The difference between good and bad inflammation
Any way you look at it, there is but one bottom line: Inflammation is the cause of most, if not all, illnesses. Chronic inflammation will also prevent you from losing weight. That’s why I spend so much time discussing it in The A-List Diet.
In itself, inflammation is a good thing. It’s how your body protects and heals itself. Without it, wounds and infections would never get better. Any time you injure yourself or are exposed to some sort of infection, your immune system responds by sending out substances called “inflammatory mediators,” which increase blood flow and allow more white blood cells to get through your blood vessel walls to the site of the infection or injury. All of this is necessary for the body to heal. On the flip side, when inflammation is too active or doesn’t go away, it can make us sick. We know that major chronic illnesses, such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes, are linked to weight gain, and in turn to inflammation.
Chronic inflammation generally makes your life miserable. It causes arthritis pain, fibromyalgia, allergies, back pain, and so on. And if you don’t rein it in, it can lead to more serious conditions such as heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease, to name but a few. But as complicated as the inflammatory process is, keeping it under control is actually quite simple. Like most health problems, the best place to start battling inflammation is with food.
I’d go so far as to say inflammation is a full-on crisis and decreasing it should be priority number one. The A-List Diet is, at its core, an anti-inflammatory diet. Once you are able to conquer inflammation, the rest of your health will fall into place.
To learn more about my tips for managing inflammation, check out page 15 of The A-List Diet book. I share my “six tips for lowering inflammation” and how the A-List Diet program does all of this for you. Many of my patients have felt better within just a few days of starting it. Their energy level improves, sleep gets better, and an overall sense of well-being increases—all things you can expect to feel from the moment you start the program.
A-Listers’ Corner
Question: Do I need to eat all of this food in the book?
Answer: No! These are your options, but you do not have to force-feed yourself all these foods. Just eat when you are hungry from the lists I have provided.
With the A-List Diet, you will hardly even feel hungry and you will also learn how to manage your cravings.
The A-List Diet is all about finding the right balance to suit your specific needs.
One more thing…
The A-List Diet removes toxic food from your diet. But if you are squeamish about the thought of giving up your “favorite” foods—don’t worry! While giving up sugar may seem like an insurmountable task, consider this: It takes only three days.
Once you can get past the seventy-two-hour mark, your physiological craving for sugar goes away and you are left with just the psychological craving. I am not going to say that the psychological craving can’t be difficult to overcome, but getting rid of the physiological craving makes dealing with your psyche a lot easier. And take it from me—a former overweight person whose favorite food was (and still is) ice cream—there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t still think of eating it. But it’s only on very rare occasions that I ever actually do.
It’s okay to think about unhealthy foods as long as you’re not frequently acting on those thoughts—and The A-List Diet is here to show you how.