By Rob Archangel, 180DegreeHealth.com staff writer
Ahoy, y’all- Matt’s got a new interview up over on Jason Hartman’s Holistic Survival Podcast. It’s a great one covering some of the big ideas behind 180D and what makes Matt’s approach unique and compelling. Especially for those just getting started here, it’s definitely worth a listen. ?Check it out: 180 Degree Health with Matt Stone
Jason’s got a good site over there as well, helping people prepare for a changing world through proactive, positive steps. ?As a former apprentice on a permaculture homestead and assistant to an organic vegetable ?minifarm, I dig that a couple of permaculturists have been previous guests. ?He’s got lots of other good info there too, so feel free to poke around.
I’m the first?
Firsties!
I am looking for more informative.
What sort of information are you looking for, Quakertown?
Shit’s a ghost town up in dis ma fuckin biotch. Will be listening to this podcast when I get the chance, maybe in a lil while =) Thanks Rob!
I sometimes wonder if this entire raised metabolism&bodytemp is actually true/helpfull?or that its just a given ‘wildcard’ to get fat?(not to criticise matt or other rrarfers bc i kinda admire their boldness&wrecklessness:))
Back in the days when i ‘had a life’/job i worked with this boy who was quite overweight,he was always sweating,walking around in tshirts even during winter!yet he couldnt lose a pound and sometimes even seemed to gain some more. He ate lots of bread,sugary stuff,fatty and fried stuff….so basically whatever he felt like. Yet he also suffered from add/adhd type stuff. So,i dont think that just eating whatever,raising temps/metabolism is the end all to everything….and that its actually way more complicated?(‘food type addictions’,candida&other parasites,clooged up liver&gallbladder?…..there are just so many theories/possibillities out there)
Once again to make it clear,i dont want to criticise anyone!:)…..im just wondering,since i also read so many comments from peeps on here who raised their metabolism,packed on quite some fat and dont seem to be able to lose it anymore! Not to mention the fact that some talk about feeling tired&resting a lot/lack of energy. I wonder if that might not be bc ‘one is getting fat/sluggish’ as they say in the paleo-scene,instead of the adrenals relaxing?:s
Then there are some who claim to have gotten worse by rrarfing. Most peeps also complain/talk about their belly-flab….it is said that bellyfat happens bc of stressed adrenals/high cortisol,so could that possibly be bc one suddenly ‘bombards’ the body with lots of food?and if one might increase it steadily,the bellyflab might not occur or at least not much? also what about the theory of foodtoxins/intolerances packing on as fattissue not to mention leading to foodaddiction,which nrings one to unhealty (gut) organisms theory again…..its all complicating stuff.
I would definitely really like weekly ‘succes stories'(just like sisson has) of people,rrarfing,especially with pictures of changes in bodycomposition,their entire (dietary) history etc.,of people gaining/losing/gaining/losing etc. The whole shebang!! Would that be a possibillity?
Rrarfing has worked for me. I spent about 6 months on paleo until I crashed and burned, it trashed my thyroid (clinically confirmed). It’s taken about 3 months of rrarfing to recover to where I feel almost normal most days. I never took thyroid hormone. I have a little ways to keep going though.
I agree with you though, rrarfing for me has been a recovery strategy. I don’t think rrarfing is the correct diet for the rest of my life. But that brings me back to the same question I asked myself before starting the idiotic paleo thing, WTF is a healthy diet (long term that maintains good health)?
The other thing Matt has made me realize: there may not be an ‘all-natural’ diet that does that. Kind of a sobering thought really.
There might not be an all natural diet,yet there are lots of populations/familys all over the world who still eat naturally non-processed stuff. How does one keep balance though?bc for me it leads to major binges(bc i think ‘this must be the last time or im not gonna have/experience this for a while ‘) addictions,while health sneakily goes down the drain (unsubconsciously).
Also did you gain a lot of fat?and did you still exercise during rrarfing?or what did/does your daily movement/exercise routine look like?
