Last year I wrote this for a somewhat edgy foreign?publication that seems to have been cryogenically frozen, if not gone the way of the Dodo. I think it deserves a relocation from the files on my laptop to the blog.?Enjoy… ?
8 Badass Ways to Get Healthy
Take a moment to relax. Breathe in deeply. My buddy Daniel Larusso does it. And when he does, wow! Watch out! We were once traveling in Okinawa together and he broke like 10 fat slabs of ice with a single karate chop!
Actually, come to think of it, that was a movie. Sorry. I grew up in America. Try as I might, I spent so much of my childhood in front of the television that I honestly have trouble separating my actual childhood from what I watched on a screen. It didn’t help that I was so blind I couldn’t see my penis clearly until my mom took me to the mall to get glasses. My nose was practically pressed against the television screen. ??
Wait, what the hell am I talking about?? It seems I was going somewhere with that. Oh, yes of course. I want you to breathe deeply and enter into a meditative state. I have something very important for you to visualize in your head.
A badass.
Hopefully ?a badass? is something that you can picture clearly in your head. I don’t know what you picture in your head, but here are the thoughts that creep in as I dive deeply into this serene state of badass meditation?
When I think of a badass, I picture a guy in jogging shoes standing at a salad bar, picking over the greenest leaves to maximize his chlorophyll intake, asking the staff if the salad greens were thoroughly washed to remove pesticides.
After confirming that they were indeed hand-washed, he feels at least somewhat at ease, which is a miracle considering the fact that he is dining with friends away from the typical all-organic grocery store he is accustomed to, where he KNOWS that the food is all organic and pesticide-free. At this point, he starts to wander down the salad bar to find some safe foods that he doesn’t react to.
Damn. First item cheese. Commercial lettuce is one thing, but non-organic cheese?? It’s probably been pasteurized too. ?Um, like, no thanks? he says to himself. ?Plus, cheese makes my tongue feel a little itchy and gives me pimples on my forehead.?
?Yessss! I love beets! he thinks as he tries to hide his excitement over the next item in the bin. He has heard they are good for the liver, and his yoga teacher mentioned something about a rare antioxidant in them that can loosen up joints. He piles on extra as his hip flexors have really been tight lately in class, making him a little self-conscious when he struggles with all the Asanas performed in a seated position. ??
Then, a wave of anxiety strikes him as he inches the pair of salad tongs that he brought with him (to avoid contamination with other people who have touched the tongs going through the salad line) towards the next item? hard-boiled eggs. They look fresh. And he does love eggs, something that has made him wonder on numerous occasions if he might have an allergy. But there’s a problem?
He’s cycling carbohydrates. Everybody who knows a damn thing about how to shave those last few ounces of fat off of the obliques knows you can’t freakin? combine carbohydrates and fat. Carbs spike insulin, and insulin stores fat. If there’s no fat there to be stored, it’s no big deal. But if there is you can pretty much kiss your obliques goodbye. So obviously he can’t eat the yolk. That’s ruled out. But they were pretty much ruled out anyway. There’s no way that restaurant is using high omega 3 eggs. ?Hello! Arachidonic Acid! I’ll pass on the bronchoconstriction thank you very much! ??
But that’s just the beginning of this pivotal, potentially life-extending decision. Egg whites are great he’s thinking. ?They?re like the most highly-absorbable source of protein.? But the thing is, he has been really toying around with the idea of doing a lower protein diet.
But he’s also been thinking about bulking up. The added calories in the yolk just might outweigh the dangers. And he just wants an egg so bad. That just sounds so satisfying to him.
Aha! He comes up with the perfect solution. He will decide later whether to bulk or to continue cutting and eat a whole, entire egg. 10 extra minutes on the treadmill should take care of the problem with combining fat in the yolk with the carbs in the beets if he wants to drop down from 9% to 8% bodyfat. And if he decides to bulk, well, he’ll just be off to a quick start.
Now, now, now. I know what you’re thinking. ?That sounds just like me! I like this weird American writer guy! He thinks I’m a badass!
Au contraire thou nibbler of Goji berries, thou Sultan of Superfoods! This guy is just setting up the scene. Every badass needs a little salad-eating bitch to emasculate.
And it’s at this point in the meditation that our badass enters the scene. As Salad Boy is returning to his table after 2 hours and 23 minutes of trying to decide what to put on top of his lettuce, he is cut off by a massive beast of a man whose trapezius muscles are eclipsing the sunlight shining through a nearby window.
At first Salad Boy is stunned at this man’s rudeness, but then his eyes wander to the two giant plates this guy is carrying back from the buffet. Both plates are piled high with giant slabs of bleeding beef, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, creamy pasta, bread, candied yams, and more. And Salad Boy snobbishly says?
?Have a nice heart attack.
Before he can say ‘saturated fat,? he is grabbed by this badass mofo. The next thing Salad Boy remembers is being lifted in the air by two strong hands that felt like they had been soaking in lava, and dragged across the restaurant to the ice cream dispenser. I think you know what happens next. Brain freeze torture. Salad Boy is traumatized, but the funny thing is, this horrific experience and all, he wakes up the next morning to the first boner he’s had in three months. And it’s a beauty. The kind you could hang a kettlebell on.
It was just like the time my friend Tyler and I took a store clerk out back and asked him what he wanted to really do with his life at gunpoint, threatening him to start pursuing his dreams in life or else. Sure it was mean and cruel and stuff, but we did the guy a favor.
Hopefully you’re seeing where I’m going with this. Health fanaticism, food phobia, diet paranoia, calorie counting, portion control, and obsession with how your abs look are not the qualities of a badass. If you want to be a badass, start acting like one. This is true even more for women than it is for men, who think that eating 100-calorie snack bars, smoothies, and salads while jogging and doing a few stretches are going to make them undergo a transformation like Linda Hamilton did between the first and second Terminator movie. Not gonna happen. ?
And trust me, I know some badass women. This one friend of mine from Sweden has muscles, rides motorcycles, has a big tattoo across her back, hacks into people’s computers, and once tied a guy up and tattooed ?Rapist? across his chest after he messed with her. Last time I checked she wasn’t logging all her meals on Fitday, making sure not to exceed her daily calorie quota.
While this might all sound like a big Hollywood movie to entertain you, I am actually quite sincere about this and have explored this topic in exhaustive detail for nearly a decade. My most important ?discovery? in all these years of communicating with literally thousands of people trying to micromanage their health and fitness practices, is that this modern health fanaticism and information diarrhea can ruin your health. Being a badass and just living the life you want to live without remorse, without moralizing your diet or the things you love to do, and being free of the health and body image obsessiveness we’re all told will make us hot, cool, and pretty much any other desirable temperature, is actually the key to a successful and healthy life.
Here are?8 badass ways that you can improve your health?
1)????? Stop paying attention to the small details of food, and put more focus on how your body works. Who cares how many B vitamins or antioxidants are in a food if you feel miserable eating the way you’re eating, have lost your sex drive, feel depressed or anxious, aren’t menstruating, haven’t crapped in a week, and feel like sleeping all day? Food is powerful medicine when you know how to use it. It is also powerful poison when you continue to follow some guru’s perverse, puritanical rabbit food diet despite obvious signs it is wrecking your body. Most people feel better when they just eat what they want without feeling guilty about it or analyzing it to death. And they look better too, in terms of body fat levels. Here are?40 or so’studies on that, in case you think I pulled that one out of my ass. http://www.intuitiveeating.org/content/studies ??
2)????? Eat more food, and don’t restrict fats, carbohydrates, protein, meat, grains, sugars, or any other common dietary pi?ata. This stifles the production of stress hormones (most diseases can be traced back to an excess production of stress chemicals in the body), and in turn will make you warm, horny, happy, energetic, and more capable of increasing strength, muscle mass, speed, and power when you exercise ? just to name a few benefits. This literally will raise your body temperature and metabolism, and any number of health problems related to a suppressed metabolic rate can improve. Dr. Mark Starr, author of a book on this very subject, has a chapter on symptoms of a low metabolism that is 85 pages long. That says a lot about the different systems of the body that are affected by poor cellular energy production/low metabolism. I have helped thousands of people from all over the world to achieve this simply by NOT dieting, getting plenty of sleep, and otherwise not being a self-deprecating idiot. ?http://180degreehealth.com/180-degree-health-testimonials? ??
3)????? Stop eating so many fruits and vegetables and eat more salt, sugar, starch, and saturated fat. Fruits and vegetables are great, in reasonable quantities. And they can be good for some people. Most people I encounter have a low body temperature, are cold a lot of the time, have cold hands and feet, and other obvious signs of a low metabolism. That’s because most of the people that come to me have restricted something from their diets for a long time and have been eating too much ?health food.? It has taken me many years to identify the things that raise metabolic rate the best, and that list keeps on growing. But in terms of food, the S’s ? salt, sugar, starch, and saturated fat, you know, the stuff everyone says to avoid, are what yield the biggest improvements in people’s health, metabolism, and well-being. They are the foods people crave when they are stressed, because they are the de-stressing foods. In the right context, these substances have nothing short of a medicinal effect. Like this recent research on salt, for example? ?http://healthnews.uc.edu/news/?/12876/ ?
4)????? Eat real food. Real food means stuff that is minimally processed, not packaged in a shiny wrapper, and doesn’t have a tv commercial with a cartoon character promoting it. Real food also means satisfying food that leaves you feeling well-fed. Eating as much as you desire of unprocessed food, high in essential nutrients, can do amazing things ? even help you lose weight without ever being hungry.
