My summer trip ended early, and I had to spend a couple weeks in a hotel room. In hotel rooms I often find myself doing something I rarely do, which is watch television. A LOT of television. Stupid amounts. The kind of TV-watching where you only stand up to dust the potato chip crumbs off of your shirt. I would have bought a bedpan to avoid having to go to the bathroom, but I would have had to leave the hotel room to acquire it, which was totally out of the question. The commercial breaks simply aren’t long enough. I might miss whose dish is on the chopping block. I just wasn’t willing to take those kind of risks.
In that couple weeks of my TV safari I came across a reality show about a 380-pound woman in her early 30’s named Whitney Way Thore called, ?My Big Fat Fabulous Life.
I watched her gain weight working out to the point of tears (and injuring herself, as typically happens when seriously overweight people attempt to work out really hard) and using restraint I can’t even imagine. I mean, she took a single bite out of a cookie and didn’t finish it! Reminds me of Kristen Wiig’s little ?Just the tip? song in the recent hit movie Sausage Party.
She confessed to eating this bite of a cookie to her personal trainer who ?let her go? because she ?wasn’t serious. We’ll get to him, the prototypical misguided trainer, later on.
I feel compelled to provide some commentary about this show because, like the show Naked and Afraid (where people starve themselves out in the wilderness and the narrator keeps saying how they need ?protein? if they hope to survive), I can’t watch it without repeatedly yelling at the screen and even throwing things at it. Health and nutrition inaccuracy causes fits of rage!
The show frustrates me because everyone in the show, trainer included, has no clue about how body fat regulation works. That’s a given. I’m used to that frustration, though, as that ?eat less, exercise more? type of thinking is endemic. But I also am frustrated that Whitney has such weak ammunition for defending herself against these calorie-worshipping know-nothings.
She often gets into situations where she’s being more or less bumrushed by the calorie S.W.A.T. team, and she’s close to defenseless in response. That’s the part that makes me yell at the television. I could throw rebuttal after rebuttal at these bullies until they were 2-inch piles of goop lying on the ground. But they can’t hear me no matter how loud I yell. At least I can vent here and someone besides my poor girlfriend and possibly the people in the room next door can hear.
And so, here is an attempt to help Whitney ammo up a bit, and to help set a few people straight on how body fat regulation actually works. I’ll write it as an open letter to Whitney. I hope she gets to read it?
Dear Whitney,
I’m sure you’ve been surrounded with only a very narrow viewpoint with which to view your unfortunate weight gain problem, as have we all, since a young age. I think you mentioned starting to diet at about the age of 5 or 6. This is typical. Almost every extreme obesity case I’ve come across involves dieting at a very young age.
The questions I want you, and anyone else reading to consider, are:
- What if the standard approach to weight loss, while it gives us the illusion of being effective (you lose weight in the short-term), is actually ineffective for long-term weight loss”
- What if the standard approach to weight loss is actually a contributing factor to weight GAIN”
You know, I feel silly even posing those questions, as I think both of those questions have already been satisfactorily answered in the annals of obesity research and beyond. Huh huh, I said annals. And the experiential education of dieters everywhere is so in line with it that the truth about dieting and exercise’s shortcomings are self-evident.
Consider this line of thinking:
If you are eating as much of whatever you like and aren’t performing any unwanted exercise beyond the activity you find to be enjoyable (like prancing around with Todd, who is the real star of the show BTW!), and you are maintaining your weight effortlessly?
?Then you do something different?
And then after you stop doing something different and you start gaining weight doing exactly what you were doing while effortlessly maintaining your weight before?
Then the only reasonable conclusion is that whatever you did differently in the interim causes weight gain.
This year was, I believe, the 10th summer since I reached adulthood where I had a huge spike in my physical activity levels (because I like hiking, a summer activity). Before each of those ten summers I was effortlessly maintaining weight before the season began. Then I lost weight with the sudden increase in physical activity. And then I quickly gained it back doing the same thing I was doing before the summer started?eating to satiety and exercising for pleasure.
If my weight just went down and then back up to where it was before, it would be one thing. But in nearly every summer (except this one, fortunately), my weight after the summer hiking season actually SURPASSED my previous weight. I discuss that in this old video…
Conclusion: Increasing physical activity levels dramatically for a few months and then stopping leads to a net gain of body fat.
Sound familiar? Sounds a lot like your experience with your trainer Will, where you lost 100 pounds eating very little and performing large quantities of grueling exercise, only to gain it back plus extra before your weight started to stabilize again. Sounds a lot like my mom, who loves to say, ?Every time I try to lose 10 pounds I gain 5. Sounds a lot like just about everyone who tries to purposely force weight off by creating an intentional calorie deficit through diet, exercise, or a combination of both?even lean, young men with no preexisting propensity to gain weight.
The thing is, intentional weight loss just doesn’t work for the vast majority of people over the long-term. I even think it’s part of the problem, and there’s plenty of evidence to support this aside from the abundance of observational evidence all around us.
It sucks that the ability to lose weight in the short-term by starving ourselves gives us all the illusion of being able to control our weight. It also gives the general public that illusion, and they believe fat people can just frolic on down to the gym and fix that dang obesity thing they’ve got going on.
Not so much.
As Albert Stunkard, the world’s first major pioneer in the field of obesity research liked to say, most obese people have about as much control over their weight as they have control over who their parents are. He came to believe this after doing like, you know, actual science and stuff. Even the New York times couldn’t report his recent passing without trying to debunk him. Cuz you know, obesity has gotten more prevalent, so it can’t be genetics. It’s your fault fatty. We know that infants are getting fatter, so it can’t be a hereditary thing. They are getting fat just from thinking about all the junk food that they’re going to eat and video games that they’re gonna play later on in life.
Sorry, I know this stuff isn’t common sense. In reality, more people are inheriting a tendency to gain weight from their mothers. It’s hereditary in that there’s nothing the child can do about it, but it has little to do with genetics.
Maternal BMI, adiposity, gestational weight gain, circulating triglyceride concentrations, and degree of inflammation during pregnancy are associated with increased birth weight and neonatal adiposity (11, 31, 34?40). Maternal diabetes is linked with higher offspring fat mass at birth (41), increased BMI, and risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D) in childhood and beyond (42). Maternal smoking during pregnancy is associated with offspring risk of overweight and obesity at 5?7 y (11, 43, 44). Various animal models have shown that a high-fat maternal diet during pregnancy causes malprogramming of the fetal liver (45), increased offspring accumulation of fat (46), and development of features of metabolic syndrome in adulthood (47). Maternal nutritional status preconception also plays an important, but often underappreciated role. In ewes, undernutrition around the time of conception causes increased fetal blood pressure and impaired glucose signaling in adult offspring (48, 49). More comprehensive reviews of the fetal origins of obesity are widely available.Maternal increased BMI, smoking, and circulating triglyceride concentrations are all also associated with rapid postnatal growth (33, 37, 39, 50). Therefore, these maternal characteristics may illicit a ?double-hit? programming effect on offspring’s metabolic profile, increasing the odds of later metabolic dysfunction and obesity in a cumulative or even synergistic manner (51).http://advances.nutrition.org/content/3/5/675.full
That same study shows that the diet and growth pattern of the child in the first 6 months is considered extremely significant in determining the risk for developing obesity later in life. This is also “not genetic,” but it can rapidly get worse and is completely out of the child’s control. In other words, a common cause of obesity (there are several factors, I discuss many of them HERE) appears to be caused by mostly hereditary and developmental factors making it seem “genetic” in nature. Stunkard was just too quick in dubbing it “genetic.”
Albert Stunkard, by the way, was probably the first major proponent of the idea that we should collectively stop discriminating against the overweight, as he was the first to fully realize that obesity was difficult if not impossible for most people to permanently ?cure? with standard approaches.
Yet, despite 50 years of overwhelming research showing that obesity is hard to prevent and even harder to permanently eliminate?and attempts to lose weight might even be exacerbating obesity’the public opinion is still guided by hereditarily-blessed jocks, eating-disordered nutritionists and dieticians, and other improperly-educated blowhards who think obesity is caused by food addiction and laziness.
In a nutshell, the body has a host of involuntary mechanisms that control energy regulation?your desire for intake, your desire for output, how much gets burned for energy, how much gets stored as fat, and so on. Forcibly trying to override those systems with willpower to create a conscious calorie deficit literally causes appetite to increase, metabolic rate to decrease, desire for physical activity and calorie burn during exercise to decrease, and fat storage efficiency to increase. That’s why it doesn’t work and is actually a contributing factor to weight gain. I mean, would you take a pill with those side effects if you were trying to lose weight?
In reality, the story goes like this?
Kid is already pudgy before she has her first solid food, likely from having a very high omega 6:3 ratio as an infant with infant formula and/or high omega-6 breastmilk as discussed HERE, among other hereditary factors discussed above. Gets pudgier as she continues to do what every other living sentient organism is programmed to do, which is to eat food until fullness is achieved every time hunger is felt. Then starts to get pressure and brainwashing from society that she is fat because she is eating too much and not exercising enough, and starts to consciously try to restrict food intake and create a calorie-deficit at a young age. This leads to rebound weight gain and an intensification of the resolve to eat less and exercise more. The cycle repeats itself again and again, each time the person’s metabolic rate is lowered and propensity to store body fat increased. Problem spirals out of control and serious, morbid obesity ensues.
I think dieting as a kid is particularly powerful, as the body is still developing, and sending it cues to horde energy can be even more dramatic in its negative effect. The number and size of fat cells hasn’t even been fully determined at that point.
Just think Whitney, if you had never tried to intervene with your body’s natural energy-regulating mechanisms, not only would you have freed up a ton of energy to focus on other, more productive pursuits, but you’d probably weigh 200-250 pounds right now instead of 380 and careening rapidly towards 400+. Or maybe not. It’s hard to say. Everyone’s obesity story is unique.
What you might want to do from where you are now?
Please GET AWAY from your trainer Will for starters. This guy may freaking kill you trying to help save you. I know he means well, as most trainers do, but he knows not what he does.
Then read some good books to get properly educated about obesity. My favorite, which is hard to come by these days, is Robert Pool’s Fat: Fighting the Obesity Epidemic. The Obesity Myth by Paul Campos is a pretty close second. I haven’t read his Diet Myth book, but I’m sure it’s also excellent. I love Linda Bacon’s Health at Every Size, although to say that obesity is natural and doesn’t come with secondary health problems is flawed (but trying to do something about it will make you even more ill, so who cares). Gina Kolata’s Rethinking Thin is also a solid read. There are others. My Diet Recovery series is decent. These all provide a good place to start.
