The Sea Buckthorn Diet: Burn Fat Faster and Help Small Farmers at the Same Time

Sea buckthorn oil can help you lose weight. And your purchases of sea buckthorn can help people who help the environment. Buying sea buckthorn oil products is a major boon to the buckthorn berry gatherers in Tibet, small farmers in Canada, and permaculturists around the world who provide the raw product. And while sea buckthorn is not really a weight loss "miracle," using it makes burning fat a lot easier. It can also clear up skin problems and make your joints more flexible to boot.

I'll get into the details of how sea buckthorn works momentarily. But first I'll explain how I got interested in it.

About 10 years ago I worked for a company that made fish oil supplements. Fish oil is a great source of omega-3 essential fatty acids, but there are a couple of problems with it. One is that the fish that get turned into fish oil often get tossed into the bottom of the boat and, well, rot before they are taken ashore to be turned into fish oil. This isn't true of every brand of fish oil, but it's true of many of them.

The other problem with fish oil is that it's pretty hard on the fish.

That's why I was very happy to get to know a Canadian scientist who specialized in vegan-sourced omega-3 essential fatty acids named Dr. Dan Wen. Professor Wen specialized in extracting omega-3 fatty acids from marine algae. Moreover, he didn't have ships trolling the seas just off the Antarctic to collect them. He grew the algae in huge, sterile, environmentally friendly tanks. Dan was especially excited, however, about a new project he had making supplements with omega-7 fatty acids from a plant called sea buckthorn.

To be honest, I had never heard of it. But I tried it. It made it a little easier to lose weight on a diet. It really cleared up a skin problem. But it also helped me feel good about buying his stuff for another reason.

Dr. Mar got his buckthorn berries from Tibet. He made sure the locals were paid a wage that carried them through the winter and was enough to send their children to school. At that time, the sea buckthorn industry in Canada, where he had his plant, wasn't large enough to support large-scale production. Some of you probably know better than I about the current state of commercial sea buckthorn production in Canada.

But enough about me. You want to know how sea buckthorn helps you lose weight.

This article explains how fat storage, fat burning, sugar levels, insulin levels, and sea buckthorn oil are all related. Then I'll tell you how to make it work with a weight-loss diet. My explanation gets a little technical. If you just want the executive summary, here it is:

Sea buckthorn oil lets fat out that excessive sugar consumption keeps in. Your body still has to burn it to make it go away, and you still have to reduce your overall calorie intake to make sure that you don't replace fat as fast as you get rid of it. But sea buckthorn oil can help smooth out the process so you get predictable results from your weight loss efforts.

Eat less, weigh less. And that's probably a better result than you usually get from dieting.

Fibs About Fat Burners

A lot of weight loss supplements are marketed as "fat burners." It's not because scientifically minded formulators of natural products want them to get marketed that way. I myself created the formula for a product that got marketed all over the United States as a "green tea fat burner."

My client's marketing department didn't pay a lot of attention, or any attention, to what I had to say on the subject. But they certainly knew how to name and package the product so it flew off the shelf, at least when it first came out.

The thing that is important to know about natural products and weight loss medications alike is that they don't burn fat. You burn fat. The so-called "fat burners" just alter the balance of fatty acids going into fat cells and fatty acids being released from fat cells so that your body has a chance to burn them. That is, your body will burn fat as long as you are not eating still more fat and you are doing something (even breathing counts) that requires the fatty acids as an energy source. No pill can do all the work. There just aren't any fat burners that let you eat as much as you want of everything you want any time you want.

How Fat Storage Works

Fat cells store energy in the form of triglycerides. A triglyceride is a molecule that combines three fatty acids and water. Triglycerides are more stable than the fatty acids from which they are formed. They don't readily combine with oxygen to form the free radicals that could damage DNA. They are bulky enough to provide the cells that store them a kind of "bounce" that keeps them from being damaged by stresses on the tissue, like getting punched in the gut.

