Running For Weight Loss? Add These Fat Burning Foods to Your Runner’s Diet

Many people use weight loss as their central motivation to run, but in many cases, some runners may frustratingly hit a bump in the road where their weight loss results hits stagnation! This is why it is essential to have a runner’s diet powered by belly fat burning foods.

To restart your dietary efforts, yes it is true, there are foods that burn fat fast, making your weight loss journey smoother, and I have found them for you! 

Running For Weight Loss? Add These Fat Burning Foods to Your Runners Diet

Running For Weight Loss? Add These Fat Burning Foods to Your Runner’s Diet

To turn the tables on your weight loss plateau, here are some evidence-based, fat burning foods and fluids for weight loss that may actually trick your body into losing more weight and prevent weight-regain! AND, when you use in concert with running, these natural measures may make your diet work faster.

Caffeine

Enjoying a cup of caffeinated coffee before a meal can change how your cells store fat. According to reports in the Journal of Physiology and Behavior, caffeinated coffee plays a big role in preventing weight gain, thanks to caffeine’s thermogenic properties, meaning that caffeine generates heat which helps melt calories by forcing cells to covert fatty acids into heat and energy, thereby permitting better weight loss results. The researchers found that drinking caffeinated coffee, or tea before a meal, may halt weight gain by increasing fat burn by 16%, leading to stronger weight gain resistance.

But caffeine’s weight loss capacity doesn’t end there! Another mechanism through which caffeinated coffee can deliver real weight loss results is by helping balance blood sugar. What’s the significance of this? When blood sugar levels are not dipping, hunger and intense sugar cravings diminish whereby coffee has a leveling effect on blood sugar, thanks to its caffeine content and plant acids, which help to welcome in more energy. According to Dutch researchers, the combination of coffee’s caffeine and plants acids helps you stay slim by helping the body metabolize sugar more effectively to be used as fuel via stimulating the muscles to burn more blood sugar for fuel, giving you more sustained energy.    

Eggs

Eggs should not be a dirty word in the arena of weight loss and healthy eating because it is clear that eggs are a significant part of the fuel to help you shed more pounds. According to Brigham and Women’s Hospital researchers, eating 2 eggs a day could accelerate weight loss by 25%. The researchers revealed that eggs are saturated in branched-chain amino acids, which are nutrients proven to help stimulate muscle metabolism, making your muscles more efficient at processing blood sugar and fatty acids for fuel.

Berries

Eating more raspberries, blueberries, black berries and strawberries (fresh of frozen) can provide speedier fat burn. According to research from North Carolina State University, weight loss can be accompanied by eating more berries because they contain a healthy compound, anthocyanins, which plays a starring role in stimulating your liver to activate key enzymes in the liver that speed the conversion of food to energy.

Fish

Eating roughly 16 oz of fish weekly may help prompt better weight loss results. How are you more likely to lose weight faster by incorporating fish into your overall runner’s diet? Evidently, fish keeps your fat cells more active, helping cap their fat storing capacity. According to Berry Sears PhD, president of Inflammation Research Foundation, the omega fatty acids in fish are critically important for weight loss because they prompt fat cells to burn more of their fat stores for energy.

Grapefruit

Grapefruit can propel your weight loss efforts as grapefruit contains a hefty amount of fiber which helps blunt appetite, but it is also abundantly rich in fat torching nutrients. According to Italian researchers, eating 1 large grapefruit a day may boost caloric burning by 12%. The researchers noted that the plant acids and vitamin C in grapefruit gives it its metabolism revving capacity, helping keep your metabolism geared up to burn more calories.

Green Tea  

Scientists and health experts have hyped the health benefits of green tea and rightfully so! Why should green tea be center in your weight loss strategy? Here’s why it is critical to drink more green tea daily:

In addition to having an enormous cell-protecting capacity that greatly reduces health-harming inflammatory events in the body, green tea may lay down the metabolic template that accelerates weight loss. To its credit, drinking 3 cups of green tea daily is known to boost metabolism, helping you shed pounds faster! But the bottom-line is, it’s imperative that you run regularly because doing so greatly enhances the fat-burning capacity of green tea!

It turns out, one of the greatest values of green tea leaves is they’re ultra-saturated with catechins which has special relevance for burning fat as it triggers a cascade of fat-burning mechanisms in the body that improves metabolism. BUT, the capacity of catechins to help melt off fat more effectively appears to be fully optimized during rigorous physical exercise! Thus, it seems as if running, or any form of physical activity, really puts green tea’s metabolic-revving capacity to work!

  • When you drink more and more green tea daily, the catechins in green tea helps reduce the absorption of carbohydrates from food, helping curb hunger, thus limiting appetite, so you tend to eat less!
  • Green tea’s fat-burning capacity may also come from its ability to increase the body’s natural supply of calorie-burning brown fat.

