We learn wisdom from failure, much more than from success; we often discover what will do by finding what will not do and probably he who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.
—SAMUEL SMILES
QUICK QUIZ
Your struggles with weight are not the result of simply too much food and too little exercise. A myriad of unsuspected elements come into play. Before we look more closely at these, take this Quick Quiz to put your own lifestyle in focus.
If you answered “Yes” to even one of these questions, read on to learn how you may be unknowingly sabotaging your efforts at weight control and what you can do to make a difference.
If you are like most people, the Fat Flush Plan is not your first attempt at weight loss. You’ve exercised, counted calories, and cut out fat, then protein, and now even carbohydrates. Perhaps you lost weight; perhaps not. Chances are you’ve regained most, if not all, of the pounds.
For thousands of individuals, the Fat Flush Plan has been different. They’ve lost pounds and inches and kept them off. I believe this is so because the plan, unlike any other weight loss program, targets the five hidden factors mentioned in Chapter 1 that bring on unwanted pounds:
Liver toxicity
Waterlogged tissues
Fear of eating fat
Excess insulin
Stress fat
How do these factors really affect your weight? Over the past several years, I have followed the research and, in some cases, the work of the nutritional pioneers who spearheaded these breakthroughs to answer this question. If you are like most of the Fat Flushers who have followed my work, when you understand some of the no-nonsense reasoning and the science behind the plan, you’ll march confidently toward your ultimate success.
Poets and songwriters may wax poetic about the heart, but your liver is by far the most versatile organ in your body and one of the most important. Weighing between 2.5 and 4 pounds in adults, the liver is the largest internal organ as well. Between 3 and 4 pints of blood flow through it every minute.
Researchers now estimate that the liver performs nearly 400 different jobs. It is the body’s most important organ, functioning as a living filter to cleanse the system of toxins, metabolize proteins, control hormonal balance, and produce immune-boosting factors. Many of these functions are essential to your overall health, for example, the liver’s synthesis of fibrinogen and other blood-clotting factors to protect you when you are injured. However, other liver functions have a direct bearing on your weight loss efforts, and these are the focus of the Fat Flush Plan.
A Fat-Burning Machine. Each day your liver produces about a quart of a yellowish green liquid called bile that emulsifies and absorbs fats in the small intestine. Bile contains water, bile acids and pigments, cholesterol, bilirubin, lipids, lecithin, potassium, sodium, and chloride. The liquid is stored near the liver in the gallbladder, from where it is transported to the intestine as needed during digestion.
Bile, as briefly discussed in Chapter 1, is the real key to the liver’s ability to digest and assimilate fats. It can be hampered from doing its job because of a lack of bile nutrients, congestion, or even clogged bile ducts, which hamper bile flow and result in less bile production. If there is not enough bile produced, fat cannot be emulsified.
If you have a roll of fat at your waistline, you may have what is commonly called a “fatty liver.” Your liver has stopped processing fat and begun storing it, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment. Only when you bring your liver back to full function will you lose this fat.
An Efficient Metabolizer. The liver metabolizes not only fats but also carbohydrates and proteins for use in your body. The organ has a triple role in carbohydrate metabolism. First, it converts glucose, fructose, and galactose into glycogen, which it stores. Second, when your blood sugar level drops and no new carbohydrates are available, the liver converts stored glycogen into glucose and releases it into your bloodstream. Third, if your diet is regularly low in carbohydrates, the liver will convert fat or protein into glucose to maintain your blood sugar levels.
The liver converts amino acids from food into various proteins that may have a direct or indirect impact on your weight. Many proteins, for example, transport hormones through the bloodstream; as you’ve read, hormone balances are crucial to avoid water retention, bloating, and cravings, as well as other health problems. Proteins also help transport wastes, such as damaged cholesterol and used estrogen and insulin, to the liver for detoxification and elimination through the kidneys.
A Potent Detoxifier. Perhaps the liver’s most important function, and the one that puts it at greatest risk for damage, is to detoxify the myriad toxins that assault our bodies daily. A toxin is any substance that irritates or creates harmful effects in the body. Some toxins, called endotoxins, are the natural by-products of body processes. For example, during protein metabolism, ammonia is formed, which the liver breaks down to urea to be excreted through the kidneys. Other toxins you consume by choice, such as alcohol, caffeine, and prescription drugs (more about these later). Still others are the thousands of toxic chemicals we breathe, consume, or touch in our environment: pesticides, car exhaust, secondhand smoke, chemical food additives, and indoor pollutants from paint, carpets, and cleaners, among others. Under ordinary circumstances, your body handles toxins by (1) neutralizing them, as antioxidants neutralize free radicals, (2) transforming them, as fat-soluble chemicals are transformed to water-soluble ones, and (3) eliminating them through urine, feces, sweat, mucus, and breath. Working with your lungs, skin, kidneys, and intestines, a healthy liver detoxifies many harmful substances and eliminates them without contaminating the bloodstream.
The detoxification process has two phases that should work in close synchronization. Phase 1 uses a group of enzymes to break apart the chemical bonds holding the toxins together. Known as hydroxylation, phase 1 makes some toxins more water soluble and temporarily more chemically active.
Phase 2, known as conjugation, attaches other enzymes to the chemically altered toxins, or intermediates. These enzymes complete the conversion of the intermediates, producing substances that are nontoxic, water-soluble, and easily excreted.
Your liver is a workhorse that can even regenerate its own damaged cells. However, it is not invincible. When it lacks essential nutrients or when it is overwhelmed by toxins, it no longer performs as it should. Hormone imbalances may develop. Fat may accumulate in the liver and then just under the skin or in other organs. Toxins build up and get into your bloodstream. Among the signs of “toxic liver” are
Weight gain, especially around the abdomen
Cellulite
Abdominal bloating
Indigestion
High blood pressure
Elevated cholesterol
Fatigue
Mood swings
Depression
Skin rashes
When your liver is sluggish, every organ in your body is affected, and your weight loss efforts are blocked. Blood vessels enlarge, and blood flow becomes restricted. A toxic liver is unable to break down the adrenal hormone aldosterone, which accumulates to retain sodium (and water) and suppress potassium. This can raise your blood pressure. The liver fails to detoxify the components of estrogen (estrone and estradiol) for excretion, so symptoms of estrogen dominance arise. Unable to carry out its activities to control glucose, a toxic liver can lead to hypoglycemia, which can produce sugar cravings, weight gain, and Candida overgrowth. A toxic liver is unable to process toxins, enabling them to escape into your bloodstream and set off an immune response. With repeated assaults from escaped toxins, your immune system becomes overworked. Fluid accumulates, and you may develop one or more autoimmune diseases such as lupus or arthritis. A liver overloaded with pollutants and toxins cannot efficiently burn body fat, and thus will sabotage your weight loss efforts.
Probably nothing you do to control your weight is as important as keeping your liver healthy. This means avoiding as many of the damaging elements (like alcohol) as possible while embracing liver boosters. Among the lesser known compromisers of liver function are caffeine, sugar, trans fats, medications, and inadequate fiber.
Caffeine. Interestingly, the latest studies suggest that coffee ranks high in antioxidants. Japanese researchers in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute have even reported that people who drank coffee daily had half the liver cancer of those who never drank it and that the protective effect occurred in people who drank one to two cups per day and increased at three to four cups. But what these studies neglect to report is how the caffeine in coffee is a powerful diuretic, doubling the rate at which calcium leaves your body in urine. The excretion of calcium stimulates the parathyroid gland to secrete the hormone responsible for drawing more calcium from the bone to replace it in the blood stream. In addition, coffee contains about thirty different acids, which draw even more calcium from the bone to act as a neutralizer.
