Sexy Forever: How to Fight Fat After Forty (7 page)

Unfortunately, we will never again be able to live an existence that is devoid of chemicals and toxins unless we move to the most remote part of the globe and eliminate all modern conveniences and technologies from our lives, and even then acid rain and chemical-laden clouds would likely be passing overhead. But don’t be overwhelmed. Simple changes add up, creating an internal environment predominantly made up of healthy cells rather than unhealthy cells. This new ratio will change your health, and as a result the pounds will drop away. Having a high ratio of healthy cells to malfunctioning cells is a key to beating the present unavoidable environmental assault. And it’s key to staying Sexy Forever.

We can get fat because of overeating and lack of exercise, but in middle age we now know there’s more to it. When we’re overweight we feel fatigued, but this fatigue and the accompanying fat are, as we have established, a result of environmental toxins. It’s the toxins that make it
impossible
for your body to absorb nutrients. When you don’t absorb nutrients, your body is essentially starving, which makes you hungry for more and more food. But the body can’t get what it needs because of this devastating toxic burden. This cycle will not stop without intervention, and as a result, you will gain more and more weight.

Without nutrients the body begins to decline in many ways. If you reduce your load of toxins, you will have more energy and fewer pounds of fat. When you start absorbing nutrients again, you won’t crave poor-quality foods, and you will start gravitating to foods that have high nutritional content. The body is smart, but it can’t help you out when
chemicals are blocking all entryways for nutrition. Imagine trying to run your car without gas.

But just getting rid of the fat doesn’t get rid of the toxins. They are reabsorbed into your body and new fat
immediately
starts to collect. This is what creates the vicious cycle.

We need to retrain ourselves to eat as we were meant to eat. I believe one of the ways we got started on this path was with TV dinners. When I was a kid, I used to beg my mother to buy TV dinners. I thought they were a treat, but when you actually think about it, TV dinners are a form of poison. Let’s just start with the aluminum trays, which we heated on high. (If you recall, you used to be able to taste the aluminum.) So right there you have a big dose of heavy metals, which have been linked to brain tumors, among many other things. The food itself was of poor quality and non-nutritious. The oils used were bad. And the most exciting part of the meal was the gooey, sugary, apple-y, chemical-y thing they called dessert.

TV dinners began our transition from real nutrition to toxic, chemical-filled food, and the obesity rate rose commensurately, as did rates of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

Don’t be afraid of real food. If you want to stay Sexy Forever, first and most important, you must eat real food—in other words, foods that come from nature, not man-made foods, not fake foods, not any foods with chemicals.

You must also become informed about food additives. Harmful glutamates such as MSG may be hidden in food ingredients such as caseinate, autolyzed yeast enzymes, beef or chicken broth, natural flavorings, soy
protein, hydrolyzed protein, soy isolates, and soy protein concentrates. This is how large manufacturers get around listing MSG. (That being said, these ingredients do not always contain MSG.) If you are truly serious about losing weight and getting healthy, you must be vigilant about avoiding these substances.

It is important to become knowledgeable about good and bad fats. The wrong choice of fats will have a serious effect on your health and your ability to lose weight.

The right choices of fats are crucial to the membranes of every one of the trillions of cells in your body. Omega-3 fats create a soft, pliable membrane around each cell, allowing for water and air (hydration and oxygenation) to flow through.
Life
is water and air, and the good omega-3 oils that promote life are perilla oil, flaxseed oil, and fish oil. Animal fats from healthy animals like grass-fed cattle are also acceptable in moderation; it is a shame these healthy, naturally occurring fats have been demonized by the food processing industry.

When your cells have the proper amounts of water and oxygen, the mitochondria (the energy source of your cells) work optimally, and a side benefit is rapid weight loss. Well-functioning hydrated cells also reverse the aging process and create a smoothly functioning, healthy body. When water and air are not penetrating the cells, your energy slows or stops, resulting in potentially serious effects on your health, all while setting you up to get fatter and fatter.

Trans fats found in partially hydrogenated oils, margarine, and shortening are the worst type of fats because they are completely unnatural. Less known are the dangers of omega-6 fats, which are found in safflower oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, peanut oil, soybean oil, cottonseed oil, among others. Too many omega-6 fats and not enough omega-3 fats creates a hard membrane around each cell, like an eggshell. Free radicals entering your body can cause the membrane to crack, and now you have a malfunctioning cell. When you reach a point where you have more malfunctioning cells than healthy cells, you will most likely become very ill, possibly with diseases such as cancer and heart disease. Along the way your weight will soar. A simple step such as changing the oils you consume can positively impact the health of your cells; there is no drug that can do that.