5)????? Stop drinking so much damn water, especially on an empty stomach. Water is like Kryptonite to someone with a low metabolism. It is a lifeless substance devoid of any electrolytes, glucose, or anything else your cells need to produce energy properly. Every time you take in water it dilutes the salt and sugar in your cells. This is only good when you have too much salt and sugar in your cells, like after eating a really huge meal. At other times, you are better off drinking something containing salt and sugar ? like a sports drink, particularly after exercise or on a hot day. In the world of coffee, tea, diet drinks, barrel-sized soft drinks, smoothies, juice, and the water fetish ? most people are drinking WAY too many fluids in general. I have helped people overcome all kinds of ?incurable diseases? like seizures, for example, by drinking fewer fluids and being particularly cautious about water. Certainly don’t force it down because some Joe Schmo doctor said to drink 8, 8-ounce glasses of water a day. Follow generic advice, have generic health.
6)????? Stop doing ?cardio.? Slow-paced exercise on treadmills or Stairmasters and stuff like jogging ? these things will make any power athlete like a sprinter or strength athlete weak, stiff, and cold. If you want a high-performance Sport’s Car of a body, then do high-performance exercise. Lift weights vigorously, do plyometrics, do some bodyweight exercises, dance and play sports? but only step on a piece of cardio equipment to do?hard work in short bursts. ???
7)????? Eat less often. What are you a gerbil?? You don’t need to sit around and eat all day. When you get hungry, eat a nice, satisfying meal. Badasses don’t pack plastic containers with pre-portioned food around with them every day. When you get hungry, eat, and eat until you are fully satisfied. Throw some quality, hard, physical training in there, kept up regularly for years, and your body might actually look better 5-10 years from now than it does currently. Eating less often actually does seem to have legitimate health benefits, and protects against the habit of eating crack-like foods out of boredom instead of actual hunger. Perhaps its most useful virtue is that it enables you to really eat when you eat, instead of just teasing yourself with an unsatisfying portion of what feels like nothingness in your stomach. ?????????
8)????? Stop wearing sunscreen. Spend time in the outdoors regularly, get regular sunlight, and your skin will slowly start to build up a tolerance to sunlight. Hang out for weeks indoors playing video games like a douche and you will go out, get burned, and damage your skin. We know that getting natural sunlight protects against a long list of degenerative diseases, including most cancers. Getting lots of sun raises the risk of getting skin cancer. So what are you gonna do? ?Die of colon cancer because you are afraid of getting skin cancer?? Go outside, get some full-spectrum light without blocking it with any toxic, chemical-laden creams, and do it regularly. If you start to get burnt, put on a shirt and a hat instead. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18550652
Great article. Funny too as usual…
Wow, I was first!
Lmao xD Great read
Amen! Preach on. Excellent.
“You absolutely kill me!” – 61 yr old woman who most folks know as a goodie two shoes who is blowing up like a balloon following your advice, but can slowly feel the energy and heat rising
What’s your definition of processed food? I buy pre made pie crusts (flour, sugar, butter). Is that processed? What about organic sugar? Should we opt for rapadura?
Rapadura? Ha ha! You’re a WAPF-er, aren’t you? :) It’s cool. I’m a recovering WAPF-er myself.
Processed is McDonalds or frozen microwave meals. The difference between table sugar and rapadura is minutia not worth worrying about.
Lol. Well, I used to be a vegan so WAPF is a step in the right direction.
I love rapadura. Tastes better than regular sugar, and I still think the extra trace minerals can’t hurt. Don’t knock it!
My husband prefers it in his coffee. :)
Rapadura is basically the same thing as the organic evaporated cane juice by “Wholesome Sweeteners” right?
I definitely prefer the taste of it to regular sugar. Extra minerals are cool, too. :-)
Cane juice sugar is one of the main things I have held on to from WAPF. I can deal with beet sugar in small amounts, but I can eat TONS of cane sugar with no ill effects. I wouldn’t worry about beet sugar in a store-bought pie crust, but if I bake at home I use cane juice sugar. It really tastes better too.
Matt, one of your better posts in a while. And not just because of the Karate Kid references. (Although clearly that is a bonus) But this is really inspiring. Gotta go work on my sun-blocking traps now.
Well timed- I thank you.
Do you have a favourite recipe for home made ice cream?
For more inspiring badassery you should all check out Chief’s blog (for those who haven’t already) at http://www.chiefrok.com/blog/ . Not too busy on there lately, but there’s plenty of bad ass tips on there.
Oh you know Chief was all up in my head when I wrote this one!
Chief! You’re getting shout outs- come out of hibernation, holmes!
Good article. I’m off to mcdonalds!
Hahahaha! The funniest shit I’ve read all day! My husband and I used to be salad eating bitches but now we are badasses for sure! Even our five yr old is a badass. He will only eat steak and potatoes, drink whole milk and eat homemade cookies and ice cream until hes about to explode. This kid used to barely pick at food and was skinny and scrawny and always cold. Now he runs around in short sleeves when it’s freezing out and just took him to the doctor for his five yr old check up and the doctor couldn’t believe how healthy and strong my kid is!!! He’s lean and muscular and weighs 53 lbs and sleeps 11 hrs every night to boot!!! Thanks Matt for turning all our health around! Screw salad and veggies ! And I hate cardio!!!
Kiki are you a EM2WL person?
My pleasure Kiki! Poor kid used to almost pass out after a can of 7-UP. Now he shotguns them Teen Wolf style and then crushes the cans on his forehead. Right?
Totally! He can slam so much sugar and carbs and be totally perfect. I’ve been a little scared lately cuz he’s eating so much. How much is this gonna cost me when he’s 16?
Amanda: I have no idea what em2wl stands for:) I’m simple of mind
I think it means Eat More 2 Lose Weight
Wonderful news about your son! I’m also happy, because my 15 year old daughter who was fretting about some weight gain listened to me, did nothing, and it came off. A few pounds on a gorgeous girl like her, no big deal, but the exciting thing is it was a great lesson on why not to diet!
Seems the success stories are mostly among the young. But I had a bit of a badass-type breakthrough too (though nobody would mistake me for a badass at the gym, believe me!) At the end of Diet Recovery, having flagged phrases like “it could take years” and “It might never happen” I just decided to stop putting my life on hold for improvements in health and looks that may never happen, celebrate those that have, and get on with some big dreams. I realized that now is the best opportunity I’ve ever had to follow my dream and I’ve been wasting it. I decided there and then to ignore my appearance and health (not neglect it, do what I need to but be kind of detached). With this, I got happy and I found energy. Yesterday we went to a sports game, walked miles, I didn’t get tired, didn’t need to pee till I got home 5 hours later. A milestone!
Nicole, EmmaW and co, I should have posted this in the last blog as it’s really part of that conversation. I agree it’s not normal or nice to accept 50 pounds overweight but if I have no choice, am doing all I can, then after that, till we know more, what else can one do? And I feel good, not stuck anymore. We’ll see how it goes …
Good on you Sue!
It is Eat More 2 Weigh Less – and one of the founders is named Kiki!
Oh! No im not that Kiki :) I weigh 20 lbs more but I was an underweight marathon runner before, but not anymore. I have more muscle now than I ever have and so does my husband. He weighs 30 lbs more but doesn’t even look fatter just bigger, manlier- mama like:) he can do more pull ups now than when he weighed 30 lbs less.
I know a couple that really got into running since I met them. They were both slim, well she very much so, but now they both look gaunt and emaciated. It sounds like you all are so much healthier now!
Kiki, your boy sounds like my 2 yr old. Meat and potatoes is about it for him too, along with all the ice cream he can get. Lots of whole milk too. He’s strong as a bull, 40 inches tall and 40 lbs, no allergies, no asthma, only one ear infection so far. Amazingly healthy and always warm (can’t even wear socks inside in winter).
Hurray for eating lots of good food!
I love the simplicity of your advice! Give people a list of 10.000, mostly unappealing food items they should regularly eat and they won’t either even start or they will try and end up depressed from eating food they don’ t really enjoy…And I am happy about being “officially” adviced NOT to eat so many vegetables…I started to have some serious digestive issues when I started to eat tons of fibrous vegetables. I just cannot digest huge amounts of insoluable fiber, possibly because I am not a cow or a rabbit. And I do not know about any culture whose traditional meals are composed mostly of fibrous vegetables. They are used to add flavour, variety amd nutrients but probably shouldn’t make the bulk…I am also pretty sure that I stripped calories from my diet by adding “bulk” and reducing starch, thus slowing my once incredible metabolism (I used to finish the leftovers from the guys’s lunches at cafeteria at university when I was in my early twenties and maintained a BMI of barely 19 while probably eat
In terms of veggies in other culture’s diets, I can attest that in Spain and Greece, people do eat vegetables, but usually there is quite a bit of olive oil in it, on it, around it. Sometimes a puddle. So it’s not low-cal vegetables by any means.
A Spanish midday dinner (lunch for us) would have 3 courses and wine. The starter might be a salad with romaine, eggs, olives, tuna or a plate of vegetables. Second course might be fish, meat and potato, or a rice dish with some meat in it, 3rd course dessert would
be a fruit plate or you could have ice cream or flan, custard. Whenever I’ve spent time in Spain I don’t gain and sometimes lose weight.
You know I am new around here. But reading diet recovery I can’t get over so many things Matt mentions that remind me of when I am in Spain. The fact that they eat so damn much it is sort of obscene. When I go home (Spain) I eat sooo much and feel great! You know, im on vacation and i dont get to eat all this stuff at home so i just eat whatever i want. I pig out at first and then as the days go by I am eating less between meals. Sound familiar? Then I come back and go back to my healthy diet and wonder why my hair starts falling out! Must be the stress from the flight, etc. Duh!
I am heavy so the assumption is I can handle my food. But I am so embarrassed when a table full of non-overweight 80 year olds put away a 12 course tasting menu and I can barely handle my 3 course. They are total badasses!!! I always wondered what was so different about how they ate there and really never imagined it was they ate more!! A proper complete meal in Spain is the meat/veg/starch + egg + soup and optional dairy!!!
