the kinds of foods I was eating versus looking at the calories and looking at the portions and focusing on that, which is everything I had done before. So I started changing up the foods I was eating. I started eating a lot of undefined, processed foods, lowering my sugar, adding protein, and then I also added a lot of spices into my food because I knew that I had to make healthy eating fun. And that was the way that I can make it sustainable for me. And so I started eating like this every single night. I would sit down, my husband did it with me. We would sit down and we would start eating, and I would take a bite, and I would look at him and I would think, oh, my God, this does not taste healthy. It tastes too good to be healthy food. Because all the kinds of food that I had known in the past, it was so bland and boring whenever it was healthy, which is why it wasn't sustainable. So after eating like that for four weeks, I got on the scale, and I had dropped 10 pounds, and it felt like it had melted off. And because I felt so great, my energy levels were going up. It felt so easy, and I liked how I felt after I was eating this food. I kept following it, And I lost 20 pounds in three months. And then I continued following it, And I lost 40 pounds in nine months, and I actually got to 20 pounds below my pregnancy weight.

Wow.

Yes. So that was where something went off in my brain after I was like, aha. I was thinking, like, there's something here that I haven't heard from the weight loss Industry from all the magazines that tell us to do all these different things that I've been following for decades, nothing worked. But when I actually changed the kinds of foods I was eating and then I started adding these flavorful spices, I found out that later on, later on I went and researched them and I found out they're actually anti inflammatory spices. Spices. Their metabolism increasing and their calorie burning spices, that's the benefits that they have and they're all natural. I realized that this overall diet, it had helped me with inflammation and it helped my body just to process easier. And so then I started sharing my recipes. Everyone started asking me about it because they saw my 40 pound weight loss. And I started a blog that's masalabody.com, my site. And that's where I started just sharing my advice. And it's grown into a coaching and an online business.

I love it. I always think that the, you know, the best health experts out there, whatever their background, you know, Maryland health coach, whatever it is, the best ones are the ones that have gone through that journey themselves. You know, had the struggle and gone through it and really experienced it. So you know what being inflamed feels like because you were there. But the someone listening right now, how would they know if inflammation was an issue for them?

So when you're inflamed, sometimes you can't see it right away because chronic inflammation, which happens inside, it's not necessarily like if you were to get a cut, you would start to, that's when your skin will turn red and hot. That's acute inflammation. But when you have inflammation internally, you can't always see, see it right away like that, but you can tell that it's there. And the reason is a lot of times if you feel tired or if you feel washed out, that's the result of inflammation. And a few specific ways that you might know that you're inflamed is that people that are inflamed, they usually have belly fat that will not go anywhere even if you try to eat healthy. And that's because fat cells in our belly, they churn out inflammatory chemicals. And if you have more belly fat, then the more chemicals are, the more are created. And so belly fat is like, it's like a hotbed for inflammation.

That's a good way to describe it. I remember reading a study that showed that inflammation was its own independent risk factor for obesity.

Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Yes, definitely.

I know, we just don't think about that. So yeah, let's dig into that a bit, yes.

So chronic inflammation, it's definitely associated with obesity, with heart disease, with a lot of other disease. It's kind of the, it stems, that's where a lot of things stem. Even arthritis, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, those are a lot of diseases that stem from inflammation. And when we're keeping ourselves, when we're watching how inflamed our bodies are, that can help in terms of preventing that. But obesity is definitely one of them. And one of the other ways you can tell that you're inflamed is if you have digestive problems like gas or diarrhea or bloating. And this is similar. It stems from a sick kind of inflamed gut. And it's, some of us have heard about leaky gut. That's what this is caused from. It's like toxins are escaping into your bloodstream and it's one of the major causes of body wide inflammation. So those are a couple ways, ways that you know, plus just like feeling tired, your face is puffy, you might have a brain fog. Those are some other ways that you, that inflammation may be the cause of those things.

