Buy These Foods and Lose Fat; Buy Those Foods and Build Muscle
3 Foods to Never Eat, 5 Foods to Accelerate Fat Loss, and 7 Foods to Build Muscle

Dr. Kareem F. Samhouri
Body Expert

You are addicted to something very dangerous: Food.

And to keep you addicted, the food industry has created a big enough price discrepancy between ‘healthy’ foods and ‘their’ foods. What’s disturbing about eating right is how ‘expensive’ it seems — but that’s on a scale of relativity created through deceit. We’re unable to find gasoline that barely keeps our cars running, clogs them up, and makes them cost more and more money over time; yet the food industry is ridden with tasty, yet poisonous foods that break down our bodies, but first our energy levels, pain level stability, and ability to focus.

Eating the wrong food makes you:

• Less intelligent over time
• In more pain, all over your body, or in one specific joint
• Fat
• Weak
• Inflamed
• Predisposed to heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, digestive disease, liver disease, kidney disease, gallbladder disease, immunocompromise, psychological instability, anxiety, depression, and other major health disorders

Please re-read this list — really think about it.

And that’s just the beginning. Eating is about optimally maintaining your body. Digesting is about getting what we hope to from the food we eat. When we eat poorly, not only do we lack nutrients in a particular meal, but we also lose our ability to absorb nutrients from the right foods when we do eat them.

Some of these foods are obvious, but others are not. Let’s take a look at 3 dangerous foods to eat that may otherwise be known as ‘healthy:

1. Soy — loaded with estrogenic effect — research debates this, but my personal experience is that everyone who eats a lot of soy that I know also exhibits these symptoms. I strictly forbid soy from my coaching clients, as I have promised them a result, and this seems to interfere with my ability to deliver when I haven’t.
2. Corn — only because you’re bound to eat a lot more corn than you realize, even when you try to avoid it. It’s in Ketchup (corn syrup), cereal (corn starch), and many other foods. This used to represent a tiny minority of our diet, but now corn is represented in almost every typical American meal.
3. Wheat — our bodies were not made to process a lot of wheat, or a lot of grains — again, my opinion, but well supported by leading nutritionists and many doctors who don’t necessarily follow ADA guidelines. More interestingly, the book Wheat Belly talks about how the number of chromosomes in wheat has changed so much over the years that it’s not even the same as it was when we were hunters and gatherers. I think this is a fascinating discussion, and it was interesting to see that wheat in Jordan didn’t have the same effect on my wife’s Celiac Disease (wheat/gluten intolerance) as it does in the U.S. Jordan, per Wheat Belly, is one of the few countries who still use an older genetic variety of wheat.

On the other side of things, here are some foods that will help you build muscle or lose fat:

Food:	Build Muscle and/or Lose Fat?
Avocados	Both (Fat loss key food)
Grassfed Beef	Both (Fat loss key food)
Organic Free Range Eggs	Both (Fat loss key food)
Organic Free Range Chicken	Both
Mixed nuts & fruits (see below)	Build Muscle
Cauliflower	Build Muscle
Brussel Sprouts	Build Muscle
Plain Low-Fat Yogurt	Both
Organic Coffee	Both
Mixed spices (see below)	Both (Fat loss key food)
Raw cheese	Build Muscle
Carrots	Both (Fat loss key food)

As you can see, good food either helps you build muscle, or also lose fat. The only reason that you’ll see certain foods listed only for ‘building muscle’ is because they are easy to overeat. These delicious treats can greatly increase your caloric intake for the day, or total number of carbohydrates. Since high carbohydrate intake matches better with building muscle than losing fat, I’ve categorized them this way. Foods that are listed as “Both (Fat Loss key food)” indicate that ensuring you have these foods in your diet while trying to lose fat will help.

This all begins with your grocery list. Buy the right foods; ignore the cost of foods that don’t belong and are meant to trick you into expensive healthcare, more addictions, and an unhappy life. If you buy enough of the right foods, it’ll cost you, and you’ll eat them — rather than going out, you’ll be saving money, but comparatively to your normal diet, you’ll be spending enough more to not want to waste an ounce — use this to your advantage.