Excessive consumption of coffee, as well as other foods containing caffeine like tea, regular soft drinks and chocolate will increase your risk of osteoporosis by reducing blood calcium levels, triggering calcium to be pulled from bone and flushing needed calcium out of your body. And it doesn’t take much to be excessive. A mere three cups of black coffee a day can result in a 45 mg calcium loss. Unfortunately, women between the ages of 36 and 50, who often need calcium the most, drink more coffee than any other age group.
You may be thinking, “I only drink one or two cups of coffee a day.” However, you may be unknowingly consuming much more caffeine, from chocolate, cocoa, tea, some soft drinks, kola nut and guaraná root supplements, and a host of over-the-counter medications, including Excedrin, Anacin, Vanquish, Midol, Cope, Premens, Vivarin, NoDoz, and Dexatrim. Sugar. Annually, Americans consume over 150 pounds of sweeteners and another 15 to 20 pounds of artificial sweeteners per person. Once again, you may not even know you’re consuming sugar. Food producers don’t use it just for sweetening. Sugar helps retain color in foods like catsup, gives a brown crust to breads and rolls, and adds body to soft drinks. Cigarettes, toothpaste, aspirin—even hairspray and postage stamps—contain sugar.
And sugar, a simple carbohydrate, comes in many forms, not all of which you may recognize in an ingredients list:
Glucose
Fructose
Sucrose
Maltose
Lactose
Raw sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar
Molasses, maple sugar, honey, corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup
Synthetic sugars: sorbitol, mannitol, and xylitol
In the process of being metabolized, these sugars rob your body of valuable nutrients; some of these, such as zinc, are essential for liver function. Sugar also inhibits your liver’s production of enzymes needed in the detoxification process. Your liver must go into overdrive to convert the sugar into fats such as cholesterol and triglycerides. Unfortunately, once the liver has made this heroic effort, the fats may pile up in your liver and other organs or accumulate in the most typical fat storage areas of your body—thighs, buttocks, and abdomen.
Sugar is also a favorite food of Candida, a yeast that can overgrow and not only bring on bloating and water retention but also stress your liver. The yeast causes sugar to ferment and form acetaldehyde, a neurotoxin that increases ammonia levels in your bloodstream and can damage the liver. In addition, your liver must work overtime to detoxify the toxins produced by the fungal form of flourishing Candida, compromising the organ’s fat-burning ability.
Trans Fats. As I indicated in Chapter 1, I introduced to the public the concept of adding the right fats back into the diet in 1988. I was labeled a “nutritional heretic” at the time, but the concept is definitely mainstream nearly fifteen years after I came out as an advocate of fat. Not just any fat, of course, but the essential fatty acids that have shown themselves to be both healthful and helpful in weight loss. I’ll have more to say about the latest findings later in this chapter.
What I have been urging you to avoid for years are trans fats, also called trans fatty acids.
Trans fats are created when vegetable oils are hydrogenated. This process produces solid or semisolid fats widely used in commercial baked goods and other processed foods and in fast-food restaurants. By adding hydrogen and metals, under high heat, processors create a very stable oil but have altered the oil molecules. Trans fats impede your liver’s ability to burn fat. They retard the conjugation phase of detoxification, increase fatty deposits within the liver, and thicken the bile, thus impeding bile flow through the bile ducts. You’ll find trans fats in margarine (not butter), hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, shortening, as well as in processed foods made with these ingredients. As a general rule, the softer or more fluid the oil, the fewer trans fats it contains.
Medications. As with food, the medications you take must be processed before they can be used by your body. Once again, your liver plays an important role. Some drugs, however, cause the liver to work harder and can also pack on pounds. Hormone-replacement therapy, for example, causes the liver to make more clotting factors, and the organ must work harder to break down the drug’s hormones. Other drugs may produce waste products that can accumulate in the liver. Acetaminophen, the active ingredient in the popular pain-reliever Tylenol, is one such drug. Studies by researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center found that 38 percent of more than 300 cases of liver failure and 35 percent of 307 cases of severe liver injury were associated with excessive acetaminophen use. The common antidepressants Zoloft and Paxil can typically add ten to twenty pounds of weight gain while a Depo Provera birth control shot can be responsible for as much as 30 pounds of extra weight.
Drugs that can potentially harm your liver or may cause weight gain.
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)
Cholesterol-lowering drugs
Antidiabetic drugs
Triglyceride-lowering drugs
Anticonvulsants
Hormones (e.g., estrogen and tamoxifen)
Antidepressants
In addition, to protect your liver, you may want to avoid these nutritional supplements, which when taken on a regular basis may actually damage it:
Chaparral
Comfrey
Germander
Pennyroyal
High-dose vitamin A (in amounts greater than 100,000 I.U.s for months)
Anabolic steroids
Ephedra (ma huang)
Gentian
Senna
Shark cartilage
Valerian
If you are currently taking any medications and have concerns about their effects on your liver, do not stop taking the drugs before you consult your physician. Liver function tests are available. You may be able to take an alternative drug with less potential for liver damage. Many drugs, for example, are available in lower doses or in different forms (e.g., patch, pill, or injection), or a natural form may replace a synthetic product. These alternatives may provide the treatment you need without the added weight and liver dysfunction you don’t need. Know and weigh the benefits of the medication versus weight gain and any other side effects you’re experiencing.
Inadequate Fiber. If you are like most Americans, you eat only about 10 to 12 grams of fiber a day when experts believe that 20 to 35 grams are ideal for long-term health.
Among fiber’s healthful benefits is its role in moving toxins out of your body. Insoluble fibers, from flaxseed, for example, absorb water in your digestive tract. This speeds up transit time (the time it takes materials to move through your intestine) to move waste products out of your body. Without adequate fiber, up to 90 percent of cholesterol and bile acids will be reabsorbed and recirculated to the liver. This taxes your liver and reduces its fat-burning abilities. No matter what the cause, a sluggish, overworked liver does a poor job metabolizing fat, and you gain weight.
We start with the plan’s cranberry juice–water mixture and Long Life Cocktail of cranberry juice, water, and psyllium or flaxseed as a potent source of phytonutrients such as anthocyanins, catechins, luteins, and quercetin. These powerful phytonutrients act as antioxidants, providing nutritional support and cofactors for the liver’s cytochrome P-450 phase I and phase II detoxification pathways. These nutrients also seem to digest fatty globules in the lymph. The cocktail’s fiber blocks the absorption of fat, increases fat excretion, and binds toxins so that they are not reabsorbed into your body.
The lemon found in the plan’s hot water–lemon drink benefits bile formation, which is essential for optimal fat metabolism and helps regenerate the liver. It also promotes peristalsis, the movement in the bowels that keeps waste moving along the digestive tract and out of the body for elimination.
The plan’s cranberry juice–water mixture and plain water will assist your liver in diluting and expelling the increased body wastes from the two-phase detoxification process. Water helps empty stubborn fat stores because your liver is more efficient at using stored fat for energy when your body is well hydrated.
Daily protein is important to your liver’s health and function. Only protein can raise metabolism by 25 percent and activate the production of enzymes needed during detoxification to break down toxins into water-soluble substances for excretion. Your liver needs protein to produce the bile that is essential for absorbing fat-soluble nutrients. Protein also provides amino acids, such as cysteine, that your body needs to produce the antioxidant glutathione. This enzyme is one of several that overcome the damaging free radicals produced in your liver (and elsewhere) during detoxification.
Red meats such as lean beef and lamb are high in L-carnitine, which plays a vital role in normalizing liver enzymes in the blood and in the liver’s use and metabolism of fatty acids. L-Carnitine, which is made primarily in the liver, is a cousin of amino acids and similar to vitamin B. This nutrient carries fat to the mitochondria in your cells, where the fat is converted to energy. L-Carnitine also helps clear waste products from the mitochondria to avoid free-radical accumulation (and damage) as a by-product of food oxidation. In animal studies, carnitine has been shown to protect the liver from powerful toxins. To ensure that you get enough of this fat-burning nutrient, the plan includes not only dietary sources but also a supplement. You’ll get 1 gram or more of L-carnitine per day, which at least one study has shown is enough to burn off 10 extra pounds in twelve weeks when combined with a Fat Flush–type diet and light exercise.