So you are such a total tease with like, you were like, and then there were these spices and, and then I started losing weight and it's like I was going, okay, spill it, sister. Like what I want to know are, and I know that you've got some cool things to share. So everybody, it's show notes will be amazing. Jjvirgin.com spice. You'll definitely want them. But let's talk about some of the biggest anti inflammatory spices and foods like the key ones that you love that really help.

Definitely. So the thing about spices is that they're completely natural. Our ancestors have been using spices for thousands of years. In fact, spices were regarded as money. They were so valuable. And that's because of the health benefits that they have. And in addition to that, they add a lot of flavor to our food. And one of the myths that we hear is that spices are spicy. But the first spice I want to share with you, it's actually sweet. And so this is one of my favorite spices. It's cinnamon. And the benefit of cinnamon is that it lowers your blood sugar and it controls insulin levels. So you actually get that sweet taste that you would get from sugar, but you're not getting the insulin spike that sugar will cause.

Do you know what's so funny? There was actually a supplement company that was making cinnamon supplements. I'm like, why do we need a cinnamon supplement? People like, you know, it's like, are we gonna have a chocolate supplement next? Let's just put this, put it all over everything.

Exactly. And cinnamon is so easy to use. So one of the great reasons that I like cinnamon, just the benefit of the fact that actually because it's lowering your blood sugar, it's helping you store less fat, and that is helping overall for inflammation, it's helping for weight loss, it's helping to feel better. And cinnamon is so simple. What I usually do is every morning I sprinkle it into my coffee and it's really just a pinch of cinnamon. You could put it in your coffee or in your tea. And you can use cinnamon in so many things throughout the day. It's great with apples and cottage cheese. I call that a healthy apple pie snack because you're feeling really full with the cottage cheese and the cinnamon and the apples. But it's completely healthy, it's all natural. So it's one of those really, really easy spices to add. And you can always add it into a smoothie as well. So that's a sweet spice that is great for our blood sugar levels.

Love it. Love, love, love it. That's one that I put into the Sugar Impact diet as a key one that we should be using and a great substitute for a.

Absolutely, absolutely. Oh, my gosh, it's so good for you. Another one that I have that is. I'm so excited to share this one because this is definitely the spice that we think about when we're looking for anti inflammatory ingredients. And this is turmeric. So turmeric is a golden yellow spice and I call it the wonder spice because it has so many amazing benefits. It's antioxidant, it's anti cancer, and it's anti inflammatory. And it, it basically, it's like nature's inflammation buster. It acts like ibuprofen, but with none of the side effects of modern medicine. So it really relaxes your body inside and out. And a lot of studies have also showed that turmeric actually blocks body fat as well. So it's really great for weight loss. In addition, but just the fact that it cuts down inflammation, it just, it makes your whole body feel good. So a couple ways I like to use turmeric and sometimes turmeric can seem intimidating because it is a very bright, sharp yellow color. But the thing about turmeric is that it doesn't have a, it doesn't even taste very. It doesn't have a distinct taste. It has a slightly earthy taste. And so there's some foods that if you add it into, you can't even tell that it's in there. So I always add it into my eggs every morning because eggs are yellow anyway. And by adding a half teasp of turmeric into my eggs, it blends in. I can't even tell that it's there. But then I'm starting the day with those anti inflammatory benefits. And so that's a great way to use it. And another great way to use turmeric is after coming back from the gym, if you're having a protein shake is to add a half teaspoon of turmeric into your protein shake and it helps to relax your sore muscles after your workout.

Oh, that's a good one.

Thanks. Yes, yes. So I add it in all the time when I'm coming right after the gym. You can really tell the difference too.

Very, very cool. Okay, so we've got cinnamon and turmeric. These are two of my favorite spices, by the way. Totally favorite. Okay, what's the third?

Okay, so the third spice, this one is a spicy spice. So I wanted, so I shared a sweet spice, a mild spice, and then this one's a spicy spice for those of us that do like spices, like the spicy spices. But I'm going to teach you some secrets on how you can actually make this less spicy in case that's what you want. And this spice is cayenne pepper. Cayenne pepper, it actually increases your metabolism and then not only does it do that, but it actually curbs your appetite. So it's almost like if we have an appetite that we feel like we're hungry all the time. Well, if you have a little cayenne pepper, you can actually feel the effects of having this. When you have that spice on your food, you're just satisfied and it actually satisfies you so you don't have the cravings afterwards. And then it also speeds up your metabolism partially because the sweating that you feel when you're eating hot spicy food. So cayenne is amazing.

