Obesity is a continually growing trend in countries consuming more and more fast foods. But this spike in weight gain can’t be entirely blamed on diet and a lack of exercise: chemical toxins contribute to fat storage and limit weight loss.

We live in an environment steeped in chemicals that our bodies were not designed to process. Over 80,000 chemical toxins have been introduced into the market since World War II. They are in the water we drink, the food we eat, the cleansers we use, our beauty products and even the air we breathe. Toxins literally surround us.

Even babies are contaminated. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals found that the average newborn has 287 chemicals in his or her umbilical cord blood, 217 of which are neurotoxic (poisonous to nerves or nerve cells).

What is a Toxin and How The Body Processes Them?

Toxins can be split into two groups:

Fat-soluble toxins and water-soluble toxins.

Water-soluble toxins are easily flushed out via the blood and kidneys. This is often called the phase 2 detoxification pathway.

Fat-soluble toxins are harder to eliminate. These fat-soluble toxins include heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides, bisphenol-A (BPA), pollutants, preservatives, food additives (MSG), and other environmental chemicals we encounter in our daily lives.

To eliminate these toxins from the body, they have to be processed by the liver to become water-soluble. Our phase 1 detoxification pathway is the process of converting these fat-soluble toxins into water-soluble toxins for excretion in phase 2.

How Toxin Exposure Leads To Fat Gain

When toxins enter our bodies, they are sent to the liver to be broken down and flushed away. But when the liver is overwhelmed or not getting enough nutritional support and the heart and other organs are endangered, our bodies revert to a backup plan and jail the leftover toxins, locking them away inside fat cells.

By locking up the toxins in fat cells, the vital organs and tissues are protected from damage. But there is a downside; not only does this cause unhealthy body fat, but these fat cells can cause inflammation and health issues in the body and brain.

As environmental and internal toxin levels climb, these overwhelm the liver more and more often. As a result, more toxins, along with more fat, must be stuffed into storage for later disposal. The number of fat cells increases to deal with the toxic load and people quickly become overweight.

Losing Weight with Toxins

These toxins also make it very difficult to lose weight. Fat cells packed with toxic compounds don’t function very well. These malfunctioning cells continually release Leptin, which burns out receptors, leading to Leptin resistance. Leptin is a hormone that regulates appetite and turns fat cells from fat storing to fat burning. Leptin resistance tells our bodies that we need more food and need to store more fat even when there is plenty of it stockpiled away. This drive to overeat and makes losing pounds problematic.

Even without Leptin resistance, if high toxin levels are still entering the body while we are desperately trying to lose weight through healthy diet changes and exercise, our body will still continue to combine these toxins with fat and store them away in cells where they do less damage. We may be burning through old stores, but the body keeps making new ones.

Dropping pounds and inches means releasing and burning fat stores, which can flood the system with toxins that had been previously locked away. This toxic torrent into our system slows down the weight loss process, which is one of the causes of weight loss plateau, and can lead to a yo-yo effect as the body responds to the assault by filling fat cells over and over as we rerelease stored poisons time and time again.

Remove Toxins from Your Life

Toxins cannot be avoided in today’s polluted world. It’s shocking how many of these toxins penetrate our body and affect us on many levels, both physical and mental. We are exposed to too many, but there are some steps we can take to help our body get rid of stored toxins, and prevent new ones from accumulating. Here are 7 ways to do that:

1. Minimize your exposure to toxins. Avoid alcohol, cigarettes, refined sugars, processed foods, all of which act as toxins in the body and are obstacles to your healing process. Also, reduce or eliminate the use of toxic household cleaners and body care products and look for more natural soaps, shampoos, deodorants, and detergents.

2. Eat foods that help you detoxify such as cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, kailan, chinese cabbage, bok choy, cauliflower), watercress, spinach, celery, parsley, spirulina, wheatgrass, activated charcoal, carrot, beetroot, green tea, cilantro, garlic, ginger, turmeric, citrus fruits and cacao.

3. Cleanse your body. Even if you eat a relatively healthy diet and you exercise regularly, this maintenance is not necessarily enough to repair your entire system and flush out the toxins that are hiding in your cells, tissues, and organs. That’s where detoxification and cleansing come in. The purpose of a juice cleanse is to give your body a break from toxins and solid food while supporting the organs of elimination by consuming enzymes, vitamins and other molecules that will improve and optimize the natural detoxification process.

4. Sweat it out! When you exercise and your body temperature rises, you increase blood flow, which in turn transfers heat from the core of the body to the skin. The sweating process helps eliminate heavy metals and toxic chemicals. Exercise and saunas are both great ways to work up a sweat.

5. Find ways to reduce stress hormones in your body. While these hormones can provide the adrenaline needed in a stressful situation, in large amounts they create toxins and slow down detoxification enzymes in the liver. Yoga and meditation are simple and effective ways to relieve stress by resetting your physical and mental reactions to the inevitable stress you encounter in life.

6. Make sure you’re eliminating regularly. Having one or two well formed bowel movements a day is essential for moving waste out of the body. Make sure to drink plenty of water and consume a diet rich in fiber.

7. Lose weight gradually. Don’t go for the crazy weight loss diets that lose big too quickly, but go for a few pounds at a time. This will let your body deal with the released toxins slowly and manageably, breaking them down and flushing them away without overwhelming your liver or feeling the need to incarcerate them once more in the fat storage facilities on your brain, stomach, butt, or anywhere else you don’t want it.

You can manage your weight loss if you are smart about what you eat, how active you are, and how many toxins you remove from your life. You don’t have to go big. Start small, but start today.