Essential Oils To Aid In Weight Loss
If you’ve been on countless traditional weight loss diets, and even pursued intensive, fat-burning exercise programs, but aren’t impressed with the mediocre results you’re getting. If you feel like your own body is fighting against you, then you should consider using essential oils to supplement your weight loss plan.
Now, to be perfectly honest, essential oils aren’t miracle cures. But, if you incorporate them alongside a number of other healthy habits like: working out a few days a week, planning your meals, and tracking your habits, you’ll be amazed at the results.
By using essential oils, you can supercharge these positive, healthy habits. With just a few drops of the oils described below, you can overcome the many common hang-ups that plague people on weight loss journeys. Things like fatigue, digestive problems, inflammation, sugar cravings, and lack of motivation or discipline.
How Essential Oils Can Help You Lose Weight
Everyone knows there is no miracle solution to weight loss. Fad diets and magic potions will only work temporarily, if at all, and can lead to health problems later.
Eating a healthy diet (meaning proper nutrition, not diet foods) and exercising regularly are the most fool-proof ways to lose weight and keep it off. However, adding essential oils into your daily routine can help promote emotional and physical health that will help you lose weight faster, easier, and healthily.
Essential oils are known for their ability to affect your mood and can either calm you down or energize you. This effect can help with the psychological aspect of any weight loss experience; such as emotional eating, junk food/sugar cravings, fatigue, and decreased motivation.
Keeping you from “falling off the diet wagon” will allow your body to continue to be fueled with healthy foods and keep your self-esteem high. Increasing your energy and motivation allow you to do your best before, during, and after workouts, without making you feel emotionally overwhelmed by the task at hand.
Certain essential oils have physiological health benefits. They can speed up metabolism, aid in digestion, and boost energy. A fast metabolism and healthy digestive system will allow your body to burn more calories each day without you having to go to extremes. Increased energy will get you through those workouts.
Though they are not a replacement for a healthy lifestyle, adding essential oils daily will help pave the road to successful healthy lifestyle changes. Now let’s talk about the best essential oils for weight loss.
Best Essential Oils for Weight Loss
1. Grapefruit Essential Oil
Grapefruit essential oil is one of the best aromatic oils for boosting metabolism. This citrusy oil is perfect for revving your body into fat-burning mode. Grapefruit essential oil contains nootkatone, a compound that speeds up metabolism and helps your body melt away fat. This constituent triggers a vital enzyme in the liver and the muscular-skeletal system to boost physical performance and metabolism. An optimized metabolism is vital for weight loss.
A study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) published in the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institute of Health (NIH) revealed grapefruit oil’s ability to shrink fat-storing cells (adipocytes). Smaller fat cells indicate better weight management.
This fragrant essential oil does more than increase metabolism and reduce adipocytes, however. It also keeps obesity at bay, acts as a natural appetite suppressant, balances mood, and reduces stress. These benefits make grapefruit extract a potent, effective agent for weight loss when combined with a healthy diet. Its cheerful aroma is invigorating, you’ll feel refreshed and revived with an enhanced sense of well-being.
How to Use
- Combine 4 drops of grapefruit essential oil in a teaspoon of olive oil, and use to massage the abdominal region to melt fat. Washing off the area after massage isn’t necessary. Allow it to absorb into the skin.
- Add 3 drops of grapefruit essential oil to a tissue and use as an inhalant to reduce appetite and food cravings. More drops can be added throughout the day once the aroma begins to dissipate from the tissue. An alternative is to add up to 10 drops to a diffuser for about 15 minutes.
2. Cinnamon Bark (Cassia) Essential Oil
If you love sweets, cinnamon essential oil can really help with weight loss. This oil helps control blood sugar and insulin levels, keeping those sugar cravings in check. Stabilizing blood sugar levels with cinnamon bark essential oil keeps your body from craving sugary junk foods. Adding this warm aromatic oil to your daily routine will make you less likely to overeat, keeping you on track with your diet.
Cinnamaldehyde, the active compound in cinnamon bark essential oil, speeds up metabolism by targeting fat cells. Like grapefruit, cinnamon bark can be used to stimulate thermogenesis, a process by which your body is made to burn adipocytes. Read more in this article on Science Daily.
How to Use
- Combine 5 drops of cinnamon bark essential oil in 30 ml of a carrier oil.
Cinnamon bark essential oil is known to cause skin irritation if used in pure form. Use this blend to massage the abdomen, lower, and upper back areas.
