Your Shortcut to Better Health

1. The Colorful Detox Drink

Ingredients:

• 1 Bell Pepper
• 3 Carrots
• 1 Medium Cucumber
• Half a Lemon
• 1 Apple

Simply juice all of the ingredients and drink fast, before the antioxidants get destroyed! This detox drink contains large amounts of vitamin c, vitamin a, a nice amount of minerals, vital for a healthy skin & powerful fat and toxin-flushing antioxidants, contained in the apple and lemon. It does taste a bit strange, but is definitely not unpleasant. Drinking a glass or two a day is extremely effective for cleansing your liver, improving your skin complexion and generally improving your health & energy levels.

2. The Green Tea Citrus Drink

Another juice that has amazing detox power!
Ingredients:

• Half a cup of green tea, cooled down
• The Juice of Half a Lemon
• 1 Banana Blended In

This is a bit more difficult to prepare, as it requires juicing, blending AND tea brewing! But it’s worth it – the EGCG in green tea acts together with the lemon juice to rapidly detoxify your body. EGCG is absorbed much, much better in an acidic environment and when combined with minerals (the potassium from the banana). Another huge benefits is that the juice tastes very nice – you can almost get addicted to it.

3. The Golden Liver-Flushing Drink

Ingredients:

• Half a teaspoon of turmeric
• A bit of ginger
• The Juice of half a lemon
• Half a cup of water

This juice not only flushes toxins from your liver, but it also prevents gallstones and cleans your bowels. It also settles down your stomach after a big meal. Turmeric is a very effective liver-detoxifying agent and is used as a hangover remedy in some countries. Again, combining it with lemon juice makes it even more effective. Unfortunately, this drink doesn’t taste that well. You can definitely improve it’s taste by adding a banana, but don’t add too much, as the sugar from the banana will slow down the cleansing action of the turmeric.

The King of Detox Drinks: The Red Tea

If you’re looking for a drink that will detox your liver and body quickly and without any side effects, consider the red tea recipe (link). This particular detox drink is very interesting, not only because it’s in the form of tea, but because it works by the synergistic effect of it’s ingredients, which by themselves won’t do much, except provide some antioxidants and vitamins. You can get pretty amazing results it, considering how easy it is to prepare. Now let’s explain how just adding a detox drink to your day can help you lose weight! After all, shouldn’t weight loss be much harder?

How Can a Simple & Easy Liver Detox Lead to Weight Loss?!

The red tea recipe linked above is often recommended not only for the well-being that comes from detoxing your liver, but also for weight loss. But how can a liver detox lead to weight loss? It’s simple – the toxins that get stored by the liver and body are almost exclusively the fat-soluble ones, and we have plenty of those in our diets or the air we breathe. The fat, containing these toxins get deposited on cell walls, mainly in the liver, interfering with hormone signaling. The fat literally acts as a barrier between insulin and the insulin receptors that every single cell in the body has. The same happens with leptin and every other metabolic signaling hormone. Since cells have many different hormonal receptors, all of them get blocked by the toxic fat, and hormonal signaling can no longer work. Because of this, the body keeps storing fat and even if we exercise, fast, eat less or try to “burn calories”, the signal to “start burning fat” simply doesn’t get to the fat-covered cells of the liver. It reaches subcutaneous fat-cells, because those are designed exactly for the purpose of energy storage. Therefore, as much as we try to starve ourselves, we never really burn off any visceral(belly) fat or the toxic liver fat that interferes with countless processes, necessary for optimal functioning. Detox the liver and all of this starts working again like magic, and the body starts getting rid of that fat. We need a lot of anti-oxidant molecules to break the chains of the toxic fat buildup, but the right combination of phytonutrients does the trick!
Since cancer and many other diseases also happen because of poor signaling between cells (in cancer, the cells “think” there’s not enough of them and start dividing uncontrollably, which is caused by signaling blockages – you can read about this in the wikipedia page about cancer), detoxing the liver is a starting point for preventing many chronic diseases as well. Insulin resistance, leading to diabetes is the same thing – fat blocks the insulin receptors and the pancreas has to secrete more and more of it, eventually burning itself out. When this happens, you become a type 1 diabetic and have to rely on an external source of insulin, i.e injections. Since the fat gets deposited to store the toxins that cannot be eliminated without a proper anti-oxidant molecule, a proper detox gets rid of it and signaling can work again!
As we all learned, visceral (belly) fat is almost impossible to get rid of through exercise and caloric restriction, as it is not stored by your body for energy, but rather as a result of toxic buildup in the gut and liver. Your liver is your main ‘metabolic organ’ – it metabolizes glucose and virtually all food that is absorbed by your stomach goes first through the hepatic vein and then into the liver.  This is why you can read a lot of stories from people that completely changed their life and lost 50+ pounds quickly after going on a long juice fast. Fortunately, getting those same results doesn’t require a long juice fast commitment, if you use a recipe, designed to quickly detox your liver and “unclog” it’s cells from the toxic buildup.