That’s funny because when I was naturally thin I could eat unimaginable amounts of food. Whole pizzas, third helpings of meat and potatoes, tons of cookies. My boyfriend and I used to have eating contests for fun and I’d give him a run for his money. Now that I’m recovering from bulimia, I find it harder to finish meals that used to give me no problem, and it’s such a disappointment because I was a great eater 2 years ago! I’m working back up to it though :)
I don’t know but these people are doing something right. Those 12 course portions weren’t much smaller than the 3 course ones. My parents came to the US when they were young so they really lost a lot of stuff from “the mother land”. I have been trying to reacquaint myself with the eating culture but really don’t know how to do it without applying all my biases (like never noticing it might be the QUANTITY of the food). They don’t exactly have a book called “how we eat for idiots” not that they have all the answers. Now they are having a lot of similar health probs as here. In the past 10 years there is a huge shift in how much crap they sell at the grocery stores, before it used to be basics like rice, olive oil, meat, etc (which I thought was really boring).
But my great aunts all lived to 100+ yo without counting carbs or intermittent fasting ha…. My husbands gram is 92 yo has lived in the US for 50+ yrs and is still totally fine. No glasses, cane, nothing. She makes pretty much everything she eats and frys everything in mazola or some other crap… think she avoids nuts or something and loves chocolate.. hey that must be it!!! :D
So interesting! These people from Europe all went through a few years of at least semi-starvation during world war II so they must have recovered from that as well.
Typing from my smartphone, I did not finish the post, I probably never ate under 2500 cals a day, didn’t to any formal exercise and struggled not to lose weight. Now I have to watch what I eat and exercise in order to stay lean. I ascribed it to being well over 30 but possibly my “healthy” diet is to blame? Please, give me some confirmation that my turbo metabolism of 10-15 years ago can be awaken…!
This is awesome, Matt. I feel badass all the time when I chow down on pizza, cream and sugar in my coffee, real ice cream, etc., as other people eat the diet food.
BTW, this is a really non-badass question and probably makes me look like the salad guy, but I started taking my temps again recently because I had been through some really stressful stuff that caused me to not eat and sleep enough and I’m sure cortisol rose and my temps dropped, I felt anxious all the time, etc. I’ve been really pounding the food and sleeping again, and my temps are mostly great again. Usually between 98.5-98.8 most of the day, even hitting 99.5 after dinner when I’ve measured. BUT, when I take my temp at 7am every day (which is my usual wake-up time for work, and I have to measure at the same time each day to track my cycles properly, it a bit lower – usually low-98s, but sometimes high 97s). If I roll back over and go to sleep on the weekend, it’s 98.6 when I wake up an hour or so later. What is up with the 7am dip? Low metabolism still?
FWIW, I’ve gotten my temperature to 98 degrees and up for most of the day, which is a huge improvement over what I used to have (95.9 F on average for the whole day)…but…
I have a manual labor job in a warehouse and have to get up at 6AM during the week, and I usually feel completely exhausted when I wake up, and my waking temperature during the working week has been as low as 96.1, compared to typically 97.6 on the weekends when I have a chance to sleep until 7:30 or 8.
I imagine sleep definitely has an influence on the metabolic rate. Two things to consider are investing in a light box as well as some amber, blue light blocking glasses, like the Uvex S1933X (it’s only around 10 bucks). You can use the light box in the morning and wear the glasses about an hour before bedtime if you’re going to be watching TV or using the computer or otherwise be around a lot of lighting.
I borrowed a Daylight lamp by Uplift Technologies for a while for SAD. It really helped me immensely. I had to give that back recently and have been in a little bit of a slump, and am looking for a good light box to invest in. I’ve heard very good things about the Litebook, although it’s really tiny (5″ x 5″ x 1″).
Excuse me for getting obsessive there. I’m in the process of deciding what to do about this myself, but I did want to throw this out there, as I think it could potentially help a lot. I also found that using the light box in the morning allowed me to eat a lot more for breakfast. Normally I would be zombi-fied and feel kind of nauseous in the morning and could hardly get down a little piece of cheese. So I do think there’s a strong correlation here.
I also remember seeing circadian rhythm referred to as “body temperature rhythm.” I think the body temperature naturally fluctuates as the day goes by, so there will be some variation. If your temperature is generally staying at least 98 degrees I wouldn’t worry about it too much, although improving your sleep quality wouldn’t be a bad idea, especially if you’re dipping down to the high 97’s.
That’ll probably normalize over time, but I still like the idea of the amber glasses and the light box. Pretty simple adaptations for modern times IMO, and potentially very valuable.
Yes,I’m looking for cheap alternative lamps that stimulate Vit.D production too as the official therapylamps are way too pricey…
I heard it’s the UvB that stimulates it and that certain reptile-lamps contain this too….they’re also pricey but nowhere near the official therapy lamps.
One aspect of deep sleep is lower body temperature, and that’s normal. As the body completes its sleep cycle, and brings the body to awaken it releases cortisol, raises the body temp so you are alert, rested, and ready to go in the morning. Waking up cool and tired could be a symptom of just needing more sleep… so you wake up coming out of the deep cycles, especially if you’re waking up real early (and dealing with stress, etc) and when going back to sleep for a while seems to solve the problem.
Thanks, Travis. that’s interesting. Yeah, 7am is definitely earlier than my body “wants” to get up. I need to get to bed earlier for sure – maybe that would clear things up a bit.
@Jib, that’s interesting on the light box. I don’t think I have the funds for that sort of thing now, but I would not be surprised if it does wonders for the mood, sleep, etc. Interestingly, I am very sensitive to sunlight and SAD prone now. I never was growing up, but after living in super gloomy place for a few years (where the sun literally might shine just a handful of days all winter), I developed it and literally crave the sun now, even though I live in a more temperate place now. My mood difference on sunny vs. cloudy days is significant.
Matt, I have been following your advice and experimenting with static contraction weight training for over a month. My lifts (if you can call them that) keep going up and up. It’s much more satisfying to handle ungodly amounts of weight in this way than it is to trudge through a prescribed number of sets and reps with something lighter. I go once every 5-6 days and eat like a mofo for a couple days afterwards and it’s great. Somehow I’m not getting fatter and I think my moobs are shrinking at last. My quads are definitely getting bigger and stronger. There’s another month to go on the experiment and then hopefully it will be warm enough to enjoy the outdoors again.
Matt -or anybody- I’m doing well on ETF and am seeing more healing than I have in a few years. I even recently began to think about exercise and have started walking around my backyard when the mood kicks in. I’m pretty weak from being house-bound for 4 years with adrenal/thyroid issues, but am at least able to do a more than I was a year ago. I’m getting a lot more done around the house and am better able to tolerate sudden noises and crowded rooms. The food is keeping me calm!
But the one time of day I struggle is somewhere between 10 and noon. I’ve tried eating more sugar, more salt and more in general, but everyday I get hit with a case of general malaise, dizzyness and mild headaches. It usually goes away by 1 or 2 and I can resume some activities, but no matter what I do, I know I will feel like crap in the late morning. Any suggestions? Also, I am still struggling with shortness of breath. Just walking across the room to answer the phone makes me huff and puff to the point where the caller will ask if I ran to the phone. Sometimes I notice it just watching TV, too. Anything I can do to help that? Thanks!
Susan. Are we sisters from another Mister? I had the same dip, but now I find that when I have plenty of starch and sugar at breakfast, it makes the whole day right.
My favorite breakfast is cheesy eggs, with hashbrowns cooked in coconut oil and salt AND 4-5 bites of a brownie. Some cake. Dates are good (3 or so.) And I wash it down with coke.
Apparently dad got around bc this exact happens to me!!! It is much better the more carbs and salt (salami!) I eat at breakfast. I used to notice that on vacation when I went the breakfast buffet and ate ate and ate I was ok within a couple days! Also a snack before bed helped. If it still happens to me so i just eat 2nd breakfast at that time! It’s getting better!
Something that also helped was to have a good meat/carb/fat snack BEFORE it hits. This worked for me along with lying down after. A naturopath suggested this a long time ago and it did help some but was pretty unsustainable for me. A saliva test showed that my adrenals were super low at that time of day and super high the rest of it.
I know this is the blind leading the blind here. This 10 am to noon crap is the freaking bane of my existence. I can’t make any appts or go anywhere between those hours and it truly sucks.
Matt, you must see this a lot from us malnourished people. Can you comment on this please? Even if it is that you have no idea but have you seen it and seen it go away when RRARFing?????
I keep thinking about the food schedule in Spain. 8am toast and milk with coffee, 11am (eleven-sies) a sandwich, 2pm-5pm big lunch, 8pm tapas (snacks) 10pm lighter (3 course) dinner. Should I just move?
ugh matt thank god you are here. I keep going off on random ideas thinking i should eat just vegetables and stuff again but then i remeber you are here and come read your articles and come back down to earth. I guess it takes more than a couple times to get it through some of our starved skulls. thansk for what you do. I just need to remember you have been through this before for years and years trying to be healthy. My last idea was that some food gave more energy like raw veegtables and that other food took it away? have you thought that one before?
Anyone out there have any clue why a 43 yr old male 6′ 170 lbs who has never dieted a day in his life would develop Type 1 diabetes? No close relatives with it. Not a big exerciser but active. He had normal glucose levels 3 years ago so it has developed since then. Besides some GERD he has always been pretty “healthy” whatever that means but not feeling great for a little while. I may have pushed him over the edge with all my trying to get a hold of my low blood sugar and encouraging him to drink a coke when he is thirsty instead of water.
Type 1/Type 1.5/LADA is caused by an autoimmune disease. I would highly doubt the Coke caused it
It’s usually autoimmune at that age. It’s called MODY.
