The real cause of weight problems

I don’t know whether you feel the same, but I am someone who likes to understand what lies behind a problem or an obstacle. Only once I know how things connect do I find the motivation to really change something. With health matters such as weight problems in particular, recognising the true causes is decisive — it is what lets you turn the right dials. If we work on the wrong starting points, lasting success stays out of reach, and it can even do harm over time.

When it comes to weight problems there are countless concepts — and often you no longer know whom to believe. One day carbohydrates are demonised, the next it is fat, the metabolism, the thyroid, the genes or a lack of discipline. Everyone seems to know something different, everyone has an opinion, and everyone thinks they know better. Still, I would ask you to give this article a genuine chance in spite of all that.

The content of this article draws on the books of Anthony William, known as the “Medical Medium”. His approaches do not rest entirely on the general scientific consensus, but far more on his own findings and experience over decades. Since thousands of people have to this day improved their health considerably by following his recommendations, it is well worth looking at his view on weight problems.

Besides, scientific consensus does not automatically mean absolute truth. Scientific understanding keeps developing. What counts as consensus today can be overtaken tomorrow by new findings. That is why, in my view, it matters to stay open to other perspectives too and to consider them as an alternative point of view.

Our body, and our brain above all, is flooded today with additives from our food. These substances can set off processes that impair our self-control, for instance by shaping our appetite in a targeted way or by acting on our emotions.

Since the seventies our diet has changed dramatically: it has become unnatural, high in calories and at the same time poor in nutrients. From childhood on we are conditioned into this unhealthy way of eating by advertising and by the deliberate placement of such products in the supermarket.

Add to that pollutants from food and the environment, which put further strain on the body, for instance by interfering with hormonal processes. No wonder that our body — in its deeply wise protective mechanism — begins to lay down fat as a store for those substances. Excess weight, according to Anthony William, is ultimately a natural response of our body to this unnatural and burdensome development.

Genes are often given the central blame for excess weight. Genes really can play a part, by influencing the metabolism or the distribution of fat, for example, but they do not determine our weight on their own. Far more decisive are the environmental and lifestyle factors we can influence. And here it gets interesting: within families it is not only genes that are passed on, but eating habits and behaviours too, and these matter even more. The good news is that despite a genetic disposition we hold a great deal in our own hands.

Well worth reading on this is the research of Bruce Lipton, a pioneer of epigenetics, neatly summed up in his fascinating book “The Biology of Belief — how our experiences steer our genes”.

There are people who can seemingly eat whatever they like without putting on weight, while others don’t lose any despite eating carefully and moving. Many who never had weight problems suddenly gain, although they have changed nothing. We will look at this aspect more closely later in the article.

Children too increasingly struggle with weight problems — a particularly worrying trend. According to Anthony William the cause often lies in an overloaded liver, thrown off balance by pollutants, stress and a poor supply of glucose.

Excess weight is not a problem in its own right but a symptom — often caused by an overloaded liver. The liver is responsible not only for detoxification but also for processing and storing fats, vitamins and nutrients. An overloaded liver can no longer do its work efficiently, which means fat and pollutants end up stored in fat cells. According to Anthony William this is a central mechanism behind today’s weight problems.

We live in a time in which our body faces more challenges than ever before in human history. It has to cope with a whole range of burdens: pesticides and herbicides in our food, pollutants from the environment, drug residues, contaminated air, radiation of all kinds, heavy metals and toxic ingredients in cosmetics and household products. On top of that come viruses, bacteria and other pathogens, an often unhealthy diet high in fat and/or sugar, chronic stress, difficult emotions and much more. Our body does something astonishing every day to withstand all these factors.

At the same time the nutrient density of our food is lower than ever in human history, because the soils have been exploited and poisoned. On top of that we eat too many processed, nutrient-poor foods. In essence we are overfed and yet undernourished. Our body receives too few essential nutrients to withstand the many challenges of our time. Although we eat enough, our body lacks what it really needs. And this is exactly where the key to lasting weight loss — without counting calories or going hungry. By reducing the toxic load and increasing the supply of nutrients, we can bring our body back into balance. You don’t have to be a scientist to see that this makes sense.