Bc it seems most guys get away with it all pretty well,whereas females seem to be another case:s (honestly i dont care much about the fertillity argument nc i never planned on going through the birthing process,for some reason since early childhood i always thought about adoption if i ever were to get a child(ren).)
Were you battling with obesity/chubbiness before paleo,or what made you find paleo in the first place?
Like i said id really to see stories/experiences with various body pics throughout different periods in life and maybe childhood? And not just regarding (types) of food but the entire spectrum regarding lifestyle,daily exercise/movement patterns,dealing with it emotionally&how to change that(bc i still suffer from the fat unhappy/unenergetic girl syndrome&anxiety. Rarely do people who lost/became lean speak about the psychological hurdles&doubt regarding weightloss,diet&keeping it off,especially without weird food/macro issues!) And also stuff like how one found passions,dreamjob,purpose etc.again! I love those kind of stories bc they give me some little hope to fantasize about a way out of it all towards happiness without all the anxious,distrusting and uncomfortable feelings&patterns.
Maybe mr.Stone should take the lead and honor to be the first one to post his detailed history in words&pics?:)
“There might not be an all natural diet,yet there are lots of populations/familys all over the world who still eat naturally non-processed stuff.”
Stone covers this in his ‘Eat Better than a Caveman Book’. The idea that they’re healthier than the populations of the industrialized world is really a myth.
“Also did you gain a lot of fat?”
Nope, my weight has hardly changed.
“Did you still exercise during rrarf”ing?or what did/does your daily movement/exercise routine look like?”
I stopped exercising (was biking/lifting). Now I only walk, maybe 0.5mile/day, I’m stretching for about 10-15minute/day as well.
“Were you battling with obesity/chubbiness before paleo,or what made you find paleo in the first place?”
I’ve always been fortunate to not be fat and to be hones, basically perfectly healthy. I was just lucky I guess. Then I got to my 40’s and things started to change – the diseases of middle age showed up: hypertension and elevated cholesterol. So, I thought I’d go on a ‘healthy diet’ and start exercising regularly again (rather than start the RX pill express for the rest of my life). I roughly followed Mark Sisson’s ‘primal blueprint’. I did loose some weight, though that wasn’t my goal. My blood pressure and cholesterol did come down. I thought I had ‘done it’. Then my thyroid crashed and I learned that the whole paleo thing was really a bad idea in hindsight. Thanks to finding Matt (on Mark’s site) and learning to rrarf, and some supplements I take (discussed on another blog thread), I’m recovered back to the point where I feel mostly normal most days. I’ll continue rrarfing and supplementing until I feel completely normal most of the time.
Then what?….. idk
Then you make yourself and others feel good as much as you can, Help yourself and others as much as you can, Be creative, progressive, and fuck a lot. LOL
Well my meaning was more like ‘what next diet-wise’, but everything you suggest sounds good too…LOL!
Thanks- it is interesting to hear peoples rrarf-ing stories. I too am interested in the process and the results.