Is there anything he can do diet wise for an autoimmune disease like that. My friend who is naturopath, who has treated clients with this, told him to eat lots of veggies and stay away from carbs? I didn’t think it was the coke but I am sure he might of felt better if he drank water.
The only successes I’ve had with autoimmune disease are by raising metabolic rate with lots of food, sugar especially, more sleep, and very little exercise. But type 1 is a very unique situation.
Matt, is this true for all autoimmune diseases? What’s the max amount of exercise you recommend we do once our metabolism is up?
Hence eating lots of carbs and sugar could be a problem. Thanks for your reply. Just when I was coming out a rabbit hole of monitoring things I should or shouldn’t eat (been on some sort of diet since high school 20 + yrs ago), my husband, who has never thought about it a day in his life, will have to really monitor his food. At least I have a lot of practice and can support him. I guess I will have watch my kids too. Ugh!
Kelly, you may want to try homeopathy (not to be confused with naturopathy). A classical homeopath is what you want. Homeopathy likely would not cure a type 1 diabetes case that has been going on for a long time, but for recent onset you have a shot.
(If you do it, just make sure to find someone good and experienced, not a quack. I’ve worked with 3 homeopaths in my life – 2 really good and thorough, 1 was a quack. It can take a bit of trial and error to find the right remedy, but when you do, the health changes are amazing.)
I wouldn’t worry too much about your kids developing Type 1 too much. There is a very slim chance (I think it’s 1% or 7% that a child of a T1D parent will develop the disease).
Speaking as a Type 1, I understand the frustration that comes from spontaneously developing an autoimmune disorder. I’m really trying to follow the recommendations of this website and ignore the whole low carb diabetic nutrition advice. I can tell you that while I followed the low carb/no carb lifestyle, I gained weight and saw my insulin resistance increase. Not good. Since I’ve started eating more carbs and working out, I found I need less insulin than ever.
Also, I encourage your husband not to stress over what he eats. He can have sugar and carbs and yumminess; he just has to take more insulin to cover it.
I’m still not happy. I have a hard time losing the fat, and I want a cure, but I try to enjoy my food now and not stress over the number of carbs in everything.
When it comes to autoimmune disease, the main thing is to stop consuming foods that activate immune system. For now. Maybe this can relax a little in future.
Usually, the allergenic foods are those that were consumed in great quantity. For me it was dairy, for others wheat, for some both, or something totally different like carrots!
I reckon I’ve got a catchy one for ya Matt…
I operate on the premise of the 7 Undeadly Sins of Health
Sleep, Sex, Sun, Sugar, Salt, Starch & Saturated Fat
You can do as few or many as you want at once. Bonus points for all 7.
Clothing optional.
awesome. i may make myself a poster for the front of my fridge :).
I”m going to try LDN for my autoimmune disease…
This is off topic but WOO HOO!!! Yesterday I finally hit the magic body temp of 99 F (at 6pm half hour after dinner) and today I forgot to take my temp, so I took it just now at 9pm and it is 98.8 F!! Thank you Matt!!!! :)
Matt, I’ve been following a primal style eating way for a few years, and that included meat fish veg butter olive oil organic yoghurt mainly farmers market cheese potatoes sweet potatoes 100% choc Manuka honey.. Don’t eat nuts, or seeds, or avocado once every four or five months..! So pufa low…. Only thing is- I’m struggling to see still whether humans need grains….. After reading so much paleo info with my obsessive nature!!- I just get thrown into anxiety over wheat bread, rye, pasta, noodles… Still not touched them- the other day I picked up a spelt croissant from farmers market, felt happy to eat it but after started panicking, rice bread from wholefoods seems to be ok for me mentally, but other stuff is generally a real mind- f@!k , have read your books and have noticed you say bread is ok- but what bread are we talking here? White sourdough, wholemeal, sprouted? Or is it really necessary to include bread? The only thing is … I’m still bit functioning as woman should be at 25 (ie hindering my chances of being able to reproduce) and I have severe dry skin and red skin rashes around my neck every day…. So am wondering what to exactly include in my diet as I get comments saying “you must be missing something from your diet!” But the only thing i don’t eat is bread and pasta and surely that’s not necessary?!
Don’t get sucked into that plaeo bullshit CULTISM. Think of them as just another cult, would you listen to a cult leader’s bs? I’d think not.
Fuck everyone else, fuck every cult leader out there with an opinion about what is OK to eat and what is not. What the HELL do they know? They want to make a name for themselves and make money while they are at it. We’ve eaten bread and grains for a long long time, no matter what some bony mentally fucked up paleo salad boy says.
Buy the bread you find most appealing, just ETFF!! (Eat the fucking food!)
You are in control of your own happiness, why do you let some mind fucking deep shit control it for you?
I apologize for my strong language I just hit the roof when I hear the P***o word. I lost 10 years of my life because I used to have the same mindset (i have this and that, there must be something wrong with my diet – yeah, I was living in health food prison, that was my problem). Thank GOD I am free to live again, thanks to the Lord, RBTI (NOT Challen) and 180degree.
If it’s really hard for you to get your head around bread could you try a sprouted grain bread??? might be a good place to start? Meant to be a lot easier to digest. Or a really long fermented sourdough? I think what Matt is saying is that the body needs the concentration of energy and glucose that are found in carbs. Experiment. Start listening to your body and to what you would truly like to eat, you might be surprised! I’m eating carbs now but it still freaks me out a little after years of low-carbing. However, it is bloody delicious. All the best. I think dry skin can be a sign of metabolic syndrome, ie, you need to up the carbs to stimulate your whole system.
I’d suggest soft white bread, it goes down easy for me (I try to go for something natural with only a few ingredients because some brands pack all sorts of random shit in there). Definitely nothing whole grain in nature if you have a slow metabolism though. And I’ve found plenty of salt with grains, starches, or anything really helps digestion.
Seriously, I hate to say it, but you hit it on the head: you are mental. Just try different things until you feel better. Maybe that rash is from a deficiency. Have you tried some sugar?
I had the rashes around my neck and very dry skin. They started during my second pregnancy and it was god-awful. It was so unbelievably itchy, I basically couldn’t leave my house. I was eating a very low carb diet at the time, NO sugar and very minimal flour products. The only thing that worked to heal it was adding sugar and carbs back to my diet. My son is almost two now and, even after a years of adding carbs back, I still battle the dry skin, but only on my hands. Actually, it’s now the main way I can tell if I’ve been eating enough to keep my metabolism happy. My skin has gotten buttery soft since bringing up my temps.
lucy, after sharply increasing starch consumption, my skin began cracking and bleeding on the tops of my wrists and tops of my hands, common locations for pellagra dermatitis. the neck is another common location. megadosing niacin quickly took care of that.
i had tried megadosing niacin in the past, but my calories were probably still too low. this time around, i’m eating a lot more, especially carbs, and the improvement in energy level and mood has been remarkable.
* not functioning , iPhone.!
Hi Matt! When can I buy the vegan solution e-book? I am really waiting:)
It’s not yet written! But it is coming soon. Matt might have a better guesstimate of when.
When I’m done with it. Unfortunately for you I also follow “intuitive working” and have the luxury to do so. I imagine it will be done and out towards the end of March.
I love it. Intuitive working. Ha. Combined with intuitive eating to be intuitive living. Nice.
Lucy, Mags is correct! Just eat the food. Stop reading so much, stop following rules! Life if just too short. Nobody gets out alive. Besides this site I have found http://www.junkfoodscienceblogspot.ca invaluable for getting my head straight. Another site I love is http://www.healthylifestylebalance.com Jennifer is a RD and is amazing. Not a fanatic, she opened a non profit eating disorders clinic in Texas. Stop reading and following rules, this creates anxiety. No matter what you eat, someone out their will find something wrong with it. The stress created by trying to eat ” perfect ” will cause more problems than any food will cause. Best of luck.
thanks a lot for your reply, about the check the site, pretty apt as i spent most my life anorexic, thanks people!
Lucy, have you been to youreatopia.com?
I was anorexic in my early 20’s, and after going in to remission when I started having kids I started following paleo/gaps thinking that I had a bunch of food intolerances.
Then Matt linked to this article: http://www.youreatopia.com/blog/2012/11/23/phases-of-recovery-from-a-restrictive-eating-disorder.html
and I realized that all those “intolerances” was actually just my body attempting to come back from starvation.
So the anorexia basically morphed in to orthorexia and my health problems over the last decade have just been from not getting enough food due to restriction in one form or another.
Had I known what sorts of things your body does when recovering from an ED I might have cracked through the denial and not wasted a decade on all this stupid crap!!
Another great link, Thankyou . Have lots to read. Thanks for sharing your snippet of past… It’s scary how the pursuit of “health” can make your brain and life unhealthy isn’t it..! Freedom= fun!
No one else sees the contradiction here? “Stop eating so many fruits and vegetables and eat more salt, sugar, starch, and saturated fat” but also “Eat real food. Real food means stuff that is minimally processed…unprocessed food, high in essential nutrients.” You should at least interact with Michael Moss’s new book Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us. Here’s one of many things he found out:
“Some of the largest companies are now using brain scans to study how we react neurologically to certain foods, especially to sugar. They’ve discovered the brain lights up for sugar the same way it does for cocaine, and this knowledge is useful, not only for formulating foods. The world’s largest ice cream maker, Unilever, for instance, parlayed its brain research into a brilliant marketing campaign that sells the eating of ice cream as ‘scientifically proven’ way to make ourselves happy.”
ICG, I’ll take a fruit (which contains sugar, vitamins, minerals, and flavonoids) over a cup of sugar any day.
ICG, it’s about having a balance. These foods are great for boosting damaged metabolisms, but no one can sustain health long-term without nutrient-dense foods. Hence the perhaps apparent contradictions.
