Vinegar and Weight Loss

As you might know from an earlier blog, I like vinegar. Well, I don’t like vinegar, I like the health benefits of vinegar.

I might have mentioned, in a previous blog, that it helps sore muscles when you haven’t ridden your bike all winter-and then overdo it the first nice day of spring. Or that it can help ‘wake you up’ when afternoon fatigue hits.

But lately I’ve been doing quite a bit of research on apple cider vinegar for weight loss. Mainly to drop the weight I gained when I quit smoking almost two years ago. The pounds crept on slowly and they appear to want to stick around awhile because, no matter how diligently I diet, I can’t seem to get rid of them.

A couple of interesting things I discovered about using vinegar for weight loss is that it helps to detoxify the liver. Apparently a liver that’s working well will help to metabolize fat. Vinegar also helps break down food so it can be more easily digested.

So...

After scouring the www.earthclinic.com website one more time, I decided to give a few of the suggestions a try. Let me tell you, people are getting impressive results!

Basically all I’m doing is drinking about a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar two to three times a day. I’m also trying to drink it just prior to eating. Unfortunately I tend to forget that third shot, but it’s getting to the point where I just kind of forget to eat.

Which reminds me of an email I got a long time ago that said you had to be a special kind of stupid to forget to eat. But believe me, you can get to that point.

Oh. This is very important! To the vinegar I add about 1/2 of a teaspoon of baking soda and about a 1/4 to 1/2 of a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Although sometimes I use a heavier hand than I intended and have to fan my mouth for a minute. But I just kind of pour it in the cup rather than measuring it, so I might actually be getting a full teaspoon or two. Good thing I like a little spice!

To explain that bit, cayenne pepper is supposed to help increase the metabolism. And I occasionally add about half a teaspoon of cinnamon because it has been proven to stabilize blood sugar. Which affects our hunger and energy.

It’s also been proven, by me, to make the vinegar, soda and pepper go down a little easier! I’ll have to make a point of adding that to each cup. Not just for the flavor but for the benefits, too.

Before I forget, you never want to drink this concoction without adding some water. Not a lot. Maybe a quarter of a cup. If you don’t, you’ll be sorry. As much as it looks like the vinegar dissolved the soda, it doesn’t. Just trust me on this.

What results am I finding?

I’ve lost about ten pounds in the last couple of weeks. I had to step on the scales twice this morning thinking I might have been standing a little off center, or I’d looked at the numbers wrong. But I hadn’t.

Ten pounds. Can’t complain about that at all!

Now a lot of people would have a problem with this but I’m finding that if I start my morning off with the mixture, I often don’t feel like eating until one or two in the afternoon. Although some mornings I wake up starving. My cravings are diminishing to a large degree, too. Not that I have a whole lot of them right now.

But then I already knew that apple cider vinegar helps with PMS symptoms. In addition to regulating a cycle. I have no idea how that works, it just does. And I’m grateful.

Given that I’ve tried about everything to get these “stopped-smoking” pounds off, I’m pretty pleased. Not to mention impressed, since I’m still eating pretty exactly what I want to eat. I haven’t counted a single calorie or purposely cut back on anything.

Nope. Just the vinegar before eating.

All I can say is that it’s about time! Earlier this summer (at least two months ago), I eliminated most of the soda pop from my diet-and lost exactly nothing. Given that I was downing a two liter bottle every day, I was disappointed, to say the least!

I’ll be interested to see what the results are in another couple of weeks.