Written by Angelina on June 25th, 2019

Many people don’t realize that their skin is affected by the way they eat. The skin is actually your largest organ and it’s cells are connected together by collagen – a substance that your body produces by using amino acids, many different vitamins and minerals and vitamin c. Collagen is also vital for connecting internal organs and muscles together, which is why if your body can’t make enough, it will choose to first repair those tissues and then if there’s any left – the skin. Chronic deficiencies in certain vitamins can be the root cause of cellulite and although you won’t fully reverse it by fixing the deficiencies, this can definitely reduce it. Let’s learn which common vitamin and mineral deficiencies can make cellulite worse and how you can fix them.
Deficiency: Vitamin C
This should be obvious – severe vitamin C deficiency causes scurvy, which is a disease that causes your skin to break apart and bleed. Almost no one is that deficient, but according to many doctors the current RDI of Vitamin C (60mg/day) is very low and is just borderline enough to prevent scurvy or more obvious symptoms of deficiency. However, people during the paleolithic era consumed about 300 to 700 mg daily, which is ten times more. This is why we lost our ability to synthesize vitamin C. Dogs, Ducks and almost all other animals produce 10 000 mg or more Vitamin C per day in their liver.
Fix: Bell Peppers, Broccoli & Spinach
Red Bell peppers contain more than 100mg of Vitamin C per 100g. Broccoli & Spinach contain about half of that per 100g. Supplementing can also help, but is not necessary at all.
Deficiency: Magnesium
Magnesium is a mineral and not a vitamin, but it’s still a micro-nutrient that your body uses for more than 300 body functions. Deficiency of Magnesium leads to nerve problems, low energy levels, depression and most importantly – heart disease. It can also affect the elasticity of the skin as magnesium is also used during the collagen-synthesis process. Almost no one gets enough magnesium, as it’s traditional source is water from ponds, lakes and mineral water. Today, we have more than 5 times less magnesium in our water. In addition to that, magnesium in soil is rapidly consumed by plants, which means that with each crop, the magnesium content of the plant will be less and less, even though we use fertilizers.
Fix: Greens, Nuts & Mineral Water
It’s hard to source mineral water that’s high in magnesium (50-100mg/Liter), but if you can definitely do it. Greens are another good source of magnesium, although not as good as they used to be, due to soil depletion. Nuts are still high in magnesium, as they come from trees, whose root system is very deep and not affected by soil depletion of Magnesium. This is one of the main reasons why consuming just an ounce of nuts daily can cut your risk of heart disease almost in half. Unfortunately, there aren’t any studies done on cellulite directly, as it is not as medically important as other disease, but we know for sure that magnesium deficiency can affect the elasticity of your skin.
Deficiency: Antioxidants
Antioxidants protect your skin from free-radical damage, which comes either from outside sources (the sun, toxins in the environment, etc.) or your own body – your natural metabolism creates certain by-products that cause damage to your cells if not scavenged by antioxidants. Historically, humans have consumed a lot of antioxidants in their diet in the form of plants, which is how our bodies cope with toxins. Today, not only do we consume less natural antioxidants, but we also consume much more food that creates toxic by-products, trans-fat being the main enemy.
Fix: Eat a lot of Plants

Many people are starting to realize that vegetarian diets are not necessarily healthier just because the exclusion of meat, but because once you exclude meat you have to eat a ton of vegetables and plants to consume the same amount of protein. As a result, you boost your antioxidant intake 10-fold or more.

Foods to Avoid

Avoid carbonated beverages – no one understand the exact mechanism behind this, but it does seem to make cellulite worse and cultures with low carbonated beverage intake have almost no cellulite. Of course, this is also related to other factors – if you don’t drink any carbonated beverages, you are probably also not eating junk food. Fast food contains a lot of chemicals that are not natural for your body and created by cooking fat at high temperatures. Your skin gets easily damaged by those free radicals, especially in the absence of dietary antioxidants. Increasing your antioxidant intake and reducing fast food intake can have a massive effect on your cellulite, although it will not completely eliminate it.
A big factor in cellulite is blood flow. This is a complex problem and good blood circulation depends on a good diet – studies have shown that nuts are very effective in reversing blood-flow problems caused by constricted arteries. This is what special massaging tools for cellulite aim to do – by massaging your skin they supposedly improve your blood flow, which nourishes your skin and gets rid of cellulite. Unfortunately, this almost never works, as the effect is very temporary. Improving your diet can have a much more pronounced effect on the blood flow to your skin. Stress is another co-factor that causes your blood vessels to constrict.
As you can see, many factors influence cellulite. Generally, a healthy diet can greatly reduce it through it’s anti-oxidative effect on the skin. Collagen synthesis happens much more easily if you are healthy, which also repairs the bumps.

Completely Eliminating Cellulite

There are several methods you can use to successfully reverse the connective tissue structure changes that lead to cellulite and completely get rid of it. One such way is explained in this e-book.