Personally, I eat pasta and ice cream and white bread, but also plenty of fruits, veggies, sprouted grain bread, oatmeal, etc. Saturated fat, of course, is found in butter, which has vitamins, and also in cheese and meat, which are quite nutrient-dense. The extra, refined stuff is mostly good for getting your calories up which is hard to do on only totally unprocessed foods.
ICG, I saw Michael Moss on Dr Oz show recently and they were not quite upfront with the audience in regards to the specifics of what the Food companies are doeing. Both he and Oz used the words “salt”, “sugar” and “fats” rather generically when they should have ben using more accurate words such as “MSG”, “Autolyzed Yeast Extract”, “HFCS”, “Crystalline Fructose”, “Trans-Fats” etc. etc. This generic wording is part of the media-induced scare campaign to making people believe that natural sugars, sea salts, and healthy saturated fats are bad for you. Also, Michael Moss is not “exposing” anything new in his book, people have already been informed of for this for at least 15 yrs now. Anytime you see an Author of a book stating they are exposing the truths about a corporation and that author happens to be a writer for the NY Times…run away from that book!!!
The much ballyhooed concept that fMRI studies suggest blood flow increases in areas associated with pleasure when we eat most palatable foods (not just sugars actually) actually suggest an addictive nature to any food is what is called a faulty syllogism:
Mrs. Smith drinks milk
All babies drink milk
Therefore Mrs. Smith must be a baby
Food does not interfere with endocannabinoid reception as an addictive substance will do.
And Michael Moss has come to the wrong, although attractive, conclusion. Unilever’s marketing skill is as robust as those of GlaxoSmithKline, or ExonMobil or any other multinational tasked with getting us to just buy stuff.
In fact, ice cream is likely scientifically proven to increase blood flow in areas of the brain associated with pleasure, reward, aggression, fear, and an ability to generate the placebo effect. And, not surprisingly, the Unilever marketing message is selective in that we don’t know whether increased blood flow to those areas of the brain results in one emotion over any other (or any at all in fact). Could be we are more likely to experience fear when eating ice cream — blood flow is not an emotion actually.
Unilever isn’t using brain scans to generate its marketing messages — it has mass media to thank for garbling the scientific data already to the masses and then it simply tweaks those messages in the hopes it will result in increased sales.
Endocannabinoids are our bodies own natural opioids — they reduce our perception of pain and increase our sense of wellbeing. A truly addictive substance (such as cocaine) actually binds to the endocannabinoid receptors in our brain, preventing the uptake of our natural opioids and generating an addictive cycle in some predisposed individuals.
Food (even the food manufactured in a Unilever lab) does not produce any chemical substrates that bind to our central nervous system endocannabinoid receptors.
And I am absolutely no fan of the industrial food complex and can heap much derision on their unsustainable use of energy, resources as well as their heinous treatment of animals. There is no need to adhere to conspiracy theories about their marketing practices to find them at fault. They should be properly shamed for their very real corporate irresponsibility in how they produce the food in the first place.
Suggesting that food is addictive may increase the sales of Michael Moss’ book, but it’s not not scientifically correct.
The general consensus here is that food is only “addictive” when you haven’t had enough. Thanks for your comment Gwyn. I hope to see lots more!
Stephen Guyenet and to and extent Seth Roberts are also talking about food addiction.My own experience is that since eating when I’m hungry and ETF I don’t particularly feel cravings towards junk food. I do have some instances when I mini binge. Although, I have not been able to lose the weight yet.
Yes ,
I find this comment true- with both healthy foods and junk foods.
ie, when I am not genuinely biologically hungry-
even junk food has no appeal or power.
very well said GWyn!
While that is true, they are using junk fats not good ones.
thanks nmfm, mags (LOL- ETFF) and alex, your all right, I’ve been ignoring what i want for ages, moralising what i feel like eating and replacing it with stuff that won’t affect my head- mind over matter, you’ve all brought back reality thanks lol freedom is better than ‘fear’
Lucy-
When I first found out about Matt from Cheeseslave I was ecstatic! Because of adrenal issues, I had been told not to eat too many carbs because they would turn to sugar and that would be “too energizing” for my zapped adrenals. So after reading that eating carbs would benefit me, I went nuts. I ate toast like it was a brand new invention! To me, there is nothing better than a lightly toasted piece of sourdough with a shit-ton of Kerrygold butter on it! Yummy! I ate it three times a day in the beginning. I recently moved on to brownies. I buy the mix at Great Harvest bread store and it is beyond yummy. Besides it takes 2 sticks of butter and 4 eggs to make it….perfect! I chowed through the pan in 2 days. It was fabulous. Whenever guilt kicked in, I sent it packing because the most important thing I’ve learned from Matt is that the guilt is nine gazillion times more stressful to your body than any brownie ever could be!
Just ETFF! Soon the guilt won’t even creep in any more because the food will make you feel so cozy you’ll find that you worry less about everything! I hope you are feeling world’s better very soon!!
Thankyou Susan for your advice! I read a blog who’s husband owns a great harvest bakery (I think they’re a franchise?!) and her blog is a nutrition blog, she’s very sensible in her approach and eats REAL food! No detoxes or avoidance, of anything really, anyway I hear great harvest is fresh bread and ere in uk we can get kerrygold also! Thankyou for the well wishes :) time to sart thinking normally..!!
I’m with ya Susan. After not eating cereal or bread for years, toast is now the best food ever! Think grilled cheese with a nice crunchy crust. I had two slices of sunflower seed crusty bread with Kerrygold soft butter and two poached eggs with runny yolks and it wad heaven. Cinnamon toast like your mom used to fix when you were sick with lots of sugar, cinnamon and butter. But now you got me jonesing for brownies…
Can someone help with this?
I have struggled with asthma/allergies all of my life, and was recently diagnosed as hypothyroid. Most of the time I am sleepy, cold, and struggle with breathing. I have tried so many differently eating plans to try to “detox” myself, with no success. I recently read a book (which I know would not be recommended on this site) called Your Bodies Many Cries for Water. I focused on the section for allergies and asthma, which suggests a pretty regimented schedule of drinking water and salt throughout the day. I was never a big drinker (never really thirsty), but gave this a try. It worked. Within 2 days my chronic asthmatic cough was gone, no chest congestion, my chest was not tight, and I could breath through my nose again. I was so excited. My body finally adjusted to this water intake after a few weeks and I finally stopped urinating every hour.
I started listening to the advice on this blog, mainly because of my low metabolism / hypothyroidism and thought maybe I would warm up and have more energy if I started eating more sugar/starch/salt and reduced my fluid intake. I tried it and all of my allergy/asthma symptoms came back in full force. I am at a loss of what to do. Would drinking all of that water be ok for me if I was careful to add extra salt and sugar in my diet?
PW- I’m still playing around with the ETF plan myself and learning what works best for me, but I’ll throw in my 2 cents……First off, I can’t tell you how Matt would feel about drinking so much water all day long, but I can tell you what works for me. I don’t have any liquids during the morning hours because I am working to get my temps up. This works for me because I am rarely thirsty in the morning, but if I do get thirsty I drink some mega-sweetened lemonade to thirst (meaning I only have as much as my body wants at that moment, usually less than 8 oz). If I get a bit thirsty later I will have an orange or an apple; they are both packed with water and follow it with a pinch of salt. Somewhere in the mid-afternoon I eat some ice cream with salt or pretzels. By dinner I find myself very thirsty and I will drink more lemonade, kombucha or water. I drink until I’m satiated, sometimes up to 20 oz, sometimes only 10. (Of course I am eating during all these times as well, but I’m focusing on the liquid part of your question)
Remember, there are tons of foods out there that have water in them: fruit, soup, ice cream. You need to see what works for you. I used to drink 10 glasses of water a day -even though I wasn’t flippin’ thirsty- and my temps plummetted. But what works for me, may not work for you. You have to play around with it while watching your temps. If your temp gets higher in the afternoon, then drink more in the afternoon and cut back when your temps are low.
I know when I first started the ETF plan, I felt great for a few days, followed by feeling like hell for a couple of weeks. While feeling like crap I ate and slept and ate and slept, but then got to the point that I began to realize that I was feeling better. Sometimes healing is uncomfortable and sleeping through it really helped me.
Thanks Susan,
I know I just to keep in mind that there is not a one size fits all plan for everyone, as much as I wish there was :)! I have just felt horrible so long that I just want somebody to tell me what to do so I don’t have to keep experimenting on myself.
Yeah I would be cautious ignoring your own bio feedback. I don’t know what to tell you, but being able to breathe is pretty important. You could try just upping the food while keeping liquids the same and see what happens.
One thing to keep in mind, though, is that when you raise cortisol levels with diet, you can get short-term relief. Many people get asthma relief from low-carb diets, but then it comes back way worse when they inevitably ease up. I think only you can know whether your previous regimen was raising cortisol.
Personally, I would recommend homeopathy here, too. Or maybe accupuncture. I used to have horrible post-nasal drip that would choke me at night (it literally formed a riverbed in my throat that doctors could see when they examined me), and several years ago (way before finding this site) I fixed it using homeopathy. But I bet accupuncture could help a lot, too.
Kind of what I was thinking – about upping the food intake. Also, so true about the accupuncture. I tried it a couple of years ago and was making good progress, but for some reason stopped going. Probably because I have 2 children at home with me and it was an hour drive away. I really need to start back with that again. I think one of my problems is sticking with something when it seems to be working. If I am feeling better, I slack off and that is when I start feeling bad again. Thanks for your advice!
Eat like a badass, become a badass! Finding this site is the best thing ever happened for my way of eating. I used to be like the salad boy. Stressed out, not making progress in the gym and worst of all not making progress in life. I basically did the 8 “badass ways” you described for about 2 months now and the results are amazing. My productivity, strentgh, moods, desire to socialize, self esteem and capacity to handle stress all went up. I did gain some weight, but from the looks of it barely any fat. Oh and body temperature is slowly going up too, and I no longer wake up at night for a bathroom visit.