I actually went on Dr. Oz to talk about cayenne pepper and it boosting your metabolism. And you can, you can put it in a little like if you do a little chocolate smoothie and throw in a little cayenne. It's awesome.

Oh, yes. Oh my gosh. With chocolate too, because cayenne chocolate.

Yummy, yummy.

Yes, yes. I like to do also a water in the morning, an infused water, which actually super, super simple. It's really a lemon and cayenne water. And this is something that a lot of people, it's kind of a, I mean, it's a common water in terms of detoxifying. So if you wake up in the morning, you squeeze and you put a little bit of cayenne pepper, you will really feel awake after that. And then your whole body is just cleaning out and your metabolism is already getting boosted right from the morning.

So what about a couple foods?

Okay, absolutely. So the thing is, these spices are amazing and you can actually sprinkle them on so many things. But when you combine them with anti inflammatory foods, that's when you're getting the real power because you're getting healthy foods, healthy spices. It's just all around great for your body and you love what you're eating. So a few anti inflammatory foods that I think are great. One is any fatty fish. So especially like salmon, which has a ton of omega 3s. This, it just really helps. It moves through your body really easily and it doesn't irritate your body in any way. So you feel full and you can digest this food very, very easily. So salmon is one of my favorites or any other fatty fish. Another really, really great anti inflammatory food is of course, green leafy vegetables. I personally recommend having broccoli because broccoli is very known for its anti inflammatory benefits and it's also filling. So when you have broccoli, you feel full with less calories, you are cleaning your body, you are just, everything is working well. So it's one of those staple vegetables I like to have, but any other green leafy vegetable is great. And then another one that I use all the time, this is flaxseed. So flaxseed has a ton of fiber in it, which JJ I know you talk about this a lot, how important fiber is. And fiber keeps us full and it helps our digestion. So everything is moving through your body very smoothly. And what I like to do with flaxseed is I usually put it in my smoothie because you need it to be ground up to get all the Omega 3s from it. So you grind it and you put, or you put it in a smoothie, it just grinds up. You can also sprinkle it onto your oatmeal if you grind it or buy ground flaxseed or you can put it on your cereal or on your Greek yogurt or anything else like that, but it makes you feel full and it helps helps with that anti inflammation.

Again, I just have to do a shout out because I, I pull a bunch of People off of dairy. That's if you don't have a dairy intolerance people. So disclaimer, dairy disclaimer. But we can also put that on yogurt made out of coconut milk or made out of almond milk. And I, I just think like freshly ground flaxseed meal is one of it is especially I buy this golden flax. It is, is fabulous. And people just don't realize how amazing, amazing these things are. I will use it unground in, in meatballs because it's Then protected. The Omega 3s are protected and you can cook with it because first people were telling me they were cooking with them. Like are you kidding? Ah, but if you don't grind it, then you can cook with it. But you won't get those Omega 3 benefits the same way as when you grind it and put in smoothies. So. And by the way, nutribullets will grind up flaxseed. So there's another, another big shout out for those nutribullets. Now for busy people, Nagina people are busy. So a lot of this stuff sounds time consuming. Let's talk about how you can have all this delicious stuff and not spend hours in the kitchen.

Yes. Oh my gosh. What a great question jj because there a lot of times we want to do the healthy, the healthy thing we try to, but in our busy lives it's just hard to fit it in. So I use a cooking methods and I recommend this to everyone because it makes things so much easier. So I want to recommend a few cooking methods and then I have a couple quick, easy snacks that I think are also helpful. So for example, if you use a crock pot, it is really great for hands free cooking. So what you could do is you could put any kinds of protein, you could put spices, you could put some tomatoes which are also anti inflammatory, turn it on and cook it for five hours, five to eight hours for for example chicken and then you pull it out and it's a beautiful warm meal. So a crock pot is really great. I know sometimes people find it challenging to find crock pot recipes, but there are really great recipes out there.

