0 Being Fat Can Be Toxic !

It is a well known scientific fact that being overweight increases your chances of developing serious illnesses such as atherosclerosis, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer, among many others.

Another scientific fact to take into account is that the fatter you get the less efficiently your immune system protects you against infection and early aging.

One of the main questions to ask is why do so many people overeat when they eat cooked foods, especially junk foods ?

The answer is because their diet is short of vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients. The body, in a desperate bid for nutritional satisfaction, demands more and more calories.

Overeating produces more toxic wastes than the body can get rid of and so it stows them away in the layer of fat under the skin where they can do as little harm as possible.

The Overburdened Digestive System

An overweight body is a misshaped body with an inherited tendency to store fat. It is nutritionally starved despite the number of calories it has consumed over the years.

Its endocrine system, circulation, bones and nerves are under constant stress.

Overeating too many nutritionally 'void', depleted foods and not eating enough nutritionally rich ones. This leads to the overweight person's digestive system to become overworked.

The digestive juices are in overproduction. This leads to deficiencies in important enzymes needed to break down foods fully, provide nutrients needed to break down foods completely and provide nutrients for cell use.

The cells of the body are constantly craving to be fed, plagued by constant appetite, regardless of how much or how little the overweight person puts into his mouth.

The constant stimulation of the digestive organs can result in excess acidity of the stomach and longstanding inflammation of the intestines which further increases the craving for more food.

An overstressed enzymic system can lead to food allergies and result in sub-clinical vitamin and mineral deficiencies which in turn reinforce the vicious circle of hidden hunger.

Fat cells are much less active than other cells in our body. They burn less energy than muscle cells. This means that the more fat you have relative to muscle the lower your metabolic rate is.

A fat person uses up fewer calories per kilo of body weight than a normal weight person, which is why he or she can eat very little and still not lose weight.

Reducing your calorie intake has much less effect if you are fat.

Re-adjusting Your Fatpoint

(The Center For Health Promotion & Wellness at MIT Medical - Adapted from Integrative Group Treatment for Bulimia Nervosa by Helen Riess, M.D. and Mary Dockray-Miller)

This is not a fixed level but the usual level of fat your body is accustomed to. Whatever weight your body has maintained for, say, a year or so, seems to determine your fatpoint. Your body maintains this usual level of fat by checking up hormonally on its fat reserves.

The hormones that do this work via the brain, and the level of these hormones in the bloodstream is directly proportional to the amount of fat stored.

It is this fatpoint, and the cravings that are a sign of malnutrition, which spur the familiar phenomenon of rebound eating, uncontrolled eating as soon as you stop dieting.

Rebound eating may raise your fatpoint higher than it was before you began dieting because you have alerted your hormones to the fact that your body's reserves of fat are falling. And so you put on even more weight.

This is how most people's weight creeps up over the years. When you diet repeatedly you are fighting one of your body's most efficient self-protection mechanisms, and you are the one who loses.

The solution is to work with, not against that protection mechanism. You gradually have to readjust your fatpoint so that lost weight stays off.

This means doing three things.

• Eliminating cravings by giving your body all the nutrients it needs ( at least 50 essential nutrients are known but fresh raw foods probably contain many more)
• Calming an irritated and overactive digestive system so that its functions return to normal. Then you will derive full benefit from the food you eat and eliminate the ravenous hunger.
• Getting rid of accumulated toxins and amyloid deposits, because these block proper assimilation and adversely affect the endocrine and nervous system.

A diet consisting of well chosen raw foods will do all these things and will do them gradually, without your having to pay attention to calories and without alerting your body's fatpoint defenses.

One of the amazing benefits about losing weight eating large amounts of raw foods is that you do not need to end up looking drawn or flabby.

Skin and muscles become firm and the whole body undergoes a slow process of rejuvenation which is little short of miraculous.

Most dieters become quite irritable. Flare ups of temper and rapid changes of mood are often due to an over-acid system.

If you have a great deal of fat in your blood, which is usually the case if you are dieting and getting rid of stored fat, your blood will be acidic. Unfortunately most of the foods that make up weight loss diets also increase acidity.

The more acidic your system the more irritable you feel. Raw fresh fruit and vegetables have a counteractive alkalinising effect. This means that you feel calmer, more resilient and less tired while you are losing weight.

Barbara is a qualified nutritionist offering Health & Wellness Counseling.

Barbara has also created the Med Life Diet a 12 week online course aimed at developing healthy eating and healthy lifestyle habits and attitudes for life !