Did you know that adipose tissue (body fat) is a storage site for fat soluble toxins? And did you also know that to effectively lose body fat you need to be able to rid your body of these harmful toxins.
When you try to lose body fat without having an optimal detoxification system, the toxins are all too often mobilised and redistributed around the body instead of being excreted through your liver. (This can cause you harm and show up in symptoms such as migraines, nausea, diarrhoea and it can be a large reason for stubborn fat loss especially in the lower body). So to help prevent this from happening and to make sure the toxins are eliminated successfully, it is important that you support your body’s ability to detoxify.
Your liver is the main organ for detoxification, there are two phases involved (phase 1 and phase 2) and it requires a lot of nutrients to be able to function optimally.
I see a lot of food diaries and one of the most common things I notice is a lack of healthy nutritious food groups. People all too often follow low calorie and low level nutrient diet plans in an attempt to lose weight, without realising that the very food groups they are limiting themselves from are the essentials they need for detoxification and fat loss.
So to give you a little bit of education, here’s a list of some of the nutrients that are required for each phase of detoxification.
Phase 1
Nutrients
Vit A, Vit B3, Vit C, Vit B6, Vit E, Folic acid, Vit B12, Branched chain amino acids, flavonoids, phospholipids, Selenium, Copper, zinc, manganese, Co Q10
Phase 2
Nutrients
Glycine, Taurine, Glutamine, N-acetylcysteine, Cysteine, Methionine.
Now the nutrients listed above may look like a lot of letters and numbers if you’re not familiar with nutrition but they all play a very important part in the excretion of hormones, chemicals and toxins out of the body.
Is this modern age of excess chemicals, stress and toxins, most people will have some form of liver malfunction and they will benefit hugely from supporting their detoxification system.
The first step to reducing your toxic load and supporting your liver is to readdress your diet and make sure that you’re including more colourful vegetables, healthy fats and lean sources of protein. You should make sure your meat and vegetables are coming from an organic source and also make sure that you filter your water daily.
Here is a small list of detoxifying foods:
Chicken
Turkey
fresh water fish
Grass Fed Beef
Watercress
Spinach
Broccoli
Cabbage
Cauliflower
Onion family
Garlic
Berries
Consuming the foods listed above is always going to be beneficial to your health, but certain liver detoxification pathways are so deficient nowadays, that there is need for more targeted support.
So here is a list of extra supporting nutrients that you could look into:
A good quality Multivitamin, Green Tea, Tumeric, Dandelion, Milk Thistle, Alpha Lipoic Acid, N-Acetyl Cysteine (NAC) and Calcium-D-Glucarate
Whenever I focus on liver detoxifying nutrients with my clients I always see favourable results in their body composition. Take some time to reassess your diet and make sure that you are really looking after one of your body’s vital organs.