There are however some downsides. I have to shave 3 times more often and toilet paper expenses went up too. But I think it’s worth it. :P
Thanks Matt!
Matt! Wanted to thank you for making me a bad ass… I was sucked into the Paleo cult for the past 2+ years & was over exercising (all just to lose 10 lbs and to be “really lean & healthy”. Yeah, I’m kicking myself over this one now). Now I have been eating the food for the past 2 months or so and I just got my first period without birth control in over a year and half!!! My mom cried when I told her, she thought I was going to be sterile from all the bad side affects I have gotten from restrictive eating and over training. I have gained about 20lbs, but it went to all the right places (whats up D cup boobies), sex drive is back (THANK GOD! whats the point of having a skinny body if can’t get turned on), body temp is up, moods are getting stable, and I am begining to think more clearly, after feeling like I was living in a haze the past 2 years. I am seeing a therapist to help me work on my body image issues and orthorexia. Once I am feeling really good, I am going to start some mild weight training, but I will never be a cardio queen or obsessed with food again. My lifestyle change all started by reading your books and your blogs, and with Gwyn’s help on Youreatopia…. so THANK YOU!
It is so good to see these success stories of people eating the food. I have finally taken the plunge. Part of the motivation was deciding to let my 4 yo eat whatever he wants whenever he wants. I was tired of him asking for ice cream all of the time and crying when I said it was time for dinner. My older kids think I have lost my mind:) I am almost a week into it and have seen temps rise a bit and have gone from no poop or goat poop to two good bms yesterday. I am having difficulty keeping my calories up. I can easily not eat enough(yesterday so back to goat poop), even including junk food. I can get them in if I eat McDonalds, but I don’t really want that most of the time. Any suggestions on how to get enough in?
Also for those who have let their kids ETF, do they eventually want to eat real food? My older kids like veggies and such, but my 4 yo has never liked them. He even gagged on them when he ate baby food. Oh, and my 9 month old has started having regular bms too.
J – I have an almost 3 year old and I’ve kind of been letting him eat whatever. I feel a little guilty, but when I do put meals down in front of him he doesn’t eat them anyway. I think he lives on bread, PB, smoothies, milk, yogurt, and some fruit. He REFUSES to touch any meat, chicken, pork, or eggs and will take a bite of a hot dog. He does not recognize pasta in any form as a food. He eats broccoli sometimes. He took one bite of sweet potato yesterday. He likes fries. Today he ate a scone, a bag of M&Ms, a Hershey bar, lots of strawberry milk and ??? Could that be it? Anyway, just wanted to say you are not alone!
My 10 year old who won’t touch meat/chicken/pork/eggs but will eat a Burger King burger, gobbled up all the broccoli tonight after not wanting to taste it! She also lives on yogurt, milk and smoothies. They only drink water when they feel like it.
Hey Matt – Am I killing my kids?
My son now eats whatever he wants, and definitely did not get stuck on junk food. He has had phases of eating a lot of one thing- chocolate chippie biscuits(cookies) , toast with butter, spaghetti, and so on.
But- he loves meats, and certain veges, and will now eat few cookies, minimal chocolate, and so on..
Ok so my guy eats dairy and fruit and green beans but was obsessed with junk food….and tv which we also limit. He told me one day that the only things he liked were watching tv and eating ice cream (I know this isn’t true b’c he is downstairs playing some sort of beat em up star wars/superman/batman something with his big bro). He sometimes will eat mashed potatoes and he likes pizza. I think the best thing about letting him eat whatever he wants is the stress reduction for both of us. No more battles over food.
Thanks nola, I guess there is hope that he will eventually start eating more real food. I am starting to try to bake and make more of our “junk food”. No small task for a family of 6! They eat so much more now that they can eat whatever. It was cheaper to eat healthy b’c they just didn’t eat as much!
The funny thing is my other 3 kids like veggies. We were having a yummy dinner a few weeks ago which included roasted brussel sprouts. My 10 yo daughter told me she could make a meal of the brussel sprouts which she almost did. Now I love brussel sprouts, but they certainly don’t rate above the steak and mashed potatoes or whatever else it was we were having.
One thing I’ve notice though is my 4 yo who has been the one with regular healthy bms (I always wondered how he could poop that much though he hardly ate anything), now is having more difficulty. Will this resolve itself in time?
I’ve always let my 2 yo daughter eat whatever she wants and I have problems too, but in the opposite direction.
She could subsist on bits of meat and broccoli/carrots along with oranges. The problem is that I fear she eats enough! We own an ice cream business, so she eats that whenever she wants, but every day I fear about her calories.
‘Please eat the cookie!’ and ‘Finish your Mountain Dew!’ are phrases that fly quite often in my home. (Daughter is ADHD so the dew actually calms her down),
Kids are picky, no matter what.
J,
You shouldn’t stress over your 4 yo not liking veggies. I know this may sound strange given the information that has been pounded into our heads for so many years, but veggies are not required to get the nutrients needed. Does your 4 yo like potatoes? They are very nutritious. What about high quality dairy products (milk, hard cheeses, yogurt offer nutrients)? Fruit? Shellfish such as shrimp? If your 4yo likes and eats these foods, that may be all that is needed to provide the calories and nutrients he needs. Just my two cents.
I’m glad you mentioned the chick from (RIP) Larson’s Girl with the Dragon Tatoo. If you read the book, man does Lisbeth eat well. I found a site that mentions menus from different books. Check out all the foods that were mentioned (no low-fat here). She mainly ate what is listed in sandwiches. And loads of coffee any time of day. She was powerful in every way. Takes place in Sweden.
Food mentioned in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo :
Caffe latte, 16, 298, 482
Aquavit, 21, 180, 276, 351, 580
Reimersholms brandy, 23
Coffee, 39, 45, 50, 57, 73, 75, 79, 106, 115, 210
Fruitcake, 73
Christmas ham, 75
Christmas cake, 75
Pastries, 80
Roast hare with currant jelly and potatoes, 111
Red wine, 111, 200
Sponge cake, 142-3
Moose steak, 185
Lamb cutlets with potatoes in cream sauce, 200
Cognac, 208
Sandwiches
Cheese sandwiches with pickles, 227
Cheese, caviar and egg on rye, 271
Roast beef or turkey or avocado on bagels, 328, 330
Pickled herring in mustard sauce and egg sandwich, 351
Cheese, liver sausage and pickles on rye, 461
Liver pate and cucumber sandwich, 580
Kefir, 253
Apples, 253
Fried sausage with potatoes and beets, 254
Aberlour scotch, 268
Bacon pancakes with lingonberries, 277
Toast with cheese and marmalade, 284
Venison stew, 287
Lamb chops sauteed in red wine, 374
Coffee cake, 550
KB,
Thanks for posting that list. I actually just ate something similar to one of the dishes on the list (fried sausage with potatoes and beets – except I had crispy bacon strips instead of the sausage), so now I feel like a Badass!!! ;)
Loving this site (food menus for different books). Stephen King’s 11/22/63 has an Amercan version of yum (in a pre-obesity time). As a project a la Julie and Julia, someone should commit to eating everything on that list in a span of a month. Great RRARF project for a newbie.
http://bookmenus.blogspot.com/2011/12/112263.html
Don’t forget Coke and the frozen pizzas from 7 Eleven… In the movie (American version) she even packs cans of Coke for her motorcycle ride from Stockholm to the island.
um yah… but isnt the story fiction?
Yes, but Larson was a Swede and King is American. They’re writing about a culture they know very well. And since the books aren’t primarily about food, this is what a perceptive writer’s food reality was. Could you see Lisbeth being a Diet Coke and lean cuisine kind of character? Not as believable a story.
Hey Matt!
This is an awesome post. I love the Fight Club references. Bad assess definitely don’t care too much about whether their leafy greens (if any) are pesticided, hydrophonic, or certified organic.
Coming from a health fanatic background, eating first and asking questions later does wonders. And water is more overrated than Justin Bieber these days.
Keep up the good work!
Sincerely,
Teran
Keep rockin’ that Tater hat Teran!
Man, why haven’t I been keeping up with this site?? Best article I’ve read in recent memory! Complete badassery in effect!
I’ve read Eat 4 Heat and Diet Recovery 2 and have now been eating this way for a bit over a week. Eating 3000-3400 calories a day (female 5’7″).
I have a question about the junk food. I’ve been doing this all with whole foods (yes, I’m REALLY stuffed) because the idea that I have extra fat due to dieting and lack of nourishment makes sense to me. What I don’t understand is how are some people on here doing this with with the foods that are not full of nutrition. Wouldn’t this just fill up the stomach but not the nutrient bank and put on fat? Pizza without vegetable oil?
This is the one area that I would have enjoyed hearing more about in the books. Please explain this point a bit as I’m totally confused!
Sometimes it requires the calorie-density of “dirty” foods to get a sufficient surplus of calories to rehab metabolic rate. Many people also lack the digetive prowess to extract sufficient nutrition from unrefined foods. Throwing lots of fiber and large particles from food into a slow-moving bowel can also exacerbate digestive problems and things linked to it. So, like everything, it completely depends upon one’s personal circumstances. I would recommend eating the most unrefined and nutritious diet that you can and still achieve the desired objectives (good digestion, warm hands and feet, high body temp, solid sleep, etc.). And free up your mind to experiment freely. You are also foolish to think that pizza or ice cream are devoid of nutrition. They are most certainly not. http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fast-foods-generic/9304/2
Great response Matt, thanks for providing that! This has truly been a life altering and liberating experience. I’ve never been so excited for time to fly by and my temp to start soaring.
