7 Odd Metabolism-Boosting Nutrients

Unusual nutrients that can FIRE-UP your

metabolism naturally!

by Mike Geary - Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Nutrition Specialist
author of best-selling program - The Truth About 6-Pack Abs

If you've read my Fat Burning Kitchen program as well as Truth About 6-Pack Abs program, then you know I point out dozens of "minor" things that can all have small, but cumulative effects on your metabolism and fat-burning efforts.
Some of these minor fat-burning factors that I've written about previously are:

• Use of 'cruciferous' veggies to help fight the xenoestrogens your body is exposed to (that can make stomach fat particularly stubborn)
• Use of green/black/white/oolong teas to have very slight increases in the fat-burning effect
• Use of capsaicin (from cayenne) to have a slight thermogenic effect and increase in calorie-burning
• Use of cinnamon which is proven to control blood sugar levels, improve insulin sensitivity, and thereby help to control appetite/cravings and burn more fat
• and dozens more simple little "tricks" like this that can all add up.

I've made sure to stress that none of these are "miracles" that will magically transform your body...
I've always tried to stress that the main aspects of your lifestyle, training consistency and strategy, nutritional habits, and mindset are vitally more important than any of these minor "tricks and tips".
But, I also honestly think that if you consistently combine many of these minor aspects like spices, teas, food types, etc, etc -- that you can see a legitimate increase in your fat burning results.
Although I don't believe in "Fat Burners" per se, I found a great new product that I think can help to maximize your metabolism...
This product contains some of the things I've talked about before... green tea, cinnamon, capsaicin, L-tyrosine, AKG, and a few other goodies.
I don't think it's a "miracle fat burner" or any nonsense like that... but I DO think it can help to give you the edge and increase your metabolism. Based on some of the ingredients, it could help to control blood sugar, control cravings, increase thermogenic caloric burning, etc...

check it out, click here: 7 Powerful Metabolism-Boosters 
It only makes sense to give it a try and see if it helps to boost your metabolism and burn off stomach fat faster than usual. 
Here's to a blazing metabolism!

Mike Geary
Certified Personal Trainer
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Author of best-selling program - The Truth About Six Pack Abs

If you're not yet a subscriber to my FREE Lean-Body Secrets Ezine, sign up above to get FREE access to all of my delicious fat-burning recipes, unique workouts that burn fat faster than traditional cardio, and tons more fat-burning tips and tricks!

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A Weird Way to "Sneak" More Nutrition into Dinner

by Mike Geary, Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer

co-author - The Fat Burning Kitchen program

I just started doing this recently, and it's been a great way to "sneak" more nutrition into certain types of dinners. This can also help you get leaner, because higher nutrient density in your meals means lower appetite and controlled cravings for you later.
Here's what I've been trying out...
As you've probably heard a dozen times before, specific greens such as kale, mustard greens, bok choy, swiss chard, etc are the absolute most nutrient dense vegetables on earth.
However, even though I've always known what superstars these are in the nutrition world, I never really thought of ways to use them in cooking meals. Sure, I always get plenty of lettuce and spinach in salads, but the greens like kale, bok choy, mustard greens, and swiss chard are WAY more nutrient-dense than lettuce and spinach.
So I finally figured out how to sneak these into my meals (and this works even if you don't like the taste of those greens separately)...
There are probably other recipes you can use this for, but I've used it for soups and italian tomato sauces so far, and it works great.
What I do is take a good amount of bok choy, kale, mustard greens, and/or swiss chard and throw them whole (not chopped up) into my tomato sauce or my large batch of soup broth.  I'll also throw some large chunks of onion and maybe a zucchini into the simmering pot also.
Then, after they've simmered for a while and have softened up, I'll take out the whole portions of the greens and the onion/zucchini and throw everything into a big blender.  Then I blend the greens smooth with the onion and pour the mixture back into the simmering tomato sauce or soup.  Of course, my tomato sauce meals usually involve some grass-fed bison sausage, but that's just one of my personal favorites for an actual healthy meat.
I'm not a huge fan of the taste of these types of greens separately (kale, bok choy, mustard greens, etc)... however, pureed and blended into the sauce or soup actually makes a pretty delicious mixture and also adds TONS of nutrient density to your meals to satisfy your appetite and help you get leaner.
Another benefit is that since the greens are pureed in the blender after being softened, you actually absorb more vitamins and minerals, as the pureed greens are easier for your body to fully digest compared to just chewing them normally.
And this idea is a home run if you have kids... as this is truly a way for you to "sneak" more greens into your kids meals without them even knowing you added them to the soup or sauce (as long as you did a good job with seasonings and recipe).
I hope you enjoyed this little tip today to help you and your family eat healthier and get leaner this year!