Written by Angelina on March 28 2016

There are countless anti-cellulite products on the market. Needles to say almost none of them produce any visible results. Weird massages and vibrators are all powerless against your cellulite, when your body is ‘creating’ it. Many women think of cellulite as just something that happens, or as a result of weight gain. Both of those are incorrect. Often, losing a lot of weight makes cellulite worse for many months, because the skin loses even more elasticity. Fortunately, there are a few foods that can help. Many women find that they get rid of their cellulite ‘by accident’ after accidentally changing their diet. Many others find that no matter how much weight they lose, the cellulite still sticks around or actually becomes worse.

Can a Diet Tweak Eliminate Your Cellulite?

As you age, the way your body synthesizes collagen goes through several changes, which ultimately lead to the common cellulite. Various vitamin deficiencies can also contribute greatly to cellulite formation and fixing those can reduce your cellulite. Vitamin C is a major factor in collagen synthesis and a deficiency is known as scurvy. Although scurvy is extremely rare, it affects mainly the skin and causes it to ‘fall apart’. Low-level deficiency can also make your cellulite worse, as insufficient collagen makes your skin lose it’s elasticity. The way successful cellulite-eradication programs, like Joey’s program, work is by completely reversing age-related collagen hardening, after which your body automatically and easily gets rid of the cellulite on its own. In this article, we won’t be going into that much detail, but will instead show you which foods improve the complexion of your skin and lead to a reduction in cellulite. So, let’s get right into it!
Broccoli
Broccoli contains a chemical, called alpha-lipoic acid, or ALA. It naturally binds to collagen, keeping it elastic and soft. Collagen hardening is how cellulite starts. Broccoli is also high in Vitamin C, which helps your body synthesize collagen. Insufficient levels of Vitamin C limit your body’s ability to synthesize collagen and it uses the collagen it can produce to repair your most important connective tissues, not leaving enough for the skin. It has been shown that Vitamin C from supplements is not absorbed very well, as it requires certain flavanoids in order to be metabolized properly. Getting Vitamin C from raw foods, like Broccoli makes it easily available for your body to use.
Cucumber Juice
Cucumber juice is very detoxifying and we all know toxins are a major cause of cellulite. They disrupt thousands of body functions, leading to a slower protein synthesis. In turn, this prevents your body from repairing your skin fast enough, causing to the wrinkles. I recommend drinking a few glasses of cucumber juice, which you can easily make with a juicer or blender (strain the liquid after). A side effect of cucumber juice is frequent urination, so I wouldn’t advice you to drink a lot of it if you are not at home or don’t have easy access to a bathroom. Cucumber juice can replace many drinks that you consume, including even water. In addition to helping your body get rid of cellulite, it detoxifies your liver, enabling your body to get rid of visceral (belly) fat.
Omega-3 Fats from Fish
Omega-3 fats, contained in salmon reduce the chronic inflammation in your body, which often causes problems with collagen synthesis. Don’t go overboard with it however – aim for a serving or two each week. The full-range protein found in fish also floods your body with an abundance of amino-acids, which helps your body repair your skin. Remember that your body has priorities – if you don’t consume enough nutrients, it’s not going to use the little that you do consume to repair your skin. Instead, it will focus on more vital organs and functions in the body, leaving your skin under-nourished.
 
Water & Tea

Drinking water should be obvious – but many people really don’t drink enough. As a result, toxins build up in your body and disrupt many functions, causing you to feel sluggish, sleepy, gain fat and cellulite. The results from drinking more water come very slowly, as most of the toxins that build up are fat-soluble and not water-soluble. Your body needs to convert fat-soluble toxins to water-soluble by products, which is a very slow process. However, not drinking enough water can completely shut it down. Green tea is a nice alternative and it speeds up the clearance of toxins a lot, because of it’s ECGC and caffeine content. Antioxidants in the tea also protect your skin from UV and other free radical damage, which gives your body time to get rid of the cellulite.

Written by Angelina on March 27, 2014

The hormone I’m talking about is leptin. If leptin levels are high, your body readily gets rid of stored belly fat, as it is no longer in starvation mode. Unfortunately, most popular diets do the exact opposite – they trick your body into believing it’s starving, which kills leptin levels. As a result, your metabolism slows down, making you gain fat much easier once you start eating more again. This is exactly what causes the common and frustrating rubber-band effect – you start dieting, lose a bit of weight, hit a plateau and then gain all the weight back, plus some more. Fortunately, a little trick that boosts leptin levels can easily avoid this problem and enable your body to effortlessly get rid of stored body and belly fat.

How ‘Starvation Mode’ Works

When you rapidly decrease your calories, exercise too much or keep your protein intake low (many people trying to lose weight do all three) your body thinks it’s starving. Its reaction is to slow down your metabolism, by halting leptin production. This takes some time to kick in, which is why you can see some weight loss in the first week or two, although a lot of it is water and muscle mass. Losing muscle mass is also a natural consequence of eating less protein. The less lean muscle mass you have, the slower your metabolism and the harder it is for your liver to burn calories. Not only that, but now your leptin levels are low. This also makes you hungry. You hit a plateau and stop losing weight. Sooner or later you start eating more again (sometimes, without even realizing it, as your body can trick you) and beacause now your metabolism is slower, your body puts on much more weight in order to prevent you from dying the next time you starve.
Your body is used to how things were thousands of years ago – eating less then meant that you didn’t have access to food. If your body did not shut down your metabolism and kept burning fat you would starve to death. Your body is very smart, but it doesn’t know you are trying to lose weight. It thinks you are starving.
Then how it is that so many people lose a ton of weight? They are (usually unknowingly) doing things that boost leptin levels and prevent their body from going into starvation mode. The result of such a diet is a fast elimination of body fat, with little regard to how much you go to the gym. As we have said before, exercise is not a very efficient way to burn fat anyway – you burn much more calories through your metabolism, regardless of whether you exercise or watch TV. However, if your metabolism has shut down, this won’t happen.