By including flaxseed oil, the plan takes advantage of its metabolismraising action and its ability to attract and bind to the oil-soluble poisons that lodge in the liver and carry them out of the system for elimination. The essential fatty acids in flaxseed oil also stimulate bile production, which is crucial to the breakdown of fats.
Eggs are the highest dietary source of several sulfur-based amino acids, including taurine, cysteine, and methionine. These are needed by the liver to regulate bile production. This nutrient-rich food is also a superb source of phosphatidylcholine, a nutrient needed for overall liver health and to make lecithin, which helps prevent cholesterol oxidation harmful to the liver and other organs. If you’re worried about eggs and heart disease, take note: A dietary analysis published in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) in 1999 followed nearly 40,000 men and 80,000 women over a period of eight to fourteen years. The study found no evidence of any association between egg consumption and the risk of coronary heart disease or stroke in healthy men or women. So enjoy up to two eggs a day on the plan.
You’ll find lots of cruciferous vegetables in the menus. Broccoli, brussels sprouts, and kale are very high in sulforaphane, a substance your liver uses in converting toxins into nontoxic waste for elimination.
Many of the herbs and spices featured in the Fat Flush Plan were selected for their liver-supporting and fat-metabolizing properties. Garlic and onion encourage bile secretion and aid liver function. Gingerroot boosts metabolism, helps reduce toxin buildup in fat cells, and supports bile flow.
Supplements are an integral part of the plan, including the lipotropic herbs dandelion root, milk thistle, turmeric, and oregon grape root. Lipotropic substances decrease the fat storage rate in liver cells and accelerate fat metabolism. Dandelion root, which contains moderate levels of vitamin A and other nutrients, has been shown to aid the liver and fat metabolism in two ways. It stimulates the liver to produce more bile to send to the gallbladder while at the same time causing the gallbladder to contract and release its stored bile, thus assisting in fat metabolism.
Milk thistle, in use for over 2000 years, increases liver enzyme production, helps repair damaged liver tissue, and blocks the effects of some toxins. Over 100 research reports have been published on the liver-supporting properties of its active ingredient, silymarin.
Turmeric, a relative of gingerroot, is the highest known source of betacarotene, one of the powerful antioxidants that help protect the liver from damage by free radicals. Oregon grape root helps stimulate the liver by helping to control bile production.
Among the other lipotropic factors featured in the plan’s supplements are the B-complex vitamins phosphatidylcholine and inositol, the amino acid methionine, and the fat-digesting enzyme lipase. They help prevent excess fat buildup and thin or emulsify fat for easy movement through the bloodstream.
Just as important as what is included is what is excluded. Among the missing are caffeine; sugar; alcohol; yeast-based foods such as bread, soy sauce; most vinegars (except the anti-Candida apple cider vinegar); and trans fats from fried foods, margarine, vegetable shortenings, and commercial vegetable oils. These seriously disrupt liver function by clogging the detoxification pathways or increasing Candida production. The yeast-related poison acetaldehyde is extremely toxic to the liver and inhibits fat burning.
You also won’t find several herbs popularized recently for their thermogenic qualities. Most widely known is ephedra, or ma huang. Ephedra acts as a stimulant to the adrenal glands, which are responsible for your body’s stress response and for maintaining blood sugar levels. Prolonged use of ephedra can create adrenal exhaustion. The herb also can constrict blood vessels, elevate blood pressure, and raise the heart rate. These can be serious side effects, especially for individuals with diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, or kidney disease. Kola nut, guaraná, and mate contain caffeine, and the fifth thermogenic, white willow bark (from which aspirin is derived), is high in salicylate, which can have unwanted blood-thinning effects.
On a “good” day, your body is 60 to 70 percent water by weight. About two-thirds of the water is in your cells; the rest is in blood, body fluids, and spaces between cells. This water is essential. It flushes toxins, moistens your respiratory system, and is part of every metabolic process. Cells take the water they need from capillaries, which in turn carry waste products and excess water to the kidneys.
However, many individuals carry an extra 10 to 15 pounds of water trapped in their tissues. This water contributes to abdominal bloating, cellulite, and face and eye puffiness. It is what my esteemed colleague Elson Haas, M.D., calls “false fat.” That is, the weight is not the result of additional adipose tissue, or true fat, but of excess water. Waterlogged tissues result from various causes, including
Consuming too little water and protein
Food sensitivities
Hormonal fluctuations
Certain medications
It’s ironic, but consuming too little water can cause your body to retain water. Your kidneys must have adequate water to flush waste from your body. When your fluid intake is low, the kidneys hoard water.
Insufficient fluid also slows the lymphatic system. This system of organs, tissues, and tiny channels filters cellular waste and other foreign particles, pushing this debris along in lymph the contraction of the lymph vessels. Some researchers conjecture that when a sluggish lymphatic system fails to carry wastes away in a timely fashion, the waste accumulates in fat cells and causes cellulite. At least one study, conducted at Brussels University in Belgium and cited by Elisabeth Dancey, M.D. in The Cellulite Solution, has found that women with cellulite showed lymphatic system deficiencies.
Our obsession with protein and fat has abolished these nutrients from our diets and may contribute to widespread water retention. Protein plays a crucial role in tissue growth and healing, strengthening the immune system, and burning fat. But it is its hydrophilic—literally, “water loving”—properties that have an impact on water retention. Proteins that circulate in your blood control water levels between and within cells and within your arteries and veins by attracting water molecules. As the blood circulates through your kidneys, this excess water is removed and eliminated. When your body is deficient in protein, however, fluid leaks from the vascular spaces into the spaces between the cells. It becomes trapped there, resulting in cellulite, water retention, bloating, and water weight gain.
An estimated 60 to 80 percent of people are sensitive to one or more foods. Unlike true allergies, sensitivities often cause delayed, rather than immediate, reactions after you eat the offending food. This delay can make it difficult for you to tie your symptoms to the food you eat. Among the vast array of food sensitivity symptoms are
Headache
Coughing
Blurred vision
Rapid heartbeat
Indigestion
Skin rashes
Fatigue
Joint swelling
Mood swings
Food sensitivities are also one of the most common causes of weight gain through fluid retention and through overeating brought on by cravings.
The Response to Reactive Foods. Your body’s immune system releases antibodies in response to signals from foreign substances. In the case of food sensitivities, the antibody is immunoglobulin G (IgG), found only in the bloodstream. The “foreign substance” is food macromolecules that have left the digestive tract and entered the bloodstream. When IgG meets a macromolecule, the entire immune response is kicked off. Histamines and other chemicals are released, and the area is flooded with extra fluid to wash away the reactive food particle. Your body holds onto this water as long as such molecules remain in your tissues.
At the same time, your body produces hormones, including cortisol and aldosterone, which increase sodium intake. This sodium attracts more water to the cells and tissues. In your gastrointestinal system, reactive foods can stimulate production of the gut hormones cholecystokinin and somatostatin, which cause water retention in gut tissues.
The production of histamine and other chemicals causes blood vessels to expand and contract, leaking fluids into tissues and setting off a secondary inflammatory response and swelling. This leaking fluid often carries protein with it, and the protein attracts sodium and still more fluid.
To compound the weight gain from waterlogged tissues, food sensitivities also trigger weight gain from adipose tissue. This results from either heightened cravings for reactive foods or disruption of your metabolism.
The same immune response that pumps excess fluid into your tissues also triggers your body’s distress mechanisms, centered around various natural chemicals and hormones. First, endorphins hit your system. These natural opiates give you a pleasant feeling of relief—but only for a few minutes to several hours. As your supply of endorphins dwindles, you are uncomfortable and seek to recreate the pleasant feelings with more of the reactive food. Cravings strike!
