Most Effective Appetite Suppressant Fat Burners
The road to successful weight loss can be tough.
Gearing up for a challenging gym session or hitting the pavement a couple of times per week for a run is the easy bit – the hard part is sticking to your diet.
No matter what you’ve tried, you just always feel hungry… and on more than a couple of occasions, that all-consuming feeling of hunger has led to binges that have slowed your progress and sent you into a downward spiral of negativity.
But there is a solution.
In this article we’ll tell you about the best nutrients to control hunger and reduce your appetite, making your journey to weight loss much, much easier.
Read on to find out more.
Controlling Your Appetite Boost Weight Loss
The key to a healthy body weight is balance.
Making sure that you can control hunger and refuse those extra snacks and sweet treat makes all the difference to how quick you reach your target weight.
Why?
Energy balance.
When you eat less than you burn off each day you force your body to take drastic measures. Rather than storing any extra calories it has in your fat cells, you leave it no option but to unlock those cells and let those fatty acids out into the circulation, ready to be used as energy.
This is called negative energy balance and is the number one rule when you’re trying to lose weight or improve your body composition.
How does energy balance work?
All of the food that you eat contains energy in the form of calories.
Carbohydrates, fats and protein all give you the necessary nutrients you need to fuel your body each day. The vitamins and minerals that you consume with them don’t give you energy directly, but it does assist in the way that your body uses it.
Calorie balance is a bit like a pair of balance scales or a seesaw. You’ve got energy coming into your body on one side and all of the energy you burn off each day on the other.
If the energy coming in outweighs what being burned off, the scale tips towards weight gain. The further it drops, the more fat you’ll put on and the heavier you’ll get. If the amount you eat is the same as what you burn off, your weight will stay the same – you’re at what’s called ‘maintenance’.
But the magic happens when you find that negative energy balance. Burning off more than you eat is the only way you can trigger your body to consume stored fat to make up the difference.
So what’s the take home message?
It’s important to focus your attention on what as well as how much you eat when you’re aiming for weight loss.
And that’s where appetite comes in…
Reducing Your Appetite Helps You Achieve a Calorie Deficit
In order to achieve your calorie deficit you need to think carefully about exactly how much energy you can consume each day while staying under the maintenance threshold.
Go too low and you’ll feel tired, low on energy and ultimately you’ll fall off the wagon. Go too high and your weight loss progress will be slow and unmotivating.
Using a calorie counter like the one at the bottom of this article helps because it factors in everything you need in order to be successful – from gender differences and starting weight, to activity levels. It’s all taken into consideration.
The more objective the number are that you use, the better your progress will be.
It’s easier to eat a little less than it is to try and exercise it off
When it comes to maintaining a deficit you can do it one of two ways. You can either eat a fair amount and then work hard each day to burn it off (physical activity burns calories of course), or you can choose to eat a little less and not worry too much about exercising hard every day.
They both achieve the same thing and the choice is entirely yours.
But think of it like this… there are over 1, 000 calories in a large pizza. It’d take you over an hour of intense cardio to burn that amount off. If you simply don’t eat it then you avoid those calories altogether…
But remember – this isn’t a licence to avoid food altogether. You have to use that calorie tracker to find a healthy balance.
Most Effective Ways to Control Your Appetite
Eating a little less is a great way to achieve a calorie deficit. But if you’re constantly hungry that can be a tough thing to maintain.
And that’s where these appetite suppressing foods and nutrients come in.
So if you’ve had poor results in the past and you need to focus on curbing your hunger, here are the best natural appetite suppressants.
#1. Glucomannan
Glucomannan is a type of fiber found in the konjac plant.
When taken as a supplement it breaks down in your gut where it is fermented rather than being immediately digested. This is because of its complex carbohydrate structure consisting of polysaccharide chain beta-D-glucose and beta-D-mannose takes longer to break down.
This nutrient also has a fairly large molecular weight meaning it absorbs water and then swells.