Feel free to email this link on to friends and family that might enjoy it or share it on facebook.

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Is Your Microwave Cooking Making You Sick?

A look at how microwaved food can negatively affect your health
by Catherine Ebeling - RN, BSN & Mike Geary - Certified Nutrition Specialist
co-authors - The Fat Burning Kitchen

Do you know what (besides a television) is in almost every home in America? It’s a microwave oven. Because microwave ovens are quick and easy and don't take up much space, they are used for meal preparation in the home, at the office, and even restaurants. Even your favorite healthy restaurant may depend on these electrical devices to quickly heat up or cook foods. So, the question here is —
Are microwave ovens safe, and is it ok to eat the food cooked in them?
Before we look at the science of how microwaved food can affect your blood chemistry and negatively affect your health, let's look at a bigger picture, common-sense thought process about this...
If you think about it from this perspective, the human digestive system evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to digest food that was either raw or cooked in water or by heat.  However, food cooked via microwaves is a totally alien and unknown cooking method to the human digestive system.
It's just common sense that such a radically different cooking method will alter the chemistry of the food to negatively impact our health.
Now onto a little more science...
Let’s take a look at how microwaves ovens work
Microwaves are a part of the whole electromagnetic spectrum of energy that includes light waves and radio waves. They travel at the speed of light--which is about 186,282 miles per second. So how does that oven heat up the food so fast?
Inside the microwave oven, there is a “magnetron” which is a tube full of electrons. The electrons in the microwave oven react with magnetic and electronic energy and become micro wavelengths. This is the radiation that interacts with the molecules in food.
Food molecules have a positive and negative end, kind of like the way a magnet has a north and a south polarity. The electrons from the magnetron produce wavelengths that react with the positive and negative parts of the food molecules. The food molecules then start vibrating, up to several million times a second. This molecular “vibration” is what creates the heat in the food.
This agitiation deforms the molecules in food and creates new unnatural radiolytic compounds previously unknown to nature. These strange foreign compounds in microwaved food have been shown to damage the blood, the digestive system, and our immune systems.
Microwave ovens have been actually been around for about 40 or so years, but so far, only a couple of in-depth scientific studies have been done on them.
Research showing negative health impacts of eating microwaved food
Extensive research, though, was conducted in both Switzerland and Russia on microwaved foods and their effects on the human body. Both studies concluded that microwaving foods significantly deteriorated the nutrient value of the food, distorted protein molecules in the food, and created new, radically unnatural compounds. Most alarming, however, was that the subjects' health deteriorated from eating the microwaved foods.
Their findings included:

• Blood hemoglobin (the extremely important oxygen-carrying component of the blood) decreased significantly after eating microwaved foods. 
• White blood cell count rose, (as it does in response to an infection).
• LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol) increased, and HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol) decreased.
• Carcinogenic (cancer-causing) agents in foods increased.
• Higher incidence of digestive system cancers.

The Russian scientists found the microwave oven significantly scary enough to actually ban its use--up until recently.
When food is cooked in a microwave oven, it has:

• Significantly less B vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin E, essential minerals and fats.
• Broken down and de-natured proteins.
• Loss of vital enzymes and phytochemicals.