Use self-control, even if only while grocery shopping, and your health will improve.

My “Ideal” Grocery List:

Grass-fed Beef (or Hormone and Antibiotic Free when grassfed is too expensive or unavailable — but stretch yourself for grassfed when possible):

• NY Strip Steaks x 2
• Filet Mignon x 2
• Ground Beef x 2
• Stew Beef x 1

Organic, Free-Range Chicken — this combination can be super hard, so look for organic and free-range first; all chickens should be partially grassfed, but many are only grainfed, so it’s worth seeing if you can avoid the extra grains.

4 Bell Peppers — orange and red — I use green for cooking sometimes, but orange and red are much more delicious in my opinion.

Organic Cauliflower (fresh) — I like to heat this up with a little bit of Olive Oil in a pan — doesn’t have to brown to avoid acrylamides.

Brussel Sprouts (frozen) — delicious with eggs in the morning (on the side).

Organic Broccoli (fresh) — steamed, and lightly dribbled with raw cheese and grassfed butter.

Organic Tomatoes on the vine or Roma, depending on the deal of the day.

Organic Avocados — excellent source of good fats – I try to eat about up to 1/2 per day.

Organic Spinach (fresh) — much healthier than lettuce, in my opinion, and tastes better. I eat this cold, warm, sautéed with pine nuts, or mixed into another dish — but always rinsed thoroughly, as spinach carries more bacteria than other vegetables.

Frozen Spinach — I use this for cooking “pasta” dishes, although it’s funny to refer to them as pasta, since they pretty much have all the ingredients of a pasta dish, just without the ‘pasta’ 🙂

Organic, Free-Range Eggs — again, partially grassfed is ideal here, but the only way I’ll eat as many eggs as most diets recommend. Eating eggs, should they cause inflammation, has been proven to create arteriosclerosis. However, there have yet to be any good studies to look at an anti-inflammatory diet combined with the ‘right’ eggs. From my experience, and from speaking to some of the world’s leading nutritional experts, eating organic free range egg yolks, when the body is not inflamed, does not increase cholesterol. Before I’d personally recommend you eat a ton of eggs, I’d suggest you get the rest of your diet in order. As for egg whites, that’s garbage — the nutrients are in the yolk.

Tapa Tio – this hot sauce is my favorite, by far. Don Cholula is my 2nd favorite.

Plain Low-fat Yogurt – great for probiotics and gut health. I use this for toppings on arabic dishes, or as a standalone bowl of something to snack on with a few berries from time to time. I personally don’t care for Greek Yogurt, but this would be a better choice.

Raw Cheese & Low-Fat Part-Skim Mozzarella Cheese (raw Cheddar, Provolone, and Monterey Jack are my favorites)

Spices:

• Cayenne pepper
• Black pepper in the mill (I like to crush it fresh, so I bought a pepper mill for a few bucks)
• Garlic Salt (you can prepare this on your own, but I use it sparingly, so I buy it)
• Oregano
• Basil (I prefer to grow this)
• Marjoram
• Mint leaves (I add this to tea sometimes)

Teas/Coffee:

• Green Tea (antioxidants & immune system, caffeine)
• Darjeeling Tea (coffee alternative)
• Jasmine Tea (nightcap if it’s been a long day)
• Organic Coffee (richer in antioxidants and much safer to drink, stimulant)

Nuts & seeds (raw almonds, raw cashews, sunflower seeds, pine nuts, pecans, raw macadamia nuts)

Dried fruits and berries (dried pineapple, cranberries, blueberries) — less then ideal, but really adds a lot of flavor when I mix this with my nuts and seeds and create a trail mix. Use these sparingly, and in much lower quantities (10%) than typically come in a mix.

Your “ideal” grocery list should remind you of the reasons you eat ‘the way’ you do — using only a list will lead you towards temptation. When you understand what you’re eating, and you understand why, your relationship will grow with food. Also, knowing ‘how’ you’re going to use the food is important. You can whet your appetite much more this way, and find ingredients that pair together well. Once you’re stocked, and you have ideas, your diet improves naturally, as will your health.