By James Duigan
Your body stores toxins (poisonous substances produced by living cells or organisms) in your fat cells. If you’re dieting, your body will slowly lose fat, so that the toxins will have nowhere to go but back into your system, making you feel tired, headachy and generally unwell. This is why most people feel so rotten and tired within a few days of starting a diet. Your body then quickly decides it doesn’t like feeling this way, so it holds on to fat in order to store the toxins.
So if you’re toxic, you’re always going to find it hard to lose weight. Yes, you’ll slowly drop pounds if you exercise enough and eat very little, but it’ll be a long, hard process and one slip-up will see you a pound or two heavier on the scales (your body will grab any chance it gets to cling on to fat). You’ll also feel miserable, deprived, tired all the time and you’ll go to bed dreaming of chocolate bars every night. Then once you’ve lost weight, the real battle will begin as you try in vain to keep it off because the toxins will have turned your body into a fat-storing machine. Most people give up by this stage and just assume they’re ‘meant’ to be fat – that their body is just ‘designed that way’.
And the harder the fat, the more toxic it is, and the more difficult it is to remove. When I see middle-aged men with solid, hard beer bellies it fills me with fear – the fat they’re carrying around their stomachs is seriously toxic. Squidgy, soft fat is better; it’s not great, but it’s better than the really toxic hard stuff. As a general rule, the softer your fat bits are, the easier it will be to remove them. Hard fat also causes some serious health problems, like increased risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancer, and while softer fat also increases your risk, the risk is smaller.
The first step to becoming clean and lean is to follow my 14-day Clean & Lean Kickstart plan which you can find in my book. To purchase my book The Blueprint of Health, please click here. It consists of three meals, plus snacks, a day; you’re also allowed one cup of (organic) coffee or tea every day plus up to six cups of (organic) green tea. You should drink at least 2.5 litres of still, filtered water every day and no alcohol or fizzy drinks.
Although we tend to associate malnourishment with skinniness, some of the most overweight people I’ve met are also the most malnourished. A toxic body doesn’t digest or retain nutrients properly. And a high-calorie diet may not be high in vitamins and minerals. That’s why fat people are so hungry – they’re hungry for nutrients. A well-nourished body doesn’t feel hungry: if you thoroughly chew a Clean & Lean meal (for example, a chicken salad full of all kinds of vegetables), you won’t feel hungry afterwards; but if you hurriedly eat a greasy burger and fries, or a ready meal, you’ll feel hungry for something sweet afterwards. That’s because your body is left crying out for nutrients.Clean & Lean food fills you up in a way that toxic food never can, plus chewing your food properly helps you stay nourished (and therefore less hungry) for longer because it releases the nutrients from your food.
Another great way to detoxify the body is by adding a supplement such as Lovewell Blossom into your diet. Due to it's high amount of nutrients, it will nourish the body with essential vitamins and minerals.
So put simply: it’s toxins that are stopping you from having the body you’ve always dreamed of. Clean them out of your system and you’ll find losing weight is simple. To become truly Clean, you need to clear out your excretory system, which is responsible for removing toxic waste from your body. So if you want a Lean, lovely body you need this system to be clean and functioning as best it can. The excretory system is made up of the three main detoxers – your skin (through sweating), your liver and your kidneys.
I’ve cleaned out people’s diets in the past and the weight loss has been dramatic. And we’re not even talking about crash diets or starvation here. These people were eating three meals a day, plus coffee and snacks, and they still dropped the weight effortlessly and quickly. How did they do it? They stopped eating and drinking toxins and they got clean.
Where are toxins found?
These are the most fattening toxins:
- Sugar
- Alcohol
- Fizzy drinks
- Processed foods
- Processed ‘diet’ foods
- Excess caffeine
- Cortisol – the stress hormone
What makes foods clean?
Clean foods are those that:
- Haven’t changed much from their natural state – for example, an apple in a bowl still resembles the apple on the tree, whereas a crisp (having been heavily processed) looks nothing like a potato.
- Don’t need any added fake flavour.
- Don’t last for months and months; they go off in the fridge or cupboard after a short while.
- Contain fewer than five or six ingredients.
- Have no ingredients that you can’t pronounce or recognise.
- Don’t list sugar as their main ingredient (or as one of the first three).
- Don’t make you feel bloated, gassy or uncomfortably full.
- Satisfy you so that you’re not hungry after eating them.
A father of three, James has an incredibly successful career as a wellness entrepreneur, an international best selling author and as a trainer to the stars, he spends his time coaching many of the worlds most familiar faces! James is passionate about improving health and wellbeing and understanding the connection between the mind, body and spirit to live our best lives possible.
You can find James Duigan @jamesduigan & find his book Bleuprint For Health - By James Duigan