This means, then, that excess weight in most cases comes not simply from too little discipline or self-control, too little movement or too many carbohydrates and calories, but from an overloaded liver and an undernourished body.

The thyroid is often blamed for weight problems. Thyroid dysfunctions, however, are according to Anthony William a direct consequence of a burdened liver. In his view the thyroid is not the initial cause of weight problems.

Many women struggle during the menopause with weight problems, which is often put down to hormonal changes, since hormones play a central part in the metabolism. Anthony William, by contrast, also sees the cause of menopausal symptoms such as weight gain in the overloading of the liver described above. He explains that the liver is burdened more and more over the course of a life, and that at the start of the menopause the load often reaches a critical point. In his view this imbalance leads to hormonal disturbances and the menopausal complaints that follow from them — the greater the load, the more pronounced the symptoms.

Stressors of the liver

In what follows we look at what exactly happens in your body with weight problems, according to Anthony William, and what part your liver, your adrenal glands and your lymphatic system play in it.

A healthy liver that works efficiently plays an important part in fat metabolism and in detoxification. When the liver is burdened by pollutants or unhealthy habits, however, this can slow the metabolism and disturb other processes in the body as well. Much depends, of course, on how much the liver has to handle each day.

But careful: just because someone stays slim no matter what they eat does not mean their liver is not stressed or overloaded. We will look at why that is later in the article. Putting on weight is therefore often connected with the liver’s ability to process pollutants and fats.

Let us look at which factors burden the liver most:

• A diet high in fat, strongly heated fat, seed oils such as sunflower and rapeseed oil
• Toxic metals
• Pesticides in food and in the environment
• Fungicides, for instance in clothing
• Chemicals, solvents, plasticisers
• Plastics (microplastics)
• Petroleum products such as petrol
• Viruses (the Epstein-Barr virus in particular) and their metabolic products, neurotoxins, dermatoxins
• Bacteria and their metabolic products, neurotoxins, dermatoxins
• Sustained stress and difficult emotions: excess adrenaline and cortisol
• Too much salt, the wrong salt
• Vinegar
• Coffee
• Alcohol, cigarettes
• Fluoride
• Radiation

That is a great deal for our body to handle every day. Our liver works tirelessly to neutralise these burdens and keep the body in balance.

An excess of these stressors forces the liver to store pollutants temporarily and slows its function down. That can indirectly affect thyroid function as well, since the liver and the thyroid hormones are closely linked. Anthony William highlights in particular the role of the Epstein-Barr virus, which in his view is a central cause of liver and thyroid problems.

You can read more about these stressors here: “Anthony William on hidden burdens in food and everyday life”

The liver as a store

Your liver is not only a central organ for detoxification, it also serves as a store for important substances such as vitamins(A, D, E, K for example), vitamin B12, iron and copper. If your liver is overloaded by pollutants or by a diet high in fat, however, its ability to process and store these substances efficiently can be impaired. That means your body may be able to store and use fewer nutrients. At the same time fat-soluble pollutants can be stored in the body, above all in fatty tissue — to protect the organs from harm. An overloaded liver is also often associated with increased fat accumulation around the belly, since metabolic processes and hormonal control loops can fall out of balance. In this way an overloaded liver can also contribute indirectly to a nutrient deficiency.

The liver is a central organ, responsible not only for detoxification but also for the processing and storing of fats. When the liver is overloaded — by pollutants, a diet high in fat or metabolic disorders — it can no longer process fat efficiently. The result is that fat accumulates in the liver, which is known as a fatty liver. A disturbed fat metabolism can also lead to more fat being stored in the body, especially around the belly (visceral fat). Fat deposits in the arteries or around the heart usually arise from raised blood lipid levels, which can likewise be connected with limited liver function and an unhealthy lifestyle.

Liver problems rarely appear overnight; they develop over years or even decades. When the liver is overloaded by an unhealthy lifestyle or by pollutants, this can impair fat metabolism and mean that fat is processed less efficiently. Many people therefore put on weight although they have not changed their eating habits or their behaviour. In athletes too, impaired liver function can affect fat metabolism.