I didn’t think pizza was devoid of nutrition but rather that without making it at home (something most don’t do) that is is excessively high in omega 6. I’m trying to be open to all foods again but high omega 6 oils and corn syrup are where I draw the line :)
This process is really making me feel a lot of love and compassion for myself and what I have put myself through almost my entire life. The idea that if I had just never stopped eating I could have saved myself this torture and OCD obsession with food/nutrition/health. Thank you for bringing this information to the world.
Matt, please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the one crucial thing most people forget is that a calorie is a nutrient. And the most important nutrient, bar none!
If you don’t have enough calories, it doesn’t matter if you have the best macrobiotic / vegan / holistic / magnesium rich / blah blah whatever diet that provides all the necessary minerals and vitamins. Without the calories, you will still struggle.
The rest is important too, but secondary. Energy first, then energy co-factors.
Yes, that is certainly true. I am proof of that. I have eaten a diet full of nutrient rich foods but at a caloric deficit for many years. It was an improvement on my previous diet of low calories and even less nutrients, but obviously it was still lacking.
From my new book project, The Vegan Solution….
What happens is that the single-most important nutrient that we derive from food is completely forgotten and left behind. That is the CALORIE. The primary reason we eat is to obtain energy. If we do not obtain sufficient energy from the food we eat, the body compensates for this by lowering metabolic rate. When metabolic rate drops, virtually every system in the human body starts to function poorly.
The next most important thing that we derive from food are the macronutrients ? protein, carbohydrates, and fat. These too are completely forgotten by many vegetarians on an obsessive quest for dietary purity, ?getting out the toxins? and other pseudo-scientific (okay, non-scientific) pursuits. Getting an insufficient amount of fiber, vitamins, minerals ? all that kind of thing may be a problem. But it’s a very minor problem compared to getting insufficient amounts of the macronutrients and overall calories. From this point forward, we will call the basic constituents of food needed for immediate proper functioning ? those calories and macronutrients, as ?The Primary Nutrients.
Yes, my vegan days were certainly where things started to really start going bad really fast. I prided myself on zero fat days or days when I did have fat I would limit it to ONE TEASPOON!!! I also kept calories between 500-800 during a lot of that period of my life, while attending Ashtanga Yoga class for 1.75 hours a day!
Of course that all left me with massive adrenal fatigue, muscle loss, hair loss, food allergies and some extra body fat. I just couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t getting stronger or fitter and couldn’t lose the 5-10 pounds of extra fat I was holding on to for dear life.
Question. If fat is essentially void of nutrients and more or less just a source of energy for our body, why are people (including some individuals here), who have gotten to the point that they are okay with eating fat, still hung up on eating sugar? Sugar is a source of energy with no nutrient content just like fat. They are both, more or less, primarily sources of energy. Am I missing something? I don’t know why anybody has a problem with one source of energy but not the other.
Fat is not void of nutrition- fats have a lot of nutrients from my understanding.
Vitamin A , K , D, E etc.
In fact I think some of the most critical nutrients are found in fat?
As far as I know, fat helps the body to absorb those vitamins (fat soluble vitamins) but those vitamins are not in fat itself.
Nola,
I double checked this to make sure I was correct and I am. I checked the nutritional profile of various oils/fats. The only vitamin the majority of the oils/fats have is a small amount of vitamin E, with almond oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, and tallow being amongst the highest per serving of the oils/fats (approx. 25% per 1 Tbs.) that I checked (olive, coconut, soy, corn, peanut, almond, safflower, canola, sunflower, sesame, walnut, tallow, lard, butter). Butter has a small amount of vitamin A & D, but very small.
I’m glad I read this post today. I have been following you more and more. I’m really trying to eat the food, but my hands are always cold and my temps never go up much. Only got to 98.1 one time last week. Also having a hard time getting enough calories. The only thing I can think to do now is eat more junk food. I have been on the wapf diet so it’s hard to really go to out to McD’s for a double cheeseburger, but I must. I may even break down and buy coke! I’ll admit I am bad about stress and don’t sleep well so I want this to work for me.
If you had seen the pic I just saw of a girl’s teeth turning ivory white after loosening up her WAPF diet you would be more convinced. And less fearful.
Linda,
Former WAPF-er here. Take it from me: I tried to raise my temps for months eating giant bowls of brown rice with butter, lentil and sweet potato soup, rapadura, you know, healthy WAPF stuff. I have to say, it kind of worked. My temps did come up some, but it took months and months of eating a lot of high-fibre hard to digest food, which did exacerbate my digestive problems and stress levels. In December I got a bad flu and after that, I said, f-it. I started eating all the “bad” foods Sally Fallon cautions against: soda, some fast food, cookies, etc. I still eat butter, cream, eggs. Some healthy food, some junk food. I don’t worry about it so much, and my temps are way up and stress levels down.
Oooh, I’m getting there. I’m going to keep checking back here and rereading your ebooks. I figure it’s just going to take me longer.
Linda,
I can understand your apprehension to all this but it works. It took me a coup,e of months of Eat4Heat to get my body temps up, its not going to happen “overnight” so to speak. I was like you in that there was a week where I once hit 98.1F and the rest of the time had temps below 98F. Then starting about a week and a half ago, I started to hit 98.4/98.5 more frequently and then about two days ago I hit 99 and 98.8 the next day. What worked for me more so than eating junk food was always putting salt onto my foods and even into my drinks including coffee,sodas and OJ. I even found out that adding Baking Soda to my OJ helped (and it gives it a fizzy sensation :) ). I don’t know if this will help you but try focusing on salt, restricting fluids and eating to appetite.
Thanks JonO. It’s good to get feedback. I am doing the salt. I figured I need the junk food for the calories, but like you said, it will probably take time to get there.
Just an aside: Dr Sircus, IMVA recently had an article extolling the value of high body temperature, your sine qua non….kudos
Anita graham,
Thanks for mentioning that doctor’s site, the article (the one I saw was tilled Infrared-Therapy or something like that) listed a lot of symptome of low body temps, many of which I had! Yikes!!. Its interesting that on his site he also focuses a lot on the benefits of Baking Soda (Sodium Bicarbonate) and he even claims it can help a person lose weight.
Hi Matt and the rest of ya’! I REALLY need some advice now because I’m redo to ‘restrict’ my diet again because of my problems with trying to eat like a badass.;-) I’ve bought almost all of your book’s,Matt and read this blog as often as I have the energy to. But I really don’t know what to do right now…I’ve been trying my best to follow the general guidelines of the books and info here and yes l have seen improvements in my temps and my PMS seems to have improved.(I have SEVERE mastalgia (swollen and painful breasts up to three weeks/month!) and the doctors have even talked about such drastic methods of operating my breasts away or to shut down or block my pituarity gland! :-0 But the mastalgia have been better the past two months and I think that’s due to what I have learned from you,Matt!:-)) So..l really see some improvements but I have been doing this for almost a year now and l have the most EXCRUTIATING pain in all my body now from the feet to the head. Muscels,joints,everything is aching like HELL how, I’m more incapacitated than EVER right now! I have had painissues since about the year 2000 but now it’s just worse than it’s ever been! Still gaining weight also,over 200 pounds now…Don’t overeat much though nowadays,I just can’t stand it. (And I can’t afford it eather since I can’t work. And also based on your information that once you go up in temp,its not needed to ‘overfeed’.) Since Eat for Heat I have also implemented these factors. So…temps up (but a bit ‘fleeing’) and some things seem to improve.But WHY this horrible,horrible pains that makes me almost incapable of anything! Oh, and my asthma has also gotten worse. I’ve begun to blame it on possibly the grains again…And yes, l remember that you wrote in DR 1 that it’s painful to heal. But how do I know the difference between if it’s from healing processes or if it’s just that I eat something that really isn’t good for me? I know that l can exclude grains again and see,but I really don’t want to begin to exclude things again if it’s not necessary! I had pains when I ate no grains too,but then l ate lowcarb…so…what was what? F**k ass, l really just want to do as so many here says=F**k diets! But it’s really hard to know what to do when I’m in SO much pain! I don’t want to start exclude things again,but shouldn’t a year of eating ‘freely’ have led to less pain by now? I have also noticed since about 8-10 month’s or so that my eyebrows and hair ontop of my head is thinning like CRAZY. That’s the only problem I didn’t have before even though I had very low temp and all the other symptoms of low metaboIism,wich I have had for about 15 years. So WHY NOW when my temps going up? Balding and aching as hell at the same time my temp is going up. WTF? Can it be the grains? I am not clinically gluten-sensitive according to bloodtest and I had no inflammatory markers in my blood,but still I can’t almost even stand on my feet!! Any others out there with the same strange phenomena? I’m letting all of my previous ‘knowledge’ about grains get to my head again and even remembered my old ‘Blood-type’-dietshit that bloodtype 0 shouldn’t eat either grains or potato because it’s supposedly give these kind of problems that I’m having now…I also bought Jon Gabriels book,haven’t read it yet but I know that he doesn’t recommend grains….Sigh! I thought that I was OVER these kind of dietshit and I feIt SOO free when I read your books and also ate whatever I wanted! I have also defended grains to my low-carb friends and so on…And it’s SOO tasty and convenient and so on…But my pains is so excrutiating so it’s impossible to ignore and on top of that the effing hairloss that I never experienced before despite SO many years with low metabolism…What am I supposed to do now?? If I had the money I really would have called you, Matt,but I’m broke…Any input from any of you here is much apprechiated! l just feel a bit Iost right now…Can it really be possible to be in this much pain and loosing my hair after almost a YEAR trying my best to follow what I have learned here? Is it time to make changes in my diet or should l just keep doing what I’m doing? Is The Jon Gabriel Method just another trap for me? (But I remember that you, Matt,wrote positively about him in one of your books…Have that opinion changed?) Sorry about the long post,but I feel a bit desperate and there’s NO use in turning to the medics…They just want to cut my boobs off and give me a lot of drugs! Feels really reliable…;-)
I think if you are eating big and resting a lot with no or little exercise this can often flatline cortisol. When cortisol is too low pain levels as well as asthma are often higher. That’s why I don’t necessarily recommend the basic approach on a long-term basis, but recommend transitioning into a more balanced lifestyle. I don’t necessarily have the answer for you, but I know exercise makes my pain and asthma go away like nothing else can. That may or may not be practical but becoming really physical (not just 30 minutes 3 times a week but living a truly physical lifestyle with lots of hiking and swimming and sports and such) might be a reasonable next step. Or you may have to find a doctor that doesn’t cut off boobs and take a close look at hormone levels to try to figure out what’s really going on.
