The 10 Fat Flush Commandments: Part 1

January 11, 2023
Ann Louise Gittleman, PhD, CNS

Ann Louise Gittleman, PhD, CNS

Award-winning nutritionist and New York Times bestselling author.

Surprising links between weight loss, your liver, your lymph and eating the right fat.

 

1. Love Your Liver

My Fat Flush Plan is dedicated first and foremost to supporting the liver in its daunting role as the body’s purifier. In reality, the liver is perfectly designed to detoxify itself automatically, without any help from you or Fat Flush, for that matter. As the body’s premier detoxifier (think of it as the filter in your personal engine) and fat-burning organ, the liver has an amazing built-in process that is in charge of breaking down everything that comes its way, from chemicals, preservatives, and heavy metals to the food and beverages you ingest.

Ah, but here’s the rub.

In order for the detox process to work smoothly, your body needs a plethora of heavy-duty nutritional elements to keep the detox pathways working optimally and to break down toxins. So, you need to be very well nourished to detox.

A liver clogged with poisons or excess fats cannot perform its fat burning and other essential duties, like maintaining blood sugar levels, storing glycogen, synthesizing and normalizing blood proteins, and helping to keep your body in hormonal balance. A poorly functioning liver results in stagnation. Freeing up your liver to do its job may be the single most important step you ever take in improving your overall health and achieving your weight loss goals permanently.

The Fat Flush program accomplishes this task in several ways. One is through the antioxidant/phenol-rich cranberry and water mixture you will be drinking during each seasonal Fat Flush to keep those detox pathways moving right along. The recipe for the signature Fat Flush cran-water is 1 oz. unsweetened cranberry juice to 7 oz of water (makes an 8 oz. glass of cran-water) to be consumed eight times throughout the day (64 oz. total).

And the benefits of cranberry keep on accruing. Cranberries were analyzed with other fruits for their antioxidant power by measuring their ORAC value (oxygen radical absorbance capacity). Cranberries register a 9,584 ORAC value compared to the second runner up (raspberries), which were only 4,882. So cranberries are powerful medicine in neutralizing harmful free radicals and preventing them from taking a foothold in the body.

Daily intake of foods in the liver-loving veggie cruciferous family (think cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts) also speeds the breakdown of fat-storing toxins and keeps new body fat from forming. Lemon and water first thing in the morning helps to thin out bile and tone up both the kidneys and liver. Eggs (preferably from chickens that don’t do drugs) are part of the regimen because their high sulfur content and lecithin helps the liver’s detox pathways and aids in the forming of bile salts.

When you clean up your act, the liver and its beautiful bile are nourished with the right foods and supplements, which will ensure efficient fat metabolism as well as efficient elimination of toxins and wastes.

2. Get Your Lymph Flowing

If the liver is your body’s filter, then the lymph channels are your body’s drainage system. Your lymph system is the foundation of your immune system and includes your spleen, tonsils, and thymus. If you have never heard of the lymphatic system, you are not alone. So many people, even those into detox, have no idea about the crucial role this system plays in health and in weight loss.

The lymphatic system is a complex network of needle-thin tubes filled with fluid that continually bathes our cells and then carries away the body’s “garbage”—toxins, waste products of metabolism, fat globules, and excess liquid—to filters called lymph nodes, where these substances are stored and then neutralized. But while blood has a pump (your heart) to keep it moving, the lymph must be pumped by the movement of muscles or through deep breathing. (You can begin to see how a sedentary lifestyle can affect your health.)

The lymph, like the liver, can be overloaded with chemicals, pesticides, and a variety of pollutants that can shut down lymphatic flow. Plus, the everyday stress we are under also is a lymph stressor. The muscles and motion of breathing are a primary way to move lymph and when we’re under stress, our breathing becomes shallower.

So what does this mean for your waistline? First off, if your lymph isn’t flowing, your tissues aren’t draining excess fluid. This creates a backlog that results in bloating. Waterlogged tissues can cause your body to swell up to two sizes—weighing-in with an extra ten to fifteen pounds—yikes! A lazy lymphatic system may also be connected to cellulite because backed up fluid “sticks” to fat cells. Last but not least, waterlogged tissues interfere with nutrient and oxygen absorption and utilization, so cell starvation starts to take place.