I also think you’ll like the work of Diana Schwarzbein, who has a similar health background as yours. She suffered from PCOS in college just as you did.
With these books you should have much better ammunition against the haters who love to say that you are just enabling fat people to continue with their unhealthy ways with your show and your dedication to eradicating body shame. You can now tell them that what they advocate to help you get healthy is something that makes the problem worse not better, and that you’ve given up on that approach after 25 years of giving it a chance to be the solution that it just isn’t.
And yes, please give up before you lose and gain your way to 500 pounds. You’ll be surprised at just how non-fattening not trying to lose weight can be. Sure, you’ll gain a little weight in rebound coming off of a quarter century of dieting. But when your hair starts growing back, you sleep better, you’re happier, you stop gaining weight completely without even trying, and you don’t have to live in a perpetual guilt/repent internal struggle over every morsel you put into your mouth, you’ll know you’re on a better path.
Will you lose weight by staying on that path? Probably not. But you might. Many actually do, surprisingly.
At least you won’t likely keep swelling while trying desperately to lose weight. Imagine what kind of message and hope that would send to your overweight fans who think you’re a hero rather than what you are sending to them now?watching you cry over buying a cookie, get yelled at by a guy who has probably never had more than 10 pounds of fat on his entire body, and injure yourself trying to ride a bike with car tires on it.
Or you know, keep doing what you’ve been doing. Your call.
About the Author
Matt Stone is an independent health researcher, author of more than 15 books, and founder of 180DegreeHealth. He is best known for his research on metabolic rate and its central role in many health conditions as well as his criticisms of extreme dieting. Learn more by signing up for his free Raising Metabolism eCourse?HERE,?which also includes?THIS FREE BOOK.
First…
idiot to the first power
Don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m sure you’re not that bad.
Good to see you back Matty Cakes! I hope Whitney gets this letter and heeds your wise council. It is so sad to see these people punished for tv ratings.
xo
the HAG
Yay! I too am so sick of these shows perpetuating the eat-nothing-and-workout-till-ya-dropout myth. Argh. Oh, and don’t forget the nasty saturated fat that’s fuelling your rice cakes with cancer and heart disease!…
You’re alive matt!!
Love the post, I see it so often where people do these programs to lose weight and end up worse off. Its been 2 years since my refeeding (dieting and sugar free since 12 y/o)and I might be a lot bigger but I am so happy and energetic. I am always warm and the only one in the office to walk around sleeveless in winter. My sleep is amazing, moods are stable, energy is through the roof. Now that i’m not focussing on weight and diets I have finally started my own blog and a life to live.
I wil forver be thankful to you Matt!!
Nice Bianca!
So great to have you back! You’re one of the funniest guys I know and seeing your face makes me think I’d better stop drinking my coffee black and put some creamer in there.
Don’t forget the sugar too!
Welcome back! I also hope Whitney sees this letter. I love her show and I admire the way she sticks up for herself as everyone is lecturing her and laying guilt trips on her. She knows in her heart and from her own experience that everything you have written above is true. At least now she will have some science to back it up.
I dieted and binged my way up to morbid obesity from the age of 15 to 55. At that point, there was no doubt in my mind that diets ultimately result in weight gain. I vowed never to diet again and purchased the book, “Intuitive Eating” by Tribole and Resch. Best purchase I have ever made. It is no easy task to heal a very disordered relationship with food after a lifetime of dieting. Tribole and Resch enabled me to do that, step-by-step. I also joined an online support group which was very important in the beginning. As is typical, I did gain weight the first six months, about 13 pounds. Not exactly welcome when you are morbidly obese but I had been told to expect it and assured it would eventually come off. Sure enough, weight slowly did come off, and I am now down 70 pounds, eight years later. I could still stand to lose another 70 and maybe I will and maybe I won’t. I always eat to the point of satisfaction, never restrict calories, so it is up to my body what happens. She is in the driver seat. What I do know is that I will not gain 5 or 10 pounds every year eating this way, as I did for most of my adult life when I was dieting.
Nice story, Cathy B. Congratulations and well-done.
Thank you very much, Carl!
Awesome Cathy. Like the automotive metaphor there, as what you’re really doing is handing the keys over to the body and letting it do the driving instead of perpetually trying to steer it around. Cool that you did, indeed lose quite a bit of weight. I hate that I can’t promise weight loss to everyone. But ultimately whether a person loses or doesn’t isn’t my call nor theirs. It’s up to their body.
Damn it Carl.
I wanted to be first.
Despite the location of my post, you’re always #1, Deb!
awww thanks ;-)
Matt, it sounds like you dont believe there’s anyway possible to consciously reduce calories and thus lose weight without having the body react negatively?? If so, I disagree. I think its the constant dieting, caloric restriction, that’s the problem. Something like cutting calories one day and then eating normally the next would work to lose weight without the negative consequences. Studies on fasting show humans do not make up the total caloric deficit on non fasting days. I believe the real problem is impatience. To lose weight correctly without negative consequences takes time.. at about 1 pound per week which would mean years for someone like Whitney.
Hey Jeff, I think there is some validity to the idea that leptin can be spiked with frequent refeeds, and that long-term calorie deficits without a reprieve are indeed worse. That’s sort of the fitness industry approach. It’s still a hard thing to do in practice, and I can’t personally attest to getting any real results with that approach. I don’t mean to sound cynical, but it would be dishonest of me to paint a rosier picture than I have in this article.
Hey Matt, great thoughts here, and I enjoyed your free email tutorial on metabolism. But I wonder what advice you’d have for me, since I am pretty much the opposite of typical dieters.
My first attempt at losing weight wasn’t until my mid 30’s, not on a calorie counting plan, but a starch based, low protein “vegan” plan (McDougall)…and I have never gained back to my high of about 300lbs, but have lost, then regained SOME BUT NOT ALL of the weight.
so…I’m not like a dieter. I haven’t destroyed my metabolism with super low cal/high activity practices. What do you suggest?
No major suggestions Heidi. If you find something that seems to work and doesn’t seem to have any negative side-effects and is sustainable for you (vegan is something very few can sustain long-term, and restricting your diet to that degree probably isn’t necessary and may even be harmful–I know strict veganism screws me up badly), then by all means, go for it. Track your body temp and general biofeedback to make sure your body isn’t responding negatively to the weight loss.
Great to see you back, Matt! I was crushed to think you came to believe blogs are obsolete!
Anyway, you probably figgered I’d chime in with my two cents’ worth of glycine. My experience is that it has no effect on weight (except an initial loss sometimes of water weight associated with inflammation, when the inflammation goes away), but plenty to do with what are believed to be the side-effects of obesity.
Specifically, it’s generally believed that abdominal obesity causes metabolic inflammation, which manifests as insulin resistance (“pre-diabetes”) and eventually as diabetes, with all of its follow-on consequences.
But in truth, it’s not the abdominal fat tissue (adipose tissue) that causes the inflammation, but the immune cells (macrophages) embedded in the fat that cause it. But they only cause inflammation if you are glycine-deficient.
So for me, about 10 years ago I tripped into diabetic territory with a fasting glucose of 129, being mildly obese (about 20 pounds overweight) for about 20 years (I’m 65 now). But since I started experimenting with glycine supplementation in 2007, and taking 8-10 grams per day ever since 2009 (I went into business and have been selling my sweetamine glycine supplement since 2013), my blood sugar and A1C have gone back down and stayed there, even though my weight managed to creep up a couple of pounds over these last few years.
There are clinical studies that back this up, and there will be more.
I love reading your material. Thanks so much for posting this. I don’t watch television very much but I could imagine how frustrating it is to watch that show. Thank goodness that in a world of conflicting information, we have people like you trying to sift through and filter out the bullshit. It’s so hard…There’s so much junk to be thrown out. No offense but your filter has been clogged/compromised in the past (mandatory in the journey of knowledge of course…), and boy oh boy so has mine. Still is…But I never give up. Please don’t ever get rid of the Quitn6 courses Matt. I have so much going on, I’m not ready to give up my job, nor to start my own business. But I very much so want to complete your courses and become my own Boss. I know I am smart enough but I just struggle with certain disciplines…Love you home slice. For real.
Thanks Metal Dude. Always good to see you’re still out there lurking. :)
Missed you Matty! Did you buy anything from infomercials while watching all that TV? Are you the proud owner of a slicer/dicer or perhaps an airfryer?
Just saw my first airfryer commercial last night on a YouTube video. Gordon Ramsay no you didn’t!
God it’s good to have you back. Here’s hoping this lovely young woman gets wind of this post. I’ll share it and get the evil eye from the “beach body diet” minions who have taken over my town. But I like getting the evil eye… So…
YES!! Your back! Admittedly I am late to finding your blog (like a few weeks ago) and I was hoping you’d start blogging again. Love what you have to say on this topic. I’m in the middle of RRARF-ing (which btw makes me think of spaceballs every time I say it). I’ve put on weight, some fat, but my energy is picking up, sleep is still needing some improvement but I’m getting there. I’m still trying to get temps up, can’t seem to pass the 98.4 threshold and sticking around 97.4 for the most part. Not sure if my body is fighting this because it’s really out of the norm since birth I’ve always been a low temperature being or if I’ve got to tweak my diet more. I’d be curious to know Whitney’s temperatures. I’m sure that would be telling.
Welcome Heidi and good luck with it! Don’t overlook the importance of sleep and destressing. They can be just as effective as food and less fattening, lol.
Oh, so very happy you’re back. You always crack me up, love your writings. More, more, more.
I’ll try!
Matt, tell us why this summer was different and you did not gain the weight back? Tell us more about this. Did the hiking cause weight loss? Did you keep this weight loss? Or did your weight stay the same this summer even though you had a spike in exercise? Love to know. And yes, it’s great to have you baaaaaacccccckkkkkk!
Hey Kathy,
I think the difference this year was simply not doing it for very long. I only hiked hard for about 4 weeks, in which time I probably lost about 10 pounds. I was hiking every other day and never two days in a row also, which is much less hiking than I normally do when I’m fully into it. That probably helped as well. And, I ate absurd amounts of food. Losing 10 pounds in a few weeks while eating 20-30 cookies per day and 3 liters of Kool-Aid with extra sugar added is quite astonishing, even for me!
As for gaining it back, I gained it back in about 4 weeks. As the weight came up my sleep improved. My sleep is always the first thing to go when I’m doing something that compromises my metabolism.
So fascinating! Love your stuff. Its so counterintuitive and excellent. Through you I met Maddy Moon and I’ve interviewed her for my Brave Body Love event.I wonder if Whitney has seen this? Any news? I’ll try to pass it in through a friend.
I don’t think she’s seen it.