0K! Thank you so much for your answer! I have really tried to incorporate lighter exercise for quite some time now but I have given up since my pains just are so extreme and also because it makes my temps drop. I can’t even walk because of the pain in my feet. (Have good shoes,from a specialist,so it’s not about that.)
Very interesting about the flatlining cortisol and correlation to pain and asthma! I somehow forgot to mention that I have had repeated infections for about 2 months (mid dec to mid feb), can one also get more susceptible to infections if the cortisol is ‘flatlined’?
I just bought The Maffetone method since I read about it in some thread here…I guess I will have to try to begin to exercise lightly again although l have these severe pains. I thought that I maybe needed to rest more,but after your answer l guess that that maybe just isn’t the right way for me now…Since you didn’t comment about the “grain-issue’, Jon Gabriels and so on, I reed between the lines that I shouldn’t care about that right now l guess? So! I guess that it’s time to try to start moving again! Have you written somewhere about this ‘flatlining’ cortisol and what it does somewhere where I can read more about it? l have maybe read about it, but l just can’t remember if that is the case…(Alzheimers Light? ;-) ) Thanks again from the Semi-Badass Swedish Girl ;-)
Cammi, with all your aches and pains, have you checked your Vitamin D and B12 levels? I used to have terrible pain in my feet, to the point I had trouble walking. Turned out to be low B12 levels. After taking B12 (sublingual Methylcobalamin), the pain went away. I supplemented for about a year, then was able to stop. As well, I believe taking D3 has helped other aches and pains. I also follow Matt, and Eating The Food has also really REALLY helped me.
This is especially true if you have hypothyroidism. For whatever reason, thyroid sufferers tend to easily become deficient in B12 and vitamin D. I’ve had severe deficiencies in the past with both of these. Once I got my levels back to normal, my symptoms went away. My doctor checks them regularly now to be sure that they don’t start dropping again.
It was a while ago…but I have eaten both D3 plus the B-komplex every day for a Ioong time now and I really don’t think that it’s that,but thanks for your input and I’m actually going to the doctor this wednesday so I can ask if they check it. :-)
Oh! Do you know exactly what tests for D3 and B12 that is best? I know there is different tests and that it’s important to take the right ones to get to the real truth. Like the ‘serum’-tests doesn’t say much or how was that? Since I eat all this suppIements l guess my serum-levels might be great. What tests shows the most accurate status in the body?
Sorry Matt,l just want this answer,then I’m not going to occupie this thread! Is it 0K to leave my emailadress here if anyone else wants to give me advice? I did that once before and that comment dissapeared along with some of my other comments so l thought that you maybe took it away… (Not here, but in another thread a while ago.)
I don’t know, Cammi. My doctor did a blood test, but I’m not sure beyond that.
Oh! Forgot! I still get high pulse after eating a carb-rich meal. Isn’t cortisol responsible for that?
Hey Cammi, I don’t know if it is relevant to you with your history, but this might give you some answers, this post and the site in general….(by restrictive, it needn’t even mean highly so- even a little bit!)
http://www.youreatopia.com/blog/2012/11/23/phases-of-recovery-from-a-restrictive-eating-disorder.html
And just to say- the painful feet, body all over etc can be due to water retention because of healing (for a while I could barely walk down the street and none of my shoes fit, never mind clothes), and horrible itching all over as the nerves rebuild, as well as massive weight gain etc. You will be glad to know that within a week of ‘normalising’ my diet and activity levels, I dropped 5 kg of water, could do everything as normal and most of the pain went away (this was around August last year). Unless, of course, it is due to allergy, but it sounds very like healing symptoms.
Thanks for the link! I will read it after this! :-)
It’s not waterretention though, I have had this problem since about 2 1/2 years now, I think it has a correlation to low metabolism and this problem started while I was Iow-carbing…But as said, l gave up that over a year ago and I just don’t know why it’s now worse than ever…But I think that I will go easy on the grains for a while. l seem to get more pain from that, but I’m not sure yet. I’m not going to exclude it fully,just don’t eat it every day as I have been doing for quite some time now…But I realise how important starch is for my warmth,that’s just undisputable! So..I guess it’s going to be more potatoes and other starches instead of bread and see if it’s getting better. :-)
Trying to break my bodies code to become the badass I always wanted to be. All I want is to be like The Rock, is that too much to ask?
Also, I do enjoy me some vidya games. If I play Pac Man will that boost my metabolic rate? I’m assuming that “Pac Man fever” raises your body temp. However, my girlfriend is Asian and this “yellow fever” I’m having seems to do nothing to my temps.
Hey Matt
What is your opinion about getting a significant number of your calories from beer. I assume that it is reasonably nutritious but it pushes you towards a very high fluid intake and i guess detoxing the alcohol might be an issue.
Number 6 is a real problem… What’s a girl to do if she can’t avoid the cardio… I have a 35 min walk to get to work (each way) and unfortunately I really can’t afford a bus pass. I’ve only had 1 period since I started doing this much walking and it was at christmas when I had 3 weeks off and sat around on my ass… I do normally charge along at quite a pace so I’ve tried walking more slowly in a more relaxed manner but it’s taking me 45 mins now, do you think that will help or do you have any recommendations for food types pre/post walk?
With any kind of exercise it’s important to prioritize carbohydrates and protein, and fast-absorbed carbs perform better than slow-absorbed carbohdyrates. It could be just regular food or you could take some kind of super calorie-dense postworkout type of formula if it’s more convenient. I think some dried fruit along the way and a sandwich when you get there will be as fancy as it needs to be.
Hi Matt,
I tend to have a problem filling up on “real food” and i end up eating like 6-7 meals a day because of it. I was wondering if you could suggest some meals that supply a decent amount of calories and consist of only “real foods”. Thanks so much for your time!
If you are eating “real food” as in unprocessed and unrefined foods exclusively it’s probably necessary to eat 6-7 times per day in more of a grazing pattern.
I guess I get confused with that rationale sometimes when I read about traditional cultures that have published accounts of eating only two to three times per day. Not to mention how annoying it is to have eat so often in the span of a day
Probably because they weighed 110 pounds. At least you’re not a gorilla. They eat for 8 hours per day.
This website time and time again just makes me sad. I am 16 years old and have no say in what my parents buy. We live off of processed food (except for the fruit that I eat).
Eating “healthy” isn’t as easy as you think. This website has made me ridiculously paranoid every single time I sit down to eat dinner. I feel like I’m doing so many things wrong for my health. I just want to eat “the right way” but we don’t have the money or the time to make complex, nutritious meals from scratch. I really wish we did. Am I doomed to a low metabolism because my family isn’t rich and no one knows how to cook?
I bought your book Diet Recovery II and it inspired me to cut out processed foods from my diet, but then I realized I would be cutting out 90% of the foods I eat. At first I liked this website but now it’s just making me want to die. I will never be healthy.
You’re 16 years old, just eat everything in sight that tastes good. Refined or not, get in enough calories to feel satiated and don’t stress about it. Cooking for yourself can be CHEAP and simple. Throw a Potato in the microwave, zap it, open it, apply butter, salt and pepper, eat. Simple. Drink milk – no cooking involved. Don’t over think this. Eat “healthy” is a matter of perspective, everyone views it as something different. You’ll find this applies to damn near everything in life. So don’t focus on healthy, eat the foods that make you feel good and that you can afford/ have access to.
good advice from bryan.
potatoes are also very good cooked in a toaster oven at 350 for an hour and half. i poke holes in them with with a fork to keep them from exploding, and cook three at a time for the day.
with salt and whole milk, potatoes are very nutritious. there have been historical observations that the poorest among the irish, who could only afford to eat that way, were actually the healthiest and strongest.
if there isn’t a toaster oven in the house, buying one for yourself could also give you more independence. just don’t eat any potatoes that are green or sprouted.
good advice from bryan.
potatoes are also very good cooked in a toaster oven at 350 for an hour and half. i poke holes in them with with a fork to keep them from exploding, and cook three at a time for the day.
with salt and whole milk, potatoes are very nutritious. there have been historical observations that the poorest among the irish, who could only afford to eat that way, were actually the healthiest and strongest.
if there isn’t a toaster oven in the house, buying one for yourself could also give you more independence. just don’t eat any potatoes that are green or sprouted.
Can we address the elephant in the corner first please? How much weight gain are we talking when switching from low carbing to this badass diet? I’m new to this site and I’m so scared to get chubbier than I already am and have to buy new clothes. Is there a way to repair our metabolisms without gaining a ton of weight? Could we maybe mix some intermittent fasting with eating junk food (i mean that sounds like what heaven would be)?
I gained 38 pounds during my 3rd pregnancy and usually it’s easy for me to lose the baby weight, but unfortunately not so lucky this time. I have a feeling it’s because this time I got into low carbing and paleo when I should have just waited it out and lost it naturally. Is it possible to be “skinny” and have high temps or are we stuck being chubby in order to feel healthier?
This website is fascinating. Wish I found it sooner!!
How are you guys doing after all those years?
ANy successes, failures, or surprises?
Does anyone actually visit this site anymore?