I think everyone knows the feeling of cravings or hunger that cannot be stilled. These can have various causes, among them blood sugar swings, hormonal changes or nutrient deficiency — and the liver can play a part too, when its ability to store glucose is impaired.

Our body is designed to draw its energy preferentially from glucose. Glucose that comes from healthy carbohydrates, as found in fruit, is essential for many functions and above all for the brain. Although our body can also draw energy from fats and proteins, glucose is the most efficient and most natural source. That is why it matters to give our body high-quality, whole-food carbohydrates, so that we stay healthy and capable.

Hunger that cannot be stilled, which does not pass even after eating, can point to exhausted glucose and glycogen stores in the liver. Our liver needs glucose to work at its best, and a lack of healthy carbohydrates can burden it. Chronic stress in particular, and the other loads already discussed, can overtax the liver and lead to cravings.

If you often feel cravings or a strong urge for something sweet, that is frequently a signal from your body that your blood sugar is low and that your brain and your liver are calling for glucose.

So if you are overweight and have a hunger that cannot be stilled, then according to Anthony William there is a good chance that you have a fatty liver or are in the early stages of one. The fatty tissue sitting inside the liver and on the surface of the liver prevents the storing of glucose. Excess adrenaline, released through stress, also prevents glucose from being stored.

When meals are skipped, adrenaline is released. The same phenomenon occurs with fasting. While fasting we often feel full of energy and quite elated. According to Anthony William, though, that is down to the adrenaline the body releases in excess, because of the stress of food withdrawal and of blood sugar that is too low. If the liver is constantly busy processing surplus adrenaline, it has no capacity left to build glucose stores — even when food is eaten regularly. So we really should reduce the stress in our system and in our lives.

Intermittent fasting, or a properly conducted fast, can be very good for health. But if your body already has a problem with too much adrenaline and you have too many toxins stored, you should avoid it for the time being. Once that problem is resolved, intermittent fasting or even a fasting day a week can be a good tool for more health and a longer life.

The glucose we take in as healthy, whole-food carbohydrates should not be eaten together with fat, because fat makes it harder to unlock the glucose and its uptake into the liver. Because the liver always deals with the fat first. And let’s be honest: we eat fat and carbohydrates together all the time, or one shortly after the other.

Even if you eat fat at some point during the day, it can hinder glucose uptake for the rest of it, because animal fats in particular stay in the blood for a long time. Fat from pork products, for example, remains in the blood for 12–16 hours on average. With fat from other animal products it is 3–6 hours. Plant fats stay in the blood for 1–3 hours.

To sum up once more: a lack of glucose creates hunger. A diet high in fat and low in carbohydrates makes the state worse, because healthy carbohydrates supply the form of sugar we need, while too much fat both hinders the conversion and uptake of glucose and weakens the liver.

We have looked at the liver in great detail. Now let us turn to the part our lymphatic system plays in weight problems. Excess fat is only one part of excess weight. The other part is fluid retention. Your lymphatic system, which runs through your whole body, is really the second filter after the liver has done the first pass. The liver normally filters the the coarse toxins and the lymph the fine ones.

But if your liver cannot do its job, the lymphatic system has to step in and take over the liver’s filtering entirely. As a result the lymph, which is not meant to filter coarse toxins, becomes thicker than usual and can barely move through the fine lymph channels. That creates congestion and pockets of fluid. These accumulations make up part of the excess weight. You then see it in an increasing waist and hip circumference. So when we relieve our liver, we relieve the lymphatic system too, and the congested fluid can be carried away.

Let us look at one more participant: the adrenal glands. You find them in the body at the level of your kidneys. You have two of them, one by each kidney. The adrenal glands are two glands that, among other things, release adrenaline. We have already talked a little about adrenaline. Because of the immense chronic stress and sensory overload of our time, our adrenal glands are called on non-stop and release enormous amounts of adrenaline. According to Anthony William, an excess of adrenaline in the blood can lead us to put on weight.

