More than 160-million Americans are either overweight or obese. The Western diet of convenience foods high in sugar and trans-saturated fat lead to too many calories consumed daily by the majority of the population.
If you’re trying to burn off your belly fat, and have the goal of a toned midsection, slim thighs, and toned glutes, then it’s time to put the work in at the gym, and at the dinner table. When you reduce your caloric intake, while increasing exercise levels, helps you to burn more calories than you consume.
As a result, you’ll start to lose weight on the scale, and look better in the mirror.
However, weight loss takes time, and it may be nearly a full year of diet and exercise before you start to reach your goal weight. Fortunately, the use of dietary supplements can help you achieve your weight loss goals faster. Curcumin is one of the most effective weight-loss supplements to help you accelerate your fat loss efforts.
What Is Curcumin?
Have you heard of the yellow spice known as turmeric? Turmeric has a special place in traditional medicine for its bevy of medicinal properties that help to reduce systemic inflammation in the body. The spice gets its healing properties and anti-inflammatory benefits from a compound known as curcumin.
Turmeric contains around 2-percent curcumin by weight, and it’s an efficient weight-loss agent when combined with a healthy diet. When we eat refined carbohydrates, such as sugar found in candy and hamburger buns, it causes a significant amount of digestive distress in the form of inflammation.
The inflammation disrupts gastrointestinal function, slowing metabolism. Your metabolic rate is responsible for regulating the pace at which you burn calories. As a result of the metabolic slowdown, you start to pick up weight.
Why Choose Curcumin Supplements Over Real Turmeric?
The first reason why we recommend you use a curcumin supplement, rather than consuming fresh or dried turmeric, is the low quantity of curcumin available in the spice. As mentioned, turmeric only contains around 2-percent curcumin. Therefore, you would need to eat a significant amount of turmeric to receive the amount of curcumin you need to assist your weight loss.
Using a curcumin supplement allows you to benefit from the fat-loss effects of curcumin, without over-consuming turmeric. Overeating turmeric with your meals may lead to bouts of diarrhea, which is not something anyone wants to have to deal with on their weight-loss diet.
Curcumin with Bioperine
Unfortunately, curcumin has low levels of bioavailability in the body. As a result, your digestive system struggles to absorb the curcumin. Fortunately, smart nutritional scientists discovered that the addition of piperine extract from black pepper improves bioavailability by as much as 2,000-percent.
Bioperine is a standardized form of piperine that contains at least 95-percent of the nutrient. Most curcumin supplements come with Bioperine blended into the curcumin to improve absorption in the digestive tract.
The Benefits of Turmeric and Curcumin for Weight Loss
Here are the top benefits of adding a curcumin supplement to your weight loss diet. We recommend you start with 500-mg per day and work up to 1-gram a day. Very obese people should supplement with between 1 to 3-grams of curcumin per day for best results.
Curcumin Speeds Up Weight Loss
Clinical studies show that curcumin has a potent effect on accelerating your weight loss efforts. One study shows that curcumin accelerated weight loss in patients that had already made the necessary dietary changes to start the weight loss process.
Patients using a curcumin supplement with Bioperine, experienced a weight loss rate of 2.2-lbs every 10-days, while the control group only managed half of that. Both groups were eating a balanced diet providing them with a caloric deficit, as well as the same levels of daily exercise.
The group using curcumin supplements experienced a reduction in their BMI in both the waist and hip measurements taken in the study. Their results were far better than those of the control group.
Curcumin Reduces Inflammatory Conditions Caused by Obesity
As mentioned, obesity and a poor diet lead to changes in your metabolic rate, as well as a reduction in blood sugar regulation. People using a curcumin supplement to fortify their weight loss diet experience a reduction in the inflammation of fat cells, known as adipocytes.
Curcumin achieves this effect by reducing the presence of inflammatory particles like TNFα, NF-kB, and TGF-β. These proteins increase inflammation, placing the body in an environment that increases fat gain.
In other words, taking a curcumin supplement helps to mobilize fat cells for use as fuel when you exercise, increasing your rate of fat loss.
Reduce Diabetes Risk
Research shows that fat cells act as hormone-producing organs in obese individuals. As a result, the modifications in insulin production by the pancreas lead to the development of insulin resistance in the affected individual. Therefore, the pancreas has to work harder to produce more insulin to reduce blood sugar levels, resulting in dysfunction of the organ.
Obese people experiencing pancreatic dysfunction are at higher risk for the onset of the blood sugar disorder, diabetes. However, curcumin helps to reduce the formation of glucose in the liver while increasing glucose uptake.
As a result of the changes in insulin management produced by curcumin supplementation, obese individuals lower their risk of developing diabetes.
Supplementing with Curcumin Helps to Reduce Fat Storage
Curcumin prevents the activation of cytokines produced by white adipose tissue (WAT). WAT is a hormone-secreting organ that pushes out proteins known as cytokines. As a result, the body forms fewer fat cells and inhibits the growth of current fat cells in the body.
Supplementing with curcumin helps to limit the progress of fat cells going through the cell cycle, preventing them from forming. Curcumin stops this process, known as adipogenesis, in its tracks, helping you stop the growth of fat cells while mobilizing them for fat burning during exercise sessions.
Curcumin Causes Changes in Your Fat Cells
Research shows that specific types of fat cells promote energy expenditure and utilization within the body. As a result, these fat cells can help burn fat and limit the formation of new fat cells in obese individuals. These fat cells, otherwise known as adipocytes, come in two different categories – brown and white.
White fat cells are the bad kind, resulting in fat storage. Brown adipocytes don’t accumulate in the same manner as white adipocytes, and they provide the body with a source of fuel during exercise. Research shows that supplementing with curcumin changes the white cells, to brown fat cells, allowing the body to break them down efficiently, instead of shuttling them off for storage as adipose tissue.
Wrapping Up – Should You Use Turmeric Spice or Curcumin Supplements?
Why not use both and get the most out of this spice? We suggest you start with 500-mg to 1-mg of curcumin per day and increase your dosage each week until you hit 3-grams. Severely obese individuals can increase their dosage up to 6 to 8-grams a day for best results.
Use turmeric in your food for an additional bump, and the curcumin supplements will help to derive the curcumin from the turmeric. Drinking a cup or two of turmeric-infused tea every day with your meals will also help to reduce digestive inflammation.
This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.