The MicroVore Diet

In this article I want to share some aspects of a plant-based weight loss plan that will steadily chip away at your fat stores, increase your energy levels, and have a lot of other health benefits as well! Micronutrients are the vitamins and minerals in your food that are needed in all reactions including those important for weight loss. For example, without enough iodine your thyroid gland's ability to regulate your metabolism is compromised. Lacking in iron, your red blood cells cannot properly transport oxygen to your tissues that need it to break the bonds of fat molecules for energy.

B vitamins including thiamine, riboflavin, folic acid, b12 and others are critical for transforming fat into useable energy and handling it’s breakdown products. Anti-oxidants like selenium, zinc, and vitamin C ensure the free radicals produced by activity don’t wreak havoc on your tissues and your immune system and make you inflamed and sick. Even looking into the micro-components of proteins and fats, we see that individual amino and fatty acids play specific and essential roles in our health and ability to recompose our fat to muscle ratio.

Micros matter, and deficiency can be the greatest limiting factor in your weight loss pursuits. The best way of ensuring you are getting the micros you need is by choosing nutrient-rich foods and taking supplements for the nutrients that are not present in plant-based foods (Vitamins B12 & D and Omega 3 DHA/EPA).

Our list, Top 24 Healthiest Foods, can serve as a starting point--we’ll send it to your email when you sign up for our Microvore Starter Guide above. Our program, The Microvore Diet, is also a valuable guide to nutrient-rich eating. Blood sugar is another aspect that becomes important to manipulate if we want to lose fat quickly and sustainably.

Excessive and/or frequent intake of carbohydrates will make it so that insulin is ever-present in your bloodstream. Insulin is a storage hormone, it causes fats in the blood to be stored in fat cells, and prevents muscle cells from using fat for energy. This isn’t to say that you need to cut carbs or go on a low carb diet.

You need carbohydrates to fuel your nervous system and keep your mood in balance. During physical activity, you’re not going to be able to put in your fullest effort if you’re low on carbs and using exclusively body fat for energy. Controlling carbohydrate intake is a way to feel energized during activity while also burning body fat. There are a few ways to control carbohydrate intake in a way that favors fat loss. The first and most obvious way is to eliminate the junk carbs in your diet.

Refined sugar, flour, and most alcohols are all sources of simple carbohydrates that will spike insulin, cause fat gain, and prevent fat loss. Now from here there are a few ways we can tinker with carbs to make weight loss easier. One is by making meals with a balance of complex carbs, simple carbs, protein, and fat.

This will create a meal that is both energizing and satiating, does not spike blood sugar, and will allow you to space your meals further apart which is beneficial for weight loss. If you’re wondering how to achieve a good macro-balance, you can use the Microvore Meal Formula here. In our guidebook we also suggest periodically lowering the amount of complex carbohydrates to the minimum value or leaving them out of the meal completely. This trick will speed up weight loss and can be practiced if you’re still finding it difficult to lose weight.

The limitation or avoidance of complex carbohydrates is a big part of our other plant-based program, Fruit. Fat. Forage (FFF). FFF is our raw food detox program that calls for the temporary avoidance of complex carbohydrates and consumption of fruit for energy instead. Since the sugars in fruits come from both glucose and fructose, and fructose does not have an impact on insulin, a fruit-based diet is energizing but still permits fat burning throughout the day.

FFF is effective for very quick weight loss, but if you are looking for a longer term and potentially more sustainable method for weight loss, keep reading. So if you are eating a variety of nutrient-rich foods, cutting out the junk carbs, and making macro-balanced meals, you’re on the right track to sustainable plant-based weight loss. Taking it a step further, if you have not yet tried cyclic or intermittent fasting, I highly suggest it. Fasting is the voluntary abstinence from food for a period of time.

We are in a fasted state approximately 12 hours after the last time we eat. Many of us wake up from sleep in a semi-fasted state as much of this time has elapsed while we slept during the night. It is in this fasted state that a high amount of body fat is burned for energy until the first food of the day is eaten.

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