Hear hear! I dieted 50 years before I finally called it all off. Thyroid surgery made it harder to come back but now I have the natural replacement medication (not synthroid which is about as helpful as a boil on your butt). I think if you eat actual food, it doesn’t make you binge – oh, wait, did I get that from you? Anyway, thanks, good to hear your “voice” again.
Can you give more details on your “natural replacement medication?” Are we talking Armour or what?
Well written post as always. Hope Whitney reads this and comes to her senses.
Thank You
I knew you’d be back eventually… Nutrition and health will always be in the back of your subconscious, slowly but steadily nudging it’s way to your frontal lobe.
What can we expect next from you? A Ray Peat experiment with thr addition of measuring the brix content of your pee? A 15 day fast followed by the milk diet? Perhaps some McDougall Veganism sprinkled in with paleo?
Or are you just on the path of criticising calories in-out with the hopes of luring a JT-type character for some interesting commentary?
Don’t keep me in suspense Mr. Buck Flogger. I’m so excited, I just can’t hide it :D
Interestingly, for me the 180 Degree healthy eating recommendations (aside from the therapeutic “junk food” refeeding phase) always seemed to be a neat fusion of McDougall and Ray Peat. It had the focus on starch of McDougall (taters, yams, oatmeal, etc.), alongside the anti-PUFA, pro-saturated and fruit-positive approach of Peat, plus a general emphasis on carbohydrates and glucose as the preferred fuel source, and the general acceptability of a reduced fat intake if one felt the need to lose some weight.
Cone Qarfare.
Interesting that you mention the fusion of McDougall and Ray Peat ideas, this is kind of how I eat and it seems to work for me (by “work” I mean I maintain a healthy weight, good temps etc.). I’m probably more towards McDougall as I love starch, eating a mostly vegan diet and adding salt and sugar to make food more interesting (both are things I find essential to staying warm and toasty too and McDougall seems to be the only plant based doc who is ok with salt). Matt’s Diet Recovery introduced me to more Peaty elements such as being ok with saturated fat and avoiding PUFAs – I know from experience that PUFAs make me cold, I once tried a nutritarian diet which included a lot of salads topped with tahini, nuts and seeds and I was freezing after about a week!
That’s about where I’m at too Rosie. Mostly vegan, highly-carbivorous diet built mostly around starchy staples. But nothing extreme. My physical pain levels and energy levels are much higher than eating a “balanced” diet with meat/dairy and fat at every meal.
Yeah, no big experiments for me anymore. I plan on staying in retirement on that front. I will pop up to call bullshit from time to time when I see it. Whether it lures in the calorie-worshippers or not, I don’t much care.
Great to see you back, Matt! I was crushed to think you came to believe blogs are obsolete!
Anyway, you probably figgered I’d chime in with my two cents’ worth of glycine. My experience is that it has no effect on weight (except an initial loss sometimes of water weight associated with inflammation, when the inflammation goes away), but plenty to do with what are believed to be the side-effects of obesity.
Specifically, it’s generally believed that abdominal obesity causes metabolic inflammation, which manifests as insulin resistance (“pre-diabetes”) and eventually as diabetes, with all of its follow-on consequences.
But in truth, it’s not the abdominal fat tissue (adipose tissue) that causes the inflammation, but the immune cells (macrophages) embedded in the fat that cause it. But they only cause inflammation if you are glycine-deficient.
So for me, about 10 years ago I tripped into diabetic territory with a fasting glucose of 129, being mildly obese (about 20 pounds overweight) for about 20 years (I’m 65 now). But since I started experimenting with glycine supplementation in 2007, and taking 8-10 grams per day ever since 2009 (I went into business and have been selling my sweetamine glycine supplement since 2013), my blood sugar and A1C have gone back down and stayed there, even though my weight managed to creep up a couple of pounds over these last few years.
There are clinical studies that back this up, and there will be more.
Dr. Brind,
It’s good to see you back here, too. I always enjoy your writing and insights.
What’s your opinion, if you have one, on the Bone Broth craze and organizations like the Weston A. Price Foundation?
I recently found the following video and thought it was interesting.
https://youtu.be/K7N-K8ntqK8't=5m38s
Doing a little searching, I found this lady is a Vegan and is one of the popular Plant-Based Doctors that are a growing trend.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. I have nothing against Vegans, Vegetarians, Fruitarians, Breatharians, Paleo, Primal, Low-Carb, Ketogenic, etc. Live and let live, I say.
But, everyone can’t be correct, right?
Best regards,
Buck
I’m so happy you referenced this! In the last month I’ve started following you, I have also started watching this show and have literally wondered your thoughts on it. (And ‘brush off the haters’ was also my first thought.) But anyway, I posted the link to her instagram so hopefully she reads it! Keep doing you Matt! ????
Thanks Quinn. Sorry you found me. It’s all downhill from here!
Yay! You’re back! I was just thinking the other day that I’ve missed your blogs.
This was eye opening, and I apologize for my long comment in advance. I am an over weight mom of five with a hormone disorder, mainly pcos but other issues too. I was told by many doctors my weight was to blame and the only cure was to get underweight, to the point that I quit menstruating and ovulating, so I wouldn’t have ovarian cysts. Nothing worked, even at 6′ tall and 170lbs, the thinnest I could get, I was sick.
By luck my regular doctor was out the day I discussed my husband and I wanting children, and the Nurse Midwife I saw basically said, “this isn’t working, fat makes estrogen, if you want any chance of having kids, gain weight, and it may take a lot.” After a lifetime of being told to lose weight, literally since I was 4, and failing, I quit dieting and over exercising, and let myself gain weight.
A year later I was 260, had few if any cysts on my ovaries, and got pregnant. Here is where the ridiculous part kicked in. 260 May be my “good to get pregnant” weight, it was not my healthy pregnant weight, and between morning sickness and upped metabolism, my body let me know and I lost 40lbs while pregnant. 220 is the weight my body normally stabilized at in between diets and the one I reached, no matter how hard I tried not to lose weight, during or shortly after my pregnancies.
Despite doctors insisting I must have undiagnosed diabetes and never being able to find proof, my pregnancies were healthy, my babies were and are healthy, and the only child with any sort of weight issues now is the one I was carrying when I had gallbladder disease during my pregnancy and had to go on a restrictive diet, causing me to drop to 200 lbs before he was born. He is also the only one of my children to be on formula for any period of time, as the removal of my gallbladder required medications that required him to be formula fed for about a month as a newborn.
So much of what you posted just makes sense with what I have experienced, and while my “happy weight” has crept up to 230 over the last 10 years, I continue to annoy and confuse doctors by not having any of the “obesity related health issues” they think I should have. My only issues are hormonal ones had worse even when skinny or related to car accidents and spleen damage weakening my immune system. I wish my doctor would read this and take you seriously.
Hey Emily. Great advice from the Midwife. Although, her thinking it was because it would increase estrogen had me chuckling. It’s all about dat progesterone, not estrogen, and raising metabolism through weight gain will definitely boost that progesterone. Most cultures had women eat a lot and rest a lot before and during pregnancy to boost fertility. Now the medical industry thinks everyone should be eating salad and exercising their brains out, mistakenly thinking that eating too much is what causes obesity is what causes fertility issues and unhealthy kids. In reality, a low metabolism causes the weight gain and the hormonal problems and the health problems associated with carrying too much bodyfat. I’m not saying being morbidly obese doesn’t directly cause health complications. It does. But I’ve seen countless people of all weights improve their health and overcome the supposed obesity-related illnesses by eating more and gaining weight (and raising metabolism). There’s just so much confusion about it, and it all stems from a basic misunderstanding as to why people get fat. It’s crazy how far advanced modern medicine is in so many ways, yet the science about obesity is buried in obscurity.
Like back in the old days…
I was thinking about this before I met your blog… The way I see it there are two problems.. a short term problem and a long term problem. Losing weight is the short term solution. The long term solution is being happy and being and eating “healthy”. What is done in the show is somehow tackling the short term problem (being overweight) in a very retarded way (way too much exercise) because it is a good format for TV viewers. I was thinking they should teach people the long term solution first (or even at all). How to eat and be healthy and happy. I have a strong feeling the other problem will solve itself after that (and if it doesn’t or doesn’t happen fast enough, well maybe then a diet is in order, but without a safe base of healthy eating habits it’s like throwing balloons at a drowning man .. Just get him the hell out of the water.)
Yeah that’s why I felt compelled to write something about Whitney. Her show celebrates body image positivity, but she and everyone on the show still seems to be stuck in the “starve it off” paradigm. There’s a huge disconnect there. Whitney didn’t become fat because she ate too much and exercised too little. She’s a freaking dancer! And trying to exercise more and eat less isn’t the solution either. Only by addressing her metabolic and hormonal abnormalities and fixing those does she stand a chance to really lose weight, keep it off, AND be healthy and happy.
Hi everyone
I just read the Blood Sugar Diet. The author is so convinced it is the holy grail of weight loss and diabetes reversal. The stories of weight loss and recovery from diabetes are remarkable. I’m a dedicated Eat for Heater, but I still struggle not to be enticed back into the world of dieting/weight loss. The BSD sounds so compelling, but I’d like to hear from some folks smarter than I am about why it might not be as miraculous as it sounds. I guess the main thing would be that the research is still in the early stages, so weight gain long term might be an issue, but what’s with the changes to diabetes and pre-diabetes conditions?
I’ve read a lot of your stuff Matt….but still need to ask these questions: If we eat small amounts at a time no big meals but not worry about any claorie restriction eg 4 to 6 small meals or nutritional inputs what ever you call it daily…is this a good approach? Alos for those with big weight issues and low body temperature would it not be a good idea to take a natural thyroid glandular supplement?
I have been wondering the same thing. I have to do small snacks in between meals to get the calories and to keep my temps up (though mine are currently stuck around 97.4). My experience with glandular supplements is they help a little but not enough for me to spend the money monthly.
My obesity & health recovery started with your “Eat 4 Heat” book… and has continued through a bunch of books (by you and others)…
I read & discard any that don’t agree with actual experimentation. So, I’ve kept yours! :)
My latest book has been “lose weight here” from the Metabaolic Effect people (Jade and Keoni).
Their methods to lose weight for long term are to bounce between two states (give each ~2 weeks at a time):
1. Low-calorie, LOW-exercise (eat less, move less)
2. Higher-calories, higher-exercise (eat more, move more)
In state 1, you lose fat. In state 2, you build muscle.
Your body will refuse to lose fat in a calorie deficit… and will eat muscle first. So… the whole “eat less, move more” group is just 100% wrong – as you’ve been saying, all along.
Great to see another Matt post on 180!!!