@Nola Maybe we should start a petition or something…:p
My belly is pretty flat for eating the way I do. I gain mostly in my love handles. Like I said I’m starting to work out some on top of what I do at work, and I try to rest as much as possible, and I’ve incorporated some coconut oil everyday now, and watch my vegetable oils and take Vitamin E. I can tell I’m gaining muscle and losing fat a little faster now. It’s pretty awesome. If I feel sluggish, I know its because I need rest and that’s what my body wants me to do. But if I sleep in even just a couple hours on the weekend I get right up and starting reading or doing soomething. Can’t help it, can’t even lay around if I wanted. I believe that what Matt recommends is using dense caloric foods to increase metabolic rate/temperature, but you can still do that smart. Good fats, saturated from ruminant animals, coconut oil, olive here or macadamia here and there I guess, really processed grains, not the whole grain stuff, I mostly gear towards rice and corn stuff (I eat a lot more bugles now too =) but I will have hamburgers with white bread shit if I want, I just make sure its processed as hell as I don’t want the other stuff that comes with it. I’m no scientist but it makes sense a lot of that stuff is toxic. And of course I eat potatoes, sweet potatoes, drink whole milk, have juices when I crave them, gatorade powders etc…I take a mineral supplement here and there but I hope to try out some Min col sometime. I think that it was said that if you monitor your temperature after you work out, and it gets lower, then you shouldnt do it, overstressing that is. But if you can work out and maintain or heighten I guess (idk) your temps while working out, which I would recommend sprinty, high intensity for short periods of time kind of stuff and weight training over elipticals and all that other stuff (based off I what I’ve read, I’m no trainer haha) I think working out will increase temps so you gotta check it a while after or some shit to see if its actually lowering yo shit. But if you get hungry, eat dem foods you crave. that sugar, them carbs with butter, all that shit. I had some bouts of IBS from incorporating some nastier foods into my diet at first, but I would get IBS from foods I thought were okay too before, and guess what, I hardly have any problems now eating whatever the fuck I want. I get gas sometimes but I guess that’s a given when most of the stuff I eat is processed or mostly fully absorbed so when I have indigestibles, veges and shit, it’ll make me tootscaboot LOL. Keeping your body temperature high and resting a lot can help with overgrowths from what I’ve read. Your immune system might be compromised right now and it might get worse or whatever starting to eat what you want, but perhaps when you start to maintain good temps and just let go and get rid of some stress it’ll help and your body will become strong and fight off that shit. And as far as keeping your temps high, you know like most people say hee is that you should eat dense stuff and drink little fluids in the morning to get your hands and feet warmed up, and then just maintain that warmth, and you should be able to have more watery, nutrient dense stuff more towards the evening, but it’s all in finding what makes and keeps you warm and of course always obey your thirst, just maybe try not to chug, and sip on some stuff and give your body time to adjust, and course sometimes people do better with drinking more fluids and having more watery stuff in the morning, but it seems that’s the minority.That’s all I can say for now.
According to hormonal patterns,lovehandles are supposed to ne from thyroid issues(low thyroid)…..so you might wanna lay off the wheat&corn?;)
Unfortunately dense foods make me need to drink even more and i have to eat lots of fiber with it in order to hopefully digest it:(
As far as exercise,stress,bodytemp…..ive read on numerous sites on should do generous exercise when dealing with pathogens,but also lots of sites mention exercising vigorously at least 4days when dealing with patgogens bc itd increases sweating(which also means drinking even more on top of what im supposed to drink daily from my therapist) stimulates the lymph/detox/ummune system (but i guess it isnt of much help the way im dealing with it:s.:..i also cant seem to mentally/emotionally flip the switch that less is more. I still have the ‘urge’ that i need to exercise at the gym for an hour and until i feel exhausted/jointpain and such bc it is what i was used to for years feeling this way daily!) Sometimes its easier to stay living in the dark,bc the light of happiness,ease,comfort,letting go of control and trust its all gonna turn out&be allright,is just too blinding&overwhelming….
All i can do is hope ill finally enter that stage and maintain it easily.
