Good News, Fruit Can Help You Burn Fat

It’s true that fruit contains sugar, but not only is it the natural kind of sugar that’s good for you in normal portion sizes, but some fruit might even be able to help you burn more fat overall. A new study that was published in the International Journal of Obesity found that specifically eating red and blue fruits?might help you to burn fat.

The study was done on mice, and the results showed that the mice who ate 12 ounces of fruit each day?gained 40 percent less weight than the mice who did not. (Twelve ounces for mice is equilavelnt to two to three servings of fruit for humans, btw.)

Here’s how it works. Most fruit contains the antioxidant resveratrol, which has a nice side effect of telling the body to speed up the process of converting bad white fat into the good brown fat. This means that the body will burn more calories in the short term as well as over the longterm. The brown fat that we consider good on the body burns calories, so having it there will help keep your metabolism revved up over time.

One researcher of the study Min Du, Ph.D. put it this way:

?The browning of white fat oxidizes fatty acids, generating heat in the cells, which leads to a ?leaning? effect in the body.”

So basically all you need to do is make sure that you get enough resveratrol in your diet and you will be putting in a pretty easy extra step to become a fat burning machine. Aim to get four cups a day of resveratrol heavy fruits. Those include apples, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and red grapes.

If you’ve heard of resveratrol being the healthy antioxidant in wine as well, you would be spot on about that. Wine is after all, made from grapes. Just keep it in the red variety to get the fat burning benefits from the resveratrol, and don’t down so much that you add on too many extra calories. Resveratrol will help burn fat, but it’s not a magic pill.

To get more fruit into your daily diet, try some of these tips. Mix up a breakfast juice or smoothie and get the daily requirements all at once, toss berries into your oatmeal, take the very portable apples as snacks to work, or even add berries to your salad or low sugar sauce at dinner.

To make sure you don’t go overboard with your smoothies or juices, be mindful of how much fruit you eat in a day before you make one. If you’re not going to eat any more fruit have at it, but if you snack on fruit all day you might want to cut down on some of the sugar by mixing in green veggies instead of using all fruit. Also leave out any added sugar sources such as yogurt unless it the lighter Greek yogurt type with nothing added. Stick with protein powder or some nut butter to top it off and make sure that it’s actually filling and can stand in as a meal.