Second, your adrenal glands release epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol, which give you a burst of energy and a mood lift. When these hormones are depleted, fatigue and irritability set in. Once again, you crave the reactive food to bring back your energy level.
Third, your insulin levels become destabilized, which lowers your blood sugar levels. Cells are starved for this energy booster, and you are weak and starved for food, especially carbohydrates.
Finally, as if all this weren’t enough, your levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin drop. This chemical is produced by the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that controls hunger, and is carried primarily by white blood cells. When you eat nonreactive foods, serotonin helps signal that you are full and shuts off your hunger. However, when your immune system goes into high gear in response to a reactive food, your white blood cells are too busy fighting the “invader food” to carry serotonin. The result is a craving for high-carbohydrate foods to help move serotonin to the brain.
Not surprisingly, these disruptions in hormone and chemical levels severely affect your metabolism and make putting on pounds oh so easy. Metabolism is slowed when your epinephrine levels are depleted, causing increased fat storage, or when your thyroid gland doesn’t function properly because signal hormones are imbalanced. The thyroid gland is a key component of your body’s fat-burning process. Some food reactions also interfere with your body’s ability to absorb the fat-burning essential fatty acids—such as the GLA I mentioned in Chapter 1.
Food Triggers. What foods are most likely to trigger this destructive immune response? Elson Haas, M.D., Jacqueline Crohn, M.D., and others have identified the most commonly reactive foods. Among them are
Dairy products
Wheat
Sugar
Yeast
These account for up to 80 percent of food reactions, although almost any food can be reactive.
Reactions to these foods develop primarily because of poor digestion, which results in partially digested food macromolecules entering the bloodstream and setting off the immune response. Reasons for poor digestion vary from eating too fast to eating too little fiber to eating the same foods repeatedly. Excessive consumption of processed foods, loaded with corn syrup, monosodium glutamate (MSG), and gluten, is particularly disastrous. Surprisingly, celiac disease (an autoimmune disease triggered by the protein-containing gluten in wheat, rye, and barley) is very common. Celiac is found in 1 in every 167 healthy children in the US and 1 in every 111 healthy adults. Gluten sensitivity arises most commonly with wheat, used in practically everything from breads and pastas to piecrust, muffins, bagels, and cakes. Gluten can damage the intestinal lining, create inflammation, and disrupt nutrient absorption, especially of the precious B vitamins. Consequently, if gluten-containing foods are your triggers, you may experience not only bloating but also eczema, fatigue, intestinal gas, and anemia.
Candida and Food Reactions: It’s Overgrowth, Not Overweight. Among the most common reasons food enters the bloodstream before it’s fully digested is candidiasis, an overgrowth of the naturally occurring yeast Candida albicans. Candida normally lives alongside millions of bacteria in your gastrointestinal tract, on your skin, and in your mucosa, esophagus, and small intestine. Your healthy immune system and these “helpful” bacteria keep the yeast in balance.
However, when your immune system is weakened, Candida can get out of control. It changes from a noninvasive spore form into a fungal form that grows thread-like mycelia. These structures bore through your intestinal lining, penetrate other cells, and extract nutrients. The Candida migrates to other tissues, producing toxins such as acetaldehyde that stress the immune system. Candida also produces hormone-like substances that interfere with normal hormone production. For example, it may stimulate increased estrogen production and interfere with hormone signals to the immune system.
The holes in your intestine allow food macromolecules to enter the bloodstream—the trigger for food reactions. Studies in rats have found that Candida also stimulates histamine production, another trigger in the classic allergic reaction. An estimated 80 percent of people with multiple allergies have Candida overgrowth.
Many of the symptoms of candidiasis mimic those of food reactions: fatigue, headaches, bloating, nasal congestion, heartburn, and moodiness, among others.
The relationship between candidiasis and food sensitivities is made even stronger by consumption of sugars and refined carbohydrates. The foods you are most likely to crave as a result of food allergies are the ones most enjoyed by the Candida cells—those sweets, chips, and pasta help create an environment that encourages yeast growth. This is compounded if you often consume food with a high yeast or mold content, such as dried fruit, bread, and beer.
A diet deficient in essential fatty acids, vitamins, and essential amino acids weakens your immune system and also can lead to candidiasis. In addition, Candida overgrowth commonly develops in women taking birth control pills or in anyone taking antibiotics or cortisone-type medications. The regular use of a quality probiotic like Flora Key can also help in battling candidiasis.
From puberty, women’s bodies are subject to the effects of estrogenprogesterone balance. At ovulation, estrogen secretion increases fat production by inhibiting thermogenesis (fat burning). In turn, fat stimulates more estrogen production, which gives you more fat. At the same time, progesterone levels decrease, which is thought to stimulate production of anti-diuretic hormone with resulting water retention. This balance is a crucial component in your body’s preparation for pregnancy, which requires increased body fluids and fat.
When Balance Is Lost. For too many women, however, this natural cycle is disrupted, and weight gain—from both actual fat and water retention—becomes permanent. Estrogen levels remain high, resulting in a condition known as estrogen dominance. Among the symptoms of estrogen dominance are fat gain (especially around your abdomen, hips, and thighs), sluggish metabolism, bloating, and water retention. Estrogen can promote sodium retention (and thereby more water retention). The hormone changes the way your body metabolizes the amino acid tryptophan, which is necessary to produce serotonin. You’ll remember that serotonin deficiency can lead to food cravings and weight gain. When estrogen is much higher than progesterone, you may develop hypothyroidism. A healthy thyroid gland secretes hormones that help signal the pancreas to produce insulin. With a sluggish thyroid, your body may produce too much insulin and trigger low blood sugar (hypoglycemia), along with intense cravings for carbohydrates.
Fluctuating estrogen levels are only one-half of the equation, of course. Thanks to the pioneering research of Raymond Peat, Ph.D., and John Lee, we are becoming better informed about the role of progesterone. This hormone signals the hypothalamus to increase your core body temperature, thereby increasing your resting metabolism rate. Low levels of progesterone cause your body to burn 15,000 to 20,000 fewer calories per year and increase water retention. You may not produce enough because (1) you are deficient in zinc and vitamin B6, nutrient precursors of progesterone, (2) you are not ovulating regularly, leaving you without a corpus luteum to create progesterone, or (3) your body is converting progesterone into other chemicals as a result of excessive stress.
High levels of progesterone, on the other hand, increase your appetite. They also slow down intestinal transit time to increase food absorption, which can increase insulin levels. The resulting additional blood glucose is absorbed by fat cells to add pounds of true fat.
Causes of Imbalance. Estrogen-replacement therapy (ERT) and hormone-replacement therapy (HRT) are common causes of estrogen-progesterone imbalances, with millions of American women currently on HRT. Research into the effects of these therapies on weight has found conflicting results. For example, when researchers gave monkeys estrogen with synthetic progestin (a form of progesterone), their weight increased, fat tended to accumulate around their abdomens, and they secreted excess insulin. On the other hand, monkeys given estrogen with natural progesterone did not experience these effects.
Several major studies with large groups of women have attempted to define the positive and negative effects of ERT/HRT, including weight gain and fat distribution. The Postmenopausal Estrogen and Progestin Intervention (PEPI) trial, reported in 1997 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, found that over the study’s three-year period, the women studied gained an average of 1.5 to 2.9 pounds, depending on the type of therapy given. Women taking part but receiving only a placebo (sugar pill) gained an average of 4.6 pounds.
If you are among the millions of women taking birth control pills to prevent pregnancy, regulate your menstrual cycle, or treat acne, an unwanted side effect may be weight gain. Contraceptives can create a state of anovulation, and the absence of ovulation can lead to progesterone deficiency, slowing metabolism and encouraging water retention. Birth control pills also aggravate problems with insulin regulation and resulting carbohydrate cravings, as well as encourage candidiasis.
