By Frank Suárez, on January 20th, 2010
 When we wish to lose weight, we find ourselves obligated to reduce the consumption of refined carbohydrates (bread, pasta, pizza, flour, candies, sugar, etc). It is the only way of accomplishing healthy weight loss since this type of carbohydrates turn into glucose (sugar in the blood) and the excess glucose then becomes FAT with the help of the insulin hormone produced in our bodies. For various interesting reasons, which we will discuss further, for many people, the most difficult food to eliminate from their diet and the “biggest sacrifice” is considered to be bread or pasta.
After ten years of experience in helping people recuperate their metabolism and slim down, I have learned to recognize the metabolism problems that “body intolerances” can cause. Everybody knows what an “allergy” is because when someone is allergic to a certain food and they ingest it, the allergic reaction is very noticeable. Allergies produce headaches, itching, and loss of breath, phlegm, indigestion, and inflammation which is immediately noticeable in the body. If a person is allergic to seafood and he or she ingests any, the results can be deadly from the crisis or allergic reaction that it causes.
“Intolerances” are a type of negative reaction that the body has to certain foods which do not necessarily include immune system reactions (itching, phlegm, inflammation, etc.). An “intolerance” is a type of negative reaction of the body, which is less noticeable than an allergic reaction. However, when the body has intolerance towards a certain food and we consume this food, the metabolism will decrease to the point where we won’t be able to lose weight. In other words, “intolerances” make us fat because they weaken the metabolism.
The most common foods that cause intolerance are wheat, soy, and corn. In my experience the food that most prevents people from losing weight is wheat, which is a staple of our daily meals. Pasta, cakes, and other foods all contain wheat as a main ingredient.
Wheat contains a protein called “gluten” which causes trouble for a lot of us when it comes to losing weight. Gluten can cause, for many of us, intolerance that creates constipation, headaches, fatigue, indigestion, gases and accumulation of water in the body (edema). When a person is intolerant to the gluten contained in the wheat, he or she will have trouble losing weight, in addition to the possible emotional imbalances like anxiety, memory loss, disorientation and even depression. In fact, it has been noted that many children and adults who are being diagnosed with the popular psychiatric disease ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) really suffer from gluten intolerance. Many of these adults and children, who are put on a wheat-free and gluten-free diet, begin to act “normal” again.
There is an illness called “celiac disease” which not many doctors can easily diagnose. It is an illness caused by a severe intolerance to the gluten protein contained in wheat. There are families that suffer a great deal with strange illnesses and emotional or behavioral-type problems only because they are unaware of gluten intolerance. Some of them end up drugged with antidepressants which only makes the situation worse.
A very interesting discovery revealed that the gluten in wheat functions as an opiate. An opiate is a substance with effects similar to opium (the source of drugs such as morphine and heroin) with a very addictive power. This is the reason that many people who are obese or overweight are addicted to bread! They see a basket full of bread and their mouth begins to water while something inside screams: GIVE IT TO ME!
I know all about this subject very well from personal experience. When I began my quest to lose weight I discovered that my body is one of those bodies that wants nothing to do with gluten or wheat. Whenever I ate bread or pasta, I felt that my body was heavier and I could tell that my clothes fit tighter. Also, I just could not lose weight no matter what diet I was on. With time I discovered that gluten causes a reaction in my body that forces it to retain water and thus my clothes fit tighter. I realized that if I completely avoided gluten and sauces that contain wheat, I was able to lose weight.
I my book The Power of Your Metabolism I dedicated an entire chapter to the subject of “intolerances”. I have received hundreds of emails from people who were able to finally lose weight after eliminating wheat from their diet. Others have been able to handle their indigestion, headaches, and even thyroid problems since eliminating wheat from their diet. Some experts have concluded that for those who are intolerant to gluten, consuming it could damage the thyroid gland.
Everyone has a different heritage origin. Our ancestors, whose genes determined our own genetic characteristics, were hunters and gatherers as opposed to agriculturists. Hunters and gatherers did not farm the lands and they did not eat wheat, thus their bodies never adapted to it. The origin of wheat is wild and it was domesticated and cultivated by our more modern agriculture ancestors.
