The #1 Weight Loss Supplement You’d Never Expect

Constantly… and I mean CONSTANTLY… I get asked what kinds of supplements people should take in order to lose weight.  Sometimes I’m a smart-ass and say “an apple”, but in all seriousness, I get it.  You all want to be able to take something to make yourself a little lighter in the middle.

First off, I make that smart-alecky answer, “an apple”, for a reason.  There is no nutritional supplement that can possibly make the same level of difference in your waistline as having healthy diet and exercise habits.  I hammer on this point again and again, because it’s the simple truth.  I don’t want you swallowing a pill and expecting miracles.  There are no magic beans, or secret elixirs, that will let you eat fifteen birthday cakes a day while lying on the couch, and still stay thin.  Doesn’t exist.  Never will.

You gain or lose weight due to physics and biochemistry. So first, fix the diet and exercise habits.  Then, if you think you need a little extra, you follow the same rules for weight loss supplements as you do for any other supplements… what’s something that will increase my health (something missing that my body normally needs), that I can safely take for a lifetime?

Oh, sure, there’s crap out there you can take like Ephedra or medications that will make your heart go pitter-pat super fast.  But you might as well just smoke a bunch of crystal meth to lose weight.  That stuff is horrible, HORRIBLE for you, and frankly, no, you can’t take those kinds of supplements for a lifetime.  If you try, your lifetime will end up being a lot shorter than you’d like.

Listen.  You’re not overweight because your body is low on Ephedra or other stimulants.  You’re not replacing something your body actually uses normally.  And I don’t want to see any of you keeling over dead of a heart attack in your thirties because you wanted a quick fix.

Okay, okay, okay, Healthy Andy, you’re all saying.  We get it.  No thinly-disguised crystal meth.  We replace something our body normally needs, that we aren’t getting enough of, that promotes a healthy weight.  What is it, already?

Fish oils.  Or, Omega-3 fatty acids, really.  I know, it sounds weird, that the best possible weight loss product is fish oils, but stick with me, and I’ll show you why.

Omega-3 fats belong to a class of fats called Essential Fatty Acids(EFAs), which are called that because your body can’t make them.  You have to get them in your diet.  And, most people are deficient in them.  So, they fit our classification of a healthy supplement that you can take for a lifetime… your body needs it for everyday use, and you probably are low in them.

Right, but what do they do when it comes to weight loss?  Well, the two main ways that fish oils will help you fit into your skinny jeans are first, helping reduce inflammation, and second, improving sugar metabolism.

Let’s start with the first one.  Inflammation.  I’ve posted before about how chronic inflammation throughout the body is a component of all kinds of dread diseases that plague our society.  Obesity is only one of them.

Here’s how it works.  The inflammatory process encourages the release of a substance called cortisol, a stress hormone. In short doses, cortisol is fine… in fact, it actually does helpful stuff for you.  But there’s something about long-term, chronic cortisol release that causes the body to retain fat.  I mean, retain it no matter what, regardless of whether you’re starving yourself on a low-calorie diet or not.  Rather than burn off fat, your body will consume muscle tissue or even just plain slow your metabolism to a crawl.

So, less inflammation means less cortisol, which removes a potential barrier to losing fat.  It won’t burn off calories all by itself; what it does is allows your diet and exercise program to actually work like it should.  If you’re one of those people frustrated because your diet and exercise habits are where they need to be, but you still can’t seem to shake off the muffin tops or love handles, it may be because of cortisol.

The other part of the fish oil-weight loss equation is an improvement in sugar metabolism.  Here’s what that means.  When you eat food, afterwards, there’s sugar floating around in your bloodstream.  Your body will use a chemical called insulin to pull that sugar out of the blood and put it into the cell, where it can be burned immediately for energy or stored for later use (that’s called glycogen and it’s in the muscle tissue, we’re not talking about fat here).

Omega-3s like fish oil are an important part of this equation.  The simplest way to explain it is, Omega-3s help to “anchor” the gate that insulin and sugar travel through in order to get into the cell.

You see, your cell has a wall around it to keep all the right stuff in and all the wrong stuff out.  There’s doorways or gates scattered all across the surface, so that the cell can (basically) get deliveries and take out the trash.  Each gate is locked so that no thieves can break in, which is nice, and these gates get unlocked by a doorman who escorts the delivery into the cell.  Each specific gate has a different doorman for a different kind of delivery.

When sugar is delivered to the cell, the doorman in question is insulin.  Insulin knocks on the door, says “open up”, and lets sugar in.  That gate is held in place (kind of) by Omega-3 fats.  So, if you’re deficient in Omega-3s, the gate isn’t going to open up as it should, and sugar won’t be able to get in, but will keep circulating around and causing all kinds of problems.

This process ends up leading to insulin levels going haywire in the bloodstream– spiking up, dropping down, and generally not working right.  Those wild insulin swings end up having a similar effect to cortisol in promoting the storage and retention of body fat.  You can think of it as the doorman getting frustrated and telling the sugar to just shut up and go live in a fat cell.

So, enough Omega-3s means the gate works right, opens right up when the doorman knocks, and therefore, sugar is cleared from the bloodstream right on schedule.  Everybody’s happy, and insulin levels stay in a normal range so that your body doesn’t prioritize the storage of fat, and you get to lose weight just like you should.  Practically a story-book ending.

There’s another possible mechanism for Omega-3s and fat loss that I’ll mention breifly.  Some animal studies are showing that Omega-3s directly stimulate the genes that control fat metabolism, like a fat burning on/off switch.  This hasn’t been verified in humans, but it’s definitely worth being aware of.

There’s all kinds of other health benefits that go along with Omega-3s, of course, which is why fish oils are my favorite weight loss supplement.  You need them to make your body work right.  When your body works right, you lose weight.  You can (and should) take them for a lifetime, and not only are there no ill side effects, there’s tons of beneficial side effects.

So skip the quick-fix Ephedra/crystal meth crap, and reach for something that will help keep you fit and healthy for a lifetime- Omega-3s.

If you liked this article, tell your friends about HealthyAndy.com!  It will help you lose weight!  Okay, that’s a lie.  But it will make me happy.  As always, any questions or comments, please feel free to post them below.

Stay healthy!