Sexy Forever: How to Fight Fat After Forty (8 page)

The worst emulsifiers of all are PEGs. The full name is polyethylene glycol, which is very seldom written out—who wants to bring attention to this dangerous chemical? Anything that lists a PEG in the ingredients has been ethoxylated, or made with ethylene oxide, a very, very toxic chemical. For commercial cosmetic use, this is the supersecret ingredient. It makes textures we like, but unfortunately at great cost to our health. Ethoxylated chemicals are easy to use and have a shelf life of as much as fifty thousand years. (Cosmetics companies really don’t have a clue, do they?) Almost all ethoxylated chemicals contain trace amounts of 1, 4-dioxane, which can damage the liver and kidneys and may cause cancer.

The point of this book is that carrying around a toxic burden is a huge component in your inability to shed the pounds, but most people have no idea of the extent of the chemical exposure we are getting from lotions and creams.

PEGs impact the hormonal system and the brain and create a toxic burden in the body. They may cause memory loss. And the big “E” in cosmetics happens in other words like MEA, DEA, TEA, or triethanolamine.
The
E
is for the ethoxylation process. You can look for
eth
in ingredients, or the capital
E
; for instance in baby shampoo it’s laur
eth
. From the moment a baby is born, companies are giving away free baby products in the hospital with laureth in them. The baby is then inundated with harmful chemicals, all because this chemical makes lotions easier to produce. Our pure little babies are no longer pure, even moments after they are born.

Even using products labeled organic is no guarantee that they’re toxin free. “Certified organic” only means that a government official has said to the farmer, “For seven years we have been able to verify that you have not used insecticides or pesticides.” But that government agency doesn’t have anything to do with the guy upstream from him who does use chemicals or whether a farmer or manufacturer uses chemicals to extract elements from organic ingredients. There’s not a test to verify that level of purity, but products that are “certified toxic free” can help ensure your safety from such chemicals.

With all the toxicity to which humans are exposed (
bombarded
is probably a better word), it’s not difficult to imagine what effect this is going to have on us in the long term. Where is this going? Might it even have an impact on our children’s fertility? I realize that is a heavy concept, but not acknowledging the severity of the situation only guarantees that it will get worse. Pay attention to the cosmetics, shampoos, conditioners, and tanning lotions you use. Read the labels. Try to eliminate toxic ingredients by selecting natural products. You will find a list of ingredients to avoid at the back of this book.

Fat-stored toxins are a major factor in becoming overweight. And you don’t lose toxins just because you have lost weight. You have to lose weight smartly, or you could actually make yourself sicker—and fatter. Dieting without detoxing is one of the best ways to get derailed.

According to Dr. Walter Crinnion in his book
Clean, Green, and Lean
,
“When stored fat is mobilized into your bloodstream, fat-soluble toxins—toxins that dissolve in fat and take up residence there—are also released. This breakdown of fat, known as lipolysis, takes place daily—especially at night when your body goes hours without eating. When you are dieting, exercising or experiencing high stress, your lipolysis rate increases and that means a higher than normal amount of persistent poisons is swimming in your bloodstream along with the fats.”

If you are not detoxing simultaneously with dieting, a vicious cycle gets initiated. When you diet and exercise, toxins are released from your fat into the bloodstream. These higher concentrations of toxins make you feel sluggish and sick. So you stop exercising and give in to the cravings. That is why many people on diets start feeling lousy, sometimes with headaches, flu-like symptoms, or mood swings—most a result of the increased presence of toxins. But this is exactly when you have to stay with it to succeed in cleaning out your body and losing weight.

Detoxification is not for sissies. When the toxins get released, even if you feel sluggish, you have to continue forward with a firm, full commitment. According to Dr. Crinnion, the only solution is “breaking the toxin recirculation cycle.”

Sexy Forever
will show you the changes you need to make to your diet and lifestyle in order to lose weight and be healthy.

This is a lifestyle change. It’s no longer enough to simply cut out the offending foods; you must combat the toxicity in your body by choosing clean, healthy food that has not been contaminated by chemicals. This
is crucial and takes a shift in mind-set. Today’s standard diet of refined, enriched, preserved, irradiated, genetically modified, pasteurized, homogenized, hydrogenated, and processed foods doesn’t begin to meet our nutritional needs. The body needs proper nutrition for fuel. And it needs to be clean to use that nutrition. So we start with detoxification before anything else.

If you still think you don’t have a toxic body, let me point out what Dr. Russell Blaylock once told me: “Depending on your exposure, even if you consume organic food, the chemical onslaught for each of us is akin to taking anywhere from a quarter of a teaspoon of, let’s say, rat poison daily.” Now how long do you think you are going to stay healthy if you’re taking rat poison daily? So let’s say goodbye to rat poison, hello to health.

There are many ways to detoxify, and you can get started today. Here’s a quick roundup before we go deeper.

In order to detoxify your life and your environment you need to:

• Consume fruits and vegetables that are free of pesticides.
  
• Eat at home more often so you know the exact quality of your food.
  