Sounds interesting, Tina. How did it effect Body Tempts on those low calorie days.
This article is half true, at best. The problem is “going back to normal” patterns. In other words, going back to crap food, along with never dealing with the emotional issues and deeper physiological imbalances that create chronic inflammation, along with chronic carb/sugar intake that lead to more and more fat cells being created.
What actually works, long term, is eating higher quality foods, healing the gut (GAPS diet), restoring HCL production in the stomach for better digestion, cleaning out the liver and gall bladder (with coffee enemas), and slowly modifying the diet to remove grains and processed sugars.
Eventually, after much time with the above, a person will start to get healthier and their fat cells will start to empty out. They’ll probably FEEL like exercising at some point as well. They will need to KEEP the exercise for life, but it can be fun stuff like playing in the outdoors, not necessarily “gym stuff.”
Somewhere along the way, going full-on high-fat/ultra-low carb will help continue to empty out those fat cells. But after the first 10 days of HF/ULC, a “carb-up” is needed to boost leptin and other hormone levels, with a “carb night” every 5-7 days. For that part, check out Kiefer’s “Carb nite” e-book.
So yes, fat can be lost *and* kept off, but it requires daily effort on an ongoing basis. Say goodbye to junk food and grains, except for on those carb nights. That’s one night out of 21 meals per week where some of that junky food can actually be useful for creating an insulin spike. The rest of the time, it needs to be clean eating without carbs.
So that’s what actually works to lose fat and keep it off long run. This former fatty has been relatively svelt for about a year using the tools above, but it took a full year to regain my health and get fairly lean after far too long of just indulging in whatever I wanted to eat and piling on the fat.
I just want to say that I love Whitney. She is an inspiration because she has the balls to get up and dance in front of everyone and I wish I could dance too.
I am fat and have always been. No wait, I was underweight for about the first two weeks of my life. Anyways, any dietary change seems to put me into weight gain mode, not just calorie restriction. I was stable for about two years not dieting, and then my doctor put me on a gluten free diet and within two months I gained like 30 lbs, ugh!!! So this is a warning for those thinking of going gluten free. And funny thing is, I get no side effects from gluten, in fact, I always feel great eating wheat foods. But he took some blood test that said I am allergic and that it will eventually kill me and stupid me believed it.
I also just want to say that I love myself just how I am. I have no problem with my being fat and I know that dieting since a very young age has done nothing to help me, that I ALWAYS gain weight after dieting, even while still dieting and starving. I think I look great and so does my husband. I eat very nutritious foods, rarely any junk food, and am very active. I have an awesome son and great life and we travel a lot and I love it. I do have slightly high triglycerides and slightly high blood sugars (my A1C is 5.6,) but guess who has higher A1C, my normal weight husband, his very thin jerk brother, and many other thin people I know. In fact, of all me and my cousins and close friends, I am the fattest and healthiest. It might not stay that way, I know, but we will see, and we all have to die eventually (I am 38 now.) Anyways, just want to say that I have no problem with how I am, it is society that has the problem. I don’t know why my being thinner would make them happier, but whatever.
Thanks Matt for posts like this one, it feels good to know that there are some people out there sticking up for people like me.
Matt, thanks! Good post. JSYK, “The Diet Myth” is the name “The Obesity Myth” was republished under – they’re essentially the same book. A *great* book!
I had a feeling that was the case. Thanks Max.
Matt, long time no see. Miss ur blogging bruh, but I can understand. The rabbit hole seems to go on forever….
I’ve lost around 45 lbs doing HFLC for about a year now. Definitely have my moments of doubt, and I wish I could say fuck it and just eat whatever I wanted, but experience has taught me this just isn’t feasible. Weight rebound is the least of my concerns.
I dunno man, there are infinite conflicting answers out there. High fat low carb seems to bypass a lot of the issues I have, but I doubt it is a perfect solution. I think that KNOWING you are right is more dangerous than anything. Reality is shades of gray. I might die tomorrow from an overly restrictive diet, and likewise for a fat person on their overly indulgent diet. Who knows.
Yeah that’s pretty well said.
Dear Matt,
great that you’re back :-).
I’m still(or again) obsessed with not gaining weight, by eating tons of raw food and doing a lot of sports. Now, my body responds with inflammations and I’m on cortisone for a few weeks.
But now, I’m motivated and start to read your books again (I recommended them to many people,but forget about them to myself…).
Thanks a lot to you and hope to hear more often from you.
Best wishes from Germany :-)
Hey Matt, I enjoyed this article. I just wanted to let you know that you helped me tremendously in recovering from years of dieting and over exercise. It’s been probably three years since I found your blog. At the time I had gained 70 pounds after losing 50 along with a slew of debilitating symptoms to which my doctor could only offer me a shrug of his shoulders and a recommendation for an 1800 calorie diet combined with 10,000 steps a day. Yeah, I ignored that prescription. I haven’t really lost any weight in these last three years but my dress size has dropped by two sizes. Sure, I’m over 200 lbs, BUT I can SLEEP, my hair isn’t falling out anymore, the joint pain is almost gone, and a bunch of other health concerns have subsided. And the mental space I’ve freed up from hating myself and planning my next diet is priceless. You do good work. Thanks again.
This is awesome!! I am in the beginning stages of RARF with a similar weight as you. I am so glad you posted… I have been second guessing myself but posts like yours help reinforce what I know I need to do!
Heidi,
I’m glad you were encouraged. Stick with it! And buy yourself some clothes you feel pretty in and that FIT. Don’t get hung up on the size. It sounds easy enough, but building a new wardrobe was one of the most difficult parts for me mentally–at first anyways. Shopping is easy and fun now, and even my thinner friends (yet much less happy with their bodies) ask for help with clothes shopping. Good luck!
Sorry Texanne. None of those things matter. Only your weight! Hey good job. It takes a ton of patience to be heavier than you want to be and not try to lose weight. Truly. I hope your patience continues to pay off.
Personally, I love curvy women!
Your path sounds almost exactly like mine, if I’m reading you right. After all that, my weight has stablized for the past few years after a lifetime of yo-yo-ing but it’s higher than I’m comfortable with. I’m struggling right now with seeing if I can tweak something to drop just a li’l’ weight, but dammit if I’m not prone to obsessiveness. All I did was start experimenting a bit with protein shakes for breakfast and a walk or yoga every day, and all of a sudden the ol’ neural pathways are opened back up and I’m overthinking everything,upset with myself for overthinking everything, the whole vicious circle. Today I decided that was a bad move so am lying down doing nothing eating mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. Ah well. Glad to have a new bit of reading today from the only health blog that doesn’t lead to rebound weight gain just from reading it. Thanks Matt.
An aside, the stuff about our mothers is really key to helping me understand my struggles with weight, which are not and never have been reflective of my activity levels and diet. My mom was very heavy when she was pregnant with me, always had weird blood sugar stuff going on I never quite understood, was likely stressed out, and I was solely soy formula-fed, then spent a childhood eating Country Crock margarine nearly every day. Diet and exercise obsession began for me at age 7. Maybe just maybe, my weight ain’t all that under my control and I should just be happy it’s been stable. More to life and all that jazz. It’s just that old habits die hard, I suppose.
Hey Buck (Turgidson; not Flogging:D),
This reply is for you?I’ve just been away from this blog for several days and wanted to make sure you could find my reply.
Sure, bone broth is great?best organic source of gelatin and thus glycine, and it’s hard to argue with the dietary reco’s of the Weston A. Price Foundation (Price). It’s their recommendation #11, after all. Actually, it’s really part of their #1 reco to eat whole foods. If you just eat muscle meats, it’s not whole food, just as we discovered a century ago with grains.
As for the video you linked to, with Pamela Popper poo-pooing Price and the bone broth craze, she is totally full of shit, IMO. So I have nothing more to say about that.
But back to the Price Foundation and all the claims for bone broth: The claims are valid, because lack of glycine?which bone broth is such a good source of?is responsible for most of the chronic inflammation that ultimately makes people sick and die these days, one way or another. Where I disagree with Price is in the need for foods to be all natural and organic, etc. That’s nice, when it’s available, but not that important. In fact, we need to remember that there’s a reason for putting preservatives in foods, for example. Organic produce does not keep as well as mass produced produce, and by the time it goes down your throat it may have more fungal carcinogens in it than the stuff the mass-produced foods are grown, picked and packed with. I also take more minor issue with some specifics, e.g., the need for daily vitamin D supplements (cod liver oil), especially in the summer time if you have fair skin and a fair amount of sun exposure. But I also disagree with the need for supplements to be necessarily ?food-based?. For example, my sweetamine glycine supplement is factory made. Bioidentical, yes, but the glycine is made abiotically. The reason that’s OK is that glycine is such a fundamental compound that I consider it actually inorganic. After all, it can be found on comets and asteroids and elsewhere in nature not made by living things.
And that leads to my next point: Glycine is much misunderstood, even by people who appreciate its amazing ability to stop arthritis and other inflammatory conditions in the joints. There is a school of thought that glycine helps because it is needed to make collagen, to repair and maintain healthy bones and joints. That is incorrect. Although glycine is the most abundant amino acid in collagen, there is never a shortage of glycine in making collagen. The only important collagen builders for which a deficiency is even possible are Vitamin C, a deficiency of which leads to the collagen formation abnormality characteristic of scurvy, and lysine, the essential amino acid whose deficiency manifests as kwashiorkor and other conditions. But as to the non-essential amino acid components of collagen?including glycine’there is always plenty of it around to make collagen. Collagen, in fact, is a very long-lived protein, and only a tiny fraction of the glycine your body eats or makes ends up in your collagen. Most of it is excreted as glycine or other simple metabolites. Glycine is a small, water-soluble molecule that cycles through your body in a matter of hours, whereas collagen molecules (made from glycine and some other amino acids) last years. Glycine must be present at all times in high concentrations in your blood, not because such high levels are needed to make proteins, but because glycine acts on cell membranes almost like an electrolyte, maintaining a constant cell surface voltage. When glycine is inadequate, the cell surface voltage in such cells as the macrophages (the immune cells in all tissues and organs which cause inflammation), becomes unstable and the cells become too easily depolarized, resulting in activation of the inflammatory response when there are no microbes present to kill. The result is inappropriate inflammation due to tissue injury in the absence of infection, which typically becomes chronic, ultimately leading to such conditions as arthritis, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer.
That’s why I recommend 8 grams/day of glycine supplementation, as in my sweetamine product. So I don’t get soreness in muscles or joints due to vigorous exercise or injury, or secondary pain and peeling and blistering due to sunburn. That these things typically happen to most people is just an indication of how widespread glycine deficiency is.
