allergies?

Question
Evelyn
I am 49,no health issues except for a big belly.I am 5'8" 235 pounds but am fairly muscular.
In fact my belly is very firm and I can even discern the abdominal muscles-it just sticks way out.
Do you know if this could be related to a medical condition? I get complete physicals every year as a condition of my employment but nothing comes up eg: thyroid.
I have tried all the weight loss aids like green tea,guggul,forskolin,nothing helps.
My wife actually eats more than me and doesnt exercise at all but I outweigh her by 75 pounds.
Could it be hormonal or possibly a food allergy? I have tried low carb,low meat,no dairy,but it keeps expanding.
For the last few months I have been walking an hour a day to and from work,and I do a set of crunches ever day.That has slowed the expansion a bit.
One thing that makes me suspect it might be a food allergy is this: I am a light drinker,but every couple of months may consume a few too many beers.My belly really expands on the days after,even if I didnt eat much.The scale will read the same weight but I wont even be able to fit into my pants again until I starve for a week.
Thanks.  

Answer
Dear Bud,

You seem to have hit the nail on the head. The distention of your belly is not uncommon in beer drinkers, precisely for the hormonal effect. The problem lies more in the daily drinking of beer, than the occasional disgusting binge (oh Bud, oh Bud, oh Bud...).Ok kidding aside, a diet of tea and all sorts of odd sounding things will not help you in this case. It is also not exactly an allergy, because your body LOVES this beer, and shows it by growing on it. It is not trying to oust it like a hostile invader (as does the sneezing in hayfever or the rashes with some products).

Beer is a real easy, comfort drink (as compared to wine), based on the substances it contains. In herbal lore it is well known that hops are sleep inducing  and the other main ingredient barley was known by the Ancient Greeks as a "manly grain": it was supposed to stimulate male qualities, then translated into fighting courage. What happens in beer,though is that the yeasting process, the malting of the barley, "lames" this into Dutch Courage. It is also a grain that promotes awarenss and thinking power on a subtle level (so not by mineral/vitamin properties. This is an esoteric view). Again, with beer, the alcoholic property has "numbed" this quality and converts this potential creative force into a "sedentary expansiveness".

The beauty of a beer belly, to my mind, is how it so unashamedly tells men their potential could be great, if they directed all that formative energy to the right place. The right diet is meant to help do that. In fact, we eat to think about ourselves. In a sense, too much thinking about what to eat, is a waste of time. In a perfect world, you would naturally sense what foodstuffs you needed and reach for these (and these alone). You might well, indeed, even reach for the occasional beer.  But don't kid yourself, Bud: the rest of your diet is not exactly in tip-top shape either, especially not with a binge-starve pattern.

Your overall muscular stature tells me that you have a strong willforce (not necessarily converted into the right kind of determination, yet). It sounds to me you need a general tone-up covering more than just the localised problem of your belly.
The answers lie within you. Your life-style is the question. If you get this, you are pretty close to understanding the Ancient Greeks' love of barley (and wine).
Take care,
Love Evelyn  

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