Are toxins undermining your weight loss efforts? If you are wondering why it’s so hard to lose weight it may be that toxins in your body are interfering with your metabolism.
What are toxins? Any substances that are poisonous to your system, either from the outside: your food, air, water, environment or the inside: normal products of metabolism that have to be eliminated. The liver is working constantly to break these substances down and send them off to be eliminated through the bowels, the kidneys, the skin, all the normal channels of elimination. If this process isn’t working efficiently, if the bowel is backed up, the liver is overloaded, if things aren’t in perfect working order or we have a large toxic load, the body stores these fat soluble substances in the fat cells. It’s an ingenious way our body has of keeping the vital organs protected. If our bodies have too many toxins to process, we will make new fat cells and store those toxins along with fat in them. This causes easy weight gain and makes for difficult weight loss because your body does not easily give up the toxic fat it has stored.
Another thing that is going on, Dr Alicia Stanton MD, describes in her article “How Toxins Make Us Gain Weight”. Toxins interfere with our hormonal balance. She says: “They may increase, decrease or change the activity of a hormone by mimicking it, blocking it, changing the amount of hormone that is produced or changing the speed at which the hormone works. The hormones most often affected are estrogen, thyroid, testosterone, cortisol and insulin. But since hormones all work together, a problem with one has a domino effect on the others.” Another hormone that’s disrupted is leptin, a hormone responsible for fat burning. Damaged leptin receptors lead to weight loss resistance. What to do? Of course the more we can eliminate toxins from our food, homes, and environment the better. It’s important to keeping our liver healthy and all the organs of elimination working well. That’s why a cleanse is important. Over time, our digestive and natural detox pathways get backed up and run down, and can’t do their job properly. If we pay attention we will start to notice messages from our body: weight gain, lack of energy, digestive problems or sometimes even larger issues. Our body is always cleansing but sometimes needs special attention, a chance to rest and recharge, and nutritional support to naturally flush out these built up poisons. When we detox we clean the colon, nourish the liver, sweat in the sauna, rest the digestive system, hydrate the body, stretch, stimulate the lymph and blood, quiet the mind and the nervous system, and more.
Restore the Balance...
To simplify a complex process.... losing weight releases toxins triggering your body to create more fat cells to contain them. So it’s important, when you’re planning a weight loss program, to do a cleanse first, before the whole vicious cycle begins again.