In any event, should you discover intolerance to wheat; you still have the majority of every other food you can enjoy. It’s just that if you are intolerant and do not discover it, you expose yourself to failure in all your attempts to lose weight, if you don’t avoid the delicious and tempting “daily bread”.
Frank Suárez, Metabolism and Obesity Specialist
By Frank Suárez, on October 13th, 2009
 Sleep to lose weight It’s funny how everything that happens in our body is related to everything else that happens in the body. Many people who experience the problem of having a “slow metabolism”, which makes it hard for them to lose weight, also suffer from insomnia (difficulty sleeping). The reality is that sleep is vital for metabolism and health.
The human body is in a constant process of construction (new cells) and repairing the cells that have undergone some damage. Some of the cells that make up the body are dying every day while they are being replaced by new cells that are created every day.
When we sleep, the body repairs the cells that have undergone some damage. The reality is that the body never “sleeps” since it is always working on either repairing or creating something internally. We ourselves do “sleep” because we rest our minds and we rest from the vigilance and constant attention that our senses are subjected to by the environment. But the body never really stops working and it continuously maintains its entire defense system on alert (the immune system) in case it detects a danger (bacteria, parasite, virus, etc) that it needs to attack.
For people who suffer from insomnia, or those who wake up repeatedly throughout the night because of light sleep, losing weight becomes nearly impossible. This is because lack of adequate sleep produces a state of stress on the body. When the body is under stress, it produces an excess of the stress hormone called cortisol and this is a hormone which accumulates fat (it’s fattening) while it slowing destroys muscle tissue, thus resulting in wrinkles and flaccid skin. This is why, when we don’t sleep well, we wake up in the morning in a state of crisis and with very little energy.
The cortisol hormone that the body produces when stress exists in the body is the same substance as the cortisol medication that many people have taken and they notice that they have gained weight after taking it. The body produces cortisol every time it is under physical or emotional stress.
Many times this insomnia is caused by a condition relating to the thyroid gland called hypothyroidism. Unfortunately, hypothyroidism is not always detected via a laboratory analysis of the blood because it could exist as a “subclinical hypothyroidism”. Many people suffer from thyroid problems which cause insomnia and obesity and yet their lab work does not detect that such problem exist.
One way of knowing if the insomnia is being caused by problems with the thyroid gland is to take your body temperature. Doctor Broda Barnes, an endocrinologist (hormone specialist) discovered that the body’s temperature directly reflects a problem with the thyroid gland even if the blood analysis does not show the problem. This is called the “Barnes temperature test” and it is even listed in the reference books used by doctors in their offices (a book they call PDR).
If you do not sleep well and have difficulty losing weight, you can learn to take your body temperature to detect whether your thyroid is affected. This test can be done by any person at home and it’s free. Perhaps this is why (free and not lucrative for some) it isn’t more accepted by physicians. Generally, nobody promotes those things that don’t make them money.
I have concluded, while I observe the healthcare industry, that healthy people are not good business for these industries. There are plenty of good doctors out there and a very good number of health professionals that have the intention of truly helping their patients. But, for the pharmaceutical industry and other related health industries, their business depends on our ignorance and illnesses. This is the only way we’ll continue to consume their products and services.
Anyway, our only true defense against this is KNOWLEDGE. If we understand the basic principles that better our health and better the metabolism, we avoid being the victims of ignorance. This is why I wrote The Power of Your Metabolism where I explain, in simple words, which are the factors that determine whether we sleep well, lose weight, and better our health.
Frank Suárez, Obesity and Metabolism Specialist
By Frank Suárez, on May 4th, 2009
 Don't Lose Weight, Lose Fat It is estimated that on any given day of the year, 38% of the population are on some type of diet or exercise program to “lose weight”. This means that more than 1 in 3 people wish to achieve a reduction of their body weight and are willing to sacrifice something to achieve this.
