First off, let me show you how honey, garlic and vinegar are believed to aid weight loss on an individual basis. Honey When you eat refined sugar, you get an awful lot of calories and not much else. No minerals or vitamins. Honey is a far better replacement, in moderation, of course. Honey doesn’t contain fat, cholesterol or salt. It’s an unrefined natural sweetener packed with amino acids and minerals essential that help your body’s metabolism tick over. Many people use honey to kick start their metabolism in the morning. You simply squeeze lemon juice into a mug, add a spoon of honey, and drink it down warm. Or take a spoonful half an hour before breakfast.
Garlic
The most powerful active ingredient in garlic, allicin, has been shown to lower blood pressure, insulin and triglycerides in laboratory animals. This is according to The American Journal of Hypertension. The report also revealed that the animals who were given allicin didn’t gain as much weight as those who weren’t. Garlic can also help your body break down lipids, which are the fatsoluble molecules in your body, including cholesterol. Dr James Balch, author of Ten Natural Remedies That Can Save Your Life says, “Garlic also moves lipids from the tissue to the blood-stream for eventual removal. Garlic can dramatically reduce the bad consequences of a multitude of dietary sins.” A report in The Lancet suggested that you can even neutralise the effects of high fat foods by adding garlic to your diet. Researchers claimed that cholesterol levels dropped an average of 237.4 to 221.4 after volunteers took 50 grams of garlic and four ounces of butter.
Vinegar
Way back in 1958, Dr Deforrest Jarvis, a scientist from the University of Vermont, wrote a book called Folk Medicine. In this popular tome, he enthused about the effects of apple cider vinegar as a slimming aid. From his observations, he surmised that weight loss using vinegar was slow and gradual, but effective. By taking two
teaspoons of apple cider vinegar with water at every meal, he believed it would take a woman of average height, weighing approximately 95kilos, two years to slim down to 82 kilos. Since then there hasn’t been much research done, nor is there any money available for extensive research on natural foods like vinegar. However, in October 2005, The Daily Mail reported on a new study that surprised a lot of people.
Researchers from Sweden’s Lund University found evidence that vinegar can work as an appetite suppressant. The reason was the vinegar helped reduce the amount of insulin your body produced after eating a carbohydrate meal. This backs up the findings of Carol Johnston, a professor of nutrition at Arizona State University. She discovered that taking two tablespoons of vinegar before a meal reduces the blood sugar ‘spikes’ you get after eating. To explain this quickly. When you eat a meal, your blood sugar levels rise, especially if you’ve eaten lots of sugary food, or food with a lot of refined carbohydrates in it (white rice, white flour, cake, white pasta). To bring these levels down, your body produces a hormone called insulin. This causes a crash in your blood sugar. The crash causes a sudden feeling of hunger and emptiness. It’s this perpetual cycle of feeling stuffed, then empty, that can drive people to overeat, and reach for the wrong types of food. Because that peak of satisfaction you get from
refined carbohydrates and sugars is actually very addictive. Some experts believe that vinegar can help avoid that horrible crash, so you feel fuller more quickly, and for longer.
Honey, Garlic and Vinegar
Taken separately, honey, garlic and vinegar are all nutritious, healthy foods with a wide variety of health-giving properties. But many of my Good Life Letter readers have discovered that combining all three makes for a fantastic weight-loss aid. Four international studies also claim that garlic and vinegar can help you lose weight:
- In China, 600 dieters were split into two groups. The groups who added garlic and vinegar to their diet lost an average of 10 pounds (4.5 kg) each week. This was double the amount lost by the group who didn’t take a garlic and vinegar supplement.
- Dr. Hen Lee Tsno writing for in China’s Journal of Natural Medicines, reported that patients given honey, garlic and vinegar before breakfast had a high reduction in high blood pressure and cholesterol in less than a week.
- A Russian study showed that after a month, dieters who used garlic and vinegar lost an average of 40 pounds. Those dieters who didn’t, lost an average of just 22 pounds.
- Professor Carol S. Johnston a nutritionist at the Arizona State University East conducted a 4-week experiment to investigate the beneficial relationship between vinegar and diabetes. As an unexpected side effect she found that her test subjects lost weight! After taking two tablespoons of vinegar before each of two meals daily, the average weight loss over the four weeks was two pounds. Those that did not drink the vinegar showed no change.
Many naturopaths and researchers believe that when honey, garlic and vinegar are combined, something remarkable happens. They interact in your digestive system to increase the speed at which you lose weight and keep it off. Almost as if the trio bring the best out of each other. Like characters in an American ‘buddy’ film. You
can imagine the movie trailer for ‘honey garlic and vinegar’…. “When these crazy ingredients get together, nothing can stop them!” Many of my newsletter readers swear that, when used as part of a sensible eating programme for weight loss, these ingredients work more powerfully together than on their own. You can use honey, garlic and vinegar before and during meals to lower your appetite, reduce blood sugar spikes and encourage your body to store less fat. This remedy is completely natural and free of side-effects. And it’s something you can easily make at
home. Yes, that’s right now – today! There’s no excuse. As long as you’ve got a jar of honey, some good quality vinegar and a bulb of garlic, you’re ready to go.
Here are a few ways to create your own honey, garlic and vinegar health tonic: Take two cups of organic apple cider vinegar, eight garlic cloves, and a cup of honey. Blend in a mixer until the garlic is chopped. Store in the fridge. Then take a tablespoon of the mixture in a large glass of hot water every day. Or here’s another: Add a tablespoon of honey, chopped garlic and two teaspoons of pure apple cider vinegar to warm water. Stir, let it steep for five minutes, then and drink. Make sure you’ve left the garlic out for 15 minutes without its peel before you chop it and use it. Or here’s a convenient way to create the above recipe in bulk: Something I used to do when making up my vinegar & honey. I would put 50ml of organic cider vinegar, add 50 ml of honey into a 500ml container, with minced garlic, then add hot water to the level. Then drink 50ml of the liquid each day.
These are all really good ways to get these three wonder foods into your diet. A more convenient alternative is to get hold of some pre-mixed bottles of unpasteurised apple cider vinegar and manuka honey. This way you’ve got an instant source of highly active ingredients you can drink directly, or use as a basis for dressings, You could also try out oral supplements that combine honey, garlic and vinegar in a pill that you take once a day.