In earlier times adrenaline was released in extreme situations, such as danger, and afterwards regulated back to a normal level. Today we live our whole life under stress and therefore in survival mode. Since too much adrenaline is harmful to our body, our liver wants to protect us from it: it soaks the adrenaline up, binds it to hormones and excretes that compound. Because nowadays the liver of almost everyone is overloaded, it cannot excrete these hormone-adrenaline compounds completely and, according to Anthony William, stores them instead — which leads to weight gain.

An interesting aspect Anthony William raises about emotions and adrenaline is that the adrenal glands release a different adrenaline mixture for every emotion. With positive feelings the mixture is good for the body, with negative ones it is not. There are 56 different kinds of adrenaline. What feels bad probably harms the body and makes us more susceptible to illness. This continuous release of adrenaline weakens our adrenal glands, which can lead to many symptoms.

The subject of excess weight is inseparable from dieting — and there are as many diets as grains of sand. Diets work well at first because people leave behind their otherwise rather poor eating habits, their fast-food way of eating, and start to eat more healthily and more consciously. Over time it can get hard, though, because the real cause is never addressed. On top of that, a lot of fear of the sugar in fruit is stirred up.

As with the low-carb diet, few or no healthy carbohydrates from fruit are then eaten, and health problems can arise. Strong blood sugar swings set in and lead to cravings. Or the daily calorie intake is cut sharply during a diet, and when it is raised again afterwards along comes the dreaded yo-yo effect. You can read more about diets and Anthony William’s view of them in my article “Why diets don’t work in the long run”.

When it comes to losing weight, then, it is not about counting calories or going hungry, but about your body and your life: about taking the load off them and supplying them with the vital substances they need. This is a process that is not finished overnight. It is about changing something in your life for good. What has built up in your body over decades, habits that have taken firm root, cannot be shed within a few weeks. That takes time. Once you have made new habits your own and your system is relieved and repaired, it can work as it should again — and you will reach the weight you want.

The essence of all this is that we have to reduce the pollutants and in return fill our body up with nutrients, so that it can detoxify and recover — and so that the weight problem is allowed to resolve itself as a consequence.

Foods you should avoid

Anthony William recommends taking out all foods that burden our body, feed pathogenic germs and stop it from detoxifying and recovering.

Anthony William calls these foods No-Foods. They include:

• Conventionally produced foods
• Dairy products
• Eggs
• Fish
• Meat
• Gluten
• Corn & soya
• Seed oils such as rapeseed and sunflower oil
• Natural flavourings
• Artificial flavourings
• Monosodium glutamate (MSG)
• Citric acid
• Refined sugar
• Sugar substitutes
• Vinegar
• Alcohol
• Coffee
• Too much salt
• Strongly heated fats
• Supplements such as L-carnitine, whey powder, fish oil, iron supplements (plant-based ones are fine)

All these foods and substances take away our body’s chance to recover and to take up nutrients. That is why it matters so much to take them out of your diet.

I know, that is not a short list. And if you are worried that there is now nothing left to eat, I can reassure you. There are still plenty of foods available to you that are delicious and healthy as well. It is all a question of habit. If you want to know more about No-Foods according to Anthony William, read my article “Anthony William on hidden burdens in food and everyday life”.

Foods that revive and restore your body

We should bring foods into our diet that support our body in detoxifying and recovering, and that supply it with nutrients. These include fruit, berries, vegetables, leafy greens, herbs, spices, pulses, potatoes, gluten-free grains and high-quality supplements. Use as much pure, living water as you can. Avoid plastic bottles where possible. Avoid long gaps between meals, to prevent blood sugar swings. You don’t have to do everything at once either. Take it step by step if that is easier for you. That way you are not overwhelmed and can adjust slowly to the new way of living.

An important note from my own experience: if your body is heavily burdened, you should aim for a slow changeover and pay very close attention to its signals. Because if you go from nought to a hundred, your body can be overwhelmed by the detoxification and you get strong re-toxification symptoms such as headaches, digestive trouble, nausea, a racing heart — which would be counterproductive.

What else burdens your body

Besides certain No-Foods, our daily life holds other factors that weigh on our body.