Which foods boost leptin?

 
High-protein foods
This is the easiest way to keep your metabolism burning, even if you decrease your calories. Meat, eggs and dairy are good sources of protein. Plant sources include beans and nuts.  Having a high-protein breakfast is the easiest way to keep your metabolism burning and prevent your body from thinking it’s starving. Aim for 20 to 30 grams of protein in your breakfast. You can find many recipes for shakes that are high in protein. The meat and nuts breakfast is very popular among athletes and although a bit extreme, it works extremely well if you have the time to prepare it every morning.
Fish
Fish is high in omega-3 fatty acids, which have been shown to boost metabolism in addition to having many more health benefits. Any type of fish will do, but salmon is my favorite. Don’t go overboard with the fish however, as depending on the source it can contain some mercury. Fish is also a good source of protein, which is one more reason why it works so well for boosting your metabolism.
Avoid fructose
Avoiding foods that shut down your metabolism is just as important. Fructose is a major factor in weight gain. A diet high in fruit tells your body to store more fat and fructose naturally metabolises to fat before it can be used for energy. Historically, people ate a lot of fruit during the summer and autumn, which their body stored as fat for the winter. A moderate amount of fruit is not bad, but try to replace most of your fruit intake with vegetables. Needles to mention, also avoid drinks that contain high-fructose corn syrup.
Foods high in zinc
Zinc is found in nuts, meat and especially in seafood and fish. Deficiency in zinc can cause low leptin levels. Increasing your protein intake automatically fixes zinc deficiencies, as zinc is a always contained in high-protein foods, including plant sources like nuts and legumes.

How to Boost Leptin Effectively to Start Burning Fat?

All good diet programs, including the hot 2-week diet will increase leptin a lot and keep it high, by avoiding habituation to the higher leptin levels and by eliminating foods from your diet that will decrease leptin levels, one of many being sugar. If you don’t have the motivation to stick to a diet strategy, you can still loose a bit of weight initially by manipulating leptin with some simple tricks, including the following:

• Cycling diet: Eat 2 days of high-fat, high-protein and low carb, followed by two high-carb, low-fat days. This is a classic diet strategy, and although it does hit a plateau sooner or later, it will keep you losing weight for at least a month
• Avoiding all fructose and sweet drinks. Just eliminating the leptin-killing fructose will naturally allow your body to boost leptin levels. Anything sweet will also decrease leptin, because the sweetness sends a signal to your brain. So artificial sweeteners are also out.
• Meat-heavy dinner – this is self-explanatory. Make your dinner a big steak. This will boost leptin levels while you sleep

Leptin is Much More Important for Women

Although men can successfully lose some weight on a starvation diet, women’s bodies respond a bit different to the leptin signal and make this much more difficult. That’s why a good and proven diet plan is vital for losing weight if you are a woman. The flip side of this is that women’s fat-burning potential is even higher than men’s and we can burn fat almost four times faster than men. Unfortunately, this fat-burning potential is rarely being utilized by traditional diets. Protein intake is also much more important for women. This may seem paradoxical, as men have more muscle, but in reality, women go into starvation mode much easier than men and this happens very quickly as soon as you restrict your protein intake. Try to keep your protein intake high and you shouldn’t have any problems with this!

Written by Angelina on March 26th 2014

Cleansing your liver can have countless health benefits. Stubborn belly fat is mostly a by-product of liver toxicity. This explains why it’s so hard to get rid of through exercise and caloric restriction. By cleansing your liver, you enable your body to start getting rid of it. You don’t have to consume a ton of processed foods to have toxins in your liver. Even small amounts of alcohol, processed food and even the polluted air you breathe can cause fatty deposits to form in the liver and belly fat to be stored in order to protect your body from the toxins.

