Best Foods for Cleansing Your Liver

Cleansing your liver can have countless health benefits. Stubborn belly fat is mostly a by-product of liver toxicity. You don’t have to consume a ton of processed foods to have toxins in your liver. Even small amounts of alcohol, processed food and even the polluted air you breathe can cause fatty deposits to form in the liver and belly fat to be stored in order to protect your body from the toxins.

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Cucumber Juice
Drinking a glass or two of cucumber juice each day is a nice way to detox your liver. Not only does it taste good, but it is loaded with vitamins, antioxidants and minerals. It is a great replacement for water during the summer months and cleanses your whole body.

Turmeric
Turmeric is used as a hangover remedy in some countries, because it detoxifies your liver. Unfortunately, sprinkling some curry on your chicken isn’t really sufficient to produce any noticeable results. Consuming half a teaspoon a day, combined with some black pepper (it boosts the absorption of curcumin, the active chemical in turmeric) will start to clear toxins from your liver. You can add turmeric to rice or simply drink it in some water.


Avocados
Avocados contain glutathione, which is the detoxifying chemical your liver uses to flush toxins. The high monounsaturated fat content also helps to eliminate fatty deposits in the liver. Monounsaturated fats are turned into glycerides and travel into the liver through the hepatic vein. Once there, they bind to toxic fatty build-ups and flush them out.

Tomatoes
Tomatoes are high in lycopene, which is a powerful antioxidant. Once ingested, it travels through your bloodstream and provides antioxidants for your body. One study even found out that sun damage is reduced greatly after consumption of tomato paste – that’s because lycopene reaches the skin as well, absorbing harmful sun radiation. In the liver, lycopene acts the same way as other antioxidants – it neutralizes free radicals, which cause DNA damage.


Green Tea
The benefits of green tea are countless. The EGCG it contains also promotes the elimination of dead hepatic cells, which often contain a lot of toxins. The liver naturally eliminates those cell deposits on its own, but the problem arises when it cannot keep up with the toxins you ingest. Green tea speeds up that clearance, which quickly detoxifies your liver.

Onions, shallots, and leeks—
A relative of garlic, these foods also contain those smelly sulfur compounds that support your liver in its production of glutathione, the compound in every cell of your body that neutralizes free radicals.


Eggs—
Eggs provide some of the highest-quality protein, containing all eight essential amino acids, cholesterol, and the essential nutrient choline. Your liver needs these essential amino acids to perform detoxification processes. Choline a coenzyme needed for metabolism, is found in the egg yolk and protects your liver from a wide range of toxic substances, while detoxifying heavy metals.


Cleansing Your Liver
Simply drinking a glass of juice every day will improve your health, but it will not magically eliminate fat, unless you are using a special cleanse that is effective for losing weight.

Remember that belly fat is not used by your body for energy, which makes it almost impossible to ‘burn off’. Detoxing your body is the only proven and effective way to get rid of it, after which excessive body fat is often eliminated by your body as well.

You often hear of people losing a lot of weight (50+ pounds) after going on a juice fast. Although I don’t necessarily recommend this, as it is a bit too extreme, it just goes to show that detoxing your body really does eliminate stubborn fat. The amount of fat those people lost cannot be explained by any caloric equation and is therefore NOT a result of simply eating less calories.

‘Clogged up’ liver is a major reason why many people are having trouble losing weight. Your liver is the main storage organ for glucose and if it is clogged up with toxins, your energy metabolism simply doesn’t work right. Living in todays age, we consume countless unnatural substances and toxins even with our drinking water. Our body doesn’t know what to do with them, so it puts them in our fat cells. Fat-soluble toxins cannot be eliminated by the kidneys, which is why they are stored in the fat cells of your body. This explains why some people have a lot of trouble losing weight, regardless of how little they eat – the toxic overload makes it impossible for your body to readily burn body fat for energy, without releasing all the stored toxins first.

Eliminating Processed Food
Eating a plant-based diet helps a lot, but you don’t necessarily have to avoid meat. I still think it’s a great source of protein and eat it almost every day. However, avoid fried meat, as it is very high in nitrosamines, which lead to direct liver toxicity.
If you are not sticking to a special program for cleansing your body and instead trying to eliminate processed food and consume more healthy food without any plan, you can expect some hurdles, such as food cravings. Mild physical symptoms of sugar withdraw can also occur and headaches are common. Don’t let those small hurdles prevent you from sticking to your cleanse. The end result will be well worth it!