And here is a really interesting study—done on grain germination:
The grain watered with microwaved (and cooled) water would not not even germinate or grow! It’s pretty obvious that microwaving changed the water chemically and destroyed its ability to nourish a plant.
Ok, so maybe it’s ok to just heat leftovers in the microwave oven once in a while?
NO! Actually, food heated in a microwave is heated unevenly creating super-heated spots and cool spots. Those cool spots may actually harbor bacterial growth such as salmonella, and you end up with food poisoning.
In addition, when you use plastic containers or plastic wrap in contact with your food, you end up getting all sorts of nasty chemicals like di(ethylhexyl)adepate, or DEHA, (a carcinogen), Bisphenol-A or BPA (a cancer-causing agent in plastics) and xenoestrogens (synthetic estrogens) in your food!
In one recent study, it was found that carcinogenic ingredients in plastic wrap were 10,000 times the FDA limit for safety!
Exposure to BPA, used in the manufacture of polycarbonate and other plastics, has been shown to cause reproductive problems and erectile dysfunction, and has been linked with cardiovascular disease and diabetes in humans.
Xenoestrogens are really nasty synthetic estrogens that seem to show up everywhere. In men, xenoestrogens can cause low sperm counts and feminization (like the dreaded “man boobs”) and breast cancer and reproductive problems in women. Xenoestrogens promote weight gain around the belly and chest in men, and in women, it shows up as fat in the butt, hips, thighs and the back of arms.
So, in addition to being really unhealthy, microwaved foods can make you fat!
Parents should never warm breast milk or formula in the microwave oven—not only can it superheat the milk and burn the baby, but microwaving destroys the very valuable nutrients, enzymes and protein vital to babies' growth!
And here is something really scary: in 1991, a patient received blood that had been warmed in a microwave oven. That patient died of a severe anaphylactic reaction to the blood. The microwaving created something totally unrecognizable by the body!
If you want to be safe, healthy and LEAN, avoid your microwave—totally.  Personally, I threw out my microwave about 6 years ago and haven't even missed it!
There are far healthier and better alternatives:

• Eat vegetables and fruit raw preferably, or if cooked, sauté lightly (with a little water and some grass-fed butter) or steam until tender crisp in a pan on the stove.
• Heat water for tea, etc in a pan or tea-kettle instead of the microwave—or, better yet-- is to get a steaming hot water tap—I love these things!
• Plan ahead and defrost frozen foods in the refrigerator.
• Heat up ALL leftovers over low heat in a pan or in a toaster oven in aluminum foil (it still only takes 4-5 minutes to heat leftovers)
• If you must use a microwave (and I don’t know why you would!), use only glass containers instead of plastic.

Or you may want to try this-- small countertop convection ovens are great for cooking foods faster and more evenly than a regular oven or on the stove.
You can actually cook a frozen 15-oz. grass-fed ribeye in 20 minutes, and it is delicious; browned, tender and juicy. These little convection ovens will broil, bake, fry, roast, grill or steam your favorite foods, including meat, chicken, and vegetable. It takes 20-30% less time than a regular oven, and uses about 75% less energy.
This is a far healthier option than a cancer-causing, nutrient-robbing, microwave oven!

Please feel free to email the link to this page to your friends and family so they can make the smart decision to throw out their microwaves and protect their family's health!

If you liked this article, please Share it below for Facebook, google+, or twitter:


To your good health,
Catherine Ebeling & Mike Geary
Co-authors - The Fat Burning Kitchen:  Your 24-Hour Diet Transformation to Make Your Body a Fat-Burning Machine

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The #1 WORST Food that HARMS Your Brain (avoid!)

Some foods you might be eating daily can actually DAMAGE
your brain over time. In this article, we'll explore foods
that HARM your brain vs foods that PROTECT your brain.

by Mike Geary - Certified Nutrition Specialist
Co-Author of the best seller:

The Top 101 Foods that FIGHT Aging

First, the BAD NEWS...

Certain foods you eat can indeed harm your brain, both in
impaired learning ability as well as impaired memory.
Even worse, the wrong food and drink choices throughout your
life can even lead to the terrible and deadly disease
of Alzheimers.
A friend of mine just told me that her dad died of Alzheimers
recently and it was just a terrible disease where he didn't
even know who she was anymore towards the end.
It's time our society starts taking degenerative diseases
like Alzheimers, cancer, and heart disease more seriously
throughout our lives, and not just once it's too late.
Even in our 30's, 40's, and 50's, the choices we make with our
daily food can PREVENT these terrible diseases.

So let's dig in with the topic today of foods that harm your brain,
and what you can do about it...

Food #1 that HARMS your brain:  Fructose

In a 2012 UCLA study published in the Journal of Physiology,
researchers found that a diet high in fructose over time can
damage your memory and learning ability.

Beyond the harm to your brain, it's well known in the research
world that a high fructose diet can also cause insulin resistance
in your body over time, and possibly lead to type-2 diabetes and
extra body fat.  If that's not enough, a high fructose diet also
detrimentally affects your triglyceride levels in your blood as
well as small dense LDL particles that cause plaque in your arteries.

So what we have here is high-fructose intake = impaired memory and
learning in your brain, increased risk of diabetes, and increased
risk of heart disease. Oh, and we forgot to mention extra belly fat too...
Yum - who wants another can of soda pop or a large bowl of corn syrup
sweetened ice cream!