The delayed digestive process combined with the absorption of water makes you feel fuller for longer, helping you control your appetite much better than with other fiber sources.
Studies have found that 500 mg capsules of glucomannan lead to weight loss when taken over an 8-week period with each meal [1].
Glucomannan supplements have also been seen to significantly speed up weight loss when taken during calorie restriction too [2].
#2. Water
Well over half of your body is water, and as such it is needed for a number of vital functions.
Being adequately hydrated helps with gut function and digestive health, physical and cognitive performance, temperature regulation and circulatory health.
Increasing the amount of water that you drink can help you lose weight by boosting your metabolism as well as reducing overall energy intake at each meal.
A number of clinical trials have linked water consumption to improved appetite reduction.
For example, a study published in the Journal of the American Diet Association [3] found that when a group of overweight and obese volunteers had 500 ml of water prior to each meal, it reduced appetite and energy intake by 13%.
That’s a big amount for such as simple and easy intervention.
And in a slightly longer-term study, 12-weeks of regular water consumption led to weight loss 2 kg higher than those who didn’t drink water prior to each meal [4].
#3. Green Tea
Green tea is a popular drink throughout the world, famed for it’s health-giving properties and high micronutrient value.
Not only does it promote vascular and metabolic health, it also protects you from neurodegenerative disease and some types of cancer too.
Green tea is packed with bioactive phenols, catechins and caffeine, making it a potent stimulant with the ability to boost overall well-being and longevity. And it can help with weight loss too.
Independent research shows that green tea can help reduce your appetite while at the same time stimulating your metabolism – even when dieting [5].
One of the biggest studies ever conducted on green tea found that energy expenditure was elevated by as much as 16% over a 24-hour duration in tea drinkers [6].
Green tea supplements can without doubt lead to significant amounts of weight loss over a sustained period of time.
#4. Oatmeal
Oats are high in beta-glucan – a polysaccharide that is thick and viscose.
It is low in calories, high in fiber and provides a good range of essential nutrients such as chromium and zinc.
Oatmeal can help you maintain the effective metabolism of carbs and fats and helps reduce blood sugar too, protecting from insulin sensitivity. It also boosts your energy levels and helps keep you feeling fuller for longer by significantly reducing your appetite.
In a study published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition [5], researchers asked a group of volunteers to eat a standard cereal breakfast and another group to eat oatmeal. They were then asked a series of questions about their hunger, satiety and appetite.
The oatmeal group were found to be much more satisfied with their meal. They also ate less calories overall.
#5. Cayenne Pepper
Chili peppers are small, perennial shrubs that provide you with hot, fiery pepper fruits of various colors and sizes.
Famed for its intense heat, cayenne pepper can be eaten whole, dried, eaten in a sauce or added to other meals as a garnish. And being high in vitamins and minerals, it is a great food to have in your diet.
The most interesting nutrient from a weight loss perspective though is its capsaicin content – the compound that gives you that spicy taste.
That’s because the capsaicin of cayenne pepper can reduce digestive illness and boost insulin sensitivity. It also improves cardio vascular health and acts as a potent appetite suppressant too.
A large meta-analysis study showed that not only is cayenne pepper a potent thermogenic, it also reduces energy intake by a considerable 74 kcal each meal [6].
#6. Chromium
Glucose Tolerance Factor Chromium, or GTF chromium is a mineral that your body has to obtain through its diet. The fact that you can’t manufacture it yourself makes chromium an essential nutrient.
You’ll find chromium in small amount in foods such as meat, milk, cheese and shellfish, but the best natural source is broccoli.
The chances are though that you don’t get enough of this nutrient in your diet – particularly if you eat a lot of sugar because that can increase how much of it you get rid of when you urinate.
A 2008 study found that when overweight volunteers who suffered from intense and unmanageable crab cravings were given chromium for 8 weeks, they reported that they felt less likely to grab a sweet snack, felt lower levels of hunger and both food intake and overall energy intake was lower. [Anton].
