Be Nice to Your Insides

Shown in red: The adorable little adrenal glands!

Desiring nothing as much as to avoid sinking into the quicksand of Trump's meeting with Kim, I will instead write about a subject that few people ever talk about: our fabulous internal organs. They go about their business with little appreciation and hardly any mention at all, until they stop working right. Then we hear that this one had a heart attack, that one's got pancreatic cancer, and the other one had his gall bladder removed. Meanwhile, that poor drunk slumped over the bar has cirrhosis of the liver. But really, can any of us say what each of those organs do when they are in good working order? I certainly couldn't. Not until recently, when I spent a good part of the weekend reading a book called The Fast Metabolism Diet, which I then embarked on and committed to following for the next 28 days.

It all started when I met a friend for lunch last week. I hadn't seen her in a couple of months, and the last time we met she was looking haggard and grey, and a bit puffy. So I was stunned to see her all aglow and much thinner, looking like she had just returned from a month on a Greek island where servants fed her peeled grapes as she languished in the sun with nary a care in the world. Turns out she had been going to her job every day as usual, but had been on the aforementioned diet. With her enhanced health as an endorsement, I got the book.

Now I am up to speed on my adrenal glands, which I never thought about once in my entire life but it turns out they are responsible for almost all of my bad moods, high anxiety, runaway blood pressure, and tons of other crap I've been dealing with for the last ten years. FYI, "Your adrenals are small glands that lie on top of your kidneys in your lower back, and they secrete hormones that regulate your body's response to stress of all types: physical, emotional, environmental, and mental," writes author Haylie Pomroy. Eating the wrong foods can cause adrenal exhaustion, which comes from your body secreting stress hormones that should be saved for emergencies, only it's happening all the time, causing your metabolism to slow way down.

There's much more to it, but let it suffice that your mistreatment of your adrenals might be why you are fatigued and/or depressed! I decided to start being nicer to all of my insides, including my liver, my pancreas, my pituitary gland and my thyroid, and to thank me, I lost a pound and a half the very first day. Only 27 days to go....