Cleanse your lymph with a special fitness program that focuses on rebounding —the best exercise for the lymphatics due to the gentle bouncing action. I recommend the ReboundAIR rebounder (let them know I sent you). The exercise component is fortified with Fat Flush Super Star Foods that saturate the system with detoxifying enzymes, antioxidants, and phytonutrients. The cran-water drink in the program, for example, is packed with flavonoids, enzymes, and organic acids that appear to act like natural digestive enzymes. From my observations, cranberry helps to digest lumpy deposits of lymphatic waste, which could be one of the key reasons Fat Flushers report that their cellulite disappears.

People who detox their livers and get their lymph flowing also notice they have clear, smooth, glowing skin and toned bodies. Sugar cravings vanish. More nutrients get to the cells and more calories become energy when lymph flows freely. Swelling and bloating are a thing of the past; radiant good health takes their place. So, healing the lymphatics is a big deal, not only for Fat Flushing but also for disease control. For those of you with Crohn’s disease, please take note. In the January 2008 issue of the journal Gut, it was found that Crohn’s is caused by inflammation and thickening of the lymphatics connected to the intestines—not an autoimmune disease or a genetic condition, as previously thought.

 3. Eat the Right Fats

A flurry of new studies about fighting fat with fat first came out in The New England Journal of Medicine in early 2009. The media heralded these studies as the newest obesity theory, claiming that good fat, also known as brown fat because of its color, is a potent regulator of metabolism and weight. The research said that brown fat is deficient in overweight people and is primarily activated by cold.

This good fat, which triggers the body to burn more calories and generate more body heat, is key in keeping infants warm. By adulthood, brown fat is metabolically inactive in many individuals. However—what the researchers completely overlooked is the role of the essential fatty acid, gamma linolenic acid, more commonly known as GLA. Since the 1980s, it has been known that GLA stimulates brown fat activity through its prostaglandin pathways.

This is exactly why GLA has played a crucial role in Fat Flush since the origins of the program. It is found in its most balanced form in black currant seed oil, although borage and evening primrose oil are other rich sources. GLA is also included in the starter Fat Flush Kit as the GLA-90 supplement. It’s a must for beautiful, glowing skin and appears to keep the skin taunt during weight loss.

Stay tuned for my next blog in this three-part series – The 10 Fat Flush Commandments: Part 2!

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Ann Louise Gittleman, PhD, CNS, is an award-winning New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty books including The Fat Flush Plan series and her latest book, Radical Metabolism. She’s been rewriting the rules of nutrition for more than 40 years and is internationally recognized as a pioneer in the field of diet, detox and women’s health issues. 

For a FREE daily dose of tips and strategies for maintaining healthy weight, conquering insomnia, and much more…check out my Radical Health Tips.

I’d like to meet and greet you on my Facebook groups, so won’t you check us out at the Radical Metabolism RevolutionFat Flush Nation, or my Inner Circle!

24 Comments

  1. Anne

    When ever I take the GLA-90 faithfully (twice a day) after about two weeks I notice my fingernails are growing beautifully. Keep in mind that I am 47 and my whole life I have had nails that are weak and brittle. Sometimes they bend like cartilage, in the winter they are brittle and constantly chip. At other times I’ve noticed they peel in layers. Imagine my surprise when I noticed they were growing without any of these conditions. I could tap them, bang them, wash dishes…it didn’t matter. Eventually I’d have to cut them or file them down to keep them from growing out of control. I have experimented with this and it is the GLA-90 that does this. Nothing else effects them. So if it effects my nails so profoundly, imagine what else it does that we cannot see, such as what this article states. God is good to give us all we need to live healthy!

    Reply
  2. Diane

    I have all three of your books but have never gone on the Fat Flush Plan. I just ordered the Whey protein because I like a smoothie in the morning. I just had my blood tested and my cholestrol is 283 hdl 54 ldl 170 and Triglycerides 295. What would your suggestions be to lower this without medication. I’m 30 pounds overweight as well and have high blood pressure which I am taking medication for but it is still high.

    Any suggestions you may have I would appreciate.

