You guys might remember me. I’ve posted on here several times. I’m a 19 year old Male. I started implementing Matt’s ideas into my life back in July 2013. I didn’t read the posts before me, so forgive me if I am just repeatinng what was already said.
I was 145 lbs or so when I started. I had restricted food for a few years starting around age 13 then when I was 17 tried the Vegan diet, then the paleo diet at 18, right aound my 19th birthday I started reading Matt’s stuff. It made sense and I had been feeling it was time for a change. I was very optimistic. I thought that the fatigue, the aches and pains, the low sex drive, everything, was due to my history of dieting. So i started eating like crazy, but my temps would never come up. I tried multiple approaches: eating as many calories as possible (youreatopia gave me this idea), very little fluid, loading up on salt. I read posts on here like crazy looking for answers.
Now around 7 months later I weigh almost 240 lbs!!! That’s right, two hundred and forty fucking pounds. It’s not very fun. My temps have come up into the 97s most days but I still feel tired all the time. I let myself gain all that weight thinking there would be a pay off somewhere, and there was, but a very small one.
Matt advised me to get my thyroid checked after I emailed him about my insane weight gain. I got tests for TSH, Free t4 Index, T3 Uptake, T4 Total, Thyroglobulin Antibodies and Thyroid Peroxide Antibodies. They are all normal. My doc now tells me I have fatty liver disease.
I have been trying to come up with a reason for my huge gain. I don’t see too many others forum posters gaining 90 lbs doing this. I have had an anxiety disorder since childhood and also PTSD since age 11, but I don’t think that that would cause me to gain that much. I could see these issues causing more wiehgt gain than usual, but not that much more than usual. I’m open to being proven wrong on this though.
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been eating a diet high in fruit, whole grains, lean protein with some junk food thrown in there occasionally, but lower in fat and processed foods. I’ve also been walking a lot and working a bit with a relative of mine who is a painter. In other words I’ve been eating a fairly mainstream diet and getting more exercise. I feel a bit better. The bloating has gotten much better, I feel more optimistic. I’m still fat as hell though.
Anyways, I think Matt’s stuff got me out of a bad place with a ton of food resticitions and made me realize that there’s no reason to avoid certain foods at all costs. We all eat junk sometimes. It also made me realize that calorie restriction is terrible for your health. But I wonder if people would have better results if Matt rewrote his books to recommend that people use real, whole foods for this process. I think if I had used whole foods in place of processed and fast food to refeed, I may not weigh nearly as much as I do now. I realize that he does not say, eat only junk foods, but after reading the book Diet Recovery 2 and reading the forums I was under the impression that processed foods do not have much of an ill effect on our health. Maybe he should not leave things as open to interpretation and incorporate some guidelines. I also think that Matt should advise people to get checked through blood tests and such for diseases and disorders that could cause the same symptoms of restrictive dieting before diving into refeeding. I think that some of my symptoms are caused by underlying disorders (my doc thinks I might have rheumatoid arthritis).
Anyways, I am thankful for Matt’s work because it has helped me, but at the same time I am disapointed. I had total faith that my temps would come up and I would be feeling like a million bucks for the first time in a long time. That’s not the case though. Sometimes I think i feel worse than when I started beacuse of all the weight gain.
Maybe I was too optimistic. Maybe Matt’s work subtly suggests that it is the cure all for health issues. I’m really not sure.