We actually have an Amazon on Amazon. We have our one pot meals Crock pot cookbook on Amazon.

Yeah.

So that's all virgin diet and sugar impact diet approved. And I'm with you. Those crock pots are like, like one of the most under utilized, like awesome kitchen tools. In fact. Well, I got a. What is the one that's the quicker one? It's like the quick you know the crock pot, that's the instapot I got. So my son, my 20 year old son loves to cook and I got him an instapot for Christmas. I got him an instapot with a Bluetooth thing. And you would have thought that I got him like a race car. He was so excited.

Oh my gosh, that's so awesome.

I, like, just love it. Love, love, love. Anyway, all right, so what else besides the awesome crock pot everyone has to dust off? I know everyone's got one. It's like one of those things that you get, like pull it out only works if you work it.

Yes, absolutely. So the crock pot is really great. And then also sheet pan meals are excellent.

Sheet pan meal?

Yes. Let me explain. So a sheet pan meal is when you take a baking sheet, you put your oven on around 400 degrees. You really can't go wrong if it's 400 or 4. And then you put things on the sheet pan and you just put it in the oven. So I was talking about salmon. One of the most common meals I make every day almost, because I love it so much and it's so easy, is salmon. And then I have asparagus next to it. And so what I do is the asparagus is actually really great to decrease water retention. So it helps to decrease bloating in your body. I put that along with salmon onto a pan and I spray it with cooking spray first. And I just put ground fresh black pepper, sea salt. And then on top of the asparagus, I might put some cumin, I might put some coriander because that adds more flavors and those have health benefits as well. They also help decrease water retention. And so I put it in for 15 minutes, pull it out, and that's it. It was so easy. I just put everything on there, sprinkled some spices, put it in and it's done. Another trick that I like to use that adds onto this is that I will actually make enough salmon or asparagus to last me for two or three days. And you could replace this with anything. Like you could make chicken, you could put anything, whether it's vegetarian or meat, you could put it on a sheet pan and just put enough for three days. And then that way you cook one day. Even though it was so easy to cook it, the next couple days you just go to the fridge and take it out and heat it up as you'd like to heat it. So you're like adding all these hacks, crock pot, sheet pan and then making foods in bulk. And because of the spices, it actually tastes better the next day because spices, really?

That's fantastic. Now, I know we're up against the time and you had some other stuff, but you're giving everyone your sweet spice cheat sheet. And I just like you were naming off things like coriander. Like, I don't even think I have coriander. So clearly this is some stuff I need. Cause I think we all get kind of in a spice rut. Like, I know my spices that I use and I don't, I don't venture outside of them. So I'm excited to venture outside of them. So tell us what you've got in a sweet spice cheat sheet. And for everybody listening, you're going to be able to get this@jjvirgin.com spice Absolutely.

Okay. So this is so the sweet spice cheat sheet. It has the spice that's most likely in your kitchen cabinet. That's how common it is. It helps to lower blood sugar and curb sugar cravings. And the cheat sheet includes three health benefits of using the spice, five ways to use it in your day, and an easy belly fat burning tea recipe using spice killer.

We're not telling you what it is. You got to go grab it. Jjvirgin.com forward slash spice. And I love all your simple tips. They're so easy to do. And again, I mean, gosh, cayenne pepper and cinnamon and curcumin. I mean, what's not to love here? Turmeric. You know, it's like yum, yum. So thank you so much for being with us today. We have to have you back. It took way too long to get you on. Now you got to come back way sooner.

Please.

I would love to. Thank you so much, jj.

Good talking to you. Now after the break, we'll be answering the listeners questions.

