Poisons are everywhere. It’s nearly impossible to avoid them, despite our best attempts to do so. They are even in the most unsuspecting places. The media, coupled with the “all-knowing experts,” advise us to steer clear of pesticides, household cleaners, processed foods, food additives, and preservatives. If it were up to the experts, we would all be living rural, growing our own food, drinking purified water, and walking everywhere. While this might be the ideal way to live to avoid poisons, unfortunately for you and me, it’s probably not possible.
Without a doubt, the most important thing you can do to try and counteract the effect of poisons in our everyday life is to build up and support our immune systems. So just how do we do that? Well, first and foremost, we should make healthy choices when it comes to what we eat, what types of foods we choose to have in our homes, and which foods we provide for our family.
The most toxic of all foods (if you could call it that) is sugar and hydrogenated fats. These two toxins (which are consumed by the billions of tons each year) literally drain our mental and physical energy and cause a reaction in our body almost identical to consuming poisonous chemicals. The only difference is, it happens over time.
Scientific evidence has shown that sugar, in any form, depletes essential B vitamins and lowers your body’s resistance to bacteria, viruses, and yeasts. Sugar makes you irritable, hyperactive, and causes premature aging through a process called glycosylation (pronounced “gly ko si lay shun”). And it’s no surprise at all, sugar is the number one culprit to Type II diabetes, which is typically self-induced as a result of a life fueled with sugar. At this point, the body is no longer capable of disposing of insulin properly, which then becomes a serious risk factor for heart disease.
Sugar
So just what happens in your body when you eat sugar? It enters your bloodstream all at once, instead of slowly as it would as part of a whole-food, naturally occurring meal. Insulin is then immediately secreted and moves the sugar away into cells within muscle or fat. Now that there is not enough sugar in your bloodstream, your brain senses that you are in a time of famine and sends a message to the adrenal glands to release adrenaline and cortisol.
This process happens repeatedly because your body is tricked into thinking that you have depleted sugar levels and need more, causing major energy level problems and body that is working in overdrive.
Hydrogenated Fats
There has always been confusion over the consumption of fats. For so long, we were told that all fats are bad, when in fact our body needs fat to thrive. The truth is, we’ve just been eating the wrong fats.
Today, many people are getting the majority of their fats from man-made hydrogenated fats and other harmful polyunsaturated oils such as palm and corn oil. Before the introduction of man-made oils and fats, we ate naturally occurring fats and oils, such as butter, coconut oil, lard, and olive oil. During those times, people were generally slimmer and had lower overall body weight. But since the introduction of man-made fats into our diets – on a global scale – obesity has grown on an alarming scale.
The reason these fats are particularly harmful to us is because polyunsaturated and hydrogenated oils have been subjected to grossly damaging industrial processes which has essentially rendered them toxic. Their new structure has not, until recently, been incorporated into human physiology and is consequently unrecognizable to the human body. Since their introduction to our diets, these unhealthy oils have been linked to heart disease, cancer, and other degenerative diseases.
It’s best to avoid these polyunsaturated oils such as corn, cottonseed, canola, and vegetable.
By avoiding sugar and hydrogenated fats in your diet, you will:
- Improve your concentration and mental clarity
- Enhance your immune system
- Slow the aging process
- Reduce belly fat
- Eliminate food “cravings”
So how do you go about removing these poisons from your diet?
Take about 10 minutes today to check the food labels and ingredients panels on the foods in your pantry, kitchen cupboards, refrigerator, and on the counters in your kitchen.
Know What to Look For
Look for ingredients that list sugar, dextrose, sucrose, fructose, corn syrup, or maltodextrin as the first, second, or third ingredient. These are typically things like soda, breakfast cereals, and white flour products.
Any foods that list hydrogenated, partially hydrogenated, or corn, palm, or cottonseed oils. These are typically things like processed, frozen, and nearly all deep-fried foods and even some supposedly healthy nutrition bars and snacks.
Then, throw them away! Replace these foods with healthier and toxic free options such as:
- Instead of soda, drink water, unsweetened iced tea, or on occasion, soda water with a dash of lemon
- Instead of breakfast cereals, use whole oats or buckwheat
- Instead of white-flour products, use nut flours
- Bake instead of deep frying foods such as French fries, chips, and fried chicken
- Replace commercial salad dressings and cooking oils with good fats like flaxseed oil, olive oil, coconut oil, sesame oil, and walnut oil.
Commit to start reading food labels carefully; manufacturers are tricky about trying to hide these harmful ingredients. They want you to continually buy more and eat more, resulting in pure profits for them and less than good health for you.
I invite you to join me at the Commit to being Fit: The Body & Diet Breakthrough Bootcamp with over 20 health and fitness experts where you can learn how to break free of your poisons and make the most out of your life. Plus, you can sign up for my free offer – How to Decode Nutrition Labels which will help you understand what the facts and myths about what you are eating.
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