Best Foods and Spices for Detoxing Your Liver

Turmeric
Turmeric is used as a hangover remedy in some countries, because it detoxifies your liver. Unfortunately, sprinkling some curry on your chicken isn’t really sufficient to produce any noticeable results. Consuming half a teaspoon a day, combined with some black pepper (it boosts the absorption of curcumin, the active chemical in turmeric) will start to clear toxins from your liver. You can add turmeric to rice or simply drink it in some water.
Avocados
Avocados contain glutathione, which is the detoxifying chemical your liver uses to flush toxins. The high monounsaturated fat content also helps to eliminate fatty deposits in the liver. Monounsaturated fats are turned into glycerides and travel into the liver through the hepatic vein. Once there, they bind to toxic fatty build-ups and flush them out.
Tomatoes
Tomatoes are high in lycopene, which is a powerful antioxidant. Once ingested, it travels through your bloodstream and provides antioxidants for your body. One study even found out that sun damage is reduced greatly after consumption of tomato paste – that’s because lycopene reaches the skin as well, absorbing harmful sun radiation. In the liver, lycopene acts the same way as other antioxidants – it neutralizes free radicals, which cause DNA damage.
Cucumber Juice
Drinking a glass or two of cucumber juice each day is a nice way to detox your liver. Not only does it taste good (try it if you don’t believe me), but it is loaded with vitamins, antioxidants and minerals. It is a great replacement for water during the summer months and cleanses your whole body.
Green Tea
The benefits of green tea are countless. The EGCG it contains also promotes the elimination of dead hepatic cells, which often contain a lot of toxins. The liver naturally eliminates those cell deposits on its own, but the problem arises when it cannot keep up with the toxins you ingest. Green tea speeds up that clearance, which quickly detoxifies your liver.

Simple Detox Recipe Gets Rid of Belly Fat and Unclogs the Liver

Simply drinking a glass of juice every day will improve your health, but it will not magically eliminate fat, unless you are using a special smoothie recipe made specifically for rapid detox and fat loss, like the red tea detox(link)(not related to other red or green detox drinks online). Remember that belly fat is not used by your body for energy, which makes it almost impossible to ‘burn off’. Detoxing your body is the only proven and effective way to get rid of it, after which excessive body fat is often eliminated by your body as well.
You often hear of people losing a lot of weight (50+ pounds) after going on a juice fast. Although I don’t necessarily recommend this, as it is a bit too extreme, it just goes to show that detoxing your body really does eliminate stubborn fat. The amount of fat those people lost cannot be explained by any caloric equation and is therefore NOT a result of simply eating less calories.
‘Clogged up’ liver is a major reason why many people are having trouble losing weight. Your liver is the main storage organ for glucose and if it is clogged up with toxins, your energy metabolism simply doesn’t work right. Living in todays age, we consume countless unnatural substances and toxins even with our drinking water. Our body doesn’t know what to do with them, so it puts them in our fat cells. Fat-soluble toxins cannot be eliminated by the kidneys, which is why they are stored in the fat cells of your body. This explains why some people have a lot of trouble losing weight, regardless of how little they eat – the toxic overload makes it impossible for your body to readily burn body fat for energy, without releasing all the stored toxins first.

Eliminating Processed Food

Eliminating processed food will allow your body to get rid of the toxins more quickly. Simply look at food labels. Eat foods that contain basic ingredients. Avoid foods that contain any ingredient a 4-year old cannot recognize. Eating a plant-based diet helps a lot, but you don’t necessarily have to avoid meat. I still think it’s a great source of protein and eat it almost every day. However, avoid fried meat, as it is very high in nitrosamines, which lead to direct liver toxicity.
If you are not sticking to a special program for cleansing your body and instead trying to eliminate processed food and consume more healthy food without any plan, you can expect some hurdles, such as food cravings. Mild physical symptoms of sugar withdraw can also occur and headaches are common. Don’t let those small hurdles prevent you from sticking to your cleanse. The end result will be well worth it!

Posted by Angelina on March 25th 2018

How to Make Cucumber Juice
Cucumber juice is very easy to make – simply use your juicer. If you have a blender instead, blend the cucumbers with some water and strain the liquid. Almost 95% of a whole cucumber is in a liquid form, so a pound of cucumbers will make nearly 15 ounces of cucumber juice.
How Much to Drink?
I recommend drinking about 20 oz, or around half a liter of cucumber juice a day. This provides around 20% RDI of most vitamins and minerals. In the summer, I sometimes drink a lot more, especially if I can source organic cucumbers, free of excessive fertilizers and insecticides.
Why not just eat cucumbers?
Eating large amounts of cucumbers is not very fun at all, takes time, a lot of chewing and you end up with relatively large chunks of cucumber in your stomach, which reduces the absorption of the juice by almost half. The juice tastes very nice and is a very good replacement of water. It rapidly detoxifies your body, as opposed to being absorbed very slowly when you chew the cucumber. There are other factors I am not aware of, because you can definitely feel the detoxing effect after drinking a lot of the juice.

A Recipe for Rapid Detox and Weight Loss

Drinking the juice will definitely make your body eliminate some of the body fat, by removing the toxins that are clogging up your liver. If you’re looking for very fast detox and weight loss, I suggest the methods explained in the 3-week diet strategy (link). It describes a novel way to flip your fat-burning switch on for a long time with a special combination of diet and detoxing drinks. Detoxing flushes the fat-soluble toxins that stick to liver cells and interfere with hormone signaling. To do this, you need a special combination of antioxidant molecules. Once the toxins can be eliminated, the layer of fat, covering liver cells is eliminated and cell signaling can now work normally. This enables your body to get rid of visceral or belly fat naturally. Without the detox phase, the toxic fat keeps blocking insulin and leptin from getting to the cells of the liver and no amount of exercise of caloric restriction will burn off that fat.
Excess toxicity in your liver and belly is a major reason for the inability to lose weight. It also makes you feel sluggish and tired, as serotonin production in the gut is derailed. In addition to that, belly fat has been linked to a lot of diseases, including heart disease and diabetes. It is not a type of fat that your body uses for energy and is therefore very difficult to eliminate just by doing cardio or eating less calories.

