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You know, you’re probably right.
I think I remember reading the suggestion to quit caffeine, too… can’t remember if that was Matt or somewhere else, though.
I am of the belief that there are all kinds of positives in avoiding caffeine and stimulants in general. I think you just develop a more sustained moderate energy rather than spikes and crashes. That said, there are probably far worse things than coffee in this life, but if someone is trying to heal it’s probably best to avoid.
I’ve been on this site a long time, and there are some positive longterm outcomes, but a lot of people give up, or decide it’s not working for them. HalfNavajo is an example of the perfect trajectory that Matt predicts. He ate a lot, gained about 20-40 pounds, I believe, and then it just fell off a couple years later. His girlfriend was going through the same thing last I heard – she had gained, stabilized, but it hadn’t dropped off yet.
Here are some things that I have observed during my time here, if that helps:
1) Anyone who has been on a low-carb diet is going to see some serious weight gain if the RRARF. It is unavoidable. It seems the only people with better results and minimal gain have added carbs in slowly and carefully. Such as coldmember did.
2) People who go on a crazy junkfood binge are not going to be happy with the weight results. There’s a reason we think of junk food as fattening. Some is fine as part of a general loosening up, but following a core healthy diet is important. And the goal should be moving to a healthy, balanced diet of mostly whole foods with some treats added in.
3) It is about much more than food. If you are eating a lot but not sleeping, dealing with stress, etc., you will not be happy with the weight gain. Yes, if you have an eating disorder or are starving for any reason, food needs to be #1, and don’t even worry about the other stuff until you’re no longer starving. But most people on this site don’t fit that description, from what I have seen. For some people it would make sense to simply cut down on PUFAs and focus exclusively on lifestyle factors.
4) If you are on a medication that causes weight gain, you will not be happy with weight gain on RRARF. There is no possibility for RRARF to overcome the powerful effects of a medication.
5) It simply will not work for everyone. Some people probably need some more guidelines and encouragement of moderation. If you don’t think it’s working for you, try to figure out why and fix it. Be mindful while you’re doing it
6) It is very risky to force yourself to eat more than you want, unless you have an eating disorder. I don’t recommend it. It will mess up your hunger signals.
I am of the belief (not from my time here necessarily but just life observations) that there are a lot of reasons for low metabolism besides food. For one, we have fluoridated water in the US and fumigate food with fluoride, so most of us ingest a lot and it likely slows the metabolism. Additionally, we consume pesticides and all kinds of toxins, and who knows what effect they have. Then there are all of the PUFAs, and the stress of modern life.
I think the answer in the end is trying to listen to your body and make friends with it. And proceed mindfully and with some moderation.
Arg I forgot the most important thing. My personal advice is learn to eat to appetite and listen to what your body really wants. Once you start eating proper meals and “tuning” in, you will know when your body wants more protein, or more carbs, or vegetables, or whatever. But it all takes time. It’s not an immediate thing.
Amy, you just helped me get clear! Thank you so much!! My intuition tells me to stick to a routine of square meals and whole foods. Mostly sweet potato, oats, quinoa, rice with some protein, fat and a little bit of veg. Add some salt and a small dessert once a day. voila. I know I can feel great that way. I don’t under eat or have an eating disorder nor have I done low carb recently. i think dairy and esp. bread needs to be in moderation for me. It puts on weight like crazy. I guess, I have some figuring out of my own to do and see what proportions work best. I really went for it in the last 1.5 months and maybe got too intent on getting my temp. up FAST. So I ate over my hunger feeling gross and tired at times. That seems pointless. Why not feel mostly good and trust one’s body’s cues!! Matt seems to say, eat as much as your appetite allows and make the food tasty as in tarts and processed without pufas. When you think of food, eat it. And then it’s normal to be dead tired all day. I must say that, that can go wrong and cause lethargy and no interest in life. It’s ok to slow down and not exercise as much but why be half deadI don’t know. He sure is onto something and I’m grateful for what he does. Amy, are your temperatures up now and what foods work best for you? I think I read somewhere that you prefer carbs and salt over fatty foods.