Idk, most of chubbness I have is from over eating on purpose anyhow. I feel waay better from doing all of this stuff, I don’t feel like I have a thyroid issue if my body temp is high and if I rest good I have lots of energy to do some serious MAN SHIT hahaha. I know over eating can be unhealthy too…But sometimes its very entertaining. Like today me and my buddy and his wife went to red lobster, I ate super tons, to the point to where I was stuffed as hell. We’re talking serious football player shit. Just to entertain them. I never leave anything on the table, no matter if its my food or not. I gain in my thighs too, I’m not sure what it means when fat accumulates in certain spots, but I feel like its just where my body likes to put it. But if I don’t eat complete trash, and stick to good fats and stuff I start losing fat fairly easy now it seems. But we’ll see, I’m tryin to take it slow with everything, it’s probably pretty easy for me to get addicted to lifting and shit with all this testosterone I feel. My digestion is so much better now than it was before I get serious peristalsis like when I was a kid. If I eat really good it doesn’t matter if I have fiber or not. And the body can adjust to certain palatabilities which has been talked about on this site. As far as exercising to stimulate detox etc…Kinda sounds along the same lines as drink a bunch of water to get the shit out of you, but I know now that when I used to drink shit tons of water in the past all it was doing was washing me out, making me lethargic, giving me charlie horses, and actually decreasing my organs energy levels and mineral/nutrient supplies to be able to perform their detoxification functions. That’s my opinion anyway. Yeah maybe corn and wheat isn’t the best thing…But part of all of this is learning to take it easy a lil bit. Dutchie, I don’t think there is much more I can say to help you anymore. You have the tools to try at your disposal now. Maybe you need some intense orgasms to stop you from wanting to over exercise or something and take a fuckin nap and eat some cheddar bay biscuits hahaha. But seriously, good luck. And I don’t mean to sound like I have everything figured out, of course I don’t. I’m just telling you what has made sense to me so far and how it has helped me so freaking much.
LOL,the orgasm statement is such a Testosterone-driven-guy comment! (I actually never bared much for sex,maybe another reason why childbirth process never spoke to me:))
With the wrong kind of fats,I guess you mean vegetable/soy oils?….I try to avoid them as much as possible too,as well as HFCS&fructose, to my knowledge,unfortunately those oils nowadays are almost in everything! I even saw a can of whipped cream in the supermarket with parts of vegetable oil.
You also mentioned you take Vit.E,me too amongst some other stuff,however I find over here…Vit.E is always mixed with either sunflower or soyoil.:s
As far as temps&exercise I dunno….I dont have any thermometer,but if I do it right my heart usually pounds a bit faster and my back usually gets warmer.
Dunno if it was this thread where I mentioned me contacting the PHPTrainer but I received an answer from him today. He first wants me to go into therapy for a while,however I did that in the past and therapy alone just doesnt work for me. I guess thats why I’m still struggling after 2years bc I did/tried everything isolated on its own….for me its important to get the ‘entire package of nutrition,exercise&mental coaching’….like my own MTV Made. Thats actually what i’ve dreamed of for years now,but never seem to get it. He also mentioned that once I start to eat 3(nutritious)meals a day my body probably’s gonna pack on the pounds(fat) at first bc it isnt used to it after many years of (unsubconscious) disordered (unhealthy) eating patterns and that eating 3meals a day needs to carefully be built upon to let the body adjust to it.
Thats especially why I want this guy to step in from the beginning(or else ‘my old ways”probably will even et totally out of hand!),but how am I gonna change his mind?!
(Why cant I get the help I want&need Goddamn!!!)
I am trying to work out if my working out reduces my temps or not!
I do work out quite intensely,
and I know it does produce a stress effect on the body to some degree- so I try to rest extra afterwards to compensate.
So far my temps have been a bit too erratic to tell.
I am still charting it all to look for overall patterns.
I feel like this diet is a corrective to what has been going on in the diet world: orthorexia and paleo-provoked hypothyroidism. It feels like a bit of a reaction and I am sure that there are shortcomings to it. There will need to be a correction to the corrective :) After all, if over-eating and no exercise were the solution, the USA would be a paradigm of robust health.
Thomas,
I think that’s partly true- many of the people who end up here are diet refugees, and “over-eating” and not exercising is definitely not a ticket to long term health. But I think there’s a broadness to RRARF that does apply well to lots of people- the de-stressing and sleeping well, the emphasis on metabolically stimulating fats, eating lots of quality, nourishing food, etc. apply to the average sedentary person as much as to the recovering vegan or paleophile.
(Functional) Hypothyroidism takes many forms and has many causes, and the standard American diet and lifestyle can cause that as effectively as an overzealous “healthy eating” campaign, and the prescription would be similar in both cases.