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Welcome back. This is the time where I answer a listener's question and I talk a lot about cooking, cooking and food on my Facebook lives and instagram and we do a lot of fun recipes and sharing. But I'll tell you, the question that gets up popped up again and again and again. In fact, I'm not going to say a name because I'd be saying a ton of names, is I don't have enough time to cook. Oh, my gosh, I hear this so many times. I don't have enough time to cook. That's why I wanted to ask that question to Nagina too, because, hey, she's running a business, she's a mom, you know, And I think for most of us, if we say, all right, here's the deal, you can get a lot healthier, you can lose weight, you'll have more energy, and you're going to spend hours in the kitchen, they're like, no, I don't think so. So the real thing is, we know that processed food is problematic, that you want to be making your own food, but also, I don't want to add tons of time into your life. So I love what you got today on the show. In terms of the crock pot, I'd say crock pot and instant pot. My hubby Tim has become quite the instapot chef. Oh my gosh, the stuff he makes in there is fabulous. And I loved her idea of using the cooking sheet for batch cooking. So what I do on a cooking sheet is I will do little purple potatoes and little Yukon gold mini potatoes. I'll do brussels sprouts. I love roasting brussels sprouts, so I will do that. I also here's a quickie one that I like to do. So I love the idea of batch cooking. But what I do is I make sure that I have a very well stocked fridge, freezer and pantry. That's the easiest way to really save time is to make sure you have what you need on hand. And so I actually have out in my garage, I have an extra fridge and freezer. I actually have two freezers because the house that we're leasing right now came with another one. And so I actually have two fridges and two freezers. Not even. I didn't even plan it, but boy, now that I have them, I'm using them. And so I keep everything on hand so that I can make food fast. And I'll just give you an example. Today for lunch, I took frozen cauliflower rice that I got organic from Trader Joe's. I had frozen organic mushrooms. I had frozen grass fed beef from Butcherbox. We'll put the in the show notes, we'll put how to Get Butcherbox. I think it's just sensational. I love it. And then I had some shaved brussels sprouts that I'd gotten from Whole Foods, foods that I needed to use. They were going to go bad. But I've also done this with frozen spinach just so you can do that as well. And all I did was cook up the the ground beef, add mushrooms to it, and then in another pan, I cooked up the brussels sprouts and the just sauteing in avocado oil from my buddy Mark Sisson at Primal Kitchen. I used some sea salt. And when I did this for my hubby, I used some crushed red pepper too, so you could use whatever seasonings. You could throw some curcumin in here as well. And then last time I added some chopped tomatoes. This time I just did shaved brussels sprouts, cauliflower, rice, mushrooms, and ground beef. And that's it. I mean, this was so simple. And then I made enough so that I have it for. That was lunch. I had him for dinner and tomorrow at lunch because Tim's out of town, so I'm being super lazy. But that's the thing I want you to think of when you're making something. Like if we're making chicken for dinner, we make chicken so that we have it for two more meals. So look at what you can stock in your fridge, freezer and pantry. And each of my books, the Virgin Diet Cookbook and the Sugar Impact Diet Cookbook come with shopping lists. And then look at what you can make that you can reuse either in a soup, in a stir fry, in a stew, in a salad for the next couple days. And that's what we'll often do is we might do chicken one night and then chicken will go into a salad for the next day, and then and baby chicken will go into our spaghetti squash pasta dish the next night. So we will reuse things as much as possible and then it takes a lot less time. I've really gotten dinner down to 15 minutes or less. It's that easy with a little bit of prep time. All right, Hope that served you well again. Remember jjvirgin.com spice to grab Nagina's freebie for today. And I want to just do a shout out out to Kathleen SW, who gave us a five star review on iTunes. Outstanding standing content. JJ, thanks so much for your show. I appreciate the outstanding content and thank you for that. And we really appreciate these reviews. You guys are leaving. Thank you so much for them. Not only do they make all of us over here, feel good and make sure that, you know, make us know that we're doing something outstanding because we really strive to give you actionable information that you can use on a regular basis. So hearing these reviews makes us know that it's, it's being heard, we're being heard. And but it also helps other people when they're trying to decide where they should tune in, and it helps them decide to. So thank you so much for that and I will see you next week.

Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.