How to Know if You Have Toxicity in Your Liver and Gut?

It’s a pretty safe bet that almost everyone living in today’s society has problems with liver toxicity. Even moderate consumption of alcohol, processed food, tap water forces your body to store the toxins in your belly, making you gain fat. Breathing the polluted air we have today is another huge factor, as toxins from the air rapidly enter the bloodstream and are then processed through the liver.

What About Other Green Juices?

Other green juices work just as well, but can be much, much stronger that cucumber juice. Drinking even a single shot of wheat grass or parsley juice can cause stomach problems and too rapid detoxification, leading to headaches and other temporary symptoms. I recommend cucumber juice, as it is very easy to make, cheap, easy to make in bulk, tastes very nice and works. If you tend to drink a lot of diet drinks with artificial sweeteners and other unhealthy drinks, replacing them with cucumber juice will have an even more pronounced effect.
So, that’s about it! Try drinking at least a glass or two of cucumber juice each day and you will soon notice the difference that comes from your liver being cleansed from all the toxins of modern living.
Posted by Angelina on March 24th, 2016

There are countless recipes for detox drinks and they all do work if you drink them. Many people start drinking these drinks and expect miraculous results in the first day. In order to experience the benefits, you have to stick to drinking this drink for at least a few days without making excuses – if you go to work you can put it in a water bottle and easily carry it around.
Here’s the simple recipe for my favorite detox drink:

• 10 oz. Water
• 1 tbsp. Honey
• 2 tbsp Lemon Juice
• 1/4 tsp. Turmeric

How It Works

The reason why detox drinks work well is partly because of the continuous intake of antioxidants. If you were to eat a meal with a high antioxidant content, the oxidants don’t stick around for very long and are rapidly excreted by your kidneys. Green tea antioxidants work for an hour or two and so do most other water-soluble antioxidants. When you consume them continuously in a drink however, the effects are much more renounced and you start to feel the benefits of the detox.
This detox drink works very well, because of the cleansing power of honey, mixed with the acidity of lemon juice and it’s vitamin c content. Turmeric rapidly removes toxins from the liver and some cultures even use it as a hangover remedy, as it cleanses all the toxins that are created as by produces of alcohol breakdown.

The King of Detox Drinks – The 4-Ingredient Red Tea!

If you’re looking for a potent way to quickly detox your liver, lose belly fat and increase energy levels and well being, look no further than the  Detoxing Red Tea. It’s a very easy recipe and perfect for weight loss. This is because a major mechanism of fat storage is the storing of fat-soluble toxins. This creates a layer of fat around liver cells, which keep the toxins. This layer interferes with basic hormone signaling and insulin can’t do it’s job properly. Since the layer of fat blocks the signal to “start burning fat”, it can be very difficult to get rid of belly fat through exercise. But get rid of the toxins with the special bio-available antioxidants in the red smoothie and the fat just melts. Another way to achieve this is to go on a long juice fast. However, a properly prepared detoxing drink can do this much more easily and painlessly.

Do Cleanses Help With Weight Loss?

Having toxins in your liver is a major reason why your body stores visceral fat. Also called belly fat, this type of fat is not used by your body for energy and wreaks havoc on your health. Diabetes is strongly linked to the presence of visceral fat. It increases the risk of developing heart disease and cancer and is almost impossible to get rid of through exercise. Having belly fat also makes it more difficult for your body to burn subcutaneous fat.
For some people who have a lot of toxic buildup in their liver, a proper detoxing supplement can be the trigger that enables their body to completely get rid of all the unnecessarily stored fat, which is the majority of it. This is because toxins are stored in a layer of fat, covering liver cells. This layer acts as a barrier and prevents signaling hormones from entering the cells. Once the liver is detoxed and this layer is eliminated, the signals to start burning fat can then get to the cells and belly fat gets naturally eliminated.

Energy levels

Your liver stores glucose, cleanses your blood and regulates serotonin. Serotonin is the main neurotransmitter and low levels to it cause clinical depression. Serotonin is regulated by the liver and produced in the intestines. Toxic buildup prevents that and shuts down serotonin production, making you feel sluggish, tired and depressed. Toxins also clog up your liver to prevent it’s basic metabolic functions that enable it to burn fat. As a result, it turns most of the glucose that goes through it in triglycerides, that are then stored in fat cells.

Written by Angelina on March 21st 2019

This is the most common hurdle in weight loss. It is so frustrating that it makes most people give up. They don’t put much effort into any diet, because in the back of their mind they know all the progress will be reversed and all the effort will be for nothing. Fortunately, this phenomena is not something that is unavoidable. In fact, it is simply a result of  following an ineffective diet! A diet program that is effective avoids this rubber band effect, by taking advantage of a hormone called leptin and by not restricting your calories too fast.

