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Food intolerance produces a host of symptoms, which is bad enough. But it also causes a number of interrelated problems, each of which makes all the others worse. One of those problems is inflammation, a major cause of weight gain and weight-loss resistance.

Ironically, inflammation is a necessary by-product of any intense immune response – that is, it’s supposed to help your system heal. When your body is invaded by a toxin, bacteria or a virus or traumatized by a wound, your immune system swiftly triggers a cascade of healing and protective chemicals that rush to the site. You can think of your immune system as an ambulance that comes roaring to the rescue after an accident.

But suppose the ambulance driver is so anxious to reach you that he crashes right through the side of your house? That’s inflammation – the negative side effects of the healing process.

Inflammation puts on the pounds in a number of different ways.

The four classic inflammatory responses are redness, heat, pain and swelling, symptoms that are easily visible when the injury can be seen. Think of how a cut on your finger turns red and how warm and tender the skin becomes, or imagine how an insect bite on your ankle might swell. Those reactions occur inside your body, too, when a high-FI food triggers an immune reaction. Your digestive tract becomes inflamed. If you frequently eat foods that inflame your system – either foods to which you’re sensitive or foods that contain inflammatory fats (e.g., dairy, eggs and corn) – then you’re likely to suffer from chronic low-grade inflammation. And you’re running the risk of weight-loss resistance and obesity.

Inflammation puts on the pounds in a number of different ways:

 Chemical changes. Inflammation makes your body resistant to key chemical messengers that help you burn fat, tolerate stress and normalize your appetite and cravings. For example, inflammation keeps your body from ‘hearing’ cortisol, the key stress hormone. As a result, your cortisol levels rise, stressing you out, storing fat around your waist and causing you to crave carbs. Cortisol also lowers your serotonin, the feel-good brain chemical that helps you feel calm and optimistic and sleep well. Eventually, your body gets tired of producing all that excess cortisol, and your levels drop, causing you to feel sluggish, unmotivated and fatigued.

 Inflammation also creates resistance to leptin, the hormone that regulates feelings of hunger and fullness. Leptin resistance means that leptin can’t get into your cells. This makes you hungrier, so you eat more, well past the point where your brain would normally be signalling ‘enough’.

 Finally, inflammation keeps your body from responding properly to adiponectin, which helps regulate blood sugar and body fat. Add up all these responses, and you get weight gain.

 Insulin resistance. Insulin is a hormone that moves sugar out of your bloodstream and into your cells. When I say, ‘sugar’, I don’t just mean the sweet white stuff that sits on the table. I mean the starches found in grains, the fructose and glucose found in fruits and vegetables and the lactose found in milk. These sugars enter your blood, where they are meant to provide energy for your body and brain, as long as insulin helps move them into your cells.

 But when you are consuming too much sugar (in the form of sweets, starches or dairy products) or when your system is inflamed, your body secretes too much insulin and keeps the insulin in your bloodstream longer than it’s supposed to. After a while, your cells can’t ‘hear’ all that excess insulin. Your insulin receptors stop responding to the insulin, and your blood sugar remains high. You may eventually have trouble manufacturing enough insulin, putting you at risk of developing diabetes. Meanwhile, you can’t use that extra blood sugar for energy, and it ends up getting stored as fat.

 In addition, all that excess insulin in your blood tells your body you have enough sugar around for fuel, so it doesn’t need to burn stored fat. Insulin resistance basically slams the doors to your fat cells shut. Insulin resistance also makes it nearly impossible to lose weight. And inflammation virtually guarantees that you will suffer from insulin resistance.

Insulin resistance slams the doors to your fat cells shut.

 Fluid retention. Inflammation doesn’t just help you hold onto your body fat, it also causes you to retain fluids so you feel bloated and heavy.

 Digestive problems. When inflammation rages through your intestines, your digestive system can’t operate efficiently. If you have an imbalance of gut bacteria, with more bad bacteria than good, you will actually extract more calories from the food you eat and store them as fat. If your gut wall is damaged and leaky, you will struggle to be able to absorb your nutrients. The result is that even though you are eating, you still feel hungry and unsatisfied because your body can’t get what it needs from your food.

 Loss of energy. Inflammation causes you to feel sluggish and fatigued. If your body is inflamed, you are not going to feel like moving much, so you become even more sedentary. The less active you are, the more resistant to insulin you become – and the vicious cycle continues.

I hope you’re beginning to see why I told Leslie to pull out of her diet any high-FI foods that might be causing an inflammatory response. The fastest way to gain weight that you can’t lose is to allow your body to become inflamed. And the fastest way to drop those extra pounds is to remove the sources of inflammation and let your body heal. That’s what the Virgin Diet is all about.