3 Things You Need to Know About Coconut Milk!

Today we are talking about the 3 Things You Need to Know About Coconut Milk.

We use a lot of coconut milk in the Freese Method. We use it for breakfast in puddings and smoothies and we use it in sauces and curries. We use it in place of dairy for those who are dairy-free. It’s very versatile and it’s a great tool for helping women lose weight.

So today I wanted to talk about three main points about coconut milk that will help you understand more and utilize the power of coconut milk better so that you can reap the benefits of coconut milk.

Now, if you are like, “Hannah, I hate coconut milk. I hate the taste, I hate the texture, I just can’t!” Don’t worry, coconut milk is just one of dozens of healthy fats that can be a part of a metabolically healthy diet. It’s not a requirement. So, still listen in, because I’ll go through some important points about fats and health that you’ll want to hear regardless of how you feel about coconut milk itself.

Who hear already uses or drinks or eats coconut milk?

Good, this will be helpful.

Alright,

1. Coconut milk is full of healthy fats and will not cause heart disease or make your cholesterol go up.

Big point number one. Gotta start here. You need to know that coconut milk is healthy for you or the rest of this video won’t matter.

Coconut milk is made when they take a coconut and scoop out the flesh and then grind it all up and filter out the chunks. So it’s the natural coconut water plus the flesh. The flesh of the coconut is what contains all the fat.

Who’s had coconut water before? Ok, that’s different. That’s just the liquid inside the coconut. When we grind up the flesh with the water we get coconut milk.

Now, I know we have all been beaten over the head with the dogma that saturated fat is bad. That is causes heart disease and makes us fat.

Well, good news to all of us who have lived under this terrible yoke for decades. Turns out, it’s not that clear, and maybe it’s not that bad.

Saturated fats do not automatically raise your cholesterol and clog your arteries and give your heart disease. It is absolutely not that simple.

Yes, coconut milk contains saturated fats. But saturated fats are not bad for you. That’s right. We know much more about this than we used to, even just five years ago.

Now, some of those saturated fats in coconut milk are a special kind of fat called medium-chained triglycerides. You’ve probably heard of these little guys, this is MCT oil. MCT stands for medium chain triglyceride. It just means the fatty acid is neither short nor long, but medium in length if you were look at it chemically.

Medium chain triglycerides like capric acid and caprylic acid are special. Unlike longer fatty acids, they are absorbed and used by the body little differently.

These MCT’s go from your digestive tract directly to your liver where your liver is like, “oh yeah, hey guys, I’m going to burn you right now for energy! I’m not going to store you for later! Come on in here to my many mitochondria so we can get a little jet fuel!”

When your liver is happy and full of efficient fuel, you are less hungry and don’t have cravings for sugar.

Many of you may have experienced this if you’ve experimented with MCT oil or have had my chia puddings. You’ll full of energy and not hungry. It’s awesome. It’s like your body likes it or something… weird.

So we love the MCT’s found in coconut milk. We actually love all the fats in coconut milk.

Now, as far as heart disease and cholesterol are concerned, we have really good quality studies that say coconut milk and coconut oil lowers our “bad” LDL cholesterol and raises our good HDL cholesterol and lowers our triglyceride levels in our blood.

So we are good on the science side and health side as well.

Everybody feeling better about the health status of coconut milk?

Hopefully you do!

2. Only buy unsweetened coconut milk in a can.

Not all coconut milks are the same. To get all the best of coconut milk, we need to do buy the products that actually contain all the good fats.

Again, we want, we need, we are seeking out the good fats in coconut milk. Almond milk, oat milk all those other milks are expensive watery calcium supplements and they don’t help us burn fat. Coconut milk helps us burn fat.

Coconut milk is a lot like dairy milk in the grocery store.

Unsweetened coconut milk in a can is like whole dairy milk and can be used like whole dairy milk.

Light coconut milk is like 2% dairy milk and is not what we want. We want the fat!

