What to do for lunch?

Our bodies are fat burning machines when we wake up and will continue to burn stored energy until told to stop when we break our fast. We know what to do for breakfast so now we can examine when and how to break-fast effectively to keep our body running efficiently off its own energy stores. 

Breaking the Fast:We have woken up and not eaten anything to keep our insulin levels in check and have our body burning fuel and not storing fat for the first few hours of our day.

During the first few hours of our day we control our insulin sensitivity by skipping breakfast or having only coffee & fats to get us through to our first ‘meal’. Why would we stop at lunch if we can keep going?

There is no right time for our first meal. Some may be able to go 4 hours after waking while others could go 8 hours before they get hungry. Everyone is different, but aiming for midday or lunchtime to get our first hit of daily nutrients in would be ideal.

Recommendation

The liver will start to secrete insulin and stop “the fat burning process” when we eat certain foods, in particularly simple carbs or sugars.

So it goes without saying that lunchtime meals = low carb meals.

A good variety of fibre, protein and fats is a great choice for lunch and will ensure we keep our insulin levels in check while providing the body with some essential nutrients. Add a side of vegetables or salad to any of these meals for a nutritious fat burning lunchtime meal:

• Steak marinated with paprika and chilli

• Salmon with lemon & avocado and a sprinkle of herbs,

• Boiled, poached, baked, scrambled or fried eggs are always a great choice.

Large amounts of Protein alone can also cause insulin levels to rise. By balancing our meal out with good fats like avocado, butter, nuts, cheese and olive oil, we can keep our insulin sensitivity low.

Spice it up and increase your metabolism and calorie burn rate by enhancing thermogenesis. Adding chilli and capsicum to our meal is not due to an inherited Asian acquired taste but also to help our body burning it’s own fuel efficiently. Thermogenesis is the metabolic process during which your body burns calories to produce heat.

Popular Thermogenesis foods:

• Red peppers/ Capsicum

• Chilli

• Black pepper

• Cinnamon

It is no surprise that variants of these ingredients are the staple in many fat burning supplements. While the true effects of these ingredients is inconclusive, even if they provide only a slight increase in our metabolism and calorie burn rate, this is one of many smalls steps in the right direction to getting our body’s operating efficiently and at the very least they make meal time more interesting and flavoursome.

Final Thoughts

Our body’s insulin levels start to rise naturally around 4pm. So at midday we still want to keep our insulin levels in check and our body burning fat. Lunch is an ideal time to break-fast. Choosing a nutritious meal with fibre, protein and fats will help give our body get it’s daily nutrients while also keeping our insulin levels low.  We can also encourage further fat burning through thermogenesis by adding chilli and other spices to keep our meals interesting.

Food is not just there to satisfy our appetite; it is the energy resource used to fuel our vehicle ‘the human body’. As we learn and put into practice how and when to fuel it correctly, our body can begin to function more efficiently and this will be seen with a transformation on the outside. Like a supercar, we can’t expect to put any old fuel in a Ferrari and have it to run at it’s top speed, our body cannot have any old food in it to run to it’s full potential. Overtime this will affect us one way or another, be it through low energy, being unhappy with our love handles, diabetes and/or heart problems.

Burning fat is really about what we eat (or not eat) so bare this in mind for your next lunch selection and remember, the more chilli the better!

Hopefully this has been some good food (excluding carbohydrates) for thought. Please let us know what you think and feel free to ask questions via the chat feature or the comments sections and stay up-to-date with our latest content on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn & Twitter, as we try to do our part in making the world a healthier place, one website visitor at a time.

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