3. Ginger Root Essential Oil
You might know ginger root essential oil as a great digestive aid, but it’s also powerful against obesity. It contains gingerols, compounds that reduce inflammation in the intestines and help absorb more of the vitamins and minerals in food.
Reducing inflammation can lower the risk of developing medical conditions, and affect weight gain or loss. In fact, recurring inflammation may cause weight gain and also make it difficult to lose that weight. Like cinnamon bark, ginger root essential oil helps curb sugar cravings.
In a clinical study with 70 to 80 Korean subjects, ginger essential oil proved an effective anti-obesity dietary supplement. The 12-week, placebo-controlled experiment ginger essential oil significantly reduced the body fat, Body Mass Index (BMI), and weight of participants.
How to Use
- Combine 2 drops ginger and 3 drops sweet orange essential oils in a teaspoon of olive oil.
- Massage the abdomen with this mix twice daily.
4. Lime Essential Oil
The perky aroma of lime essential oil is useful for burning fat and improving mood. If you’re looking for an all-in-one essential oil, then lime is your oil. Since it benefits both mental and physical health. Its limonene compound helps dissolve body fat, while enhancing mood by increasing norepinephrine levels in the brain. Lime is a good addition to workout days, as its zesty fragrance energizes and invigorates mental faculties.
In another study by the NCBI published in the NLM at the NIH using mice and lime essential oil. Subjects’ weight gain was induced by the administration of an antihistaminic drug. After daily oral consumption of lime essential oil during the 45-day study, subjects showed a loss in body weight.
Researchers concluded that this effect likely came about as a result of the chemical properties in lime essential oil, which produced a loss of appetite (anorexia) in the test subjects.
How to Use
- Diffuse 10 to 20 drops of lime essential oil into the air after meals to curb appetite.
5. Turmeric Essential Oil
Turmeric essential oil is a weight loss aid, especially in individuals with metabolic disorders. A slowed, or suppressed metabolism is a strong indicator that the body isn’t burning enough fat.
Various studies by the NCBI published in the NLM at the NIH reveal that turmeric essential oil may be used to jump start your metabolism and increase adiponectin in the blood. An increased level of adiponectin occurs when your body is working to burn excess body fat.
How to Use
Burn fat with a cup of turmeric-ginger tea in the mornings.
- In a coffee mug, mix 10 ml of honey (or as preferred) and 2 drops of turmeric essential oil and combine well.
- Pour in a cup of hot water.
- Add a few slices of fresh ginger root (can be grated).
- Drink daily.
Do not ingest turmeric essential oil if you are an insulin-dependent diabetic on medication as these could likely interact.
6. Peppermint Essential Oil
Peppermint essential oil is a superb choice for weight loss due to its appetite suppressant properties, and its effect on exercise performance. This oil naturally prevents bloating and indigestion. Peppermint essential oil is perfect for people trying to improve their overall digestive health. The strong, minty scent of peppermint rejuvenates and revives the mind to keep you alert and attentive. It’s perfect for early morning workouts or days when you lack focus and clarity.
Although peppermint essential oil doesn’t melt or burn fat cells, NCBI research shows that it can enhance exercise performance. If you’re looking to burn more calories through physical exertion, peppermint essential oil will help you stay on track. And when you’re aching all over after those workouts, peppermint essential oil is a trusted pain reliever. This oil is naturally cooling, so use it to soothe tense, sore muscles.
How to Use
- Add 1 drop (0.05ml) of peppermint essential oil to a teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil and ingest. An alternative is to add 1 drop of peppermint essential oil to an enteric-coated capsule, fill with olive oil, and to take daily.
- Diffuse 5 to 10 drops of peppermint essential oil to improve focus before working out.
- Combine 4 drops of peppermint and 2 drops of wintergreen essential oils in a teaspoon of sesame seed oil. Use to massage sore, tense joints and muscles after workouts.
7. Bergamot Essential Oil
Bergamot essential oil has mood-enhancing properties. With the right mindset it’s easier to work out and eat right. Use Bergamot essential oil on those days when you feel unmotivated. This floral oil increases stamina and a feeling of well-being.
A tremendous essential oil for weight loss, Bergamot essential oil showed positive effects on body weight when used in a study. Daily use of the citrusy extract not only decreased Body Mass Index but glucose levels, which can contribute to weight gain if not controlled.
How to Use
- Diffuse 10 drops of Bergamot essential oil to uplift you before workouts.
