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Lose fat while helping your liver

Steve Wells
Steve
Staff Photo |

Some of these articles may seem a little “clinical” and may scare some people away with all the technical jargon. However, in order to solve complex problems like the absolute epidemic of obesity, we need to get a little technical to understand complex systems of the body. We average Joes and Janes can understand these metabolic processes when they are explained well. A friend of mine once told me, “If you can’t explain it to a 5-year-old, you’re not doing it right.”

Back to fat loss. Your liver is the fat-burning and detoxifying organ, among other things. It makes sense to take care of it, at least between huge alcohol binges. Here are some tips on how to maximize liver function.

Once again, the biggest factors for liver health and overall health are:



Stop eating so darn much; avoid snacking; stop eating so much sugar and processed crap; avoid alcohol; avoid inflammatory foods like dairy, meat and sugar (this is stuff your grandmother probably told you).

Ways to support it:



• There are many methods and cleanses out there to try. Don’t engage in horrible habits for decades and then jump into some crazy cleanse as a sad attempt to make up for the keg-stands you did in college. Slowly ease your body into good habits to minimize rejection and minimize stress.

• Squeeze a bit of actual lemon (the fruit, not the processed junk that comes out of a lemon-shaped plastic bottle) into about 8 ounces of warm water and drink it 20 minutes before you eat.

• Add about a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar (Bragg is one of the best) to about 8 ounces of warm water and drink it 20 minutes before you eat.

• Look at your blood work and have a professional explain it to you. If your triglyceride number is high, this is associated with an overworked liver. Your fasting triglycerides should never be more than twice as high as your HDL cholesterol number.

The five basic rules of the Leptin diet help to assist the liver and overall health. They are simple, but not easy. Following these rules will improve your health, guaranteed. No one diet works for everyone, but many of them offer good techniques to try. I think that it’s more the structure than the content of any “diet” that helps you. I never get behind any single diet plan, but these guidelines help a lot of my clients.

1. Never eat after dinner. Finish eating dinner at least three hours before bed.

2. Eat three meals a day. Allow 5-6 hours between meals. Do not snack!

3. Do not eat large meals. Finish a meal when you are slightly less than full.

4. Eat a high protein breakfast.

5. Reduce the amount of carbs eaten.

By the way, when you consistently exercise, your liver works much better by sending fat and sugar into the blood stream to be used for energy. This causes your body to store less fat.

Stress adds insult to injury. Higher stress levels induce more cortisol release to buffer the inflammatory effects of stress. It has now been discovered that as cortisol levels rise, a protein (HES1) in your liver elevates, which turns off your liver’s ability to break down fat. This also contributes to fatty liver and abdominal weight gain. My advice is to focus on the fundamentals and don’t become overwhelmed.

Steve is neither a nutritionist nor a dietician. Technically he is not credentialed to give you advice on your eating behavior. He continually offers an open invitation to any professionals to “chime in” in regard to ways to help people make good decisions about their body.


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