How to Use Honey to Lose Weight

How to Use Honey to Lose Weight

The first thing we should know about honey and weight loss is that eating lots of it is not going to make you thin. While it is in many ways preferable to what we refer to as sugar, it is important to remember that it is sugar. Made from a majority of fructose and glucose, you won't lose weight if you don't incorporate it as part of a balanced diet. However, it is natural and often preferable to refined sugar. It is almost always preferable to high fructose corn syrup. Honey is not a wonder cure for obesity. It can help push you along a little bit and cut out refined sugar while still keeping your sweet tooth satisfied. oneHOWTO investigates how to use honey to lose weight and suggests ways to enjoy it at the same time.

Honey to lose weight

Although honey has more calories than sugar (per spoonful, sugar contains 16 kcal and honey 21 kcal[1]), honey can act as a supplement to lower your weight. While this may seem counterintuitive, the reason for this is simple. Honey is sweeter than sugar. This means you can use less of it to address the sweetness balance of your food and aid in weight loss.

Sugar is only there for sweetness. While we crave sugar as a source of energy, it is highly addictive and contains little nutritional benefit. Again, understanding the definition of sugar will help us understand weight loss better.

What we are referring to as sugar is the refined sugar which is a white granulated substance. While brown granulated sugar is seen as being healthier for you, but there is little in nutritional difference between the two. Sugar itself is something much more complex as there are many types of sugars: fructose, glucose, dextrose, etc. Sucrose is the combination of glucose and fructose we know as white sugar.

Honey also contains fructose and glucose, making it a type of sugar in itself. The big difference is that it is not refined, so it is not the 'pure' sugar we get in table sugar. It has small amounts of naturally occurring vitamins, amino acids and mineral salts.

These natural benefits of honey go beyond weight loss. While there is still research needed to be carried out, some studies have shown possible benefits of honey in helping to cleanse wounds and promote skin growth. This is due to natural antibacterial properties in honey, one reason it is thought to help when you have a cold or sore throat. It is also believed to be good in general skin rejuvenation, one reason it is commonly found in homemade skin treatments.

One of the perceived benefits of honey is that it favors sleep, many people feeling more restful after they drink a honey tea infusion before bed. This helps to reduce the levels of stress and anxiety, helping with weight loss by lessening our propensity for stress eating. There are studies linking insomnia and weight gain because of nerve disturbances which make us rely on food as "therapy" to combat anxiety. Removing this anxiety can help us lose weight by secondary effect[2].

One of the most important factors if you want to lose weight with honey is to understand it on a molecular level. Honey is absorbed into the bloodstream more slowly than sugar. This is partly because of how bees use it. Bees create honey to enable them to use their flying muscles better and to store up energy during times when nectar is not as readily available. Refined sugar is purer and absorbs more quickly. This means you need to exercise sooner and more energetically to help with weight loss. The slow release of honey energy means it can help you go for longer.

This helps to highlight that if you want to know how to use honey for weight loss, we have to remember that it can only be done if eat it as part of a balanced diet and a suitable exercise routine. Otherwise, you will be adding sugars and calories which will lead to more fat, not less.

Honey and cinnamon tea to lose weight

Cinnamon is also a helpful ingredient in our fight to lose weight. Among the properties of cinnamon are that it is a strong natural fat burner, balancing the level of sugar in blood and lowering bad cholesterol. One study highlighted its potential in reducing the likelihood of getting disease related to being overweight such as diabetes[3]. It claims that a cinnamon supplement improved antioxidant variables which in turn decreases fasting glucose (something which is checked for when testing for diabetes).

Harnessing this potential power of cinnamon in weight loss while using honey as a sweetener might help increase these antioxidant properties. In turn, this can help weight loss on a cellular level.

We suggest ingesting cinnamon and honey together as a simple tea infusion. It is believed that this honey and cinnamon tea is best taken just after waking up on an empty stomach and again just before bed. you will need:

  • natural honey (must be organic, you can find this in health food stores)
  • cinnamon powder (must also be natural)
  • water

You only need to make the water boil and, when it starts to bubble, add a spoonful of honey and another of cinnamon. Follow this procedure twice a day for at least 1 month and a half and you will notice how your body begins to experience the benefits of this remedy and how your digestions are less heavy.