I think Sally Fallon in her book
Nourishing Traditions
says it best: “During the sixty-year period from 1910 to 1970, the proportion of traditional animal fat in the American diet declined from 83 percent to 62 percent, and butter consumption plummeted from 18 pounds per person per year to four. During the past eighty years, dietary cholesterol intake has increased only 1 percent. During the same period the percentage of dietary vegetable oils in the form of margarine, shortening and refined oils increased about 400 percent while the consumption of sugar and processed foods increased about 60 percent.” Americans are dying of heart disease from sugar, processed foods, bad oils, margarine, shortening, and refined foods. We are getting fatter and fatter eating all this poor-quality food.

Overall, we need high-quality protein at most every meal. By high-quality, I mean protein that has not been contaminated by chemicals, pesticides, growth hormones, or antibiotics. Protein is extremely important and is involved in every life function from your bone marrow to your skin. Proteins are found in both animal and vegetable sources. Animal-source protein is complete protein because almost all animal proteins contain all eight essential amino acids in optimal proportions. This ratio of amino acids is very valuable to your body.

Studies prove that too little protein in your body results in health problems that range in severity from a suppressed immune system and physical weakness to stunted growth and mental retardation. It takes a diet of at least 30 percent protein to maximize the biochemicals (eicosanoids) in your system that enhance your immune system, decrease inflammation and pain, increase oxygen flow, improve endurance, and more.

Fish is a great source of protein. Chicken and beef are a great source of protein but chicken should be organic and beef grass-fed whenever possible; conventionally raised poultry may suffer from the same problems of poor-quality feed and overcrowding that conventionally raised cattle and pigs do. Russia doesn’t want our chicken, and they have a food shortage. That should tell you something!

Besides, organic chickens taste so much better. If you cannot afford organic, look for natural poultry and meats raised without antibiotics or
hormones. These are always better choices and will contribute to your daily health and nutritional requirements.

Losing weight without getting rid of the toxins ensures that you
will
gain back all the fat and more. Think about it—just getting rid of the fat doesn’t get rid of the toxins, which are reabsorbed into your body. This creates a vicious cycle. Losing weight without learning to eliminate chemicals is like a merry-go-round. And it’s why dieting doesn’t work. Plus the toxic load makes it more and more difficult for people from age forty on to lose weight.

Now do you understand why losing weight has been a frustrating battle for you? Are you ready to get off that not-so-merry-go-round?

Here we go!

The goal of
Sexy Forever
is to enhance and improve your overall health, give your body what it craves, and help you remain toxin free and in peak condition for life. In doing this you will be rewarded with a thin, beautiful body. Recapturing health through detoxification is more than possible—it’s within your reach. But what does detox mean?

Detoxing means avoiding chemicals as best you can:

• In your food
  
• In your household cleaning products
  
• In your cosmetics
  
• In shampoos and conditioners
  
• In your bath, shower, or pool
  

I was surprised to find out that methods of detoxification have been around for almost four thousand years. One of the earliest medical textbooks ever discovered, the Ebers Papyrus, found in the sands of Egypt, shows that physicians of long ago were already using enemas to help the body cleanse itself and fight off disease. In India, Ayurvedic medicine also utilizes detoxification methods, including colon cleansing, to treat many chronic conditions and to prevent illness. But the colon is just one of many channels of elimination. This book will discuss other ways to decrease the burden of this toxic load.

One thing is clear, now is the time to
protect yourself
. Let’s start by taking a deeper look at the toxicity we receive from products we put on the largest organ of our body: our skin.

Have you ever stopped to question just what we do each day in the name of self-care and beauty? Until recently, would it ever have entered your mind that the cosmetics you have been using contain chemicals that may be making you sick, drying out your skin, and making you fat? Did it ever dawn on any of us that chemicals entering through the skin are as toxic to our systems as if we had ingested them through our mouths?

Over the years, I’ve spent a small fortune on the “best” cosmetics money could buy, all promising miracles and smelling fantastic. I’ve been rubbing creams and lotions all over my body in an attempt to make my skin soft, healthy, and appealing.

Now we have the information. This book explains the toxic burden. Now it’s important to understand how toxins enter the bloodstream through the skin. So I’ve interviewed a number of dermatologic experts.

Commercial creams and lotions, no matter how high-end, contain
emulsifiers, most often chemicals that allow oils and water to stay mixed, prevent bacteria from growing, and so on. But even though these products are supposed to hydrate the skin, they actually have the opposite effect!

Learning about the standard of skin care products made me look at my products in a whole new light. I started working with an organic formulator who uses only certified toxic-free ingredients. She told me that our skin is made of mechanisms designed to trap water. When we take a bath or shower, our skin doesn’t actually absorb water but rather traps it. The problem with commercial creams is that the same chemicals that alter the natural characteristics of oil and water, allowing them to stay mixed, also break down the natural oils in our skin. This allows water to evaporate from our skin, and it also causes our cells to put up a shield. At a cellular level the same thing takes place—your cells put up shields to protect themselves from these chemicals. So now your cells are closed off and can’t eliminate waste or take in nutrition. As a result, the cells die prematurely. We get thinner and thinner skin that feels crepey and develops wrinkles.