By Melanie Stewart

“Probably nothing in the world arouses more false hopes than the first four hours of a diet.” – Dan Bennett

It’s a new year and millions of people worldwide once again committed to the number one resolution:  Losing Weight. 75% lasted only a week. Rather than using the scale as the barometer of success, I’ve been encouraging you to look at your internal numbers including triglyceride and glucose levels, cholesterol ratios and markers of internal inflammation. When you understand how your internal numbers influence your external results, it becomes much easier to make the choices that achieve measurable improvements to your overall health, including your weight.

“The second day of the diet is always easier than the first.  By the second day you’re off of it.” – Jackie Gleason

We left off in the Almighty Liver which is the perfect place to begin the New Year.  As you may recall, foods that breakdown into glucose (sugar) trigger the release of insulin (fat storage hormone), the production of triglycerides (stored fat) and can contribute to chronic inflammation.  DEAD food dominated diets high in processed and packaged foods, high sugar junk foods and starches fried in vegetable oil are especially problematic. Normal fasting blood sugar levels are under 100 but ideally they should be 60 – 85. Let’s detour here for a minute and talk about cholesterol. Every cell membrane in your body is made with cholesterol which not only preserves the integrity of the cell; it basically keeps us from evaporating! The liver produces cholesterol out of whatever we eat but its preferred building material is healthy fats. Good quality fats create good quality cholesterol while bad fats create poor quality cholesterol.

Let’s go back and picture our tubing one more time:  Our blood pressure is incredibly strong. In fact, the human heart pumps blood at such pressure that uncontained it would be able to raise blood up to the fourth story of a building! It makes sense then, that the cells that line our tubing need strong membranes made of high quality cholesterol to prevent erosion. Erosion of the arteries is a real thing and it’s called atherosclerosis.Rather than thinking in terms of good or bad cholesterol, let’s redefine into a direction. Ldl: Leave da Liver.  Ldl cholesterol leaves the liver and goes to work building cell membranes, synthesizing hormones, delivering nutrients to cells, and as a volunteer if there is a problem. That doesn’t sound so bad!  So how did Ldl get such a bad rap? Chronic Inflammation.

Inflammation is not complicated — it is quite simply your body’s natural defense to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus. If we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods it was never designed to process, a condition occurs called chronic inflammation. There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day.

So, what’s the true culprit?  A high sugar, DEAD food dominated diet that leads to highly acidic and destructive blood and poor quality cholesterol that makes weak membranes/patches.

Fun Fact: Insulin is also a growth hormone. During periods of growth we produce more insulin which triggers the liver to produce more cholesterol for all those new cells needing a membrane.  As adults though, excess insulin can fool your body into thinking that it’s growing and thus your cholesterol numbers go up, not from fat, FROM SUGAR! Another not so fun fact: Cancer cells have more insulin receptors than normal cells and will happily gobble up excess sugar to fuel their growth. Yikes!

Melanie Stewart has written 2 books for children (Yum Tum, Good Food is Fun! and Yum Tum, We Get it Done!) and one for adults (Yum Tum For Everyone!) all available on Amazon. For more information, to book a seminar, or for private counseling, you can fill out the contact form at: https://www.yumtumnutrition.com/ or email:  melanie@yumtumnutrition.com.  All content is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech laws. It’s not meant to give individual medical advice or to make any health claims on the prevention or curing of diseases.

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