Common food sensitivities can cause bloating and weight gain.
When most people hear the term "food sensitivities," they imagine a stuffed or runny nose, itchy eyes, or other common symptoms from environmental allergens. While food sensitivities can cause these symptoms, they can also masquerade as other health issues, including weight gain and bloating.
Tissue swelling or bloating is a common symptom linked to eating foods to which you are sensitive. Some people lose weight just from cutting out those trigger foods. Some foods that commonly cause sensitivities are wheat, dairy products, corn and corn derivatives, soy, refined sugar, eggs, coffee or caffeine, beef, fish, or shellfish. Of course, there are others, but these are the most common offenders.
How to Benefit: While many people recommend rotation diets of specific foods and food families, that is simply not plausible for most people. If you suspect you are sensitive to a particular food, eliminate it from your diet for a month and see how you feel.
It may take a while to notice an improvement because the food can still be in your system or causing inflammation in your body long after you last ingested it. If you suspect sensitivities, but are not sure what foods are the culprits, try eliminating the most common ones above.
Super Health Bonus: If you eliminate foods to which you are sensitive, you'll experience much higher energy levels.
8. Don't bother with diet pills
Diet pills contain the chemical phenylethylamine, which will make you binge once you stop taking them.
Most commercial diet products—particularly diet pills—do not work. Over-the-counter diet pills usually contain the ingredient phenylethylamine, which should be avoided. These pills trick your brain into thinking that you're not hungry, which may be fine while you're taking them. But as soon as you stop taking the pills and return to the generally unhealthy eating patterns most people have, you'll find the weight quickly returns. Or worse, you may gain more weight than you started with.
How to Benefit: This is fairly straightforward. Just avoid or stop taking diet pills. Of course, if they are prescribed by your physician, you should consult her first.
Super Health Bonus: Not only will you avoid the rebound weight gain linked with diet pills, you'll also avoid the heartburn, nausea, constipation, headaches, and insomnia to which they are linked.
9. Don't drink diet shakes
Glutamate, the protein that is found in most weight-loss drinks, can actually make you fatter.
Diet drinks are usually high-protein shakes made with isolated amino many different amino acids to build new tissue, heal existing tissue, and perform many other functions. A deficiency in just one can cause a host of health issues. Most diet drinks encourage amino acid deficiencies by using amino acids in a way not intended by nature.
Diet shakes are not substitutes for a healthy diet. Having said that, replacing a meal with a highly nutritious shake can help with weight-loss efforts, provided you include the right ingredients and avoid the harmful ones.
How to Benefit: Start by purchasing a whole foods protein powder. Avoid any protein powders that contain isolated protein, isolated vegetable protein, or isolated soy protein, since these unnatural ingredients have been linked to many health issues. Additionally, avoid any protein powders that contain autolyzed or hydrolyzed ingredients since they usually reflect isolated proteins that are damaging to the body.
Super Health Bonus: Not only will you notice that it's easier to lose weight when you eliminate diet shakes containing glutamate, you'll find that by avoiding the protein powders containing isolated amino acids, you'll have fewer headaches and other nagging health concerns.
10. Uncover hidden MSG
This common food additive causes you to feel hungry even when you're not.
Protein powders and shakes are not the only hiding places for isolated amino acids. Anything that contains monosodium glutamate (MSG) is also an issue. And unfortunately, MSG has not only been shown in countless studies to be linked to weight gain and hunger, but it's also a proven neurotoxin—a toxin that does serious damage to the brain and nervous system.
Avoid these hidden sources of MSG and little-known names for MSG to make sure you're not including these health dangers in your diet.
How to Benefit: It's inexcusable, considering the volumes of research proving the damaging effects of MSG, that government agencies still allow the food-processing and fast-food industries to continue using this toxin. Until they stop, you need to take charge of the food ingredients that you're consuming. Next time you're buying packaged foods, be sure to take the above list with you to avoid harmful chemicals that are most likely sabotaging your weight-loss efforts and negatively impacting your health.
Super Health Bonus: Eliminating MSG from your diet can have innumerable effects in addition to weight loss. Because MSG is linked to mood disorders, headaches and migraines, anxiety disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, autism, and many others, you may notice that your moods become more balanced, your anxiety and depression diminish, you have fewer headaches and migraines, and your mental alertness improves.
11. Reduce Pesticides and Heavy Metals
Pesticides and heavy metals disrupt your body's natural fat-burning processes. Once you reduce your exposure, your body will be better able to rebalance.
Common toxins found in the environment, food, personal care products, and surprising other sources can interfere with your body's natural fat-burning processes by impairing important enzymes involved in metabolism. These harmful toxins include heavy metals and pesticides.
How to Benefit: Don't spray your lawn with pesticides. Avoid using pesticides or insecticides in your home. Choose organic produce as much as possible, particularly for the "dirty dozen." The dirty dozen are foods that research shows consistently contain high levels of pesticides. They are peaches, apples, bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, lettuce, grapes, pears, spinach, and potatoes. If you aren't able to purchase only organic products, be sure to try to find organic variations of the dirty dozen especially.
Super Health Bonus: By eliminating pesticides from your home and lawn you may decrease your risk of brain diseases like Parkinson's. Parkinson's disease has been linked to pesticide exposures by large amounts of research.
12. Wipe out white flour
This particular type of carb leads to weight gain and dangerous blood sugar spikes.
According to research by Katherine L. Tucker, PhD, of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, Tufts University, people who eat three or four servings daily of foods made with white flour (including white bread, wheat bread, bagels, muffins, pancakes, cookies, pies, and cakes) have significantly larger waistlines than people whose carbs come primarily from whole grains.
That's not surprising when you understand that refined flour and the baked goods and cereals made from them are treated almost the same as white sugar in your body. They cause rapid blood sugar spikes, which cause your pancreas (the organ just below your ribs on the left side of your abdomen that regulates digestion and blood sugar) to secrete insulin.
How to Benefit: Avoid eating foods made with refined sugar or white or wheat flour. Over time your desire for these types of foods will diminish. If you're still craving sweets, eat a meal or a snack more often—about every 2 to 3 hours. Be sure your meal contains some protein foods like fish, chicken, nuts, seeds, tofu, or beans. Eating more healthy fats such as coconut oil, flaxseeds and flaxseed oil, avocado, and nuts can also help you feel full longer. You can also supplement with chromium.
Super Health Bonus: Eat moderate amounts of healthy carbs. They include most vegetables (sorry, potatoes don't work on a slimming program), whole grains, legumes, and fruit (eat fruit occasionally, and avoid pineapples and bananas until you've reached your target weight—and then eat them only in minimal amounts, because of the high amount of sugars they contain).
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