Unfortunately, birth control pills and ERT/HRT are not the only medications that cause water retention, bloating, and weight gain. Chances are that your medicine cabinet contains one or more other prescription drugs that are undermining your weight loss efforts. Some antidepressants, for example, cause weight gain in 89 percent of patients taking them. Other types of drugs known to cause weight gain in some patients include
Antiestrogens
Antihistamines
Beta-blockers and other blood pressure medications
Corticosteroids
Diabetes medications
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)
Sleeping pills and tranquilizers
How these drugs stimulate weight gain varies with their mechanism of action. For example, beta-blockers work by blocking the beta receptors of fat cells. These receptors normally help release fat from the cells. When the receptors are blocked, you gain weight. Prednisone, a corticosteroid, is five times more potent than the natural cortisol it’s related to, with much the same action as the hormone.
Drugs also may cause weight gain indirectly. Side effects such as headaches, fatigue, and joint pain may keep you from exercising or preparing healthful meals.
If you are currently taking any medications—including birth control pills, ERT/HRT, and even drugs not listed above—do not stop taking them; if you suspect that they are causing weight gain, you must consult with your physician. Explore alternatives; many drugs are available in lower doses or in different forms (e.g., patch, pill, or injection), or a natural form may replace a synthetic product. Know and weigh the benefits of the medication versus weight gain and any other side effects you’re experiencing.
And, of course, try the Fat Flush Plan. As I describe in the next section, various components of the plan are designed to target the weight you gain when fat’s not fat. At the same time, with your hormones in balance, insulin under control, and key nutrients and oils included, you may find that you no longer need the medication you’re taking. Acne may clear up without birth control pills; depression and fatigue caused by food sensitivities may improve, decreasing your need for antidepressants.
The Fat Flush Plan targets water retention from the very first day. The cranberry juice and water beverage that you’ll drink throughout the day in phase 1 is a powerful diuretic. Arbutin, an active ingredient of cranberries, pulls water out to be eliminated through your kidneys. At the same time, cranberry juice works on cellulite because, as we now know, the flavonoids in the fruit improve the strength and integrity of connective tissue and help keep your lymphatic system working smoothly.
Drinking 64 ounces of cran-water (in phase 1) and 48 ounces of plain water (in phases 2 and 3) will ensure that your kidneys and lymphatic system have the fluid they need to work properly to remove wastes and fat. Ideally, water should be filtered and noncarbonated. Water helps rid the body of waste, keeps tissues moist and lubricated, and may even help burn calories. The hot water with lemon juice you’ll drink throughout the plan gives your kidneys another boost with lemon’s diuretic action. And even the Fat Flush Plan exercise regimen, based on the minibouncer and brisk walking, has been designed to strengthen your lymphatic system and help rid your body of cellulite.
The plan’s Long Life Cocktail, a blend of diluted cranberry juice and either psyllium or ground flaxseed taken twice a day swings a one-two punch of its own. Flaxseed is one of the richest sources of phytoestrogenic lignans. By binding to estrogen receptors and interfering with enzymes that convert various hormones to estrogen, flaxseed may help control estrogen dominance and the resulting water retention and weight gain.
In fact, many midlife women report that the flaxseed and GLA components of the plan act as natural hormone therapy, reducing hot flashes, mood swings, sleep disturbances, and tissue dryness without the side effects of fat-promoting synthetic estrogens and progestins. And for those Fat Flushers who are seeking even more individualized natural hormone therapy to replace their current drug prescriptions, there are health pharmacies all over the country which specialize in compounding tailormade natural hormone (see Chapter 12).
Daily portions of selected fruits and unlimited quantities of selected crunchy vegetables ensure that you’ll get additional dietary fiber. According to B. A. Stoll, a high-fiber diet reduces recirculating estrogen by binding to excess estrogen and carrying it out of the body. You’ll also find that the plan’s various fiber sources will help you feel full.
By including 8 ounces or more of protein, up to two eggs, and high-protein whey powder, the plan prevents protein deficiency that can slow metabolism and cause cellulite and water retention. Without enough protein, your body loses muscle tissue, which slows metabolism. Pound for pound, muscle burns five times as many calories as other tissue. You’ll find protein sources in the menus for all three daily meals because (1) your body needs the nutrient to rebuild tissue overnight, (2) protein helps you feel full, and (3) it helps avoid midday fatigue that can lead to overeating.
As you read through the recipes for phase 1, you’ll notice that they do not include salt, but they do feature tasty herbs and spices. Sodium’s water-retaining properties are well known, but you may be less familiar with the diuretic qualities of selected herbs. This is why the plan specifies parsley, cilantro, fennel, and anise.
Phase 1 eliminates two of the most reactive food groups, grains and dairy products. Following the two-week cleansing, phase 2 gradually reintroduces hypoallergenic carbohydrates. By keeping a journal (see Chapter 7), you’ll be able to quickly identify any food reactions and make adjustments accordingly. In phase 3, your Lifestyle Eating Plan. Dairy and some grain-based foods are part of the menu, and you are encouraged to continue to note your body’s responses, removing any reactive food permanently.
In phase 1, you’ll not only avoid wheat and other grains, which can cause gluten intolerance and candidiasis, you’ll also skip other Candida boosters—starches, sugars, and fermented flavor enhancers such as soy sauce. I have selected metabolism-boosting and diuretic herbs and spices such as dry mustard, cayenne, and garlic and mineral-rich apple cider vinegar to add flavor to my recipes without providing an environment for Candida to flourish.
In Chapter 1 I explained how I came to learn about the benefits of gamma-linolenic acid (GLA) for good health and weight loss. You read about your need for essential fatty acids such as GLA. However, you still don’t quite believe it, do you? Eating fat to get thin flies in the face of reason, of everything you’ve heard about the dangers of fat.
You’re not alone in your fear of eating fat. An estimated 80 percent of Americans eat a diet deficient in essential fatty acids (EFAs). This is unfortunate, because our bodies cannot make EFAs. Yet, as precursors to hormone-like prostaglandins, they regulate every body function at the cellular level. This includes water retention, sodium balance, and fat metabolism.
In your efforts at weight control, fat also
Carries fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K through the bloodstream.
Activates the flow of bile.
Helps your body conserve protein.
Slows the absorption of carbohydrates to balance blood sugar levels.
Is a building block for production of estrogen, testosterone, and other hormones.
Is a precursor for serotonin, which controls cravings and elevates your mood.
Every cell in your body is protected by a membrane that is composed largely of fat. Even your brain is 60 percent fat. Is it any wonder then that your body craves fat—any fat—when you eat a high-carbohydrate, lowfat diet?
Of course, the Fat Flush Plan does not suggest that you eat unlimited quantities of any fat. With the right fats, however, you’ll end fat cravings, feel full, have more energy, and lose weight.
Two of the most important types of fat are the polyunsaturates omega-3 and omega-6. Alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) is one of the omega-3 fatty acids. It is found in flaxseeds, hemp seeds, and walnuts. Omega-3 fats raise your metabolism, help flush water from your kidneys, and lower your triglyceride levels. These fatty acids also increase the activity of carnitine to help your body burn fat better and lower the risk of breast cancer. Studies in animals have shown that omega-3 fats even help prevent development of excessive numbers of fat cells when the fatty acids are consumed early in life.
Under ideal circumstances, your body converts the ALA into eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), then into docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), and finally into prostaglandins. However, circumstances are seldom ideal. Excess sugar, a high intake of trans fats, stress, vitamin deficiencies, pollution, and viral infections are among the inhibitors of this transformation.
The omega-6 fat linoleic acid (LA) can be found in unheated unprocessed safflower, sunflower, and corn oil. Your body can convert the LA to GLA and arachidonic acid (AA) and then into prostaglandins, but as in the ALA conversion, many of the same saboteurs often interfere with this process. Thus, it is usually advisable to rely on the preformed GLA found in borage oil (24 percent GLA), evening primrose oil (8 to 10 percent GLA), or black currant seed oil (15 percent GLA). The omega-6 fatty acids stimulate your thyroid, thus raising your metabolism, and activate your brown adipose tissue (BAT) to burn fat rather than storing it in your white adipose tissue (WAT). GLA also helps the skin maintain tone, firmness, and hydration during and after weight loss.
