3 natural fat-burning foods

Adding the following common foods to your daily diet can be part of a powerful weight loss strategy that will have you feeling lighter and healthier in no time.

Certain foods have natural compounds that have been found to help the body get rid of fat cells and become thinner and leaner. Starving yourself is never a safe weight loss option, so try replacing many of your menu staples with foods that burn fat naturally.

Many cold water fish including salmon, cod and even sardines contain high amounts of an unsaturated type of fat called Omega-3 that's associated with a wide variety of health benefits including weight loss.

In fact, a 2013 study published in the journal Food and Function found that not only do obese individuals have low levels of omega-3 in their bodies, but supplementation omega-3-rich fish oil led to decreases in fat levels and body mass index in said obese patients.

Replacing lunch or dinner meats with fish high in omega-3 is an easy and tasty way to begin burning fat naturally.

A staple in many Asian countries, green tea has been found to contain powerful compounds that help the body shed fat naturally.

In one 2011 study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers found that green tea was able to reduce fat accumulation in mice that were fed diets specifically designed to induce obesity.

Try drinking green tea in the morning in place of coffee or sip it as an afternoon pick-me-up that will also help burn those fat cells right off your body.

It might seem counterintuitive that something as fatty as an egg can actually help you lose weight, but this is precisely the fat-burning helper, according to several scientific studies.

The International Journal of Obesity, for example, reported in 2008 that in a weight loss study, people who ate eggs for breakfast lost considerably more body fat than those who ate bagels.

Eating eggs in the morning may be one of the easiest ways to get your body fat-burning mechanism into high gear.