The sad part is that the majority, about 95% of these people, end-up abandoning their efforts or fail in their intent to diet or exercise. Very few achieve their goal and even less is able to maintain any weight lost. Because of this, obesity and overweight conditions have been increasing throughout the last 40 years and today these conditions have become an “epidemic” because they affect the large part of our population.
Meanwhile we receive heavy advertising through the media with daily images of skeletally thin models as a symbol of how thin we all should be. Everything we see on television and print media indicates that we are “fat” and that we carry more pounds than we should.
In my experience, a lot of the people who go on a diet fail simply because they have a wrong idea or a compulsion to “lose weight”. The generality that the problem is too much weight is a wrong idea. The general problem is not that we have too much weight, but rather that we have too much FAT, and this is what classifies us as “fat”, the body fat.
There is an important difference that we must recognize before we go on a diet only to then feel a “failure” because we are not “losing weight” like we wanted to. The crucial difference lies in knowing how to set the right goal. “Losing weight” is not the same as SLIMMING DOWN. When the body experiences weight loss, the loss could come from losing water, muscle or fat. In reality, what we are interested in is losing BODY FAT. We don’t want to lose water because our body will dehydrate and metabolism will slow down which will eventually make us fat. We don’t want to reduce muscle mass either because our skin will be flaccid and loose. The important thing is to reduce FAT. That is called SLIMMING DOWN and that is what we really want to achieve.
Some people have a compulsion with their body weight. They want to achieve, no matter what, weight loss. But, they forget that the body is made up of a lot of different components: water, bones, muscles, tissue and fat. The only thing we really want to reduce is body fat because it is body fat that makes us “fat”. It is also excessive fat that blocks our arteries and causes high blood pressure and heart attacks. It is excessive fat that causes an insulin resistance on diabetics and makes it impossible for them to control their condition. It is excessive body fat that makes some women infertile and causes a very painful or irregular menstruation. Fat is a necessary substance, but when it accumulates in excess it causes a bunch of hormonal and health problems. What we want to reduce is our body fat excess. In other words, SLIM DOWN.
Measuring body weight alone has never been a good indicator of how much fat a body has. This is because a human body is made up of at least 65% water and water weights much more than fat. Fat is not a heavy substance and this is why overweight people float in water much more easily. Fat is a very light substance, but it is very VOLUMINOUS. In other words, it occupies a lot of space. Which is why trying to measure the results of a diet or an exercise program with a scale is exposing you to failure. What we should really look at, to determine if we are losing weight, is your dress size. Observing the way your clothes now fit never fails because this tells you clearly whether you are really reducing fat in your body.
In addition, when we put additional pressure to weigh ourselves it creates an anxiety that increases cortisol hormone levels and this prevents us from slimming down. The continuous stress to weigh ourselves every day sabotages our efforts because the cortisol hormone reduces metabolism, makes us hungry and makes us fat.
If you want to go the logical and effective way when it comes to being slim, lose the scale. Do not weigh your body more than once a week and always keep in mind that the problem is not “being heavy”. The real problem is being “fat” and that cannot easily be determined well by a scale. Observe the changes in your dress size. If someone asks how many pounds you’ve lost, simply tell them “I lost 2 dress sizes” or “I lost 4 inches around my waist”. Don’t put too much importance to your body weight. Do put your attention to being able to fit into those clothes you have hanging in your closet that didn’t fit anymore.
Ironically, when a person begins an exercise routine, he or she gains weight. But this weight gain is good because a person is actually gaining muscle mass. Muscles weigh 2 ½ times more than fat. If you increase muscle, fat will reduce and you will be thinner. Increasing muscles is a good thing. I have heard a so-called nutritional expert tell his client not to exercise because exercise makes you gain weight. This is just a reflection of the expert’s ignorance regarding the human body. The best way to slim down is with the correct diet plan paired with an exercise routine.
So, forget about your weight. It is not important. Observe your dress size or the size of your waist. Give your scale a vacation and you will see that you will slim down and increase your energy.
Frank Suarez
Author , The Power of Your Metabolism
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