If you are trying to boost your fat burn, you may have taken it upon yourself to cut dairy out of your diet plan. Many people have heard that dairy will cause fat gain and that it must go for optimal results.
It may be time to reconsider this notion.
The fact is that unless you have a serious dairy intolerance, including dairy products in your diet can actually serve to benefit you, not hinder results.
Of course, you do need to choose wisely. If you go serving yourself up a banana split each day for your mid-evening snack, clearly weight loss is not going to be in your cards.
However, if you make smarter dairy choices, you can certainly include dairy, reap all the nutritional benefits this food group has to offer, and see increased, not decreased fat loss results.
Want to know why?
Here are the facts.
Dairy Contains Protein
The very first reason why dairy rich foods will enhance your overall fat loss results is because they contain a high dose of high quality protein. Protein itself is highly thermogenic, offering between 20-25% of a metabolic boost after consuming it.
This means for every 100 calories of protein you eat, you will burn off around 20-25 of those. This then means you net fewer calories overall at the end of the day, increasing the rate of fat loss you see.
Win-win.
Dairy Offers High Satiety
Second, dairy also offers a high level of satiety as well. If you choose casein based dairy, which is found in cottage cheese, you will get a
very slow stream of amino acids released into the blood over time, ll reduce the amount of hunger you feel while dieting.
Since hunger is one of the biggest reasons people often fall off their plan, doing whatever you can to minimize it will be critical to your success.
Dairy Boosts Trunk Fat Loss
If you want to get a set of flat abs, dairy needs to become a mainstay in your diet plan. One study that was published in the International Journal of Obesity noted that when subjects consumed dairy products as part of their diet, they lost more total body fat as well as fat specifically from the trunk region t include dairy rich foods.
This was said to have to do with the calcium content that dairy products contained, but was noted that the same results cannot be seen by using calcium supplementation instead. The increased calcium intake needs to come from dairy rich foods for this benefit to be demonstrated.
Choosing Dairy Optimally
So all of this said, it is important as we noted in the introduction that you choose your dairy products wisely. As certain dairy products can contain a high concentration of saturated fat as well as calories, if you choose unwisely, you will end up with fat gain.
The best dairy sources to include in your diet plan would be skim or 1% milk, low fat Greek yogurt, low fat cottage cheese, or whey protein powder such as Gnarly slim or Gnarly Whey.
Whey protein powder also has even greater benefits as it helps to boost glutathione production in the body, which enhances your overall immune system. This can mean you bounce back from workouts t come down with the common cold and flu as often either.
Whey protein powder is also a fast and easy way to add more protein into your day, especially around your workout sessions, so it has enhanced benefits there as well.
Finally, one note with choosing your yogurt variety, make sure that if you do opt for regular yogurt (or even some Greek yogurt varieties), you choose one that contains very low sugar content.
Many yogurts are very high in added sugars, which will take away from the benefits you gain from consuming it.
Keep sugar out of the picture and focus on quality protein containing dairy products instead.
Reference:
Gebhardt. L. et al. (2005). Dairy Augmentation of total and central fat loss in obese subjects.
International Journal of Obesity. 29, 391-397.
