By David Blyweiss, M.D., Advanced Natural Wellness

April 18, 2012

• Why dieting makes it harder to lose weight
• The three steps to weight loss that work
• A surprising way to use coffee in your weight loss efforts

If you are one of the millions of people who have tried desperately to lose weight – and failed – today’s issue might be your favorite of all time.

You may finally solve the mystery that’s been stalking dieters for years: Why can’t I lose weight… and keep it off?

Losing weight is less about willpower than you might think. And it’s more about famine physiology. In other words, you might think you’re dieting. But your body thinks it’s starving.

You see, when you deprive your body of food, it assumes there’s a long-term famine at hand. It begins to store fat to survive.

Which means, the more you deprive your body of food, the more fat it stores. Making dieting one of the fastest ways to train your body to get – and stay – fat.

So if you’re a chronic dieter, you might be happy to finally ditch the popular “diet and exercise” regime. And instead, discover that the real secret to losing weight lies in understanding how your body handles stress, and how that is affecting your weight…

To our minds, there are many types of stress. But to our body, there are two primary forms of stress that are critical to our survival: attack and starvation.

You’ve probably heard of the fight-or-flight response. It’s the rapid stress response to imminent physical danger, most likely developed during the Pleistocene Epoch when man found himself bumping into the saber-toothed tiger one too many times. In your body, it’s accompanied by an adrenal gland umph! – complete with cortisol surge, rapid insulin release, and speedy glucose metabolism. This response to stress supports a lean figure and increased mobility (as well as slippery sweaty skin so you’re harder to grab and eat).

But our ancient ancestors were not only faced with physical attack. They also experienced long periods of food shortage, creating a stressful metabolic reaction that sticks with us today.

In the face of food restriction, our metabolism slows. We experience intense cravings for fatty or carbohydrate-rich foods. Our bodies store calories and use them sparingly. Our energy is reserved. And when the body feels it is in a period of prolonged famine, cortisol, triglycerides, insulin resistance, and inflammation all increase.

In fact, all the markers of our response to famine are part of the diabesity continuum.

Dieting makes your body think there is a famine, and kicks off a metabolic chain reaction that has been designed by thousands of years of evolution to keep you from starving to death. With many people this may initially show itself as a relative hypothyroid state. In fact those of us with ancestry from famine times and countries, such as Ireland and Ukraine for example, can find ourselves gaining 10 or more pounds over the initial weight we tried to “diet” off!

But when this chain reaction continues over long periods – like a lifetime of chronic dieting – it also makes you sick and keeps you fat. From previous articles you might remember that the more visceral abdominal fat we carry, the more toxic we are. And the harder it is to burn fat because our liver is overloaded with toxins.

Your body endures a chain reaction to this type of stress designed to keep you fat:

• Your liver works overtime when you are carrying excess weight to manage the toxin and dioxin overload. It literally becomes exhausted especially if you’re lacking necessary enzymes and nutrients… which occurs more with calorie-restricted dieting!

• Your thyroid and adrenal function are diminished, throwing off a variety of hormones that can affect how you process food.

• One critical hormone, leptin, is often completely blocked. A big problem, considering it controls appetite. Leptin carries the critical message from your body to your brain that you’ve had enough to eat and it’s time to stop. This missing link makes your body feel and act like it’s starving, no matter how much weight you gain.

Once you start to understand what you’re up against, and how your body responds, you start to see why the “diet and exercise” approach to weight loss is a complete myth. It’s not only wrong, it’s dangerous.

Here’s what I recommend instead…

1) Stop Dieting: Instead of restricting calories, opt to eat whole, live foods. Plenty of fruits and veggies and as little processed food as possible. Follow the suggestions I made in The Resolution Report at the beginning of the year. And make that your approach to eating for life, not just for a month or two until you shed the weight. Eating good, healthy, nutritious food consistently is the best way to get to and maintain a healthy weight. Feeling better, looking better, being better is a happy benefit.

2) Replace Exercise with Burst Training: Don’t stop exercising, rather change the way you exercise. The goal is not to burn calories, but to trick your body into thinking it’s having a primal experience – like escaping a hungry tiger. This will shift your body from being in famine response – or harboring fat – to a fight-or-flight response, which will keep you lean and mobile.

3) Detox: As you lose weight, you’ll need to remove the toxins that were stored in the fat. Breaking a sweat often, through burst training, will remove some. Relaxing for 20-30 minutes in an infrared sauna is another. Plus, each of the following nutrients will play a role in cleansing the liver, removing toxins and rebuilding muscle in place of the fat. You can focus on foods that have these nutrients, but I would also recommend supplements, specifically if you have a lot of weight to shed:

1. N-Acetyl Cysteine 600 mgm two to three times a day
2. Alpha-Lipoic Acid 100mgm. two to three times a day
3. Acetyl-L-carnitine 500mgm two to three times a day
4. Selenium 100mcg (as selenomethionine) two times a day
5. Zinc 10 mgm (as gluconate)
6. Pomengranate extract 50 mgm twice a day

And for a little additional detox help, you might want to try these all natural, but slightly unorthodox, approaches…

If you are overweight, and plan to take my first two suggestions to heart, then you may want to hasten the process of detoxifying the liver along a bit more quickly, too.

Here are a few “home remedies” you can try:

1) Coffee enema: While this is not the cancer cure-all that some hopeful holistic practitioners hoped, it is a fast and easy way to relieve the liver of toxins relatively quickly. A good online resource for more information is: http://curezone.com/art/read.asp?ID=28&db=5&C0=818

2) Lemon cleanse: Squeeze a half a lemon into a glass of warm water and drink first thing in the morning, 20 minutes before breakfast. Lemon is a gentle cleansing agent for the liver. You can work up to a whole lemon. But if you experience headaches or any discomfort, reduce the amount of lemon.

3) Apple cider vinegar: Instead of lemon, you can use one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar. You can also incorporate apple cider vinegar into your diet in place of regular vinegar on salads.

As with any detox, faster is not better, and can, in fact, be dangerous. Use these approaches in moderation, along with a sensible eating and exercise plan. By sensible eating, I mean eating more vegetables and fruits, minimal-to-no refined manmade carbohydrates, and lean organic meats should comprise no more than 12% of your diet overall.

And any sensible exercise plan or movement moments must be dictated by what works for you; even if it starts out as twenty minutes a day of walking with your dog… or your honey… whoever you enjoy walking with more. As you can, include bursts of heavier exertion.

By gently cleansing your liver while you change your lifestyle, your body will be able to change its approach to stress… and stop storing fat for a rainy day.

References:

Rozenthal P, Biava C, Spencer H, et al. Liver morphology and function tests in obesity and during total starvation. Am J Dig Dis 1967; 12:198-208