Cavewomen Don't Get Fat by Esther Blum Page A

For a more comprehensive lifestyle guide to toxins, treat yourself to Debra Lynn Dadd’s amazing book Home Safe Home: Protecting Yourself and Your Family from Everyday Toxics and Harmful Household Products .
Food as Medicine: Detoxifying Your Diet
    Now that you’ve started to kick environmental toxins to the curb, it’s time to get the dirty stuff out of your diet too.
    When we work consciously to avoid ingesting toxins, we prime our bodies to lose weight, lower our risks of getting hormone-related illness (such as diabetes, certain cancers, heart disease), and improve our moods, our sex drive, and, of course, our overall energy.
    What we put into our bodies matters. We know that some items are no-nos because they make us fat and, even worse, sick. Every Paleo Chic woman banishes tobacco, eliminates refined sugars, and cuts way, way back on her alcohol consumption. (Of course, indulging in a celebratory cosmopolitan or margarita now and then is fine.) We also go easy on caffeine and strive to buy organic, fresh, grass-fed, and local foods whenever possible.
    Here are other Paleo Chic ways to protect yourself from toxic overload:
    â€¢Â Eat your greens. Dark leafy greens and bright green vegetables are like free-radical-seeking drones: they’re rich in chlorophyll and help keep our livers functioning at their highest capacity.
    â€¢Â Pile your plate with fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs in a rainbow of colors. Color indicates the presence of vitamins and minerals, and the more vibrant they are, the more toxin-fighting power they have.
    â€¢Â Eat organic. Believe it or not, it takes only a week of eating all-organic to allow your body to eliminate the pesticide residue that it may have built up. Even if you can’t buy organic all the time, doing so as much as possible will do your body a world of good.
    â€¢Â Up your antioxidant intake by eating more berries, cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, bok choy,watercress, cabbage), dark green vegetables, tomatoes, avocados, and nuts. Think of antioxidants as nature’s firemen. They’ll tap out inflammation, which can manifest as joint pain and skin conditions such as psoriasis and acne. They promote cell growth and help create a cellular barrier to free radicals, which are like little pinballs that seek electrons from other cells in order to make themselves more stable. These free radicals accelerate aging, initiate buildup of plaque in arteries, suppress the immune system, cause digestive disorders, and damage the reproductive organs and lungs.
    â€¢Â Clean up your gut. Keeping the ecosystem in your intestinal tract healthy and balanced will keep you regular and fight against low-grade infections (including yeast infections), food allergies, and other gastrointestinal ailments.
    â€¢Â Drink lots and lots of clean, filtered water. Nothing dilutes poisons and cleans like good old H 2 O.
    GMOS=OMG!
    Topping the ever-growing list of things to do to protect our health: steering clear of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). A GMO is an organism—plant, bacteria, animal—that has had its genetic structure artificially engineered, or modified, to create a different organism. For example, a particular type of corn may be engineered to resist diseases or to guarantee larger yields. Much of our food is being messed with in laboratories, and the result is what I like to think of as an agricultural “hate child” of modern technology merging with corporate greed. Big biotech companies do not have your best interests at heart. I don’t know about you, but patenting the world’s food supply doesn’t sound like such a good idea to me.
    Some companies have also contractually limited farmers’ ability to use GM seeds from their crops. Farmers must buy newseeds every year instead of growing from the previous year’s yield. Ironically, GM crops have shown no increase in yield. GMOs are bad for your