These include:

• Conventional cosmetics
• Fluoride (in salt or toothpaste, for example)
• Contaminated water (tap water, plastic bottles)
• Packaging containing harmful substances
• Plastics
• Aluminium
• Radiation
• Microwave ovens
• Blue light (from a smartphone, for instance), above all before going to sleep
• Smoking
• Passive smoking from cooking (frying fumes, above all from meat)
• Medicines
• Petroleum products
• Pesticides, fungicides and other toxins in food
• Chemicals, solvents, plasticisers
• Cleaning products

If you would like to know more about this, take a look at my article “Anthony William on hidden burdens in food and everyday life”.

Try to move your life step by step towards products that carry less of a load. There are very good alternatives for everything.

Reducing stress

We have already talked about the effect that stress, and the adrenaline released by it, has on our body. If we now want to recover and lose weight successfully, we absolutely have to reduce stress. Practices such as meditation, yoga and enough sleep can lower the adrenaline level.

Movement

I still find the saying “what rests, rusts” very telling. If we do not move and challenge our body, circulation gets worse, our muscles harden and we become less and less mobile. To detoxify properly we need good circulation in every part of the body. Otherwise toxins cannot be carried away. And nutrients cannot be carried into the hardened, stuck regions of the body. It is exactly in those parts that health problems then appear. The focus should not necessarily be on burning calories, but far more on mobilising the body, on detoxification and on the supply of nutrients.

Important: when you switch your diet towards a higher intake of nutrients and bring more movement into your day, it can look at first as though you are not losing weight — or the scales even show a slight gain. That is completely normal. Your body is refilling its nutrient stores and building muscle at the same time. Even if it doesn’t look that way at the start, your body is changing step by step. Be patient with yourself — it is worth it.

From a scientific point of view, excess weight is caused mainly by a combination of higher calorie intake, lack of movement and genetic as well as hormonal factors. The metabolism, the composition of the gut flora and psychosocial aspects likewise play an important part. Current studies stress the importance of a balanced diet, regular movement and stress management for long-term weight control. That combination matches Anthony William’s recommendations too.

Anthony William puts particular emphasis on the role of the liver as the central cause of excess weight, especially through the storing of pollutants and the burden of viruses such as the Epstein-Barr virus. These views are not recognised to this extent in scientific medicine. While an overloaded liver definitely has an influence on the metabolism, many of the mechanisms Anthony William puts forward (EBV as one of the main causes, for instance) are seen as speculative and are not backed by studies.

Even though Anthony William’s view of the causes of excess weight does not fully match the scientific consensus, I think it matters to know different perspectives. That way everyone can decide for themselves which path best fits their own health goals. The truth may lie somewhere between his approaches and the scientific consensus. Avoiding pollutants, reducing stress, eating more consciously and more healthily and bringing more movement into everyday life will do our health good in any case — and if weight problems resolve themselves along the way, all the better.

My recommendation: if you want to go deeper into the subject, I recommend the book “Heile deine Leber: Die Wahrheit über chronische Erschöpfung, Reizdarm, Gewichtsprobleme, Diabetes und Autoimmunkrankheiten” by Anthony William. It offers valuable insights and practical tips for improving the health of your liver.

You will also find more information on the website of Anthony William.

Further books by Anthony William:

• Mediale Medizin: Der wahre Ursprung von Krankheit und Heilung
• Heile deine Schilddrüse: Die Wahrheit über Hashimoto, Über- und Unterfunktion, Schilddrüsenknoten, -tumoren und -zysten
• Medical Food: Warum Obst und Gemüse als Heilmittel potenter sind als jedes Medikament
• Selleriesaft: Der ultimative Superfood-Drink für deine Gesundheit – Starkes Immunsystem, gesunder Darm, strahlend schöne Haut
• Heile dich selbst: Medical Detox – Die Antwort auf (fast) alle Gesundheitsprobleme – Revolutionäre Heilstrategien bei Migräne, Übergewicht, chronischer Erschöpfung u.v.m.
• Heile dein Gehirn – Das Basisbuch: Die Wahrheit über Angstzustände, Depression, Long Covid, chronische Erschöpfung, Alzheimer und Demenz
• Heile dein Gehirn – Das Praxisprogramm: Hochwirksame Ernährungsstrategien und maßgeschneiderte Nährstoff-Therapien