A belly blow is a lot more damaging to a thin person than to a fat person. And when there is famine, something that world hasn't experienced on more than a local scale in about 50 years, fat people live longer.

Fighting famine is the reason fat cells are programmed to hang on to triglycerides until the body absolutely, positively has to use them for energy. Fat cells won't give up their fatty acids if they get hormonal signals that the body actually has more energy than it needs. In fact, the triglycerides inside fat cells are so bulky that they can't pass across the cell membrane to get back into the bloodstream to circulate to the muscles that would burn them.

The signalling chemical for fat cells is insulin. As long as there are high levels of insulin (the hormone the body uses to transport sugar into cells for energy), fat cells are more responsive an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase, commonly abbreviated LPL. This hormone activates a series of processes that literally make them suck fatty acids out of the bloodstream for storage.

At the same time LPL is changing the chemistry of fat cells so that they take fat out of the bloodstream and store it as triglycerides, insulin makes the muscles--which actually burn fat--less able to absorb fatty acids. LPL tells the body to burn sugar first. Fat cells don't actually respond to blood sugar levels (at least in this regard). They respond to blood insulin levels.

If your insulin levels are high, your body is poised to store every extra calorie as fat and your fat cells won't let fatty acids go. That is, unless something changes the balance of fatty acid storage and fatty acid release. Is all of this a little hard to follow? Here's the bottom line.

Anything that increases your insulin levels, like eating sugary foods, keeps fat locked in your fat cells until you have gone long enough without eating that your body absolutely, positively has to use body fat for energy. The more sugar you eat, the longer the effect lasts. And if you are a diabetic who takes medications that increase your body's production of insulin or you inject large amounts of insulin, you naturally tend to get fatter and fatter.

And don't a of us know all about getting fatter and fatter no matter how hard we try?

How Fat Burning Works

That something that lets fat cells release their fatty acids is a second enzyme called hormone sensitive lipase, or HSL for short. HSL liquifies the trigylcerides stored inside your fat cells. This allows the fat cells to break them down into the fatty acids that can cross the cell membrane.

Once fatty acids are liberated from the fat cell, then they can travel through the bloodstream to muscles that can burn them. You actually have HSL working on your fat cells all the time. The problem is that if your insulin levels are high, then the fat cell will be more responsive to LPL, keeping fat in its solid form inside the cell, than it is to HSL, liquifying fat so it can get out. And your insulin levels will be high if:

You take insulin injections,
You use diabetes medications that increase your body's production of insulin, or
You tend to eat a high-carb diet.

Going on an Atkins-style high-protein high-fat diet, however, does not necessarily help you lose weight. Why is this?

What the weight loss gurus don't tell you is that the body turns about 30% of protein in sugar. Our bodies break down protein in food into amino acids to make our own specialized proteins. You can't graft a beefsteak protein into your brain or a tofu protein to your tuccus. The body makes human proteins from a unique sequence of individual amino acids.

If it doesn't have the right amino acids in the right order, the liver just recycles them into glucose and urea. (Urea is what makes the urine acidic. You've probably heard something about eating meat and acid-alkaline balance.) Too much glucose from meat can cause just as many problems as too much glucose from sugary, high-carbohydrate foods.

How Sea Buckthorn Oil Shifts the Balance of Fat Storage and Fat Burning

If you are getting the impression you really do have to eat less or exercise more to lose weight, you have got the right idea. You aren't going to lose weight if you eat, eat, and eat some more. However, there is one class of naturally occurring chemicals that can help you shift the balance of LPL and HSL, the balance of fat storage and fat burning, so more fatty acids leave your fat cells so your muscles can burn them.

These are the omega-7 fatty acids. "Omega-7" is a technical term that just means that a molecule has its terminal double bond at the seventh carbon in its chemical chain. You don't really have to worry about the chemistry (although feel free to comment) to use the products that contain omega-7 fatty acids to lose weight. The bottom line about how they work is that they make fat cells more responsive to HSL than to LPL. Your muscles will then have more fatty acids to burn.