“…glycine … can be found on comets and asteroids and elsewhere in nature…”
When I was young, I thought asteroids was rectum trouble.
bada BING!
Then, there’s the old joke that I used to think Grape Nuts was a Venereal Disease.
Anyhoo…
Thanks so much for the epic reply, Dr. Brind. I’m going to let it slowly seep into my thick skull. Then, I will read it again!
As for Popper’s poo-poo of Price, I guess that’s expected from a vegan that loves to quote Campbell’s “The China Study.” As you keenly noted, there’s probably little else to say.
I sincerely appreciate your taking the time to write such a detailed and thoughtful reply.
Best regards,
The Other Buck
Would you agree that Donald Trump’s physical robustness at the age of 70 comes from the fact that he never really followed a restrictive diet? That his higher energy performance on a high-everything diet outshone that of Jeb Bush who was allegedly on a particularly miserable version of paleo. Or is it just down to good genes?
Trump seems to enjoy life and not worry about being seen eating a McDonald’s meal in a way that has been missing from American life since the Reagan years.
I don’t know, but I doubt focusing more on his macronutrient ratios would have yielded better health or a better life. :)
I dunno, I remember a lotta McDonald’s during the Clinton administration…http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/bill-clinton-at-mcdonalds/n10361
Very excellent article, Matt. I, too, wish these victims of personal trainers were armed with the information to give them a public buttocks reddening. LOL! The people who worship the calorie are total idiots. Like Feynman noted, we have all these many, many , many, many units of measurement for the same abstract quantity-as energy is only a characteristic or property-like size or “huge” is. Feynman said this utterly absurd, embarrassing and totally unnecessary. We onoy need one unit for it. The calorie worshipping retards do not even understand the nature of what they are worshipping and are misusing physics to blame people.
Nobody could ever keep track of all the carbon atoms entering and being absorbed in our bloodstream versus all those carbon atoms being physically removed and excreted back into the surrounding environment after a month,let alone a year or a decade. We can onky hope to help the involuntary system and nudge it perhaps, hope it turns out and works with the involuntary regulatory system. Then there is the genetic issue like you correctly note. Obesity’s genetic component is staggering. Then we have comolex biochemistry, celluar chemical cascades, partitioning of the atoms/molecules. Why do some people have the propensity for gaining fat tissue vs. muscle etc. ?
Recently, they have found strong immune system involvement in body fatness.
( But there are plenty of people working their butts off. The “understanding” of obesity that the mai stream has is very wrong). I have totally witnessed this myself-a maid I know in Miami from Haiti cleans all 48 rooms by herself at the motel on many days. She is fairly chunky, but the hardest worker I ever saw. The common lore and common advice is simply garbage that does not work.
You are a great blogger, one of the very, very few that I admire and respect. Thanks for your support even backmin 2010. : ) You are a good dude, Matt.
My best wishes,
Razz
Hi, Razwell!
One of the reasons I’ve missed Matt’s posts — aside from enjoying his work, of course — is because I sometimes get to see you. How have you been?
I don’t see you around the Innerwebs much anymore, because I’ve been focusing on some health issues. So, I dialed-back all my non-essential stalking of the Low-Carb Paleotards and Ketojerks. I always enjoyed how you punished those groups! :)
Anyway, I just wanted to say “Hello.” I hope you’re well!
Best regards,
Carl
Hey guys kindof off topic but how do I deal with thirst when trying to up my metabolism? I feel like when I feel super thirsty then drink then all my symptoms appear again like my moods go super down sometimes. My temp is usually 37-37.6 was my highest
Anyways yes agree of the article I face palm so many times when people bring up conventional nutrition tips but Its so hard to try to bring them up to speed so I just end up agreeing lol while in my head want to shake them
Hey Richard, I’d try making your drinks extra sugary and adding some salt as well.
Hey man awesome you replied! You saved me from eating disorder when I went out west to work! Anyways a couple of questions. I want to eat more high carb what are some good metabolism staples for eating a high carb diet?
Potatoes, yams, beans, corn, rice, bread, pasta, fruit, fruit juice, dried fruit, breakfast cereal, pastries, sorbet, candy, etc.
Thanks man! Noticing reducing fat is helping my moods. Mcdonalds makes me crash now if I eat too much! Cant help those mcdoubles tho ;)
Hey matt I was hoping you could answer another question of mine. Its a big one. I have agoraphobia and panic attacks. (dont like labels but for the sake of it) haven’t left my house since February. Getting help has been hard since no one wants to do home visits (I live in canada so I get free care) and the doctor that did end up seeing me for 5 minutes said I had GAD and prescribed me sleeping pills, anti psychosis meds and SSRI
I did not take any of these because I feel they would mess me up big time. Anyways if I feel overhydrated/low metabolicly what is the prescription to get out of it. YOu mention that thirst when your over hydrated/diluted is misguided and that seems to be the case as I keep sipping. What are your tactics to dealing with that as it makes my panicky mind worse.
Anyways thanks alot Matt your the man! Asta La Vista Baby
Hey Richard, have you read Eat for Heat? You’ll see the reviews are filled with mentions of anxiety decreasing. I think the book explains what to do a lot better than I could in a simple comment.
Hey matt need your advice again. I got a refractometer and my brix reading is normal (5-6 have been mine so far ) But this morning I had a high stress event (panic attack, cold everything shivers etc) and I checked my brix and it was good still (5.5 brix)
What could be going on ?
The first urination of the day is meaningless. It’s concentrated from dehydration. And even if it wasn’t, avoiding overhydration doesn’t offer complete protection from anxiety events. It offers support at best.
Also, the “crash” usually precedes a drop in urine concentration. I’m guessing that your urine concentration continued to drop without eating or drinking anything when the opposite should happen.
I admit the answer might be in the previous comments but I need to ask this.
Excuse my typos please
Is it not true that as some of us age our metabolisms slow down resulting in weight gain?
I stopped an eating disorder by eating what I wanted to satisfaction years ago and did not lose weight but stopped going up and down and stopped being bulimic. But I was tired all the time and depressed, and as the years went by, I gained weight around my middle. I walked or danced for exercise.
So maybe I should have been maxercising? Eaten more meat? Less omega 6’s? Let go of soy? Was it the caffeine taxing my adrenals? The gluten, dairy and sugar? I did stop all of that, did start exercising more vinously, ate much more protein and veggies and saw some relief and weight loss but became bulimic again.
Since then diagnosed with parasites and candida by my ND.
I am best friends with the founder of Beyond Hunger one of the first intuitive eating proponents around, so I did all that. Still I struggle with weight and what to eat.
With my tears into this ( started recovery at 24 and am now 52.) I am beginning to think this:
We have some control, not much over our weight and the less we focus on it, the better.
We are guided in what to eat if we really listen to our bodies.
Sometimes, if you are generally lazy, like me, you gotta push yourself to exercise harder to get the blood moving in your brain. Other people need more relaxed ways to move for their body.
Driving ourself crazy over anything ( food and weight) is not healthy.
We do have an epidemic ( in the west) of trying to control life to fit our ideas of how everything should be and it is not going to save us from the fact that everyone dies and life can be painful at times. There is no escaping it.
Yes Paula, with advancing age it’s very typical in western society to gain fat. Metabolism does slow down over time, more or less than par depending on what you do and how you live your life over decades. With a history of eating disorders, you’re likely to be more prone to fat gain than average, but that doesn’t mean you’re destined to be huge or anything. Just soft.
Your summary at the end was pretty perfect.
Hi Matt,
Please do not take this the wrong way. This is genuine question from me. I am now trying the High everything diet and upping my calories and everything. But , part of me is still concerned about affect of increasing my sugar in my food .
I did watch some of your videos and in your recent videos, you look much older ( probably because of loss of hair on your head ) than in your earlier videos. Did your experimentation with different diets cause this? (Again, this is genuine question . I am just concerned on where I am heading to).Also, how have you been over last few years? Are you slim ( in a healthy way?)
I feel and look like hell, but honestly, the higher sugar intake is my saving grace. My health problems have been caused by working too hard and sleeping too little. I crashed and crashed hard because of it. I thought I was invincible, but not so much. All things considered, I’m a pretty young-looking 38-year old now. But between the crazy diet rollercoasters and reckless work and sleep schedule, I’ve done a great deal of harm to myself, and I don’t see it miraculously getting fixed anytime soon. It’s been tough.
Matt, you look great. You are a smarty pants, funny guy and you are doing a great service to the world. Thanks for all you do. Take care!
Goddamit, Matt, this is why I love you — your honesty!
Most of us have been lied to and bullshitted so much, an honest answer like yours is almost hard-to-believe. How sad that bullshits feels more real than the truth.
Now that you’ve figured-out the business stuff and you’re earning a nice income, are you working on resting and healing? I hope so.
Yeah I’ve been working a lot less. My health problems started when I tried to build Buck Books, Archangel Ink, and 180 Radio all at the same time with very little help. I crashed hard but managed to recover, and it forced me to hire a huge team to get the work done. Over the last couple of years I’ve worked only a couple hours a day typically. But I’m still feeling those “adrenal fatigue” kind of issues. If I exercise too much, I get insomnia and feel terrible for days. If I work really hard on something one day, I crash and can barely even open my email for a couple of days. I’m still very limited. I’ve only found a way to “manage it.” Haven’t really “fixed” anything it seems. But as long as I get plenty of sleep and don’t work too much, I feel fine really, so can’t complain. I just miss being able to be a workaholic, lol. Especially when things don’t go as well as planned. I feel powerless to fix them, which is pretty scary when our monthly breakeven is like $50,000/month!
So yeah, being a health guru has been a very humbling experience :)
I think the humbling is good Matt- I don’t think we are meant to be workaholics or anything extreme for too long. That comes from more Western Cultural BS. I like that you are listening to your body and resting.
The mind loves to drive us onward doesn’t? And for what???? Be a rebel and get rest I say!???
Sweet Jesus, Joseph, and Mary on a Donkey — that’s quite a monthly break-even!
[ Good thing you’re worth $350 Million. :-) ]
More importantly, I’m sorry you’re still dealing with the after-effects of your workaholic days. I hope you’ve gotten yourself checked-out to rule-out anything else that might be happening. Believe me, I’m not one to want to stay in the “Medical Mill,” but, as you know, it has its time and place.
I’ve been dealing with relapsing bouts of fatigue for over 13 years — since early 2003. The most recent one started in 2013 and was worse than all the previous episodes combined. Thus, I empathize with you.