How Eating Less Makes You Gain Weight

As soon as your body ‘realizes’ you have stopped eating and started starving, it kills your leptin levels and puts the brakes on your metabolism. This is especially true for women, whose metabolism slows down even further as soon as their body thinks that they can starve. This is a simple evolutionary mechanism that is there to help you – it’s how we survived back in the day when food was scarce and there weren’t supermarkets on every street corner. When your body thinks its starving, it aims to preserve every last calorie your consume and decreases the amount of calories it burns though your metabolism.
What do I mean by “through your metabolism”? Well, your body does not burn calories only during physical exertion. If you were to lie down and watch TV, you would still burn between 50 and 100 calories each hour. People with fast metabolism burn more calories through their metabolism, regardless of how much they exercise. Of course, this is only a part of the ‘trick’, as burning calories does not necessarily mean you are burning body fat.

Don’t Restrict Your Calories Too Fast

As soon as you start to limit your calories quickly, your body will think you are in danger of starving to death and will shut down your metabolism. As long as you are in a caloric deficit, you will lose weight, although your progress will be extremely slow if you rely solely on the caloric equation. The problem comes when you start eating more at some point – then your metabolism will be much slower and your body will put on even more excess fat. Unless you plan on being on a caloric deficit for the rest of your life, this won’t work.

Instead, Focus on Eating Healthier at First.

Do limit your calories, but not by much. Eat slightly below your caloric expenditure or don’t even focus on calories at all, eat whenever you want. However, eat healthier food. Aim for natural food. What do I mean by natural? I’ve said it before – if a food contains an ingredient that a 4-year old doesn’t recognize, it probably isn’t natural. Keep eating like this while slowly decreasing your calories. That way, you will avoid putting on re-bound weight. By eating healthier food, you will also start to cleanse your liver, which will start getting rid of visceral fat – the worst fat for your health and the most difficult fat to get rid of through exercise.

The Secret – High-protein boosts Your Metabolism By Boosting Leptin

Leptin is a fat-burning hormone, especially important for women. A high-protein breakfast, containing 20-30g of protein can multiply your weight loss results as much as 10-fold. A high-carbohydrate, low-protein breakfast is a major reason for slow or nonexistent weight loss.
Most importantly, protein prevents your body from thinking it’s starving! Think about it – back in the day, high-protein foods were the most nutritious foods to eat. Pretty much, the only high-protein foods that existed were meat and nuts. If you had access to any of those, it usually means you are set for at least a few days and are not going to starve. Your body hasn’t changed much during modern society – it still has those basic mechanisms that prevent it from starving. If you are a vegetarian, you can still think of high-protein foods – nut protein and whole nuts are very good and so are lentils and beans.
Let me say it again: The more protein you consume, the more you can limit your calories and still keep your metabolism burning.
As basic and simple as this sounds, it’s probably the most important weight loss ‘secret’, so keep it in mind.

An Easy Diet Strategy That Gets Rid of Unwanted Fat, While Speeding Up Your Metabolism Even More

This video shows you a quick and easy to follow diet that rapidly gets rid of unwanted fat without causing any hunger pangs or plateaus. If you don’t have a lot of weight to lose or you are not in a rush, you can do it simply by using the principles above – slowly decrease your calories, while increasing your protein intake. You’d be surprised at how well this works – you can limit your calories a a lot without feeling hungry at all, provided that you keep your protein intake high. Consider that most people do the opposite – they quickly decrease their caloric intake and often eliminate meat, cheese and eggs from their diet, as those foods are high in calorie. What you are left with is a carbohydrate-heavy and low-protein diet that makes you hungry, kills your energy levels and leads to slow weight loss, that will be quickly reversed as soon as you stop ‘dieting’.

Posted by Angelina on March 17th 2014

Visceral fat is a bit different than the fat under your skin. It is not necessarily used by your body for energy and is therefore very difficult to get rid of through exercise and caloric restriction. All food that is absorbed through your stomach goes directly through your liver through the hepatic vein. Unfortunately, a lot of the food we consume today contains a lot of toxins in the form of preservatives, unnatural proteins (gluten), antitoxins and unhealthy fats. A lot of nutrition experts agree that this is the primary cause of the so-called ‘belly fat’ that your body stores in between your internal organs. This type of fat is the most dangerous, not only for your looks, but also for your health. The best way to get rid of it is not through exercise, but by cleansing your liver.

Foods that cleanse your liver

Try to include some of those foods in your diet on a daily basis. In general, foods that cleanse your liver are foods that are high in antioxidants and flavanoids. This is part of the reason why many people lose a lot of weight by drinking green shakes – they pack a powerful antioxidant punch. Here is a quick list of antioxidant-rich foods, drinks and spices:

• Green tea
• Garlic
• Turmeric
• Walnuts
• Greens

Green tea contains EGCG, a powerful antioxidant that reverses liver damage and scavenges free radicals. Spices like turmeric do the same and nuts like walnut contain ample amounts of fat-soluble antioxidants, which are particularly helpful for cleansing your liver. Greens like spinach contain vitamin c and chlorophyll, in addition to dozens of other well-known antioxidant compounds.