As I mentioned earlier, breathing does in fact count. You can lose weight lying in bed if you just cut calories enough and you don't stoke yourself with sugar. However, the beauty of omega-7 fatty acids is that when you do exercise, and it can be something as simple as walking (or if you are like I was at one point in my life, waddling) around the block. You'll burn more fat than carb. Especially if you aren't eating a lot of carb or eating too much protein.

What are the natural sources of omega-7 fatty acids?

One is macadamia nut oil. There really are people who lose weight when they add limited amounts of macadamia nuts to their diets. The problem is keeping the amount limited.

The other source of omega-7 fatty acids is sea buckthorn oil. Sea buckthorn oil doesn't taste bad, but nobody is going to get addicted to it. It's OK but not delicious.

And that is precisely what makes it so useful for dieters who get at least 20 minutes of exercise a day while reducing their overall consumption of food. Remember, you want sea buckthorn oil, not sea buckthorn tea. Sea buckthorn juice also contains omega-7's, but only about 1/3 as much as sea buckthorn oil. You can get results by taking just 1 tablespoon (10 to 15 ml) of sea buckthorn a day.Thanks for hanging in there with this relatively technical explanation. Now let's take a look about how to make a sea buckthorn diet work.

The omega-7 fatty acids in sea buckthorn oil help liquify solid fat inside fat cells so it can circulate to the muscles that burn it.

When you buy sea buckthorn oil to help you in your weight loss program, the sea buckthorn oil is not the fat burner. You are. How does this work?

Sea buckthorn oil just helps fat go out of fat cells instead of in. You still have to burn them with at least a little exercise, like walking around the block, if that's your level of fitness, and you still have to eat less.

The eating less to weigh less principle is what causes problems for a lot of dieters. We are brainwashed to believe that some magical principle or product will help us weigh less if we eat more. It just doesn't work that way. Ever.

And when we eat the same and just exercise more, unless it's exercising for two or more hours a day without a break (sorry, weight lifting won't cut it for fat loss, although it's great for blood sugar control), we never get around to breaking down the fat stores in our fat cells that keep the bulge around the belly or make the thunder in the thighs.

No Magic Foods, Either

So what foods help you lose weight fastest when you are doing sea buckthorn weight loss? Do you need to eat raw foods, and by that I mean raw vegetables and maybe fruit? Or do you need to emphasize lean protein? Or maybe even high-fat? How about taking sea buckthorn oil ten times a day?

No, I'm not telling you that you need to take sea buckthorn oil ten times a day. Take it with meals once or twice a day, just a scant teaspoon (2-3 ml) at a time. Don't take it between meals or when you are doing a short-term fast. Sea buckthorn is a not a magical fat burner. No particular food or combination of foods is, either.

You Have to Eat Less to Weigh Less, Or At Least to Have Less Body Fat

The most helpful food for losing weight is no food at all. We lose weight by exercising more or by eating less. Since most of us can't do the the hours and hours of exercise it takes to trigger the enzymatic processes that fuel fat loss, we have to eat less.

Of course, just about every diet guru tells you that you need to eat more to weigh less. It's nonsense, but it sounds so good--and people will stay on the eat-more diets long enough to lose the receipt for the diet book so they can't take it back for a refund. It is simply not possible to lose fat and lose weight when you have more fatty acids going into your fat cells than you have going out.

And unless we have someone else measure our portion sizes for us (and sometimes even when we do) out appetites usually get the better of our brains. We all tend to eat more than we think we do.

People who eat 3 meals a day and snacks and lose weight either have spectacular willpower--and congratulations to those who do--or they have someone else counting calories for them. There's nothing wrong with using pre-packaged meals to lose weight if that's the way you need to do it. But there is another way to make sure you don't overeat when you are on a weight loss diet. Just stop eating. Don't eat any food at all for at least part of a day up to about 24 hours.

Short-Term Fasting Isn't for Everyone. Just Most People.

