Environmental toxins are getting worse.

And I don’t mean that as a generality. I mean it on a very real, very personal level.

We’ve passed the point where taking “reasonable caution” or “buying all organic” is enough.

We’re exposed to too many chemicals every day. They’re in our personal care products, the clothes we buy, the fabric of our car seats, and our dishwashing liquids. We even have toxic heavy metals in our baby foods.

But we’ve heard all of this before, seen all the stats and figures.

What does it really mean? How does this work, how do these things actually harm us? And is it really that bad?

Let’s have a real example and you tell me.

Well done on completing the 30 Day Fat Loss Challenge!

This is no small achievement!

We’ve balanced hormones and repaired or replaced at least a trillion or so cells, if not 10 or 20 trillion.

We’ve removed fatty deposits not only from our fat cells, but from our blood vessels, where it can narrow blood flow, causing more work for our heart.

We’ve removed fatty deposits from our organs, where it can make them less efficient or prevent them from doing their job. (Not good.)

And we’ve improved our digestion and microbiome, the most important gatekeepers for our overall health.

In short… we’ve done a lot!

You’ve probably heard of the Cholesterol Hypothesis.

This is a hypothesis that higher levels of cholesterol, particularly LDL Cholesterol, are associated with higher rates of Heart Disease.

This hypothesis is so deeply ingrained in our understanding of how the body works that challenging it is almost laughable. (Even though it’s still just a hypothesis after all these decades.)

However, over the last decade, more and more scientists and doctors have been doing that for one very glaring reason: there is no evidence to support the hypothesis.

Welcome to the final week of the 30-Day Fat Loss Challenge!

During this challenge we’ve had our ups and downs as cravings came and went and hormones began to balance.

But by Week Four things have evened out or soon will.

Energy levels rise, mood may become more even, sleep becomes more restful, digestion improves, and overall health rises.

And, of course, we’ve lost a significant amount of body fat.

As we near the end of the Fat Loss stage of this or any protocol, fat loss will slow. We might still have some extra fat, but it’s not coming off or it’s coming off very slowly.

Also, we’re getting hungry. Not for sugar or junk food, but hunger for more nutrition.

At this point, it’s counter-productive to carry on with Fat Loss, even if we have a bit more to lose. We need to do something else.

We know our bodies do most of their repair while we sleep. But did you know they do most of their fat-burning while we sleep as well?

That’s right. And if our sleep is interrupted often, it can lead to not only less fat-burning taking place, but more fat-creation.

There is a reason this is the Fat Loss Challenge, not the Weight Loss Challenge.

Usually when someone wants to be thinner, trimmer, fitter-looking, they say: “I need to lose weight.”

And that’s the first error, because weight loss is not necessarily the same as fat loss.

Any time we go on a diet, cutting out sugar or cutting down on food, we go through one phase before anything else. Cravings. This can be for sugar or junk food or processed food or just food. But your body wants and it makes you feel that want.

If you ever felt alone in your struggle to lose fat and keep it off — you’re not.

There's a reason fat loss programs in America are a $72 billion per year industry. In the past forty-plus years, the percentage of obese Americans have increased from slightly less than 10% to more than 40%, according to the CDC.

But this isn’t due to laziness or lack of discipline on our part. No. We have modern foods to blame for this.

If you’ve ever had trouble with diets, losing weight, or simply keeping the weight off, let’s start by saying… It’s not you.

Let me say that one more time in case you didn't get it. It’s. Not. You. Period.

Every year, over a hundred million Americans make New Year’s Resolutions. And, there’s one resolution made more often than any of the others: the goal to lose weight. It’s also the one that’s given up on the fastest.

Why is that the case?

Let me start by saying: No, fat doesn’t make you fat. Sugars, mainly processed sugars, do. 

Fat from food is not converted to fat in the body without the presence of sugar. But due to their effects on our hormones, some fats can help us lose weight, and some make us gain it.

Now, there are many types of fat, both that you eat and your body creates, and different fats are used for various actions in your body. 

There are several things that control cravings or make it hard to get off sugar, as covered in this article here: What Causes Cravings For Sugar & Junk Food?

Causes mentioned in that article include hormones, messenger chemicals in the body that tell the cells what to do or not do, how to use energy or not, whether to build muscle or break it down, or add fat or burn it.