Weight gain: discover how to avoid the hidden pounds

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Weight is big business, making a lot of companies and individuals oodles of money through helping you to lose weight; pills, diet programmes, cook books and eat only vegetables retreats.

Most information campaigns or television programmes say “Eat less and exercise more to lose weight” in part that is correct but when they use the word ‘eat’ I would use the words ‘absorb’.  You can’t just look at what you eat to get a picture on your weight, you have to look at your environment too.

What do I mean by absorb?

You come into contact with calories everywhere; even some teas now have candy cane in them, what happened to the good, old fashioned, Earl Grey or Yorkshire tea?  Anyway, these calories can be in your food, but usually they are ‘chemical calories’ (a term coined by Dr Paula Ballie-Hamilton in her book The Detox Diet) and later called ‘obesogens‘ by Bruce Blumberg.

These CHEMICAL CALORIES are the key in the obesity & weight issue but where are they hidden?

This list may horrify you, consider yourself forewarned:

• Air fresheners: synthetic chemicals abound in these in home or office stinkers!
• Cleaning products:  Often have many synthetic chemicals, why else do they have a poison control number in case your child drinks it?
• Perfumes and colognes: anytime you see ‘fragrance’ on a label, or ‘parfum‘, it can hide a mass of undisclosed ingredients many of which are synthetic chemicals, or chemical calories!
• Washing liquids and dryer sheets- contain synthetic chemicals (unless you are choosing a genuinely eco-friendly brands) and traces of these are then in the fibres of your clothes, (you know how some powders make you itch and others don’t?).  You wear clothes next to your skin all day & night!  Clean washing doesn’t smell of flowers or happy meadows!
• Sofa, furniture coverings and new electronics. That new computer ‘smell’ is often brominated fire retardant or PBDE- not something you want to breathe in or absorb.  Allow a new TV or computer to be plugged in for a week or two in a room with an open window before using it.
• Skin care products and make up- you likely know by now, if you read my blog regularly, that skin care and make up can be a battle ground of toxins.  Yet did you know that these toxins can accumulate in your body and make you fat?  Perhaps another reason to clean up your life in 2012?

There is now a film out called “Programmed to be Fat” by Dreamfilm (Canada) this is exciting stuff as the message is getting more mainstream rather than merely those on the fringe talking about it.

If you want the low down on what toxins you could avoid, and I highly suggest you do, then check out Bruce Lourie and Rick Smith’s book called “Slow Death By Rubber Duck” a scary but fascinating read all about what skin care, toothpaste, plastics and many other things are exposing you too.  Ignorance isn’t an option, learn today!

Do you avoid chemical calories? Have you heard the term obesogen or is this all new to you?