HOW EATING ONE VEGAN MEAL A DAY FIRE UP FAT BURN

At the heart of all the “new year new you“ stories that promise to help us get slim seems to be one recurring buzzword. A study in the journal Nutrition found that adults on a plant-based diet lost 242 percent more weight over 6 months than those who ate meat and dairy products-and they burned 2 1/2 time more belly fat too. But as much as we’d love those slimming perks, giving up fish, cheese and yogurt just feels so extreme.

First nutrition columnist Jorge Cruise had similar reservations about going vegan. It’s hard to deny the benefits of a vegan lifestyle, but eating this way all day every day means missing out on crucial nutrients. Indeed, researchers at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo report vegans are at greater risk for deficiencies in vital nutrients that are key to effortless weight loss, including vitamin B12, vitamin D, calcium and zinc. Even minor shortfalls of these nutrients can lead to hunger, metabolic slowdowns and blue moods. And left unchecked, worsening deficiencies cause more extreme cravings as well as hair loss and compromised immunity. “Full-time veganism is hard. In fact, there are more ex-vegans than there are current, pointing to a 2015 survey from the Human Research Council that found 70 percent of those who try veganism end up abandoning the lifestyle.

Cruise didn’t like those odds, so be went in research of a way to minimize the problems associated with a vegan diet while amplifying its benefits. The solution consuming a plant-based breakfast each morning. When you start off the day eating healing and cleaning foods, you set the stage to have success all day. That’s because a plant-based meal triggers a series of hormonal changes that dampen hunger and fire up metabolism. Plant foods supply phytochemical that prevent the body form secreting abnormal levels of fat-storage hormones. Even better: Front-loading the diet with veggies and whole grains prime the body to burn calories eaten later in the day instead of storing them as fat. You’re flooding the body with phytochemical that don’t let fat cells grow.

The biochemical shifts also trigger an upward spiral in motivation. In a Harvard study, eating a morning meal lead to better all-day blood sugar control and cut pre-lunch cravings in half-and adding protein to the meal enhanced those effects, cutting post-lunch cravings by 60 percent.

A vegan breakfast change the way your taste buds experiences foods too.Taste buds are adaptable little fellas. If you trade up your food, your taste buds change. They start loving the foods that loves you back. Case in point: Reports from the Iowa Women’s Healthy Study show women who adopt a more plant-based diet start to dislike foods they used to count as favorites, like cookies and chips. Once you rehabilitate your taste buds, you start to improve your lunch, you start to improve your dinner. It makes being healthy easier. 

When you start the day with a vegan breakfast, the pounds come off fast. Cruise tested the plan with hundreds of woman. And the results were astounding: they lost up to 11 pounds a week-even though they enjoyed cheese, meat and other animal products at lunch and dinner (even pizza!). Plus, testers reported no deprivation or hunger.

The benefits go beyond melting a menopot. Woman who make the switch improve insulin sensitivity by 43 percent, reduce “bad“ LDL cholesterol by 40 percent and slash their risk of heart disease by 57 percent. And that’s on top of the changes you’ll see in the mirror. The better you’re feeding your hair follicles, the stronger and healthier your hair will be. You skin looks better, your eyes look better, and yes, you’ll have more energy. You’ll have more energy. You’ll feel better in all sorts of ways you never would have predicted!

Switching to semi-vegan doesn’t just supercharge weight loss, it can also lift mood. Researchers at the University of Melbourne in Australia report that women who consumed a diet primarily comprised of plant foods were 51 percent less likely to experience anxiety than those consuming a standard Wester diet, While the connection is still being studied, researchers believe that high levels of beta-carotene, vitamin C and antioxidants in vegetables and legumes naturally increase the production of feel-good hormones in the brain.