- Dilute 5 drops in a teaspoon of olive oil and massage into the abdomen.
8. Fennel Essential Oil
Fennel essential oil is important for weight loss because it is energizing. This essential oil has a mild licorice scent. Its melatonin helps you sleep better and longer, which naturally boosts energy levels for the next day’s workout. Melatonin also temporarily curbs appetite to help reduce weight gain. It also promotes overall digestive health.
Regular, restful sleep will lower stress levels, too. This is beneficial because sustained high levels of stress increase production of cortisol, a hormone that has been shown to lead to weight gain and other health problems. Fennel oil may also give your metabolism an added boost to aid in fat-burning.
How to Use
- Diffuse 10 drops of fennel essential oil in a well-ventilated area.
9. Sandalwood Essential Oil
Nutrition and dietetics department head, Tanisha Mehta, gives her take on sandalwood’s weight loss action. According to Mehta, sandalwood oil tones digestive function to boost operations of the intestines and stomach. This seemingly simple act can aid weight loss, a digestive system with healthy gut bacteria is at peak performance.
How to Use
Break free from the clutches of emotional eating, curb overindulgence, and dispel stress with sandalwood essential oil.
- Diffuse 10 drops together with 4 drops of grapefruit essential oil.
How to Use Essential Oils for Weight Loss
To enjoy the benefits of watching those visceral fat cells melt away, apply essential oils directly to the skin. Essential oils contain the highly concentrated “essences” of the spices, herbs, and trees from which they’re extracted. They are potent and can cause skin irritation, sensitization, and phototoxicity if used undiluted, or in immoderate quantities.
Before topical use, a few drops of essential oils should be combined with a carrier oil like almond, olive, or coconut to avoid any adverse reaction. When using carrier oils, unscented is preferred. Carrier oils have their own therapeutic value, and help essential oils absorb more quickly through the skin.
Warning: never apply undiluted essential oils to your body. Always use essential oils according to their safety profile. Caution should be taken if oils are to be massaged on to damaged or diseased skin.
Option 1: Topical Application
Massage the oil onto abdomen, arms, legs, or soles of your feet to reap the benefits. When applying essential oils that reduce fat-storing cells in the body, target areas with a thicker layer of fat. A relaxing, fat-melting massage using the recommended oils each day helps.
On workout days, proper blood circulation is important, and a warm massage of the legs will help blood flow. Many essential oils act as analgesics. They have the same effect as painkillers when massaged on to sore, achy areas. For a more localized effect, use essential oils in a hot or cold compress.
Option 2: Use In a Diffuser
Having a functional essential oil diffuser will serve you well as the aromatic nature of essential oils enhance well-being. Diffusing essential oils regularly may also reduce food cravings. When you’re feeling overwhelmed and depleted, use essential oils to unwind and relax.
When diffusing your oils, always ensure the area is well-ventilated. And, if you have pets, keep the door open so that they can leave should they become agitated.
Never use essential oils in a humidifier, CPAP machine, or any other breathing device.
Option 3: Ingestion
Essential oils aren’t one-size-fits-all, you may need to use in very low oral doses depending on the desired effect. Some essential oils do interact with medications. So, it’s best to avoid internal use if taking diabetic and hypertensive medications or recovering from recent surgery. Avoid using internally if pregnant or breastfeeding.
Essential Oils to Avoid in Pregnancy
Women who are pregnant should use essential oils with caution. There are some oils they should steer clear of altogether, according to the International Federation of Professional Aromatherapists (IPFA) these are: acorus calamus, ajwain, allspice, amyris, anise (aniseed), angelica, apricot kernel, asafoetida, babchi, bergamot, cinnamon, clove, cumin, fennel, hyssop, oregano, Peru balsam, thyme, sage, star anise, sweet birch and wintergreen.
Some essential oils are contraindicated in epilepsy, please consult your doctor before attempting the recommended oils on this list if you’ve had a history of convulsions or seizures.
Final Thoughts
These precious plant–based extracts contain powerful, natural chemical compounds that burn fat, improve metabolism, enhance well-being, energize the body, and so much more. Using them regularly will help you feel confident and radiant in your own skin. They might just provide you with the determination to stick to a healthy lifestyle through diet, exercise, and self-care.
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Source:
11 Best Essential Oils for Weight Loss & Losing Belly Fat
https://www.developgoodhabits.com/essential-oils-weight-loss/
by Samantha Burris