Quick tip: to fully harness the fat-torching power of green tea, add a shot of lime juice! Research shows that spiking your green tea with lime juice may make your body 5 times more efficient at absorbing the green tea’s slimming catechins!

  • According to researchers, adding lime juice to your green tea blocks the breakdown of catechins during digestion!

To make weight loss less of an ongoing challenge, to help expand your weight loss measures, here are other herbal teas backed by conclusive scientific data, that help support weight loss by reducing intense sugar cravings and overeating.

Mulberries  

Mulberries are very sweet tasting, despite having a low sugar content which is going to help normalize blood-sugar levels, but ultimately, mulberries are great at helping shut down fat accumulation on many fronts!

Firstly, according to Harvard researchers, mulberries are effectively slimming because they are high in resveratrol, a natural compound strongly linked to helping reduce weight. 

Secondly, the researchers noted that mulberries are high in tummy-filling fiber and protein, more so than any other berry!

  • Fiber plus protein helps power off the pounds by stabilizing blood sugar levels, thus reducing the urge to snack on sugary foods!
  • Fiber also naturally expands in the gut, helping to extend fullness sensations, which may too, reduce your overall snacking frequency!

And thirdly, just like green tea, mulberries were found to activate metabolism-boosting brown fat in the body, further facilitating in weight loss! Therefore, mulberries have many physiology groups that have a strong hold in helping change the way your body metabolizes calories, making you more able to make progress towards better weight loss results!   

Leafy Greens

Leafy greens have always been prized at firmly promoting better weight loss results. According to the journal Appetite, eating 1 cup of leafy greens daily may chip away fat as leafy green may help suppress appetite.

  • The researchers found that eating more salads increased leptin levels, a hormone in the body that helps you feel full, longer, for up to 6 hours, thereby greatly halting hunger pangs!

Drinking Water… Quickly

An increasingly effective strategy at kick-starting your metabolism is by drinking more water, quickly! According to research from University of Utah, found that drinking water quickly may give your metabolism more momentum by increasing your metabolic rate by 3%!

Not to mention, drinking more water vitally improves liver function. Hydrating your liver with water significantly helps the liver flush out metabolism-slowing toxins. Additionally, drinking more water helps the liver convert more fat to fuel, thereby energizing your slimming fat!

Lentils

Lentils are credibly suited for aiding in weight loss thanks to containing 2 key amino acids: 1. L-arginine, which prompts your body to burn more carbohydrates and fats faster, and 2. L-glutamine, which may tremendously aid in weight loss as it was found to boost post-meal metabolism by 50%!  Thus, eating more lentils may certainly help pay off in melting fat faster!   

Pickles  

Pickles are well-founded in taking your weight loss efforts to the next level. According to work in the British Journal of Nutrition, pickles contain good-gut bacteria that may improve insulin sensitivity, helping to main-line better blood-sugar control, making you less inclined to crave sugar. The researchers also found that pickles and sauerkraut may help prevent fat storage after a large meal.

Dark Chocolate  

Dark chocolate is on your side when it comes to assisting you lose weight. According to research out of the University of California San Diego, eating dark chocolate with at least 70% cocoa content may be highly effective at stalling the process of weight gain.

The researchers encouragingly discovered that the good bacteria in your gut naturally feeds on cocoa, converting into anti-inflammatory compounds that may block fat promoting genes. Thus, eating more dark chocolate has positive, practical implications at the molecular level, and may quickly escalate better weight loss results!   

Take Home Message

The long-term strategy for weight loss success involves, in large measure, eating better and exercising more frequently and with more intensive effort. Luckily however, science is painting an increasingly certain picture of how incorporating specific fat burning foods and fluids, like the ones I just outlined above, are a certified way to help advance metabolic function, so you are confronted with less challenges in your weight loss journey!  

I also have a section on my YouTube channel dedicated to more study-backed tips regarding weight loss tips for runners, helping you gain a deeper understanding on the best dietary approaches to help tackle weight gain.

Bretta Riches

"I believe the forefoot strike is the engine of endurance running..."

BSc Neurobiology; MSc Biomechanics candidate, ultra minimalist runner & founder of RunForefoot. I was a heel striker, always injured. I was inspired by the great Tirunesh Dibaba to try forefoot running. Now, I'm injury free. This is why I launched Run Forefoot, to advocate the health & performance benefits of forefoot running and to raise awareness on the dangers of heel striking, because the world needs to know.
Bretta Riches

P.S. Don't forget to check out the Run Forefoot Facebook Page, it's a terrific place to ask questions about forefoot running, barefoot running and injury. I'm always happy to help!