    Reply
  3. Donna

    what about a supplement for the liver?

    Reply
  4. administrator

    Diane — Once you reduce your fruits to just two of the Fat Flush friendly low glycemic ones per day, your triglycerides will come down. So will your total cholesterol. We include the “skinny fats” like GLA, flaxseeds, and flax oil which will bring all of your blood values back to normal. GLA is great for blood pressure as is the cran-water drink that is our signature beverage to help normalize blood sugar levels as well as blood pressure according to our participants. The plan will work for you – just commit to the program and we will be here and on annlouiseforum.com to cheer you on.

    Donna- We recommend the Liver Lovin Formula that UNI KEY makes according to Dr. ALG’s specifications.

    Reply
  5. Kay Lynn Hardy

    If you are using Unikey’s Fat Flush Protein, is there any advantage to using the whey protein?

    Reply
  6. liz

    Kay Lynn,
    The FF Whey ” provides amino acid building blocks that are precursors to glutathione—the liver’s premiere antioxidant, which destroys free radicals.”
    The Body Protein is also good, especially for resetting your metabolism, but the benefit of glutathione is important for liver detox. I think it is good to do both. I line to alternate the two types of proteins and sometimes mix them half and half in my smoothie. I am doing the shakes as breakfast or lunch because they are quick and delicious, not as part of the Shakedown or Fat Flush program.

    Reply
  7. mary Reese

    My dear 67 year old neighbor has GI issues and now “autoimmune” issue with the lining of her bladder. She is in pain and poor health and mainstream medicine isn’t doing to much for her. She is taking a drug which is made from the bark of a tree? a prescription which is supposed to help stabilize her bladder lining. Do you have any ideas/suggestions?

    Thank you so much!!!!!

    Loving friend who believes in Ann Louise’s Wisdom

    Mary Reese

    Reply
  8. carol knox

    i have a dairy allergy, including whey,. what should I do?

    Reply
  9. liz

    You might want to try Oxi-Key, available at unikeyhealth.com or 800 888-4353. It also contains glutathione.

    Reply
  10. charlotte

    do i use the small bottle of concentrate cranberry juice or the bigger diluted juice for the drink?

    Reply
  11. Sierra

    Charlotte, either one will work. Page 55 of the newest version of the Fat Flush Plan book has a recipe for either kind of juice.

    Reply
  12. Linda

    I have a few health concerns. Chronic kidney stones (calcium oxalate), recent diagnosis of high blood pressure, and a recent melanoma surgery (malignant).
    My endocrinologist has recently started me on a hormone replacement. Also have low iron, low B’s and D’s. I have never been a pill taker or vitamin user. Can i safely use your program especially with the kidney stone issue. I have to limit my “greens” ie) asparagus, spinach, anything with high oxalates.
    Can you advise?

    Reply
  13. liz

    Yes, just observe the food restrictions you are aware of. The cranwater has been shown to also be helpful in keeping the kidneys clear.

    Reply
  14. Luanne

    Last year I did the FF program using the Body Protein and lost 20 lbs in 3 weeks. It worked even though I did not care for the taste. This year I would like to go back on the FF using the Whey Protein, but wanted to know if I can accomplish the same results?

    Reply
  15. Holly

    Can you drink seltzer water while on fat flush?

    Reply
    • Sierra

      Since it is not part of the protocol, I would recommend avoiding seltzer as it may impact your results.

      Reply
  16. paula

    hello
    I live in UK, and finding extremely hard to get hold of unsweetened cranberry juice is there an alternative please

    Reply
    • Team ALG

      Hi Paula, The preferred alternative would be to add 2 TBS of apple cider vinegar to 1 quart of plain, filtered water. Sip this throughout the day for plenty of detoxifying benefits!

      Reply
    • Michele

      Biona in England makes an excellent cranberry juice.

      Reply
  17. Angie

    What about all the chemicals and pesticides used in the growing of cranberries?

    Reply
  18. Team ALG

    Angie, you can find organic cranberry juice, grown without the chemicals and pesticides. Knudsen’s makes one.

    Reply
  19. Karen

    Can some who does not eat meat or dairy products do a fat flush and if so what do they substitute?

    Reply

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