Toxic Waist?

Alcohol isn't the only thing your liver treats as toxic waste...and they all can lead to a toxic waist (I'd like to apologize for that pun). There are plenty of other things we put into our system that stunt the liver's ability to function at full force. Every time we do it, we are limiting our body's ability to metabolize (particularly fat) and ultimately encouraging it to store up fats rather than burn them off.

The list of “toxins” (clearly, these are not all actually toxic, they are just sort of treated that way) is both somewhat expected and surprising. I'm not going to go into great detail here; the fact that they distract your liver from it's metabolic duties is the most important thing. Each can contribute to an unhealthy live and besides weight problems (including weight gain, difficulty losing weight, pot belly, cellulite), an unhealthy liver can also cause\contribute to indigestion, acid reflux, gall stones, vomiting attacks, constipation, depression, anger, poor concentration, overheating of the body, sugar craving, heart disease, high blood pressure, clogged arteries, strokes, fatty organs, weakened bones and allergies (just to name a few).

The list includes:

• Food additives and preservatives
• Alcohol
• Pesticides
• Antibiotics
• Sugar (BOTH natural and artificial)
• High Fat Foods
• Carcinogens

We won't go into great detail here in terms of what to do about this (that's for the next post), but a few things are just obvious: avoid junk food (gobs of sugar, fat, additives and preservatives), buy from local farmer's markets (less pesticides), drink less alcohol, avoid sweet stuff (even artificially sweet), grill but grill lightly (not too much char) and go easy on the antibiotics.

It's pretty clear that a healthy liver is essential to both weight loss and maintaining a healthy weight. So what do we do to get back to having a healthy liver? Three things: 1) reduce\remove, 2) restore and 3) repeat. In the next post we will also look at each of these.