In 2014, I was bitten by an infected tick. I did some antibiotics and seemed fine for a few months. Then, things went down the crapper. Fatigue was one of more than 20 symptoms. After many Doctors, I went private pay and finally got some useful labs. Sure enough, Lyme Disease. I’m also dealing with some other infections, too. It’s been extremely humbling for me, too. I don’t know if I’ll ever be “normal” again. I only hope I don’t get worse.
I’m always glad to see any new work/offerings you publish, but would be happier still to see you recover.
Be well.
I rode the sugar train for a while too, but you may have better genes for dealing with that than I do, because I had to bail pretty quick and still feel like I did a lot of damage. For me, caloric surplus will need caloric deficit to balance it, or health gets damaged long term, some foods being more damaging than others. Eating in general both keeps us alive and kills us, as does breathing, getting sun exposure, etc.
Hi Matt! It’s been a long time. I haven’t blogged at ONR for a little over 2 years, about the time it took me to go back to grad school and get my MSW. And when I stopped blogging it was certainly due to stress: coming out, getting divorced, moving out on my own for the first time in my 30s, taking care of kiddos, and building a career for the first time, too. Now I’m graduated, my stress is much lower, I have done more therapy (EMDR for those curious) regarding trauma from growing up with high levels of abuse, so I cope a lot better with the stress that does come along.
Big picture: I’m on the right track! Snapshot of right now: I’m the fattest I’ve ever been.
Probably because I stopped making real food, stopped working out (lifting, dancing, anything), and just did what needed to get done. I needed to get my degree, get licensed, and get a job. I’ve got 2/3 so far :) Job hunting rfn! But I can’t help but notice the toll it’s taken. I’m 36 now, fatter than ever, my depression/PTSD is better in many ways (but I still have a hard time getting out of bed, etc.), and I don’t think twice about fast food, and I never pay attention to my macros.
That being said, I had my period earlier this week and it was another weird one (I won’t go into TMI, but let’s just say that my doc would diagnose me with PCOS now, since my cycle has been weird since about 4 years ago, barely pre-divorce/high-stress), and for whatever reason, that weird period on Monday was my breaking point.
I have had enough. I’m tired of being this fat. I’m tired of not having energy. I’m tired of not caring about the things I used to do that made me feel good. I like sauerkraut. I like spazzercise. I LOVE lifting. I love sex, and having a good sex drive. I loved it a few years ago when I was fat, but my temps were high and I was eating well and working out. Now I’m just tired and fatter. Blech!
So I don’t have a question other than this: how do I re-engage in a way that will be real, sustainable, and make me feel better? I just spazzercised/danced for the first time in 3 years, and I feel fantastic just knowing that I actually did something. After I worked out just now, I sat down with a watered down root beer I added some salt to, and Googled my ol’ friend Matt Stone…and here you are! Recently back into this as well.
Here’s my tentative plan: lift 1-2x/week, do spazzercise 1x/week, and eat a lot more protein than I have been daily: hard-boiled eggs, whey protein powder, jerky, etc.
If I feel fancy, I’ll also do the water/salt/sugar thing after workouts. And I’m also recently in the habit of melatonin at night, and it’s REALLY helping. What do y’all think? Too much/little?
Thanks :)
Sup Kendahl!!!
I don’t have any major advice to dish out or anything other than to reconnect with taking care of yourself, launching mini self experiments (like upping your protein, or dropping fat intake, or increasing starch vs. sugar or sugar vs. starch, doing long and slow exercise vs. short and intense, yada yada), and reading your biofeedback. Happy to discuss anything you want as you go along though. I lurketh. Always.
Hi Carl, : )
It’s great to hear from you , too! I am doing well and hope you are as well. I am very flattered you like my stuff. I just try to research thoroughly. As you know, so many in the Blogosphere are misusing energy. Calories are an abstraction. When people eat and digest food , carbon atoms enter the bloodstream. Carbon atoms are real entities. Energy is not. Things like photons, while not matter, are definitely stuff-quanta. Energy is just an abstract mathematical property they possess-not anything that exists itself in this universe. Energy is useful concept, but it is not at all a thing or stuff, just an abstract concept like “huge” or size.
I am happy Matt sees it, too, abiut energy being onky a characteristic. I experience the same thing Matt does as far as exercising too hard then getting insomnia. I had asthma since I was 10 years old. A few times I was on prednisone off and on and I think it damaged things.
Great to hear from you again, Carl.
I send my best wishes. : )
Take care and stay well,
Razz
Razwell!
Great post and concepts! Yes, I definitely enjoy your writing! With any luck, maybe Matt will blog a bit more often and create more opportunities for me to follow your work. :-) I love the “atoms vs. energy” discussion. I never looked at it that way. Very elegant points.
Until we meet again, I send my best regards.
Sincerely,
Carl
Hi Matt,
Glad to see you blogging after a long time. Iwanted to ask you this – If drank the right amount of water daily and then replaced this same amount with sugary drinks, do yo think this is healthy?
Aslo ,I would like your opinion on moive – That sugar film which the guy tries a high sugar diet? What are your thoughts and problems with the film and methods Damon Gameau uses?
I think a healthy person should be able to drink water and be fine. Sugary drinks are much better for increasing metabolic rate in those that need to increase their metabolic rate. There’s no question about that.
As far as the sugar movie, I haven’t seen it but I know just about all there is to know about it. It’s clear that the symptoms he experienced on his not-very-high-sugar diet (belly fat gain, hyperemotionality, etc.) were clearly caused by rebounding off of a low-carb diet. I experienced the very same thing and have written about it in detail somewhere (can’t remember where though, lol).
Hi again!
I would really love any advice from you, Matt or anyone who has shared in similar struggles to mine. (And please, bear with me because this is the first time I am putting all this into writing)
I am a 5’5 25 year old female (I’ll be 26 in 3 months)
I started dieting around this time at age 20. (starting weight was 144 lbs)
A year later, I had lost weight and also my period after having regular cycles all my life.
My diet turned into an eating disorder (anorexia, bulimia etc.) and by my 23rd birthday I weighed 100 lbs.
This was where my family intervened. While wanting to please them and also make myself feel better, (severe anxiety, fatigue and fogginess all the time) I also didn’t want to GET better.
This lead to the conflict of eating while overexercising (1-3 hours of cardio a day for a few months)
Which then led to the insomnia up until this year. Matt, you talk about the low metabolism induced frequent wake-ups along with the cravings. Well that was me times ten. Every night, an hour after I drifted off, I would wake up so agitated, restless and ravenous. There was no going back down until I hit my craving. That went on one to multiple times thru the night every night. I tried anything and everything to control it. I even went as far as tying foods shut in bags and storing them on top of my kitchen cabinets, something my eating disorder therapist recommended at the time. But there I would be at 2 AM climbing on the counters. It wasn’t like I could just keep my favorite foods out of the apartment either because I would have eaten a stick of butter if that’s all there was but that probably wouldn’t have calmed my nerves like the sugar/salt that I know now would. It was such an animalistic state I’d be in. Sometimes I would almost even sleepwalk to the kitchen and I couldn’t recall it ever happening in the morning until I would find the empty whatever somewhere.
The sleep I did get was so light and shallow, that I never felt the feeling effects of sleep, I always felt like all I had was an on and off switch. This obviously affected my mood. I was in a constant state of stress and deep depression. All this time, I am still fighting my body’s desire to gain. Knowing I was going to eat all night, affected what I ate during the day and still wanting to maintain some kind of deficit. Which was really challenging because the lack of sleep made me hungrier and my low metabolism was allowing me to gain on lower caloric numbers.(ever since the exercise addiction I had been consistently gaining)
And all this time, I still haven’t had a period. So at the beginning of this year I went to see a fertility specialist and after some pretty normal blood tests, he put me on a low dose of estrogen, primarily to help me sleep and to protect my bones(every time I would run or lift my body would just feel like it was buckling and breaking) along with a couple failed progesterone challenges. Although the estrogen helped me sleep and feel so much better, I knew I only wanted that to be a temporary crutch to lean on.
July of this year, is when I started following your work and implementing those diet recovery tools into my own ED recovery. In one month, I had started my cycle again. After three years without it and two years of gaining all it took was one month to restore. And with that, I’ve been able to sleep again without the estrogen, I’m feeling better and have raised my waking body temps from 94.9 to 98.4.
I can’t quite express my gratitude to you for this, Matt. I hope just sharing my story can help relay the long journey I’ve faced and tell what it must be like to come out on the other side of it.
With that said, my body is bigger than it has ever been and uncomfortable to live in. I feel like my gaining has slowed down since I restored my menstrual cycle but I am still gaining.(without binging)I am truly trying to be patient but I have already lost so much time that I am anxious to make up for.
Any thoughts on how long it may be before my body stabilizes and naturally reaches a normal weight again?(Assuming that I’m one of the fortunate ones to have that happen.)
Thank you for everything, Matt.
Quinn
I don’t know if you’re familiar with http://www.youreatopia.com, but there are a bunch of folks in your shoes on the forums there. I would say “normal” weight may not be what you envision it to be, and many people who have done damage to their bodies with eating disorders tend to go over their set-point (their body’s happy weight) and then settle back into a stable weight. You may be suffering from edema, which is miserable, but helpful in healing your body. I have heard that it can take 18-72 months for healing, so it really depends on you and your body.
Thank you Heidi! I am familiar with that site. My starting weight was 144 and I am now 186 so well over my set point. ???? I guess I was wondering if it’s more a weight my body needs to get to or if it’s just simply time?
I think you are misinformed about “set point.” Set point changes. If you are above your set point you’ll be uncomfortably hot all the time, energetic, and completely disinterested in food–or even losing weight while pigging out.
It’s just that eating disorders raise the set point, causing people to gain a lot of weight eating to appetite until they finally reach their set point. Then, once they’ve reached the set point, it tends to start slowly falling, causing spontaneous weight loss. The timeline on that varies tremendously depending on the person. You got that part right for sure. Age is probably the biggest factor. People under 20 go through the full cycle in under a year typically, while older people rarely see their set point fall much once they’ve gained weight.
Hey Quinn. Great story! Congrats on getting your woman mojo back.
Sounds like you are stuck in almost there land. It’s a tough place to be. But I would bet that you are REALLY close to the point where you stop gaining fat eating to appetite.
The body gains as much fat as it thinks it needs and then it stops, especially when your body temp is as high as yours, and being as young as you are.
If you restored your period in August, then you’ve got a few months to go I bet. Maybe 5 more pounds gained in October, 3 in November, 1-2 in December, and then you’ll be done.
This is not a promise or guarantee just a prediction based on what others go through.
I know you’re ready to lose weight yesterday, but it’s important to complete this process. Once the fat gain stops, then you’ll replenish more lost lean, healthy tissue. Those last few pounds are the most important ones by far. Remember that and see it through completely to the end!