BAT is dense in mitochondria, giving the tissue its darker color. In mitochondria, nutrients are converted into a usable energy form through a set of reactions called cellular respiration. This stored energy form is called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). As I mentioned in Chapter 1, prostaglandins can augment the metabolic process called ATPase, which acts like a sodium-potassium pump to keep the right amounts of potassium in the cell and excess sodium out. The prostaglandin produced from GLA causes this sodium-potassium pump to burn even more calories.
BAT is high-energy fat. Its only job is to burn calories for heat. When properly activated, BAT can become your own fat-burning machine. The key words are properly activated. In thinner people, according to researchers, BAT is quite active. However, overweight people tend to have more sluggish brown fat. Age appears to be a factor as well, with BAT activity slowing down as we get older. Thermogenic vitamins, minerals, herbs, and amino acids can help stimulate brown fat activity.
About thirty prostaglandins are known, and they are categorized into three families. For each prostaglandin performing one function, there is another performing the opposite function. The prostaglandins produced from the omega-3 and omega-6 essential fatty acids perform different functions and must be kept in balance for good health and effective weight loss. GLA becomes PGE1, an anti-inflammatory prostaglandin and diuretic. AA becomes PGE2, which causes inflammation, triggers the kidneys to retain salt, and encourages water retention. PGE3, produced from EPA, works with PGE1 to control inflammation, along with blood clot prevention and other functions. All three are needed at various times; for example, if you cut yourself, you’ll need the inflammatory action of PGE2. However, to keep water retention under control, you need PGE1 and PGE3.
Omega-3 fats are burned off more quickly than other fatty acids, so when you diet, you lose omega-3s first—unless you include EFA supplements and food sources. This is just what the Fat Flush Plan does. Otherwise, if you lose weight at the expense of your omega-3 supplies, you’ll find that you regain the weight easily and will have a hard time losing that regained weight. Your metabolism will have slowed because your body is less effective in using insulin when omega-3 fats are missing.
In the early 1980s, a research team headed by Michael Pariza, M.D. of the University of Wisconsin isolated a form of linoleic acid called conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). This fatty acid is produced by cows and other grazing farm animals from linoleic acid in the grass they eat. It comes into our food supply via meat, whole milk, and full-fat dairy products.
More than 300 studies, most in animals, have been reported since CLA’s initial discovery, highlighting its promise in cardiac, cancer, and diabetes therapy. However, it is CLA’s special properties for weight control that were the subject of the first human studies.
Dr. Pariza and Ola Gudmundsen, Ph.D. of the Scandinavian Clinical Research Facility in Kjeller, Norway, were among the researchers reporting at the American Chemical Society meeting in 2000. The American study of 80 overweight people found that those who took CLA when they dieted and regained the weight when the diet ended put the weight on as 50 percent muscle and 50 percent fat. Those who did not take CLA regained the weight as 75 percent fat and 25 percent muscle, the usual ratio of weight gain.
According to Dr. Pariza, whose team carried out the study, “CLA works by reducing the body’s ability to store fat and promotes the use of stored fat for energy.” CLA helps convert fat to lean muscle tissue, and muscle is one of your best metabolism enhancers.
The Norwegian study found that overweight people who did not diet but took CLA lost a small but significant amount of weight over a 12-week period. This study, also reported in the Journal of Nutrition in 2000, showed a stunning 20 percent decrease in body fat percentage, with an average loss of 7 pounds of fat in the group taking CLA without any diet changes.
As I mentioned, your body converts EFAs from food into prostaglandins under ideal circumstances. However, circumstances often are far from ideal.
Our fear of fats, especially saturated fat, has driven us away from beef, dairy products, and butter. In their place, we’ve put refined vegetable oils, low-fat or no-fat dairy foods, and margarine. As a result, the balance of omega-3 and omega-6 fats is substantially skewed. We’ve also dangerously increased our consumption of trans fats, those damaged oil molecules produced when oils are heated or hydrogenated. Both results interfere with EFA conversion to prostaglandins. Other saboteurs include
High sugar consumption
Chronic alcohol consumption
Smoking
Use of cortisone or excessive antibiotic use
Stress
Pollution
Vitamin deficiencies
Another change over the past twenty to thirty years has had a whole range of unforeseen (and perhaps some as yet unknown) consequences, including several affecting our intake of EFAs and CLA. Almost without our noticing, farmers and commercial food producers converted from feeding cattle grass to feeding them grains. Few of us would suspect this relatively simple and straightforward change to have the potential for long-term health consequences, but this now appears to be the case.
According to Jo Robinson, author of Pasture Perfect and Why Grassfed Is Best!, comparisons between the products of grass-fed and grain-fed cattle show just how much we’ve lost from our food supply:
Meat from grass-fed animals has half the saturated fat of that from grain-fed animals.
A 6-ounce steak from a grass-fed steer has almost 100 fewer calories than one from a grain-fed animal.
Meat from grass-fed animals has two to six times more omega-3 fats than that from grain-fed animals.
Cows grazing on grass pasture had 500 percent more CLA in their milk fat than cows fed the typical grain diet, according to a 1999 study reported in the Journal of Dairy Science.
Chickens that feed on pasture have 21 percent less total fat, 30 percent less saturated fat, 28 percent fewer calories, and 100 percent more omega-3 fatty acids than do chickens given high-energy specialty feeds. The eggs of the pastured chickens have 400 percent more omega-3 fats.
The agricultural “advances” that have given us grain-fed cattle and chickens also have introduced synthetic hormones, antibiotics, pesticide residues, and additives into our food supply, having the potential to affect much more than our consumption and metabolism of fats.
Your selections for your daily proteins on the plan can provide some of the EFAs and CLA you need. I’ve even included suppliers of grass-fed beef in Chapter 12, Resources. However, I know that getting the proper balance of omega-3s, omega-6s, and CLA is so important to your successful weight loss that I’ve made specific oils and supplements integral to the plan.
Daily servings of flaxseed oil ensure that you get adequate supplies of the omega-3 ALA. Adding flaxseed oil to foods creates a feeling of fullness and satisfaction following a meal. The EFAs in the oil cause your stomach to retain food for a longer period of time compared with no-fat or low-fat foods. The physiologic effect is a slow, sustained rise in blood sugar and then a prolonged plateau. The net result is a corresponding feeling of stamina, energy, and satisfaction with no immediate hunger pangs to lure you into overeating.
Throughout the plan you’ll take a daily supplement of GLA, made from evening primrose, borage, or black currant seed oil, and in phase 3 you’ll add a CLA supplement. To ensure that your body makes the best use of these oils and supplements, the plan also eliminates or minimizes many of the saboteurs, including sugar, alcohol, vitamin deficiencies, and stress.
After reading this far, you must be marveling at just how complex and interrelated your body systems are. Too much or too little of a key component disrupts the natural balance and you end up overweight, tired, and a victim of any of a wide range of diseases. Such is the case with the intricate system for metabolizing carbohydrates.
When you eat carbohydrates, glucose is released into your bloodstream. This signals the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas to produce insulin. This hormone takes some of the glucose to cells for immediate energy; it converts more glucose to a starchy version, glycogen. Glycogen is transported to the liver and muscle tissue for short-term storage, ready to be used quickly as blood sugar levels start to fall again. Short-term storage capacity is limited, however, so any remaining glucose is converted, again with the help of insulin, into triglycerides (body fat) for long-term storage.
When your blood sugar level drops, the islets produce the hormone glucagon. This hormone causes the glycogen stored in your liver to be released once again into your bloodstream and protein to be converted to glucose, all to restore your blood sugar level. Glucagon also releases fat from storage in your adipose tissue to be burned as fuel.