I know, it would look mighty dark here without some trail blazers. And Matt doesn’t seem to have time for our questions.
I’m totally in sync with you, Amy!! Great observations!
Chsitinam – why are you asking what works for Amy? You already outlined what you KNOW works for YOU. You’re listening, and hearing what your body is saying – that’s the KEY! You’ve GOT IT! Your intuition is RIGHT!
:)I got here by trying to learn more about nutrition and what my body actually needs from “experts”. My husband at one point said, “you just want someone to tell you what to eat”… which is partially right.
We even made an appointment with a dietitian – but then found out it will be $800 (going through a medical clinic with an RD) and our insurance won’t cover it… so.. nix’d that one.
Since then, all my reading is pointing to the fact that we are all individuals, from a great diversity of genetics and environmental factors… so the “one diet fits all” that so many gurus our there are advertising as ‘the answer’ – are wrong. It might be the right diet – for some… but most definitely not all.
The E4H / DR2 philosophy, as I read it, is to stop listening to the diet police. Listen to your body. Feed it. Once it realizes that you won’t be starving it any longer, and that it will be getting sufficient calories to operate, it will start to send you clues as to what kind of calories you need… i.e. carb/protein/fat/liquids etc…. and how many. At that point, I’m guessing you stop craving Big Macs (which I don’t), and instead want a real grass-fed steak with a side of roasted broccoli and maybe some real mashed potatoes (mmmm, actually, that sounds good right now!).
During one diet phase, we just did the 3/8 rule. When your hunger is at a level 3, eat. When it hits an 8, stop. We actually did lose weight that way, slowly (by – gasp! – listening to our bodies!). And, when Amy mentions that “a year or two later” the weight dropped off… that might be another key… this is not a FAST way to lose weight and get skinny, but it should be a healthy way to achieve and maintain a healthy weight.
We just need to tune in to the piece of Mother Nature that resides in ourselves, and pay attention!
Amy, you are probably right /: I’m not feeling super sure on what I’m doing right now. Eating more sugar and so on has given me results despite my common sense screaming no. I’m trying to see what has worked for others so I can maybe skip some testing of wrong combinations and avoid unnecessary weight gain which has been mentioned on this forum. Why shouldn’t the ones before us help avoid mistakes. We aren’t that different as humans. But overall I do believe in listening to my own body. But if I was, I would probably have eaten 5 oranges for lunchI mean why would we need Matt or anyone as a guide for what to eat for that matter. Because we are still searching for what works. I agree that this is a long term process. But I am forever hopeful that suffering is unnecessary(;
I think this forum is here to exchange what has and hasn’t worked. I will continue to find those that have succeeded and listen to what they did. That’s common sense to me. In combination with my own instinct I might get where I want to go.I have faired well with this attitude and will continue to do so.I agree with everything Amy wrote.
Most diets have a “Magic food”, the ingestion of which makes you a member of the “group”. For Paleos, it is meat…They brag about the amount and strange varieties of meat they eat. The “Eat For Heat” also has developed a “Magic Food” that is called, “Eat Everything That Isn’t Nailed Down”. Over the course of time that has manifested as certain people bragging about the quantity of junk food they can consume. As a correction to years of restrictive eating this was perhaps normal, but I think we are encountering the negative consequences of this unbridled approach. A lot of people are gaining a lot of weight and having difficulty getting it off. There may be some people who have suddenly lost weight after a period on this diet, but I suspect they are an extreme minority (I might be wrong about that though). And, in any case, who has “THE FAITH” to wait two years and gain another twenty pounds in the hopes that the weight will come off. For a lot of people, this PROMISE will conjure up bad memories of being told that certain unpleasant results were only temporary and attributed to this herxheimer effect (detox), only to find out two years later that they were still “detoxing”…when in fact they were just ill from the healthy protocol.
I can find any fault with that plan, Christinam!