The average person eating a modern western diet of processed food
consumes a LARGE quantity of fructose without even thinking about it
from all of the soft drinks (high fructose corn syrup typically),
sweetened juice drinks, orange juice, processed junk foods such as
cakes and candies, as well as the HFCS that's added to store-bought
salad dressings, breads and cereals, and even condiments like ketchup.

Note that many sports drinks, even though marketed as "healthy", can
have large amounts of corn syrup or even crystalline fructose as their
main sweetener.  These sports drinks can be equally as bad as a soda for
your body and your brain.  Don't be fooled by the clever marketing showing
pictures of pro athletes guzzling this stuff.

Also note that agave syrup (aka, agave nectar) which is marketed as
a "healthy" sweetener as well, is one of the most concentrated forms of
processed fructose in sweeteners as well.  I personally stay away from
agave sweeteners as much as possible unless the amounts are very small.

All of these fructose-laden foods and drinks are easy to avoid though if
you choose to eat consciously... for example, make homemade salad dressings
from your favorite olive oil and vinegar with added spices, or choose to
drink unsweetened iced tea with lemon instead of sweetened drinks or juices.
If you use a lot of ketchup, try to reduce the quantity by mixing with mustard
or hot sauce, which typically don't contain HFCS sweetener in any significant
quantities.

Last thing to note about fructose... Yes, natural whole fruits do
contain fructose, but generally contain MUCH smaller quantities of
fructose than you would consume in a sweetened juice drink, soft drink
or sweetened junk foods.  Also, the phytonutrients, antioxidants, and
fiber that's contained in most whole fruits counteracts any negative
effects of fructose.  I personally try to keep fruit intake to no more
than 1-2 pieces a day due to the sugar and fructose content of larger
amounts of fruit.

Here's a trick:  Did you know that limes and lemons contain virtually
zero fructose, and only 3-4 grams of total carbs in a whole lemon or lime,
whereas a typical orange contains 6 grams of fructose and 25 grams of total
sugar per fruit.
I squeeze lemons and limes daily into either water or teas for a healthy
flavorful drink. Fresh lemon juice has even been shown to control blood sugar
response from a meal...another bonus!

Other Foods that HARM Your Brain:

You probably already know some of the harmful health effects
of these foods, but long term effects on your brain are yet another...

Trans fats -- strongly inflammatory in your entire body including
damage to cell membranes throughout your body.
Avoid hydrogenated oils in processed foods and deep fried foods.

Mercury -- studies show that mercury from pollution (coal burning
plants are the biggest source of mercury pollution to air and water)
and from fish that are high on the food chain such as tuna, shark,
swordfish, tilefish, etc can possibly cause long term negative effects
on your brain.  Limit these types of fish to a couple times a month and
focus more on fish such as salmon, trout, and many other types of smaller
fish to reduce your mercury load.

Wheat-based foods -- In the groundbreaking book, Wheat Belly,
Dr William Davis makes a very convincing argument that wheat has addictive
properties in the brain.  Wheat contains compounds termed "exorphins" that
have an effect in your brain similar to opiate drugs.
This explains why people have such a hard time giving up their beloved breads,
cereals, pasta, and muffins because these foods are mildly addictive.

I know personally from past experience that if I have have a pasta dinner,
I'll go back for seconds and thirds as I just can't seem to stop eating the stuff.
And then hours after dinner, I'll get cravings for more carb-based foods or sweets.
But if I pass on the pasta and just have meat, veggies, and salad,
I find myself totally satisfied after dinner with no cravings later at night.

The good news is...

There are plenty of superfoods, herbs, and spices that can protect your
brain and your other organs too!
In fact, did you know that turmeric is one of the highest antioxidant
spices that also exhibits brain-protecting effects? In India, where curry
containing turmeric and other spices is eaten daily, rates of Alzheimers
disease is among the lowest in the world, proving some of the brain-protecting
effects of turmeric.

In addition, the powerful DHA and EPA omega-3 fats in fish oil has been
proven in countless studies to protect your brain from damage over the years.
Want more...
I'll show you how to find dozens of delicious foods,spices,herbs,and unique
nutrients that PROTECT your brain, joints, organs, and skin by clicking the
click here button below!
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These unique nutrients and superfoods can be found at most stores and can
help PROTECT your brain from aging, HEAL your joints, reverse or prevent
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FIGHT against developing cancer, FIX years of digestion problems, and even
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