You can also try our delicious sugar free muffins with honey and cinnamon.

How to use honey and lemon for weight loss

Another useful way to use honey for weight loss is to combine it with the incredible properties of lemon. Although these two ingredients work wonders for tonsillitis and colds, this combination of products are also great when you want to lose weight.

Many recent articles have been extolling the virtues of using lemon water for weight loss. However, like any good dietary supplement, it should be used in moderation. The high acidity of lemon can cause its own problems even if it won't add weight.

However, it is also full of vitamin C and high in pectin (lowering LDL cholesterol), both of which are related to weight loss. One of the best ways to use honey and lemon to help with weight loss is to use it as an appetite suppressant (something it is posited lemon water can do[4]). It will also decrease your reliance on other sweet beverages like soda or even alcoholic drinks.

There are many ways to lose weight using lemon, but at oneHOWTO we show you the most effective recipe:

  1. Extract the juice of a lemon
  2. Boil a glass of water
  3. Pour the water into a glass and add two teaspoons of lemon
  4. Add one teaspoonful honey
  5. Stir well and mix
  6. Drink after every meal, especially at night, and combine with regular exercise to notice the difference

The honey makes the drink sweeter and does add its own sugar. However, it should be better for your than store bought lemonade which is often full of refined sugar or high fructose corn syrup.

Honey to aid digestion

While there is not conclusive evidence that honey will necessarily aid significantly in digestion, there certainly is a lot of anecdotal evidence that a honey infusion will help settle a stomach. This is likely due to the antimicrobial properties of honey. However, there are studies which claim honey supplements can help aid digestion by improving gut microflora.

This study concludes that "[s]ubstituting sugars with honey in processed food can inhibit the harmful genotoxic effects of mycotoxins, and improve the gut microflora"[5]. Helping you with digestion means that the healthful properties of our food can be better absorbed into our blood stream. This in turn provides us with more energy and helps satiate our food cravings.

This improves our overall health and means that weight loss is easier. Improper digestion can increase our weight by inhibiting the absorption of nutrients and making us eat more.

Other tips to lose weight with honey

In addition to consuming infusions like honey and cinnamon, it is advisable to introduce this ingredient to other aspects of your day-to-day foods in order to maximise the benefits of honey.

It's advisable that in your dishes you substitute all sugar or sweeteners with honey. This way, you will need smaller quantities to have the same effect and, in addition, you will be consuming essential nutrients for your health.

It is also advisable that, if youdo sport, you accompany your fruit with a teaspoon of honey. This way you will have more energy to carry out your exercise routine. The slow release will keep you going for longer and increase the chance of losing weight.

Honey must always be organic and natural to make sure that the nutrients and the properties of the ingredients are healthy for your body. The same applies to cinnamon. To maximise its benefits, it is recommended that they are organic.

Best way to lose weight with honey

There is a reason we crave sugar; we need it to survive. Our body converts carbohydrates into simple sugars which are used as fuel throughout the body. They aid in many of the complicated cellular activities we undergo just to get through a day. This means it is impossible to live without sugars. It doesn't mean it is impossible to live without refined sugars.

If we want to know how to lose weight with honey we must first realize it is not a miracle cure for being overweight. What it can do is slowly replace the refined and added sugars we have in our diet. This will help stop excess sugar being converted into fat. Honey will allow us to still ingest these sugars, but at a lower level. It will also mean we don't have the negative aspects of refined sugar and can enjoy the potential benefits sugar has in both losing weight and general nutrition.

This is because kicking honey, theoretically, shouldn't be as bad as cutting out refined sugar. It is a way to wean yourself off too much sugar in your diet. This will help you lose weight, increase satiety and still provide you enough energy to keep up your exercise routine.

This article is merely informative, oneHOWTO does not have the authority to prescribe any medical treatments or create a diagnosis. We invite you to visit your doctor if you have any type of condition or pain.

If you want to read similar articles to How to Use Honey to Lose Weight, we recommend you visit our Family health category.

References

1 https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/6287?fg=&man=&lfacet=&count=&max=35&sort=&qlookup=honey&offset=&format=Full&new=&measureby=

2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3632337/

3 https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/2010/researchers-study-cinnamon-extracts/

4 http://time.com/4701447/lemon-water-weight-loss/

5 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1431562/