I’d also guess, based on your age and how quickly your temperature rose following the 180D stuff, that you’ll slowly start losing some fat in 2017. Maybe the scale won’t go down until late summer, but before then your clothes will fit better and you will be looking better proportionally.
By the time the scale weight starts to drop, you can probably go ahead and start to slowly bring back more movement into your life. For fun. Not on some regimen. If I could take anything out of my Diet Recovery books it would be all that bullshit about exercise I put in there! haha
But, if you’re lucky and stick with it, I’d bet you’ll be feeling good and close to your old 144 by the spring of 2018. That may seem a long way away, but it’s not like you have to “work” really hard along the way. Just live and take care of yourself and sleep extra and indulge and find something fun, inspiring, and interesting to pursue in your life to keep you from fixating on food and physique.
Best of luck and I’ll be around to troubleshoot if you feel stuck along the way.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! It feels so good to finally see a little light at the end of the tunnel!
Wow, it’s been awhile! I used to comment here and there, and my views on food and diet have changed drastically since the blog slowed down. I have a history of bulimia, and spent a lot of time on here and youreatopia while trying to recover. I ate it up- eat as much as you want! You’ll probably taper! I ended up the biggest I have ever been- probably 170 lbs. I was miserable, depressed, wouldn’t leave the house unless I had to. I got pregnant during this time, had a healthy pregnancy and ate to appetite. After my son was born I wanted to feel good about myself again. I started following Go Kaleo’s advice loosely. I calculated how many calories I needed to support my daily activities, and had a general idea of how much I was eating. I did not restrict or ban foods, I just listened to hunger signals. The weight fell off in 6 months, and I was back to my pre-bulimia weight of 135. I’ve had another baby since with the same experience- he’s 7 months and I’m back at 135, just being conscious of my hunger and having a general idea of how much I eat vs how much I need. I get that RRARF and youreatopia guidelines have probably helped some people, but I’m sure there are others who have been discouraged. There are very few that ‘taper’ by eating 4000 calories and sitting all day. There has to be balance. I felt horrible doing that. Now I’m healthy, I sleep well, I work night shift and do amazingly well at it, take care of two young kids, and I feel better than I did 4 years ago. I don’t exercise, my daily cleaning/chasing kids seems to be enough movement to maintain my weight. I’m all for body positivity at whatever your size, but I looked sick and unhealthy at 170 lbs (I have pictures to prove it). I always enjoyed reading these articles, but what ended up working for me was the classic CICO :)
Also, can we stop with the formula=fat? See the PROBIT study, as well as the discordant sibling study. As well as my anecdata- my formula kid is a beanpole, my breastfed kid is a chunk. I’m thin (formula fed and a c section!) while my sister is heavier (breastfed and vaginal birth).
I suspect you probably would have lost it without Going Kaleo. Being fat, miserable, and feeling terrible is just how recovering from an eating disorder feels. But you have to reset your metabolism to be able to lose weight eating to appetite.
Also, no one said here that breastfed = thin. As I’ve pointed out, breastmilk can be just as bad as formula. After all, it’s shitty modern human milk that they base formula’s composition on!
Hi Stephanie,
I am glad you experimented and found an intake of carbon matter that seems to work for you. But it is very important to u derstandthat calories are not at all any kind of thing, stuff or entity whatsoever. Nor do they ever provide any explanation as to what was actually occuring-neitner the physics, nor biochemistry. Calories are merely a concept, nothing more. Energy is only -only an abstraction. There is no difference whatsoever between BTU’s, electron volts,watts, joules, kilowatt hours and calories. All exactly the same. All units for the SAME abstract quantity. Nobody ever eats calories, nor joules, nor watts, volts. It is hard for non-physicists to u understand we are measuring an abstract quantity only with “energy.”. Energy is not ANY kind of entity whatsoever that exists in our universe. It is onky a number, a characteristic, a property. I recommend watching Alan Guth’s presentation about this. Google NewEngland Physics: Misconceptions. Then once on the site, click on “pure energy.”Pure energy is pure nonsense because energy literally is not anything whatsoever itself. What you really did was excrete carbon atoms to lose fat tissue. You physically removed carbon atoms from your body. The chemical oxidation reduction (redux ) reaction is not even remotely like the oxidation of fire which is totally wild and totally indiscriminate. Setting food on fire is not relevant to fat cell dysregulation or explaining obesity and what is occuring. The calorie people are abusing physics-CarbSane, Lyle McDonald etc. When we eat ,we eat carbon atoms. These atoms , when we digest food, get absorbed by the bloodstream, adding weight to us.
We must unlock carbon atoms from fat cells, go through chemical oxidation reduction reactions, THEN these used carbon atoms must be excreted from the body, or we will not lose ANY fat tissue and thus ,weight, at all.
Atoms are actual entities with existence- stuff, matter. Atomsonly HAVE or possess this property, this concept of energy. Energy is a property, not itself any entity. Real stuff like magnetic fields, atoms -they ONLY posses this abstract characteristic called energy.Nothing canever BE energy, because energy is not ,itself ,anything. Just a very abstract property that we find useful. Strictly a number. And this number is not conserved on the vast cosmic scake-such as the rapidly expanding universe.
Calories in/calories out is utter nonsense and fitness industry speak. If there is no excretion, no physical removal of atoms from your body back to the environment there will be no tissue loss, barring direct surgical removal of fat tissue. Excretion of carbon atoms explains things. Calories do not -ever. Nor is the concept of energy ever mean to. Gurus like McDonald are physics illiterate charlatans. Feynman woukd have despised his scam , misuse of physics and intellectual pretense.
Thanks very much,
Razz
Hey Matt,
I was wondering how you felt about Scott Abel’s “Cycle Diet?” I know Scott has guest posted on your site before and even promoted his books through Buck’s Books (which is where I first found out about him). I have now read almost all of Scott’s books and although his approach doesnt seem to have any scientific backing, he is a man of “results based on experience.” Its not about counting calories and macros and all that bullshit, but about learning your own bodies biofeedback and to learn to understand when it needs more versus less. Do you feel this type of approach just isnt sustainable long term?
It’s a strange way to interact with food that probably isn’t for “normal” people. I’m sure it works quite well for those who are very serious about getting major results with their fitness and physique.
HI Matt,
A quick question about sugar film. You had mentioned the affects he was experiencing was due to rebound from paleo diet, would his symptoms subside if he continued with his sugar diet?
Aslo, about sugary drinks part- are they useful only to boost your low metabolism to a high point or are they normally better than water even in normnal health conditions?
Yes, he’d get better over time, but would probably never be as healthy as he was before doing a low-carb diet.
I do think an optimally healthy person should be able to drink water and thrive. Maybe it could even be better than sugary drinks. But then again, a really healthy person can handle sugary drinks with complete impunity. So there’s that.
Hello there.
Hi Matt,
Speaking of Scott Abel, I like him very much. He is a nice guy, genuine, and intuitive. I e-mailed him once or twice and he is very polite and sincere. I respect that. Albert Einstein thought A LOT about experience. Abel seems to be very in touch with his body and big on experience as well. That’s a good thing! Alan Guth is also big on “what we have experience with.” (As in the popular lore of the Big Bang actually being an extrapolation , only one possibility and much more than we actually know).Thanks for introducing Scott Abel to us. If it weren’t for you, I would not have known about him. Every now and then I like to peek in and see what he is doing.
Take care,
Razz
Matt! The return of the king!
Dude you couldn’t have come back at a better time. I’m glad to hear you’re having success in life even if not everything is ideal.
I have a CONUNDRUM for you.
I was in the anorexia wars for 4 years, recovered via youreatopia method and unfortunately interrupted it with a car accident, a low carb diet for a month and a little too much exercise. Anyways, got back on the wagon despite being 11 stone at 5’1″, and now, even though I am doing everything “right”, my temperature is REFUSING to go above 36.2 C and is usually much lower. It never did get any higher all through my first recovery and it isn’t doing it now.
Recently I had flu and cooked up a 40 C fever, so I know my body is capable of raising the titanic, it just doesn’t want to lift a finger in my daily life to keep me warm and functional.
A naturopath did a test and said my krebs cycle was stuck, or in other words I have mitochondrial failure, but I was not born with mitochondrial disease so this was evidently caused by my anorexia.
Any explanation for a body refusing to raise temps despite all conditions being ideal? I am feeling tempted to diet as I’m still gaining sporadically, even though I know its stupid. I don’t know what to do. Sorry for the essay, any help appreciated.
I’m guessing it’s lack of long-term consistency and a halfhearted attempt to eat big and gain weight until you reach true fatproofedness.
Do you have any advice that might help me in my situation? M/36, generally fit and healthy until recently. Crushing fatigue, depression, brain fog, and loss of libido and energy are the worst symptoms.
Blood tests showed high prolactin and low FSH and Test. Waiting for an appointment with an endo but will still be some time. In the meantime I am trying to manage as best I can but concerned about my job. Anyone have any hints or tips that might help keep me going? Feel like life isn’t worth living like this.
You’re not likely to solve that until you start to understand the cause. Were you working too much? Having financial or marital problems or other major stress? Been too careless with your caffeine consumption? Try to run a marathon or something? Not sleeping enough? Happy to help you resolve the issue, and I know you will indeed be able to, but you’ve got to figure out what caused it so you can first stop doing that!
Hi Matt, thanks for your reply.
It all started about a year and a half ago. Have always been into bodybuilding style weight training. Nothing extreme, and I’m not a huge guy, no AAS. Cardio was minimal. Some sprints outdoors in the summer, or the odd run, but those were few and far between. Plenty of walking but only light.
I tried out lots of different ?healthy? diets, including typical bodybuilding style eating, but also intermittent fasting, paleo, keto, and very low calorie. I got and maintained low bodyfat using these methods.
Had a big crash and lost energy, started feeling tired all the time etc. 12 months ago I went to see the doctor, had some blood tests done and he told me I was fine, it must just be depression.
I didn’t believe him and delved into things more. Found your work, Peat etc. Started eating more and more carbs, no skipping meals etc. Fast forward to a year later and still having problems. Got some blood work done privately and found out prolactin is very high, low FSH and Test, TSH was 4.4. Took results to a different doctor and asked for a referral to an endo, but there’s a long wait.
My training now is weights three times a week, low volume. That’s pretty much it. I try to eat ?healthy? use some your ideas and some of Peat’s, but also eat whatever ?junk? if I feel like it. Not a big coffee drinker, go through periods where I’ll have 2 or 3 in a day but it’s never been more than that and usually it’s none. I’ll drink 4 or 5 cups of tea in a day (because English).