I’m not trying to turn you away from anything… I was just trying to support the stuff you’d already done as being successful. So, you must be doing something right. :)
And from all the reading I’ve done lately about food… I’m beginning to think we, as humans, are a complete mystery to science, and each individual will need to be their own experimentation lab – because what works for one, can be totally wrong for someone else.
i.e. the conclusion stated here: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0013352
“The profound individual differences in salivary amylase levels and salivary activity may contribute significantly to individual differences in dietary starch intake and, consequently, to overall nutritional status.”
I’m most attracted to instinctive eating whenever hungry. But for now I want to fix my metabolism, thyroid, adrenals, hormones. I feel very close to target and don’t want to go on some tangent and lose what I’ve already worked hard to achieve. Thomas, what you say resonates with me. I feel that extreme dieters might come here and take the HED as a permission to pig out and be a “rebellious teenager”. Then they run back to their diet because it didn’t “work out”. Maybe there is a benefit to it but I think it holds great risk in the long run! Maybe Matt is an extreme personality. After all he did everything from fasting on only milk and other extreme diets. I don’t really want to follow anyone there but I’m totally over eating veggies with grains or fish all day and drinking veggie juice too gross lol. What if eating giant quantities of food gives a person hyperthyroid and that’s why you might become skinny while pigging out on burgers? And in the end your thyroid gives out and you get fat anyway.I honestly don’t know anyone that eats giant quantities of food and is slim except for professional athletes or dancers. But I see plenty of people eat what they want in normal amounts and look small and beautiful. All I know is that I stopped dieting a couple of years back and started eating 3squares with maybe 2 snacks, incl. carbs, fruit, honey, protein etc and I got my period back and have had one every month this last year. I still get cold hands and have a few problems like allergies to some foods, digestion etc which I want to get over. THat’s why I’m here.
And Thomas, I also have memories of detox supposed to last ?long and that’s why it’s a red flag when Matt sais it’ll take one year. Esp. when I’m already at my ideal weight and he’s saying, that, in order to achieve my goal, I need to get fat and then get thin again? UMM not sure
here’s an even harder lesson to learn: “beautiful” and “slim” are not the same thing, and “healthy” and “slim” are not the same thing. my true “ideal weight” is not the number i got from some government-sponsored BMI table. i ruined my perfectly functional metabolism by buying into all that diet and appearance crap. i was maybe 15 lb over my “ideal weight” then. and with every diet i put a few more pounds on after it failed (and they all failed). guess what? i’d be ecstatic if the never-ending stress of the public fat-shaming would stop. i’d be a whole lot healthier already. and the latest studies show that my slight overweight at the time would have given me a better life expectancy than my “ideal” weight. oh, the irony.
i think in order to achieve the goal of a healthy metabolism we need to let go of a lot of diet behaviour we’ve acquired over the years. we’re looking for rules because that’s what diets have; they all have them, leading to magical thinking — “if i only follow these (often ridiculous) rules to a T, my fat will melt off, and life will be perfect”. and then when the diet fails us, we blame ourselves. yeah, bullshit. i am done with that.
fixing our metabolism isn’t a diet. i’m coming to believe my metabolism is as individual as my personality, and i’d never go to other people to ask for rules to make my personality more mainstream. no, i delight in our differences. we ought to delight in our different body shapes and sizes too. and if it takes 2 years to fix my metabolism, and 60 added lbs, i’m fine with that — it took decades to screw it up, and i gained and lost those several times over. i want off this unmerry-go-round.
it would be nice if matt participated in these discussions, though. i enjoy geeking out.
I would never discriminate against anyone of any color or size but I honestly have a certain goal for myself. And you wouldn’t have done all those diets if you didn’t want that, too. And you also hope, in the back of your mind, that the weight will come off within 2-3 years. I wish nothing more than that! The diet industry officially SUCKS! I don’t even want to be skinny but a healthy size medium which feels comfortable on my frame and which is what I can maintain if I don’t eat huge amounts. So please don’t blame me if I ask around who got what I’m looking for and raised their metabolism, also. I might be asking for the impossible but isn’t this diet all on it’s own what is considered doing “the impossible”?
Piranha, how long have you been doing EFH and what results have you seen?
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