Coconut beverages like this one, are like skim milk, all water and sugar with a little calcium sitting on the bottom. This is definitely not what we want. Why not? There is no healthy fat!

Coconut cream is like heavy whipping cream and is amazing in coffee or whipped up for desserts with berries or shaved dark chocolate.

Coconut butter is like regular butter. More solid, not liquid.

Let’s go through a few common questions about buying coconut milk:

Hannah, does it have to be organic?

No, no it does not.

Hannah, all the coconut milks have gums in them like guar gum, is that ok?

Yes, for now that’s ok. If you have Crohn’s, IBS, or have had gastric surgery then you may want to consider avoiding gums, but for the majority of us, we will be ok with the small amount of gums found in coconut milk.

Hannah, what do I do with the leftovers?

Put it in a jar and put it in the fridge.

Hannah, does it have to be unsweetened?

Yes, yes it does.

3. Coconut milk is really good for your metabolism.

I want to leave you with why you should be eating and enjoying coconut milk.

As we touched on earlier, coconut milk is high in healthy fats.

That’s good because we eat it, it will do a couple of good things for us.

• Provides us with fast energy that we can burn and not store as more fat.
• It keeps us naturally full and satiated until our next meal. This helps us not snack!
• The healthy fats in coconut milk do not overstimulate our insulin. When we can get energy without stimulating our insulin we can keep our metabolic rate high and not accumulate more fat! This is a huge deal.
• It is a preferred source of clean energy for our mitochondria. Our livers love it and we make a ton of energy from the fats in coconut milk. It’s a like a gas stove boiling water, where as if you drink almond milk or skim milk, it’s like a little bitty match.
• It helps you burn fat. The bottom line is, eating fat doesn’t make you fat. In fact, eating fat helps keep your insulin low and you full and happy. When your insulin is low, you can release your stored body fat to burn too. It’s not about calories. It’s about hormones.

So what are we going to do?

We are going to enjoy coconut milk! We are going to order curry and make our smoothie with coconut milk! We are going to keep cans of unsweetened coconut milk in our pantry’s and use them in place of milk for tons of recipes. We are going to put it in our coffee, whip it up for dessert! 

Alright everyone, today was super fun because I get to share great news about coconut milk which is delicious and so very very good for you!

Remember you absolutely have what it takes to lose weight, you just have to fix your metabolism first!

Sources:

Han, Jian Rong et al. “Effects of dietary medium-chain triglyceride on weight loss and insulin sensitivity in a group of moderately overweight free-living type 2 diabetic Chinese subjects.” Metabolism: clinical and experimental vol. 56,7 (2007): 985-91. doi:10.1016/j.metabol.2007.03.005

Stubbs, R J, and C G Harbron. “Covert manipulation of the ratio of medium- to long-chain triglycerides in isoenergetically dense diets: effect on food intake in ad libitum feeding men.” International journal of obesity and related metabolic disorders : journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity vol. 20,5 (1996): 435-44.

Papamandjaris, A A et al. “Endogenous fat oxidation during medium chain versus long chain triglyceride feeding in healthy women.” International journal of obesity and related metabolic disorders : journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity vol. 24,9 (2000): 1158-66. doi:10.1038/sj.ijo.0801350

Assunção, Monica L et al. “Effects of dietary coconut oil on the biochemical and anthropometric profiles of women presenting abdominal obesity.” Lipids vol. 44,7 (2009): 593-601. doi:10.1007/s11745-009-3306-6

Assunção, Monica L et al. “Effects of dietary coconut oil on the biochemical and anthropometric profiles of women presenting abdominal obesity.” Lipids vol. 44,7 (2009): 593-601. doi:10.1007/s11745-009-3306-6

Tsai, Y H et al. “Mechanisms mediating lipoprotein responses to diets with medium-chain triglyceride and lauric acid.” Lipids vol. 34,9 (1999): 895-905. doi:10.1007/s11745-999-0438-9