Suffered from insomnia on and off for a long time but that seems to have gone away now with the change in diet.
Mentally and emotionally I am very stressed/unhappy, and have been for a long time, mainly due to work. I am in a job I hate, but do not have anything in the way of alternative prospects. This causes me lots of stress and unhappiness, both during the day and at home.
Over the course of the last year the only thing that makes me feel anywhere near normal is 10+ hours of sleep. I get that, I’m not too bad. If I get short on sleep I’m a zombie. More than a couple of days of not getting enough sleep and I can’t function and get depressed to the point of feeling like life isn’t worth living.
I really appreciate if there is anything you could suggest to help me get through things while I wait for my doctor’s appointment. Thank you for all your work Matt.
Are you still really lean? If so, that’s probably your problem there. Metabolism won’t return to normal unless you get back to slightly above your prior bodyfat levels.
Nope, prob nearer 18-20% bodyfat now (just an estimate), and have been for the best part of a year. Am the heaviest/fattest I’ve ever been. I’ve always had an athletic build previously, neither skinny nor fat, but now I have some muscle still but quite a gut.
Okay, good to rule that out. Now, you’ve mentioned that you feel pretty good when you sleep a ton. Are you able to sleep a lot every night? It’s an amazing way to recover and isn’t a life sentence to 10 hours of sleep per night.
Hey Matt. Yeah it’s doable in the short term. Not sure how easy it will be in a couple of months as I’m likely to have more work on my plate, but for now it’s not too much of an issue.
I know it’s not the worst thing in the world, it’s just tough because I have very little time now outside of work. It seems like it’s just work, sleep, repeat. Also don’t know know what effect this is having on my relationship.
This might seem a bit contrarian to this sites message, but I gained a lot of weight and felt like garbage too. High saturated fat low carb moderate protein diet fixed a lot of issues for me. Most of what Matt advises helped a lot, the only thing I personally think I wasnt handling well were the carbs. Some people tolerate them well, but I developed insulin resistance.
Thanks for the suggestion Rattus. I’ve eaten low carb before all this started, which may or may not have contributed to the problems I’m having now. I don’t know that for sure, but I’m not sure I really want to risk trying it again to see.
How does one judge their insulin resistance/sensitivity?
Ron Rosedale youtube videos are a good place to start if you are interested in insulin resistance. Many people who do low carb also do high protein, which is even worse than what they were eating before usually. Weight gain usually goes hand in hand with insulin resistance, or precedes it if you keep eating what caused you to gain weight. Sleep, saturated fat, salt, destress, all definitely helped me. For me, an emphasis on saturated fat for my calories, and no more than 60g protein per day, and cutting out most carbs except low starch veggies helped me a lot.
Thanks Rattus, will look into that.
Matt, are you still consulting?
No.
Hi Matt!
Ready for some troubleshooting…
But first, I have to tell you that I feel AMAZING.
In the last couple of months, I have noticed parts of my body that were tight and hard, now feel looser and softer. Parts that felt stretched now feel shrunken like my boobs, ankles and arms. My upper arms felt like there were rubber bands wrapped around them all the time.(ouch!) I didn’t realize how bad I felt until I realized how good I could feel. (especially in the last year when I thought I was good)
The most amazing thing for me though, has been the natural healing of my mind. I don’t have to tell myself that I am recovered like I did in the last year listening to countless podcasts on mindful eating and moving your body. I just am. I don’t have any desire to listen to those anymore because my intuition does it all on it’s own. And I don’t think that my eating in the night was my fault or that my “obsession with food” was an obsession at all. My anxieties and insecurities have lessened dramatically. The best way to describe it is, I am getting my pre-eating disorder mind back and I am back to myself again.
In my previous post, I mentioned my waking body temperature of 98.4. That was actually a high that I have only had a couple of times and what I really average is somewhere between 97 and 98 degrees first thing in the morning.
Does this affect where I am in my recovery?
I have still gained about 11 lbs in the last 12 weeks which I think is somewhat in line with what you estimated.
Also, one thing I have really been wanting to ask you (although I know it doesn’t matter now, but I have always wondered) is,
had I started my diet recovery sooner and hadn’t spent all that time still restricting or in “quasi recovery”, would I have gained less in the process?
I follow a lot of girls on Instagram who are recovered from eating disorders and I hardly ever see any over set point in them.
Thanks so much, Matt!
Quinn
Hey Quinn,
Firstly, I wouldn’t assume than anyone that you see on Instaram are actually recovered from eating disorders, really. Like really really. If they are and they aren’t fat, good for them. Most will spend a year or more chubby after fully recovering metabolic health though. Sounds like you’re doing great and close to the end of restoring your metabolism. Amazing how we can accept certain physical and mental states and become accustomed to them so easily. Scary!
Totally. Awesome, thanks Matt!!
Hey Matt,
Got a question that’s been on my mind for a while. Who in your opinion played a better 80’s douche bag:
A. William Zabka (Karate Kid, Back to School, Just One of the Guys)
B. William Atherton (Ghostbusters, Real Genius, Die Hard 1 & 2)
C. Robert Prescott (Real Genius, Bachelor Party).
I’d probably give the nod to Zabka, but the other two had some serious DB power.
Well Zabka had the most iconic roles. I mean, there’s really no topping him in overall impact on the douchesphere. But Atherton, in my opinion, truly played the best douchebag. The line “They’re laborers, they should be laboring. Well that’s what you get for not having an education” still reigns supreme in douche lore. As they say in Teen Witch, nobody’s ever gonna “top that.”
Except for genetic or hereditary reasons, eating disorders have a big role in increasing number of obese people.
Always opt for healthy ways to lose weight than some easy tricks to lose weight faster. Those measures can have lasting bad effects on your health.
A simple 5 minute brisk walk is a very healthy exercise to reduce weight.
You don’t always have to alter your diet significantly. Rather, focus on the prime factors like calorie intake. Reduce intake of fizzy drinks and fruit cordials with water.
Eat less lunch than usual.
I was attracted by the weight loss strategy “Eat early, weigh less”. Studies say that consuming more of your daily calories at breakfast and less at dinner would help you lose weight.
But don’t starve for the sake of weight loss. Just maintain a right balance between the two. I often stick to simple swimming exercises (it is my favourite hobby too).
Make your workout session a fun workout. Enjoy your workout than loathing or considering them as a chore. Aquatic fitness classes are increasingly very popular and most sought-after workout forms (http://www.ferraripools.com/blog/pool/4-ways-swimming-can-fun-workout/).
Don’t be anxious and don’t expect sustainable weight loss overnight. In the long run, they are self-destructive. Follow a strict regimen, expert guidance from dietitians is always a wise option.
Thanks for the really douchey useless comment Emy! You’ve got it all figured out! Good for you!
Hey Matt,
Firstly, thanks for all your great books and comments .
But? how could I get rid of my f? diet mentality?
A few month ago I tried to start (again) with eating more and doing less sports. It was okay for a while until I recognized that I was gaining weight (4kg). Immediately I stopped eating anything with sugar, started my mornings with a bulletproof coffee (I never ever skipped breakfirst before) and lost the weight.
But the whole day I think about what to eat next, it also should be healthy (read hundreds of books, so what is really healthy?). And next week I’m going for a Canoetrip for 2 weeks, meaning, it’s not possible to bring all my healthy stuff with me and doing a lot of sports. Again thinking, thinking, thinking?
So, yesterday I started to reread one of your books (Diet recovery 2), but I’m again afraid gaining weight. This morning I measured my temperature (36,4C), had some (light) breakfirst, did a very small uphill run (400HM), measured again at 11 o?clock and had 35,7C, but I really was not able to eat something, because it wasn’t time to eat.
I know, it is really stupid, I’d like to change it, but I can’t. I’m really desperate .
What could I do to to stop this ?mindfuck? (sorry, but it is ;-) ).
Thanks for you help.
Greetings from Bavaria
Katja
Hey Katja,
There’s a book coming out soon and a program called Health Nut Rehab. No lie. It should be EXACTLY what you need. It’s not my creation, but I’ve been very involved behind the scenes with the creation of it. Should be out in late June-ish.
Hey Matt,
thanks a lot.
I’m curious about it.
And, you’re the best :-)
Hey Matt,
I read most of your books within the last couple weeks and they resonate on a deep, deep level. I’ve been on the dieting/extreme exercise and subsequent weight gain/depression bandwagon for 10 years now. It started with anorexia fueled by diet pills at age 13 which of course spiraled into binge eating disorder and since then I’ve been on and off diets and have ranged between 115lbs and 175lbs.
Anyway, I’ve been eating whatever I want, especially within 30 minutes of waking up which has had a PROFOUND effect on my mood. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on “spiritual enlightenment” courses only to find that the one thing that’s helped me the most is eating some toast with butter as soon as I wake up. Fuck me.
I haven’t really “worked out” much within the last few weeks and have felt really good and oddly calm. I love to walk so I’ve been doing that but don’t consider that exercise. I did a high intensity workout yesterday when I got home from work and about 2 hours later, just like you spoke about in your book, I got really um…. emotional. And by emotional I mean I was triggered by something and hopped on the express train to crazytown.
This is my first time making the connection between a high intensity workout and my “mood”. Looking back now, I can see how my moods would fluctuate after a workout and this whole time I just thought I was a bitch. Here’s my question – where should I go from here? I did about 12 minutes of HIIT. Should I continue to just walk or should I lower the amount of minutes doing HIIT? Thanks in advance!
Hey Suki! Amen to that! I really discovered this when I went on what was to be kind of a spiritual pilgrimage “into the wild” and ended up being a bipolar mess out in the woods, near starvation.
As for the HIIT, I’m not really as into that anymore. It’s good to challenge the body and be physical, but really high intensity work is taxing no matter how short the duration. I suggest walking, some kind of active hobby that you like, and just general movement. Maybe a few weights here and there to maintain or increase strength. Nothing too structured or strenuous.
Noted. Thank you for doing what you do. It’s helped a lot.
As a Ph.D. Biochemist, I’m sorry, but I don’t understand your point. Can you perhaps bullitize your argument down to say 4 or 5 concise bullets that include the physiological mechanism of action(s) that you are advocating changing please? From my perspective, this just seems like a lot of hand-waving about not watching caloric input. Or something.
I was interested to hear what your comebacks would be to people like her trainer, but you didn’t state those. I too am frustrated by the amount of mis-information and terrible anecdotal “evidence” dietitians and their ilk are spewing to their followers. I think if this group of people took even a simple course in biochemistry, they would be astounded at how crazy they sound in terms of bodily metabolism and how energy is taken in and used by the body.
So I do want to hear your points. I just don’t get them in the current way they are presented. Sorry.