Some people can't go on fasts. If you take the same dose of insulin every day, you can't do a fast. If you take insulin and don't measure your blood sugar levels several times a day, you should not try to lose weight by fasting. If you have a glycogen storage disease or you have liver disease or you have been told by your doctor you have hypoglycemia, then you are going to go the calorie-counting, portion control route to weight loss.

Don't do any diet your doctor does not approve. But if you have the kind of middle aged spread that most of us do, then the best way to reduce your weight is to go at least a few hours without eating anything at all. Drinking water is OK.

The 17th Hour Is When Fat Burning Kicks In

Research scientists have known since the 1990's that short-term fasting enhances weight loss. The critical number is about 17 hours. When you don't eat anything at all for about 17 hours, your body runs through its supply of glucose stored as glycogen in your liver.

Since the liver combines four molecules of water with one molecule of glucose to make a single molecule of glycogen (the storage form of glucose that occurs in both your liver and your muscles), you lose both sugar weight and water weight fast. You can wake up the next morning 2 to 5 pounds (about 1 to 2 kilos) lighter if you just skip dinner and snacks.

The rate at which your body burns fat continues to increase from hours 17 to 24 and then evens out at a steady, higher rate. Since the body also needs protein and essential fatty acids, it's best to make sure you eat every single day. Just not every single meal. Skipping two meals in a row is enough to activate the changes in enzymes that help your body burn fat.

The research shows that even if you "make up" for missed food when you stop fasting, your body does not replace all the fat you lost on a short-term fast. Your weight will go up and down as you fast and eat, fast and eat, and so on, but over a period of weeks the long-term trend is downward. You don't plateau until you reach a relatively low level of body fat. It's important to understand that this is not a juice fast or a 3-hour fast or anything other than just not eating. If you go on a juice fast, you continue to supply your body with sugars.

As long as your body is burning sugars, your fat cells respond to an enzyme that keeps fat locked inside them in a solid form. This same enzyme also locks fatty acids outside your muscles so they burn sugar rather than fat. You might lose water weight if you go on a juice fat, but you won't lose fat mass.

Similarly, you don't need protein during the few hours you aren't eating. There is a popular and totally fabricated myth that we all need protein every 3 hours or our body will start breaking down muscle tissue to provide it.

Nonsense. The 3-hour diet people don't set their alarm clocks to eat protein in the middle of the night. Even they don't believe it. Our bodies do break down cells for protein--whether we are eating or not. The cells in our saliva and gastric juices contain complete protein.

Our own bodies are designed to provide us with about 100 grams of complete protein each and every day as long as stay hydrated. You do need to drink water even when you don't eat. And even when our supplies of individual amino acids run short, they don't run out in just 3 hours. It's more like 72.

Our tissues buffer our supplies of individual amino acids so that we don't absolutely have to have each and every amino acid at every meal, or even every day. Moreover, going without food for at least 7 hours (that's just overnight) activates the production of growth hormone.

Growth hormone locks proteins inside muscle so the body does NOT break them down. This process also keeps muscle intact for about 72 hours even when we don't eat. Add to that, sea buckthorn itself provides 16 different amino acids.

So while you don't take sea buckthorn while you are doing a short-term fast, either, it helps preserve muscle when you do. I know this is a hard concept, eating less to weigh less. But the simple fact is, if you lose weight, you're the one who does it. Your weight loss is never attributable to some pill or some food or even some combination of foods. Not even sea buckthorn oil. You get all the credit. And you develop your character and self-esteem as you lose weight by this method.

How Sea Buckthorn Helps You Lose Weight

Sea buckthorn helps fat burning kick in a little faster and fat storage take a little longer. It helps you burn fat and preserve muscle. But the real hero in your weight loss story will always be you.

Sea buckthorn just helps your weight loss efforts work a little better. OK, a lot better. Maybe a pound or two (about a kilo) a month, while you keep your muscle mass.

Just know that you absolutely, positively have to eat less to save muscle mass. And you have to get some exercise too. But both are easier with sea buckthorn oil. Try it!

Image credit:
By Sten, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5992335