Weighed Down with Toxins?
While everyone with a heavy toxic burden is fat –
and not everyone who’s fat has a heavy toxin burden –
all of my overweight patients who rid themselves of toxins automatically lose weight. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work the other way around.
– Dr. Walter Crinion, Clean, Green & Lean
Fat loss doesn’t get rid of the toxins
When you lose fat weight, the toxins held by the fat are reabsorbed by your body. Then new fat immediately starts to collect around those toxins. This is your body’s protective mechanism so that the toxins are not deposited in vital organs. This is the reason that losing weight without detoxing is the first step in gaining weight.
Have you experienced losing weight then gaining it back again? To lose weight for good, you need to lose the toxins. And when you do, you also get rid of the fat and all of the other health problems associated with it. For example, your toxic load could be contributing to:
brain fog- fatigue
- headaches
- chronic pain
- memory problems
- asthma and allergies
- chronic infections
- infertility
- autoimmune diseases: Lupus, Rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis
Proof
Dr. Crinnion was told by the owner of several Curves franchises in the Southwest that he’d seen many middle-aged women work out for a couple of months but begin to feel ill when they start losing weight. This proves the point. Losing weight liberates toxins, and when they circulate you will feel ill.
In a study at Laval University in Quebec, Canada, researchers have found that dieting without detoxing is one of the best ways to poison yourself and get fatter. They showed that the rise in circulating toxins during weight loss led to a drop in the number of calories burned when the body is at rest.
This drop was caused by a reduction in the level of the most active thyroid hormone, T3. Symptoms of low T3 levels are: low body temperature, fatigue, and weight gain. So after the diet is over, the metabolic rate is lower, so it is hard to keep the weight from coming back.
Getting Older?
We talk about symptoms like brain fog, loss of memory and fatigue as being due to getting older. It’s not because we’re adding years – it’s because we’re adding significant amounts of toxins every year. Toxins accumulate in the body over time and having no way our, they gather in fat cells. Studies have found that the levels of pesticides in people’s blood prior to dieting and stomach stapling is higher with higher age. The most pesticides are in the oldest people, not the heaviest. Wow – it really does have to do with toxic accumulation over the years.
Only an Organic Apple a Day Will Keep the Doctor Away
Do you routinely eat these?
- nonorganic beef
- nonorganic dairy products
- farm-raised fish (especially salmon and catfish)
- nonorganic butter
Do you know what they have in common? They are the leading sources in our diet of chlorinated pesticides. Like our fat accumulates toxins from the environment, so does the fat of animals which become our food or give us milk products for food.
You may not be able to totally control your exposure to environmental toxins, but you can control the amount of toxins you put in your mouth. If butter and beef needs to be organic to be clean, what about the other fats?
Fats are Essential
All fats, whether from animals or vegetables, are some combination of saturated fat, monounsaturated fat, and polyunsaturated fat. Without a chemistry lesson, I will still explain the fats to eat and those to avoid. It is the proportion of all fats in your diet that is important.
It is important to know that a even a fat such as butter is only about 50% saturated fat, so organic butter can be included in a balanced fat diet. And that organic eggs contain omega-3 and omega-6 fats in a 1:1 ratio, which is beneficial, but commercial eggs can contain these fats in a ratio of 1:19, which is pro-inflammatory!
You may have seen “trans-fats” labeled on food packages. These fats start as liquids at room temperature, then are put through a process that makes them solid at room temperature. This is good for the processed food industry, because they don’t become rancid as fast and produce a product with a long shelf life.
But it is bad for the consumer, because the body just doesn’t know what to do with it. Studies have shown that consuming trans-fats causes a decrease in mitochondrial function, which translates to fatigue.
Bottom line – avoid trans-fats. And one caveat: sometimes the way a serving is calculated on the product label, it comes out to an insignificant number of trans-fats per serving. But, as the commercial says, “Who can eat just one?” Eating the whole bag, or even half the bag of potato chips has significant amounts of trans-fats even if it is labeled “0 trans-fat”!
OK, so as far as fats found in nature, we want to get enough omega-3 polyunsaturated fats because our body cannot manufacture them. We also need omega-6 polyunsaturated fats, but it has to be in the right proportion. The amounts of omega-6 to omega-3 fats commonly found in the American diet leads to:
- inflammation
- hypertension
- irritation of the digestive tract
- depressed immune function
- sterility
- cancer
- weight gain
Wouldn’t you know it! Weight gain just from the wrong kind of polyunsaturated fat. Typical vegetable oils with a high percentage of omega-6 fats, which should be strictly limited are:
- safflower oil
- corn oil
- sunflower oil
- soybean oil
- cottonseed oil
- peanut oil
- sesame oil – the best in this list, but still limit it for frying or flavoring
On the other hand, good sources of omega-3 fats are:
flax seed oil, or ground flax seeds- cold water fish, such as tuna, salmon, anchovies, sardines
Polyunsaturated fats come with a caveat, too. Flax oil becomes rancid quickly, as well as the omega-6 oils listed above. This happens both in the bottle and when you use them to cook. Rancid oil is really bad for the body, because is contains free radicals, which cause damage to cells, damage to organs, and sets the stage for cancer, and premature aging.
The last kind – monounsaturated fat – is almost synonymous with olive oil. Buy it in dark bottles so it does not get rancid. It is ideal for salads, and can be used for low temperature cooking.
Eat Your Vegetables
We’re told to eat our fruits and vegetables, but some are so filled with pesticide residues that they may actually be contributing to making you fat!
This is a list of the fruits and vegies highest in pesticides. I recommend that you eat them only if they are grown organically.
Apples- Bell peppers
- Carrots
- Celery
- Cherries
- Grapes (imported)
- Kale
- Lettuce
- Nectarines
- Peaches
- Pears
- Strawberries
OK, so you are on a tight budget. Is there anything else you can do?
Well, the nonorganic versions probably do not have as many nutrients, but there is a way of removing some of the toxic pesticides before you eat them. Dr. Walter Crinnion recommends these procedures to reduce toxic exposure:
Use a vegetable peeler to remove the skin from commercial varieties of apples, pears, nectarines, and potatoes. You’ll probably need a paring knife to peel peaches.- For peppers, apples, and celery, use an acid wash:
- Fill a large bowl or a plastic food storage container with water.
- Add a cup of distilled vinegar.
- Let the produce rest in the tub for ten to twenty-five minutes, and then use a vegetable scrub brush to scrub each piece for about sixty seconds.
- For grapes and cherries, just let them soak for about sixty minutes.
On the other hand, is there produce which is safe to eat the commercially grown varieties? Yes, the following have virtually no pesticide levels.
Asparagus- Avocados
- Cabbage
- Eggplant
- Kiwis
- Mangoes
- Onions
- Papayas
- Pineapples
- Sweet corn
- Sweet peas
- Watermelon
What is the result of changing your food choices?
Dr. Crinnion talks about one patient:
Once he grew accustomed to the new routine, he lost 20 pounds in just two months with absolutely no changes to his overall diet. He avoided foods known to have high toxic burdens, but he didn’t have to make any sacrifices – he just bought clean organic versions of the same foods he’d been eating. This is something that astonishes most of my patients. It seems too easy to be true, but it’s evidence of how damaging toxins are and how healthy clean green food is for every cell in your body.
Imagine what you can expect if you start simply with avoiding the most toxic foods and including clean and organic foods. For more information, see Dr. Crinnion’s book Clean, Green, and Lean.
Please comment below when you have tried this, and what you have noticed!
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