This process works very well when blood sugar is released slowly into the bloodstream, ensuring an equally controlled release of insulin. However, some carbohydrates are quickly converted to glucose, sending a flood into your bloodstream and triggering an equally high level of insulin. The excess insulin causes your blood sugar level to drop sharply, bringing on fatigue and cravings for more carbohydrates. When this happens repeatedly, a sequence of events is set off:
Insulin levels remain high.
Insulin struggles to convert all the glucose for storage but succeeds only partially; your body fat increases.
Excess body fat is an active organ, producing proteins that prompt inflammation, which further inhibit insulin and energy usage.
Cells no longer respond to insulin and refuse to store all the fat.
Glucose that can’t be converted to fat remains circulating in the bloodstream, wreaking havoc on your heart, kidneys, nerves, eyes, and blood vessels.
In the late 1980s, in a report in the journal Diabetes, Gerald Reaven, M.D., professor emeritus of medicine at Stanford University, gave this sequence a name, insulin resistance. Robert C. Atkins, M.D., author of Dr. Atkins’ Age-Defying Diet Revolution, and others estimate that about 25 percent of apparently healthy, normal-weight individuals are affected by insulin resistance. If you’re overweight, your chances are significantly higher. Possibly as many as 75 percent of overweight people are insulin resistant.
Carbohydrates—sugars, starch, and certain fibers—come primarily from plant foods, such as fruits, vegetables, grains, and beans. Milk products also contain some carbohydrates. Traditionally, nutritionists have categorized carbohydrates as either simple or complex based on their chemical structure. Sugars were simple and thought to be digested quickly to release high levels of glucose. Starches were complex and released glucose slowly as they were digested.
However, more recent research has increased our understanding about how food is metabolized, and the simple-complex categorization has been replaced with the glycemic index. This index lists foods based on the rate at which the carbohydrate breaks down as glucose into the bloodstream. High-glycemic foods are those that are rated 70 and up; moderate glycemic foods, from 40 to 69; and low-glycemic foods, 39 and below. Foods assigned a high glycemic index break down quickly and bring on a rapid insulin response. These include many refined carbohydrates such as white bread, bagels, rice cakes, and boxed cereals, as well as certain fruits and vegetables such as carrots, white potatoes, corn, apricots, and bananas. Lowest on the glycemic index are apples, cherries, grapefruit, plums, lentils, chickpeas, and yogurt.
Low-glycemic foods fill you up and help keep you satisfied longer. They also help you burn more body fat and less muscle tissue.
In a single generation we Americans have made significant changes in our diet. Among them, the percentage of fat in our average daily calorie intake has dropped from 36 to 34 percent. Unfortunately, this has been achieved largely by consuming low-fat, highly refined carbohydrates so obligingly created by food producers. To replace the fat, they filled their baked goods with sugar. We also eat much larger portions—megamuffins and megabagels, giant plates of pasta—again in the mistaken belief that low fat equals low calorie.
The Fat Flush Plan is designed to restore balance to your diet and to control your insulin levels. About 30 percent of your daily calories come from Nature’s natural anti-inflammatories in the form of highly-colored, low-glycemic vegetables and fruits. Many are also high in vitamin C, which researchers at Arizona State University have shown delays the insulin response to glucose, and in fiber, which slows the release of glucose into the bloodstream. What you won’t find, however, are pro-inflammatory sugar, bread, white potatoes, and other high-glycemic carbohydrates.
Low-glycemic foods such as those on the plan also have been shown to decrease your appetite, helping control caloric intake. In a study at Children’s Hospital in Boston, overweight teenage boys ate 81 percent more calories on days when they ate high-glycemic instant oatmeal for two meals than on days when those meals consisted of a low-glycemic veggie omelet and fruit.
Another 30 percent of your calories come from protein. Protein stimulates the pancreas to produce glucagon, the hormone that counteracts insulin and mobilizes fat from storage. The beef and eggs are also valuable food sources of CLA, which has been shown in animal studies to improve glucose tolerance.
Finally, up to 40 percent of your calories come from high-quality anti-inflammatory fats, in particular, flaxseed oil. Its omega-3 fatty acids have also been shown to reduce insulin resistance significantly in people with diabetes, according to a report by Australian researchers published in the New England Journal of Medicine. These researchers also found that the more saturated fatty acids (from hydrogenated oils and high-fat meats) found in a person’s bloodstream, the more resistant that person is to insulin.
Studies have shown that consuming vinegar or lemon juice with meals can lower blood sugar by as much as 30 percent. The acidity in these foods helps slow stomach emptying, which means that food takes longer to reach your small intestine and bloodstream. Carbohydrates are digested more slowly, and glucose levels are thus lower. Thus the plan includes a daily drink of hot water and lemon juice and suggestions throughout the menus for using apple cider vinegar.
Speaking of flavorful additions to your meals, you’ll find several anti-inflammatory herbs and spices regularly featured in the plan’s recipes that boost your body’s ability to metabolize sugar. Most prevalent is cinnamon. Researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture have shown that just ¼ to 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon with food metabolizes sugar up to twenty times better turmeric, cloves, bay leaf, coriander, cayenne, dry mustard, and ginger lessen your risk of inflammation and excess insulin by speeding your metabolism or by lowering glucose levels.
Among the plan’s supplements you’ll find not only the EFAs mentioned earlier but also several nutrients known to aid insulin action or regulate glucose. These include vitamins A, C, and E; magnesium; zinc; and chromium. Chromium is particularly important, yet our diets are frequently deficient in it. It acts as a transport mechanism to enable insulin to work more quickly and efficiently. Thus you store less fat and use more calories to build muscle. A 1998 study reported in Current Therapeutic Research found that individuals who took chromium supplements had an average weight loss of 6.2 pounds of body fat, whereas those taking a placebo lost 3.4 pounds. This weight loss represented a significant reduction in body fat for the chromium takers without their losing any lean body mass.
Once again, the plan’s omission of pro-inflammatory saturated and trans fats, sugars, and refined carbohydrates will help its insulin-boosting components work at highest efficiency and effectiveness.
Even the exercise regimen, with the minitrampoline, brisk walking, and, in phase 3, weight training, helps keep your insulin levels low. You’ll have fewer cravings for sugary foods, feel more energetic, be more alert, and lose the weight you want—and keep it off.
Living in this information age has most of us Americans going nonstop at “cyberspeed.” So it’s no surprise to me, after assessing my own clients’ stress levels for so many years, that 68 percent of us admit to being stressed out—or that 90 percent of us admit to using food as our drug of choice to pacify things. The irony of the matter is that stress, as I suspected, is making the adrenals kick out certain hormones—such as cortisol, to be exact—that can cause you to gain weight.
In the early 1990s, noted researcher Pamela Peeke, M.D. spent three years at the National Institutes of Health examining the unsuspected side effect of stress: weight gain. Her work was published initially in 1995 in The Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Dr. Peeke discovered that stress makes you fat through a cycle of events that begins in the brain. The hypothalamus signals the nearby pituitary gland to release adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). Then the adrenal gland, aware of ACTH in the blood, sends out stress hormones to handle things, including high levels of cortisol. Its job is to release glucose and fatty acids so that muscles have energy. However, after the stress moment has passed, the cortisol level remains high, stimulating your appetite to replenish fuel your body has burned. A high consumption of sugary foods prompts more cortisol production, causing the body to store more fat than needed, usually in the abdominal area. Dr. Peeke’s work also indicates that if stress remains a problem, cortisol levels in the bloodstream will continue to rise, in which case the stress-fat cycle goes on indefinitely—along with those extra pounds.
