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My husband is so very sceptical of all this and it feels awful not having his support. I’m truly discouraged. I have always tried something that was supposed to be the holy grail of nutrition, like wapf, gaps, anti candida, etc. and now he sees this as the same thing, except that he is petrified of the weigh gain it may do to me. He also has low temperatures but keeps telling me that whenever he ate more he just gained weight, no other health improvements. And this is what I’m trying to grasp myself. How is this different to just overeating? Surely eating more leads to a weigh gain. How do I know there is a set point above which my body won’t go? What about all the obese people unable to move or those force feeding themselves on purpose and still gaining? Do they not have a set point?
He asked me to give myself a time limit on this, so I said 4 months. But what happens when you actually raise your temperature to where it should be? Do you just stop? Do you keep on eating the same amount? And when does this extra weigh fall off? I need some solid arguments to convince myself and my husband. I’m on this roller coaster of: this is it! and the next minute, what am I doing?, stop this immediately and stop eating so much….:(Matt wrote about how we get fat here: http://180degreehealth.com/2012/10/how-we-get-fat
It is no sure thing that eating more necessarily leads to long term and perpetual weight gain; see the documentary on ‘Why Are Thin People Not Fat’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeeFrcvt3KA
Also, the focus here is on keeping the stress hormones at bay
and supporting the body with adequate calories and sensible movement on a regular schedule. Matt suggests incorporating smart, enjoyable exercise (not overtaxing oneself and bailing after a few weeks of unsustainable effort), emphasizes quality sleep, and focuses on learning to read one’s own biofeedback. As outlined in that above article, this is quite different from the pattern of many obese folks.The obese, incidentally, tend to be fairly weight stable as well most of the time, gaining weight in short order in a few week’s time, usually precipitated by a stressful event of some sort (death in the family, loss of job or spouse, new medication, any number of things). Someone gaining 30lbs in 3 years is typically not gaining 1lb a month continually, but maybe 20lbs at first, then stabilizing at that weight, then maybe two years later, gaining another 10lbs, and stabilizing again.
Anyway, the goal here is to support the metabolism to get the body to a state where you can eat whatever you want, and exercise no more than you want, and remain weight stable. When this happens, the body’s hormonal profile shifts to one favoring the hormones of youth, vitality and high functioning, and at this point, you’ll probably find that you enjoy exercise, that your appetite, especially for the most palatable foods, is not as high, and that you can start to see the sort of favorable body recomposition we all want without the side effects of typical restriction-based approaches. Here’s a post on that shift in feelings toward exercise happening organically for a 180 follower: http://180degreehealth.com/180forums/topic/exercise-feels
It varies for everyone- recovery does not proceed on a set schedule. But I would aim high: healthy people are able to eat and exercise as they wish without spiraling into weight gain, and most people can too.
I have not reached the weight loss stage yet, but I wanted to add my 2-cents anyway. Last year I read Matt’s starter kit and decided to give it a try. I decided not to weigh myself as that would cause me stress since I was already overweight. So I ate with abandon and actually forced myself to eat a bit beyond full. After a month my temps were up to 98.6 and I knew I was gaining weight but I kept at it for 3 months. Then I got overly anxious about the weight gain and got on the scale, I was up 35 pounds. I freaked and stopped eating so much, I tried more of a Ray Peat style diet and stopped gaining but my morning temps went down into the 97’s.
After 6 months of Ray Peat type eating, my daytime temps were cooking but my mornin temp was never 98 or above. Next I tried supplementing with thyroid. I got my morning temps up but no weight loss and I felt like crap. So now a year later I am back to eating the food. My morning temps are up to 98.4, I gained more weight but now I am weight stable.
I could kick myself because I suspect I was close to the point where I could have started losing a year ago and a few more weeks would have done it. My point is, this path of eating the food, or as I call it Stoneing, takes some bravery because weight gain is stressful and pretty much guaranteed. Ones you decide to start, don’t stop just because you reach some arbitrary date. Go all the way until you are healthy so you do not have to start over.
I can tell you that I feel better, am getting better sleep and have more energy, than I did a few months ago. Hopefully in a few weeks I will be able to report some decrease in weight but alas not yet.
This is great, and I’m having the same thoughts. Everything I am reading makes sense, but I can’t quiet the questions of “yeah, but how is this any different that how I got to my highest weight in the first place.” After really thinking about how I got to my highest weight, I realized I was very sedentary (like, sit all day at work and then come home and sit all night) and I was stressed out from work/life.
Stress is a lot less now and I’m hoping that with enough calories to make light/fun exercise something I can actually face (low carb + long work days makes me laugh at the idea of exercise), that I have a chance at making this work.
My new goal is to eat in a way that gives me energy instead of just eating in a way that helps me lose wight. I miss having energy and hate feeling dead tired all the time.
Can’t wait to read the links above.
Thanks very much for the links, Rob!
And thank you guys for support. It is really scary gaining weight!
What you have said Cathy is actually what I was thinking. I feel that I tend to restrict my calories and perhaps the longer I drag it out, the more gain and worse it gets. But it is just so HARD to ignore the fat gain!!To me it looks like its important to remineralize the body with high mineral foods such as himalaya salt,blackstrap olasses/raw cane sugar,quality maple syrups etc. While in the first period avoiding mineralbinding or leaky gut promoting foods,such as grains/starch,normal salt which usually also entails cheeses,white sugar.
You migth also want to add in some gelatin to seal gutlining?and if youre into it probiotic foods/yoghurt?I’m not so sure about that… Have you read Matt’s latest two books Eat for Heat and Diet recovery 2 ? He actually puts emphasis on starch, sugar (even white), cheese, normal salt, etc. and plenty of people raise metabolism on these. I think the problem actually may be when one is hesitant to use refined foods and therefore prolongs the process (like what I’m doing) and therefore perhaps undereats which leads to more fat gain than necessary. My understanding is that the longer you are eating excess food in suboptimal metabolism, the more fat gain. But I could be wrong. This just my understanding. Matt, Rob what do you make of that?
@Rob
Thank you so much for that link to the BBC documentary. Really interesting.Yeah ive read it and im. talking about the same foods here (salt,sugar) etc. But more nutritous so they may lead towards a shortcut of raising metabolism/energy,while keeping the fatgain at bay maybe some more/better bodycomp?bc the body is not only getting overfed,but overfeb
y good useful foods which signals that. *food scarcity) is over.possibly, perhaps it just comes down to eat the food, as in whatever, just eat it and don’t be hungry? But if refined foods get you there faster then it may be worthy a consideration…
@Chelcw- “My new goal is to eat in a way that gives me energy instead of just eating in a way that helps me lose wight. I miss having energy and hate feeling dead tired all the time.”
Great quote- I like that, and it gets to the heart of things. Do we want to be strong, robust and full of vitality, or just sorta look like it? Substance or the appearance of substance?
@scarlettsmum – When in recovery, the calorie is the single biggest ingredient for repair and restoration. By focusing on tasty foods that we enjoy and can digest easily, we’re giving ourselves the best chance to recover without having to force feed ourselves. Eating exclusively unrefined, harder to digest food can drop our appetite and slow down the restoration process.I’m not sure it will necessarily result in more or less weight gain; the body has its own internal signals for what its optimal fat mass is for proper functioning and hormonal signaling. Whether you get there fast or slow through refined or unrefined foods may not matter as much as just getting there, and allowing the body to shift its hormonal landscape to one favoring robustness and vitality. Given that, though, there’s little reason in my mind to remain overly wedded to unrefined foods, and it probably will drag out the process, and maybe give you more time to freak out and jump ship back to restricted eating.
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