Foods to avoid

Avoid foods that contain too much polyunsaturated oils (vegetable oil). Mono-unsaturated fat, which is the fat in olive oil is fine. Processed foods and drinks that contain fructose are the two biggest liver-killers and should be avoided at all costs. Many people look at nutrition labels and when they realize the food is low in calories they feel free to consume as much of it as they want. However, the liver-clogging action of those foods will make you store visceral fat, regardless of the amount of calories you consume.

How to Get Rid of Belly Fat With a Daily Detoxing Smoothie

If you’re looking to quickly detox your liver and lose belly fat, check out the four-ingredient red smoothie recipe here. Belly fat is closely related to fatty liver – the fat-soluble toxins that the liver processes require a strong antioxidant molecule to be converted to water-soluble ones, so that they can then be excreted by the kidneys. Without that antioxidant molecule, the toxins get stuck to a fat layer, covering each cell. This layer of fat interferes with hormone signaling, and no matter how little calories you eat, the “signal” to start burning off the fat doesn’t get through. The red smoothie solves this problem by rapid detoxification of the liver. Once the layer of fat is then eliminated, cell signaling works correctly and fat automatically starts to get eliminated.
As we already said, belly fat is often very stubborn and can be almost impossible to get rid of through exercise. It is extremely important to get rid of it, as it is the primary cause of many diseases, including heart disease and diabetes. In fact, many studies find no link with subcutaneous fat and health issues, which may mean that only visceral (belly) fat is bad for your health. Even small amounts of it can disrupt the function of your internal organs and prevent your liver from properly metabolizing glucose. Following a detox diet is an easy and effective way to enable your body to get rid of all belly fat.
 

 

Intermittent fasting has become very popular in the last few years and a lot of diet programs incorporate it. It is very close to the natural way people ate during the first ~90% of evolution and it is one of the easiest ways to ‘force’ your body to resort to using your fat stores for energy.
What exactly is intermittent fasting? Intermittent fasting tells you when to eat and when not to eat. If you have never tried it before and you are used to constant snacking, stick to a 16 hour fast and an 8 hour eating window. If you already eat larger portions 3 or 2 times per day, you already do something very close to this, so you can try an 18 hour fast and a 6 hour eating window. That’s it! Now let’s dig deeper and see what results can we expect from this, and how to improve this fast to achieve even faster results.

Eating Constantly

A few years ago, the advice of eating smaller portions thorough the day (i.e constantly snacking) became popular and most people regarded it as healthy. In recent years this has been largely dis-proven and most nutrition and fitness experts now agree that it’s better to eat a few larger meals. Constant snacking leads to increased insulin resistance, weight gain and most importantly – being constantly hungry. This is a bit counter-intuitive, but when you think about it it makes perfect sense – constantly “teasing” yourself with minute portions makes you think about food constantly. Not only that, but your body never resorts to burning body fat, as it has a continuous stream of food coming in constantly.
Have you seen a skinny girl eating a huge portion of pizza and thought to yourself “Well, she has good genetics, that’s why she has a slim body”. Although this is definitely a big part of it, I know a lot of women who eat huge meals and on first sight can seem like they are overeating. However, little do you know that after this huge meal of up to 1000kcal, she will usually not eat anything for a long time – sometimes 24 hours or even more. This is actually a common habit and a lot of skinny girls I see at my gym have it, without even realizing they do ‘intermittent fasting’.

How to do IF properly

Rule 1 – Be in a caloric deficit
Yes, you still have to ‘limit’ your calories. However, if you think this will be hard and you will be hungry, you’ll probably be surprised. In my experience, constant small meals create huge hunger pangs and big meals, followed by a good period of fasting don’t cause any hunger at all. In fact, you will be surprised at the increased energy levels you experience. However, don’t be surprised if you feel a little sluggish for an hour or two after a big meal.
Drink Water
Although I’m not a huge fan of drinking copious amounts of water – something that a lot of people recommend, during your fasting stage your body does burn a lot of fat, which creates a lot of by-products it needs to get rid of. Keeping it hydrated will help a lot and completely prevent any hunger you may experience.
Really do calculate your calories
Don’t just eat food without any regard for your calories. A major reason for failure with IF is eating too little calories with your meals. Depending on your weight and physical activity level you may need anywhere from 1500 to 2000 kcal.
Watch the results
The weight loss you achieve depends on many factors, but you will definitely notice good results. The only way to not lose weight while on intermittent fasting is to consume a lot of calories in surplus. Even being at a slight caloric surplus will make you lose weight, especially if you keep your protein intake high.

Get 10-fold the Results By Boosting Leptin Levels

A secret for extremely fast results is to boost your leptin levels in addition to doing a short (16-hour) fast. You can read about boosting leptin levels here.
Written by Angelina on 14th March