• Use safe vegetable washes to remove toxins, chemicals, and aflatoxins (a type of fungus that can lead to liver cancer).
  
• Choose grass-fed beef and lamb.
  
• Consume organic pork and poultry.
  
• Avoid farm-raised fish and high-mercury fish.
  

There is more:

• It is essential to maintain a household free of toxic chemicals. Remove any chemicals and toxic household cleaners from your home, or at least limit your exposure to them. Substitute natural cleaning products such as distilled white vinegar, baking soda, borax, lemon juice, citrus cleaners, castile soaps, and safe commercial products. These items can be purchased from health food stores or grocery stores like Whole Foods.
  
• Use certified toxin-free skin and body care products. You don’t want to be putting chemicals on your skin when you are trying to detoxify.
  
• Pay attention to the air you breathe. Install air filters or commit to proper ventilation. The average American spends most of his or her time indoors; the quality of that air becomes crucial. I had not heard of “sick buildings” until I experienced one for myself. Consider air filters that are available for home use. Common household plants can also be used as filters to remove pollution from indoors.
  
• Filter your water. Unfortunately, our tap water is a major source of toxic chemicals that our overworked livers are required to process. A water filter will help. And reverse osmosis filters are essential if you have fluoride in your water system.
  

Eliminate poor food choices: processed foods, diet foods, diet sodas, fast foods. None of these foods have any nutritional value. If it comes in a bag or a box, it is most likely processed and contains chemicals and preservatives. Once you wean yourself from these foods, the cravings will go away. Your body will crave food that provides nutrients. Think of drug addicts—they have to go through a period of detox, which can be very difficult depending on the degree of addiction, but if they get to the other side, they can live the rest of their lives without cravings.

Think real food. Choose clean foods like grass-fed beef and lamb, organic chicken, and natural pork. Choose organic fruits and vegetables. In fact, shop the periphery of the supermarket—that’s where you’ll find meat, fish, dairy, fruits, and vegetables.

Here’s my criterion for choosing food: if you can pick it, pluck it, milk it, or shoot it, you can eat it! Outside of that guideline, you are getting into fake-food land, where nutritional content is absent. If you read labels and find something you can’t pronounce, chances are it has been made in a chemical lab.

Beef isn’t a problem if it is grass-fed and organic. The naturally occurring
fat in grass-fed beef is good for you and aids in healthy cell building, but beef has been demonized. Funnily enough, it was Dr. Frederick Stare of Harvard University, head of the nutrition department for many years, and his study on Irish brothers that positively correlated a high intake of
vegetable oils
, not animal fats,
with heart disease
. Shortly after he became department head, however, the university received several large grants from the
food processing industry
. (You connect the dots.) After that, Dr. Stare’s weekly columns began assuring the public there was nothing wrong with white bread, sugar, and highly processed foods! He recommended one cup of
corn oil
(omega-6 bad oil) per day to prevent heart disease and in one article he even recommended Coca-Cola (with high-fructose corn syrup) as a snack! One could make a guess here: Money talks.

Choose cold-water fish such as wild-caught salmon and sardines. Eat only minimal amounts of fish that tend to be high in mercury, such as tuna, swordfish, and halibut. Fish get exposed to mercury from polluted water and by eating smaller fish; they absorb the entire load of mercury that the smaller fish has eaten during its lifetime. In this way the big fish adds the small fish’s mercury buildup to its own.

You can also be exposed to mercury through silver amalgam dental fillings, emissions from coal-fired power plants, auto parts, fluorescent light bulbs, medical products, and some over-the-counter products such as topical antiseptics, stimulant laxatives, diaper rash ointment, eyedrops, and nasal sprays. Mercury is very toxic and very slow to leave the body; after consuming mercury-laden fish it can take a whole year to get the blood levels down to a normal range. But that’s not all. Mercury’s half life (the time it takes for a chemical to be reduced by half) in the brain takes over one year.

I’m not trying to overwhelm you here—all the positive steps you take add up to great health and the healthy weight you want.

Unfortunately, organic food is still more expensive than nonorganic. This creates a quandry for many who can’t aford it. Nonorganic food will continue to make you unhealthy and your weight will further spiral out of control. The cost of sickness down the road will surely outweigh the price of organic food today. In time, I believe, with increasing knowledge and demand, the price of organic food will decrease. In fact, people are catching on, and you’ve probably noticed that organic food is much less expensive than it was, say, a year ago. So that’s hopeful.

If you can’t afford to buy organic food, perhaps you can create a garden in your yard, or participate in a community farm where everyone is allowed to grow on a small parcel of land approved by the city. Growing your own food is very thrilling. I have my own organic garden, and I choose our meals daily depending on what is of peak ripeness on that particular day. One of the great pleasures of my life is to work with my vegetable garden; it feeds my love of food, love of cooking, love of healthy living, and love of nature, all in one. In today’s hectic world, planting a garden might be the one thing that pulls you back into a simpler time, a purer time, a calmer time … just something to think about.