In earlier eras, that enhanced appetite would have worked to your advantage. You would have burned through a substantial amount of calories running from a wild animal while hunting and gathering. Today, however, the type of stress you have to contend with is usually emotional—being stuck in traffic, juggling job and family, dealing with a difficult employer, computer crashes at critical moments, and so on. And as frustrating as all that is, it doesn’t call for the same level of energy expenditure as earlier physical stresses, so now the calories you pile on are stored in your deep abdominal fat, ready for quick energy during the next crisis.
Psychology researcher Elissa S. Epel has confirmed and expanded on Dr. Peeke’s findings, according to research published in the September-October 2000 edition of Psycho-Somatic Medicine. In Epel’s research, fifty-nine premenopausal women, over several days, experienced a series of stress-filled tasks, from puzzles and math to public speaking. Interestingly, the women who felt the most stress were those with central fat, poundage behind the abdominal muscles. Not only did they demonstrate a tendency toward more stress, but they also produced more cortisol than the slimmer-tummied participants.
Cortisol activates enzymes to store fat when it contacts fat cells—any fat cells. Central fat cells are deep abdominal visceral cells, which are a fast energy source in times of stress. These central fat cells also happen to have four times more cortisol receptors than the fat cells found right beneath the skin. Consequently, cortisol is drawn to the central fat cells, which ultimately ups fat storage in that area. Thus, every time you’re stressed, you’re encouraging your body to have enough reserves of fat to handle the problem. This concept helps explain why chronic psychological stress, according to Epel, actually has an effect on body shape through fat distribution, creating what is commonly referred to as an “apple” body shape.
People with an apple body shape have a proportionally higher amount of fat around their abdomen than elsewhere on their body. On the other hand, a pear-shaped body carries its excess fat in the hips and thighs. Aesthetics aside, numerous studies have found that “apple” fat is associated with various serious illnesses, including heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes. Scientists believe that this association is again related to cortisol. The hormone causes fatty acids to be released into the bloodstream from the central fat cells. Because these cells are located close to the liver, these fatty acids race to the liver and put stress on the organ. Cholesterol, blood pressure, and insulin levels rise. The more central fat you have, the more often this fatty acid overload occurs. Before you know it, you are ill.
In examining apples versus pears and stress, Swedish endocrinologist Per Bjorntorp, M.D. suggests that the problem is in how we react to stress rather than the actual stress itself. He studied an entire town in Sweden, contacting those born in the first six months of 1944 or 1952. From the 80 percent who responded, Bjorntorp chose 284 men and 260 women, using their fat patterns as criteria. After the metabolic workup, the overweight individuals with intense cortisol responses had a substantial amount of apple fat. These same people were chronically stressed, having no motivation to overcome their problems. Captured in a type of extreme hormonal fatigue, they had stopped searching for any type of resolve to the reason for their stress. Bjorntorp likened this to posttraumatic stress syndrome. Similarly, women in Epel’s study who demonstrated a defeatist response had elevated cortisol levels during stress and deeper apple fat. Many of these same individuals felt that their lives were spinning out of control.
Everyone handles stress differently. Some reach for a cigarette, some for a relaxing cocktail after work, and others for a hot cup of coffee. Interestingly, the more heavily a person smokes, the more visceral fat she or he has. About thirty minutes after a smoker puts out a cigarette, cortisol levels shoot up and remain high for at least another thirty minutes. In a study of 2000 smokers over age fifty years, the individuals who smoked the least were the thinnest. Alcohol has similar effects, raising cortisol levels and upping the amount of central fat. One Swedish study reported that nondrinkers had 38 percent visceral fat, whereas alcoholic men had 49 percent.
Caffeine isn’t much better, since it actually helps extend cortisol secretion, besides promoting metabolic imbalances. Just 15 ounces of your favorite coffee contains enough caffeine to raise your epinephrine level by more than 200 percent. And that epinephrine pumps out more stress hormones, including cortisol. Chugging around three cups of coffee a day could cause your serum cortisol to stay at high levels eighteen out of every twenty-four hours, instead of just the couple of hours our bodies were designed to handle. Caffeine also promotes norepinephrine production. This stress hormone targets your nervous system and brain. Along with epinephrine, it increases your heart rate, raises your blood pressure, and stimulates your “fight or flight” stress response. In fact, caffeine actually reduces your threshold for stress so that you aren’t able to handle it well. This might force you to cope by eating more comfort foods (invariably loaded with sugar and other high-glycemic carbohydrates), which creates more metabolic stress and fat storage. And remember, as I mentioned in the section on the liver toxicity factor, caffeine is in much more than coffee. It’s found in over-the-counter medications (e.g., Anacin, Vivarin, and Vanquish), chocolate (e.g., baking chocolate, cocoa, and milk chocolate), sodas (e.g., Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Diet RC, and Tab), and tea.
Sleep and cortisol are entwined. Chronically high cortisol levels disturb moods and even sleep. Sleep deprivation has reached epidemic proportions in the United States. Today, almost 70 percent of all Americans report sleep-related problems—an astonishing 33 percent increase in just the last five years. And lab tests show that cortisol levels are much higher in sleep-deprived patients. A study published in 2000 by the University of Chicago’s Department of Medicine revealed that not only does sleep deprivation affect tiredness and immunity, but too little sleep impairs the way your body handles food, creating impaired glucose tolerance. This can result in insulin resistance and obesity. It is believed that a lack of quality sleep, known as deep or rapid-eye-movement sleep, can impede surges of growth hormone, resulting in increased fat tissue and reduced muscle mass. Sleep deprivation, which causes lower body temperature and fatigue, usually leads to increased food consumption to boost energy and help you stay warm.
I’ve highlighted the effects of excess insulin on your weight. In his book Sweet & Dangerous, British researcher John Yudkin, M.D. examined another aspect of insulin, namely, its relationship with cortisol. He cited research that found that after two weeks of eating a high-sugar diet, volunteers had increased insulin and cortisol levels. Their fasting insulin levels rose 40 percent, but their cortisol levels shot up 300 to 400 percent! As we now know, cortisol works in concert with other chemicals to quicken fat storage and plump up cells, so controlling sugar consumption and getting a grip on insulin can help put a halt to excess fat.
There is another outside factor contributing to raised cortisol levels you should know about. Some prescription drugs contain cortisol more potent than what your body produces. One example is the corticosteroid prednisone, whose cortisol is five times more powerful than your body’s.
By now you’ll recognize features of the Fat Flush Plan designed to control cortisol and stress fat, including
Avoidance of caffeine, alcohol, and sugar, known cortisol boosters
Protein at each meal to enhance fat burning
Daily fat to reduce cravings and physiologic stress
As the preceding discussion makes plain, however, taking control of your weight involves more than taking control of your diet. The Fat Flush Plan incorporates various elements to manage stress, increase activity, and maintain cortisol at healthy levels.
The plan’s moderate exercise regimen, based on the minitrampoline, brisk walking, and in phase 3, weight training to strengthen muscle mass, will help burn central fat and the fatty acids released during stress while increasing levels of the neurotransmitter hormone serotonin, which enhances mood and relaxation.
A full seven to eight hours of sleep each night is important to reduce fatigue, provide growth hormone to help burn fat, and reduce cortisol levels. I urge you to adopt a 10 P.M. “lights out” regimen to increase the likelihood of getting the sleep you need.
I encourage you to listen to your favorite music during the day. Mitchell L. Gaynor, M.D. of the Cornell Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine, has stated that you can lower your cortisol levels by as much as 25 percent when you listen to music for more than fifteen minutes a day.
Keeping a journal helps to identify the emotions behind your overeating. It also helps to release negative feelings and to provide a handy distraction when temptations arise. Many Fat Flushers have told me that by keeping a journal they are able to follow the plan even better and they now understand what triggers their overeating. Understanding the reasons behind your behavior is an important step in gaining self-control.
I encourage you to use many of the plan’s features as the basis for rituals in your life. When exercise, journaling, and regular sleep are daily habits, they become integrated into your permanent lifestyle plan. During these activities, your mind’s healing powers can help repair some of the day’s stress damage. What a plan!