You may be right, but every now and then I detect a whiff of dogmatism setting in here. The same kind of dogma I have found on every diet website that leads to a sort of pissing match as to who can be the most [Paleo, Vegan, fill-in-current-diet-name here]. Paleos will brag about how much meat they eat. Peatards brag about how much sugar, salt, gelatin, orange juice and milk they ingest. Here, I sometimes detect a certain machismo about how much food was eaten at a buffet sitting. In other words, this could (and probably has) turned into just another diet fad. I agree in general with the principle of RRARFING and maybe there are always people who are going to play “follow the leader” and turn something into a dogma, so I am not blaming you or Matt. However, I do notice this tendency here.
I eat a lot and talk about it because I am amazed at what I can eat, and how much I can eat, and still feel great, and I’m looking better too as time goes by. It’s entertaining, and it goes against everything I previously thought I knew. If I sat around all day on the computer and didn’t work out, I’d eat much less, but would still be concerned if my hands and feet were cold for sure. Like Matt says, a lot of people here come from very restrictive type of places, and I think we all get very excited when we’re able to dig in, feel better, and maybe not get IBS, have tummy ache, and hopefully not gain a thousand pounds hehe. Just because I might brag about what I ate at a buffet, doesn’t mean that’s what I’m all about, all of the time. Perhaps it’s less entertaining to talk about how I made drum sticks, with McCormick seasonings, had a tiny bowl of rocky road, and made some mashed potatoes, had a good nap, and made a to do list yesterday.
@Thomas You’re somewhat right.No I don’t blame Matt,Rob or anyone either,however from all the 180Degree eBooks I’ve devoured it seems to me like there’s a completely different ‘dietary/food’ Matt speaking in there than the one nowadays on this blog.
As I can only speak for myself here….
The twisted&deranged,wanting to feel normal&cosy/anxiety-attack free feeding-badgut-flora part of me ‘enjoys’going to the wokbuffet restaurant(though my choices are limited to a certain number of foods)……another part of me however doesn’t want to keep doing that to myself/yet is also terrified to start the gaining/eating 3meals a day-process especially with all these mooddisorders of die-off/cravings,falling off the wagon etc.
So,basically I’m trapped in this repetative spiral which is getting more&more out of hand,leading even further astray of a normal life(…I dont even know,what’s supposed to be ‘normal’ anymore) and I just can’t seem to get the help I long for.
Most days I want to go back to ‘my old ways’ of living,yet I also know I can’t anymore bc everything is spiralling even more out of control!
Good points, and fair enough, Thomas. Like for Bob Dean, the buffet stuff is mostly for fun for me, and more about celebrating the dietary freedom I experience than about creating a new prescription (‘stuff yourself to the gills at the buffet line or your metabolism will tank’ or something).
But again, point well-taken. I try to be mindful of dogmatism here as well. Certainly it’s cropped up in the past in my estimation, and I gave Matt a hard time about it. To his credit, he’s receptive to that. I think ultimately he wears different hats at different times, trying them on and getting a sense of how they fit, and how they don’t, before integrating and moving on. But the immersing process does sometimes feel stilted, because I think he is sincerely trying to wrap his head around whatever perspective he’s investigating. There is a danger in people getting caught up in one isolated shapshot moment, but I think having a smart readership and an open comment policy is a good conter-measure.
WTF!…..even in my ‘naive’days (when I didn’t know about everything that was going on,Cardioing 5/6days a week,eating all the wrong “healthy” stuff etc.) I never experienced or have seen something like just about yet!
When I went to the toilet and was able to ‘squeeze out’ a bit of poop,there was this white tube-like thing between it:s I guess thats not a good sign,probably my own fault with the eating out which I apparently,despite all my measures I now have to take beforehand,can’t get away with it anymore as compared to ‘back in the days’. Yet I feel mostly “good/anxiety free” (my back glowing/warm etc.) by eating over there,lots of softice cream&tiramisu/whipped cream…….:'(
Only in Amurika could this Jason Hartman douche exist…giving over to people’s paranoia. The intro had me laughing on the floor. Lord… -__-