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THE BOOK

The Power of your Metabolism

FOODS: SOURCES OF ENERGY FOR THE METABOLISM

The metabolism is the sum of all of the movements, actions and changes that your body does, to convert food and nutrients into energy in order to survive.  The metabolism is an energy conversion system.  Food and nutrients (vitamins, minerals and water) are sources of energy like the gas that you put in your car.  The metabolism turns these energy sources into energy to breathe, move, protect, grow and survive.

Foods are sources of energy.  However, in the same way that there are different levels of octane (potencies) of gasoline, there are also different types of foods that have different levels of potential energy for your body.

Natural carbohydrates (vegetables and salad) that aren’t starches provide energy for a short amount of time (3-4 hours) and are very clean foods, very complete in nutrients and very good for you.  Notice that when you eat only a salad for lunch you feel hungry again much earlier in the afternoon than if you had eaten a meal with meat (protein) for lunch.

Starches (potato, sweet potato, cassava, yams, parsnip and other root vegetables) provide energy for a short period of time and have many good nutrients.  Starches are also by definition “simple sugars” (as defined in the dictionary), which quickly turn into glucose.  This means you can’t abuse them because if you consume them in large portions you will gain weight.

Refined carbohydrates (sugar, bread, flour, pasta, rice, crackers, etc.) provide a very short term amount of energy (2-3 hours).  Refined carbohydrates are foods that have already been cooked, polished, smashed, filtered or processed in some other way industrially.  The molecules of these foods are already very small and that means that they are absorbed very quickly with very little work of your digestive system.  That’s why your body can turn them into glucose at a rate that is “faster than fast”.  The excess glucose, as you already know, along with the excess insulin that it creates, is the cause of weight and obesity problems.

Refined carbohydrates bring along with them another critical problem: they are deprived of nutrients (vitamins and minerals).  It’s what nutritionists call “empty calories”.  The industrial processes that refined carbohydrates are put through strip them of the majority of their vitamins and minerals, which make them an “unfood”.  In other words, they are foods that don’t provide nourishment.  In order for the body to be able to turn food into energy to increase the metabolism, it is forced to use the vitamins and minerals that the foods contain.  If the food barely has any vitamins and minerals, the food only serves to create more glucose and with the help of insulin then create: more fat.

People that have emigrated from countries in the Caribbean, Central or South America, such as the Dominican Republic, Venezuela or Mexico, are surprised at how quickly they gain weight in the United States.  This phenomenon is easy to understand when we compare the type of carbohydrates that they consumed in their countries as opposed to the refined carbohydrates that predominate here.  The refined carbohydrates that we consume here are deprived of vitamins and minerals; they really make you gain weight.  As if this wasn’t enough, our refined carbohydrates contain dyes and preservatives that decrease the metabolism.  The carbohydrates that they ate in their native countries were much less industrialized and their bodies weren’t forced to turn them into fat.

Proteins (meat, seafood, cheese, eggs) are foods that we could call “high octane”, high potency foods.  Proteins take a lot more time to digest and their energy production in the body lasts much longer (4-6 hours).  That is why you will find it difficult to eat an early dinner after eating a lunch that was high in proteins, because you will still feel full.

I should mention that just as there are different qualities of gasoline, there are also different qualities of proteins, like meats.  Meats that help you slim down the most are white meats like chicken, turkey, fish and seafood.  Red meats (beef and pork) have a disadvantage in that they contain a compound called arachidonic acid (AA) that tends to cause inflammation in the body.  This doesn’t mean that you have to completely eliminate all red meat from your diet.  It’s just that if you want to boost your metabolism as much as possible, you should lower your portions of red meat and prefer white meat over red.  If you do this, slimming down will happen much faster.  This isn’t to say that you can’t reward yourself with a pork chop or some ribs every once in awhile if you enjoy them.  It is a question of choosing those meats that increase the metabolism the most.  All the substances that produce or promote inflammations in the body, like the arachidonic acid (AA) that red meat has, will tend to decrease the speed of the metabolism.

Fats are foods that provide a lot of energy.  They are foods that provide a sense of fullness and satisfaction.  Their effect of energy production is similar to that of proteins (4-6 hours).  When you eat fat or oils with your food, you feel full faster because the fats and oils provoke a reaction in your body that produces the CCK hormone.  The CCK hormone is really called “cholecystokinin” or “pancreozymin”.  It is a hormone that the body produces in response to the fats and oils, it is the hormone that sends the message to the brain that “I’m full, I’m not hungry anymore”.  In studies that have been done of injecting the CCK hormone into different animals, it always caused hunger to disappear.

This is the same reason why diets that are low in fat have uncomfortable feelings of hunger, due to a lack of the CCK hormone production that they cause.  For example, as you will learn further on in the book, organic coconut oil is a saturated fat that will dramatically reduce hunger and will make you slim down.  This is because this oil provokes a strong reaction of the CCK hormone and your body will simply stop feeling hungry.

The ideal diet to increase your metabolism should contain fats and oils.  Fats can be saturated like the fat in pork meat, but pork is a meat that you shouldn’t abuse.  The best fats to slim down are the fats and oils found in fish and seafood.  Olive oil is also an excellent option for you.

When you consume saturated fats like those contained in pork meat, you should avoid combining them with a high consumption of refined carbohydrates at all costs.  If you combine saturated fats with refined carbohydrates, you will have created a real nutritional disaster for your body.  You have to remember that refined carbohydrates provoke a high production of insulin in your body. The insulin hormone will help your body convert both the fats and the carbohydrates that you ate into additional stored fat for your body. If you combine saturated fats with natural carbohydrates like salad or vegetables, like say pork chops with salad, you will still be able to lose weight because there wouldn’t be enough insulin produced to make you fat.

Fiber is part of carbohydrates and is highly recommended.  That’s why, if you are going to eat bread, it would be better if you get a whole wheat bread that is high in fiber.  In general, the whiter the bread is, the less fiber it will have.  Breads that are high in fiber are never white or light colored.  In Europe, you’ll find that people eat a type of bread that is very hard to chew.  This is because in Europe people like bread that is high in fiber and therefore the breads are very hard in texture and in consistency.  Obesity in Europe isn’t even half of the problem that we have on our side of the world where the bread is white, sweet and soft.

Each type of food contributes to the metabolism in a different way.  Nothing is or should be forbidden; nothing.  However, here the logical goal is to consume more of those foods that help speed up the metabolism and less of those that slow it down.