Lose Weight By Avoiding Acidic Foods

Alkalizing your body can help you improve your health and reach your ideal weight. One of the ways to alkalize your body is to reduce the amount of acidic foods you eat. The best place to start is to reduce or eliminate the amounts of highly acidic foods you eat.

The theory of alkalizing your body was developed by Dr. Robert Young. He maintains that virtually all modern health problems are caused by an acidic diet and lifestyle. One of the ways the body deals with too much acid is to store it in fat cells leading to many people being overweight because of too much acidity in their body.

Your body needs to maintain a pH of 7.35. Acidic foods have a lower pH. Your diet will naturally have foods with higher pH and foods with lower pH, but if you can reduce or eliminate the lower pH foods, your body will be able to alkalize better.

For most people, animal protein (meat) is a big part of their diet. It is also one of the most acidic forms of food you can eat. Reducing the amount of animal protein that you eat will go a long ways towards alkalizing your body. The least acidic form of animal protein is fish.

Dairy products are another common type of acidic food that many people eat. Dairy products contain lactose which breaks down into lactic acid when digested. In general, cheeses are the most acidic while soy milk and goat milk are less acidic.

Sweeteners are very common in almost every food and are also highly acidic. When you eat sugar and other sweeteners like corn syrup, whatever isn't used right away for energy ferments and turns into acid in the body. Artificial sweeteners also break down into acids in your body.

Fermented and malted foods are also acidic. This includes many common condiments like ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, soy sauce, and vinegar. Try to reduce the amount of these condiments that you use to flavor your food.

The last type of acidic foods you need to consider is the beverages that you drink. Alcohol is one of the most acidic things you can consume with wine coolers having a pH as low as 2.84. Coffee is another acidic beverage that should be avoided. Coffee with cream and sugar can have a pH as low as 4.0. As mentioned above, sugar turns to acid in your body so it should be no surprise that soft drinks are also highly acidic. Most soft drinks have a pH less than 4.0 and colas can be as low as 2.5.

You won't be able to eliminate every acidic food or beverage you consume, but the more changes you make to reduce the acid you put into your body, the better you will start to feel. The second part to alkalizing your body is to eat more alkalizing foods to balance out the acidic ones you do eat. There is one more article in this series that discusses some of the best alkaline foods to eat.

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