This post could be titled any number of things. Originally I had thought to call it Low Carb Honeymoon, as I have referred to that window of amazing energy and effortless, lean-tissue sparing fat loss experienced by many on their first flirtation with carbohydrate restriction. But carbohydrate restriction is really just one way of achieving an adrenal hormone buzz that provides unfathomably good results in the short-term while mysteriously disappearing later on. Another is rigorous exercise. Another is fasting or intermittent fasting. Then you have just plain calorie restriction ? which usually feels awesome and invigorating before the crash landing. Stimulants will do the trick as well. Ephedra was an amazing supplement for many people from what I understand. A happily-ever-after? I don’t think so.Each of these techniques or diets relies upon one thing ? and that is a rise in catecholamines. Catecholamines collectively refer to the stimulatory adrenal hormones ? mostly epinephrine and norepinephrine. These hormones, when released, cause a rise in body temperature, a rise in mitochondrial activity, an increase in mental acuity, cognition, and alertness (or at least the feeling of being sharper even if you really aren’t), a huge rise in physical energy, the release of fat tissue from fat cells, a drop in appetite, and weight loss while feeling not only good ? but far better than normal.
That’s what I experienced on low-carb (roughly 100 grams per day, which is different from Atkins induction levels of carbohydrates which can cause lean tissue losses), along with other unmistakable facets of being in a high-catecholamine state such as being incapable of sleeping for more than six hours per night, never feeling tired or so much as yawning during the day, having true Energizer bunny vitality, seeing a disappearance of allergies/asthma, having a disappearance of aches and pains, being in an absurdly good and stable mood, and so on. It was awesome. I thought I was Superman.
But guess what happens when you chronically elevate your adrenal hormones for months on end? Your adrenal gland receptors (adrenergic receptors) tend to downregulate, and all that circulating adrenal juice starts to become increasingly ineffective. In fact, the subjects of Ancel Keys’s calorie restriction study, by the end of the 1,700-calorie feeding period, were almost completely unresponsive to adrenaline injections!
?In 40 persons who received subcutaneous injections of 1 mg. of adrenalin there was extraordinarily little response to the drug.
Either those adrenal receptors close (which is why stimulants are addictive, you feel tired when you are not on them after prolonged use,?and it takes increasingly larger doses to get a high from them), or those glands themselves just get tired and start to shut down. Suddenly you start to get grouchy. Fat not only stops falling off of your body, but comes back. Your energy levels fall. Your blunted appetite becomes an insatiable appetite. And in my case, my asthma returned, I never felt rested no matter how much I slept, my skin health ? once dramatically improved began to erode with breakouts here and there even while eating ?cleanly,? and more.
Repeated bouts with high levels of exercise have resulted in the exact same short-term high followed by a long-term low as well. Intermittent fasting I suspect to be capable of the same ? as it most certainly raises catecholamine levels which is precisely what makes it so effective for blunting appetite, burning fat, and keeping metabolism elevated (initially).
RRARF, a protocol I’ve laid out in the THIS BOOK to counter each one of those high adrenal dead ends, is the perfect antithesis to each one of those paths. As the most astute health and nutrition researchers understand, such as Lyle McDonald, overfeeding, especially when it is high in carbohydrates and paired with lots of sleep and physical inactivity, lowers catecholamine levels as well as cortisol levels ? another adrenal hormone that works against someone looking to improve their health, vitality, and body composition.
By dropping the levels of all these adrenal hormones, you allow your adrenal glands to heal themselves, and you allow the adrenergic receptors to upregulate as well, making those adrenal hormones much more effective the next time you go to use them. Plus, you get to optimize the output of your thyroid and sex hormones which is another major advantage. Lastly, overfeeding is a hell of a way to increase lean body mass, particularly once you’ve continued it for a substantial amount of time. In fact, several people have reported seeing continual rises in weight with pants fitting more loosely as time goes by ? indicative of the bodybuilder Holy Grail state of positive calorie balance and negative fat balance simultaneously (losing fat while eating more calories than you are burning).
But RRARF, and overfeeding in general, is a rehabilitative strategy. Like I’ve said since the beginning, there are no health awards awaiting those who manage to eat the most food and exert the least amount of physical energy in their lifetimes. Rather, it’s taking a timeout to heal up before you try to move forward ? especially when it comes to making attempts to improve your body composition.
Having said that, there will a considerable amount of focus coming up this summer on body composition, and how the effective strategies used for losing body fat (low-carb, IF, exercise, etc.)?can be used in a way that potentially avoids the pitfalls or the dead ends of just simply ?going on a low-carb diet? or ?exercising a bunch.
A quick summary of those that have the best results reveals a theme emerging almost immediately ? losing body fat must be done by raising the catecholamines. However, to keep your body from adapting to the surge in catecholamines, you MUST NOT be in weight loss mode 7 days per week. That’s why it’s the half-time dieters that manage to lose fat without (as much) negative consequence.
Part-time dieters can be filed into four basic categories?
1) Carb Cyclers
2) Re-Feeders?
3) Intermittent Fasters?
4) Exercisers
With carb cycling, you lose fat with a big rise in catecholamines while low in carbohydrates ? then you eat tons of carbohydrates periodically throughout the week (once every 3 days for example, or once every 3 meals in the case of Jay Robb). This prevents adaptation somewhat, and allows you to get away with more fat loss than you would otherwise be able to get away with ? and less rebound. You can also gain muscle on your high carbohydrate days and make some big changes to your appearance.
Re-feeders are basically cycling calories. They may spend 5 days losing weight, and 2 days gaining weight each week. By timing your overfeeding days with a good weightlifting session and extra carbohydrates, you can ensure that more of your excess calories end up in muscle tissue than fat. By keeping carbohydrates somewhat low while doing long-duration, low-intensity exercise during the underfeeding days, you can lose more fat than muscle while underfeeding. Thus, each week you can literally gain muscle and lose fat, and do so with minimal adaptation on behalf of your body.
Intermittent fasters are losing fat very rapidly while blunting appetite during the fasting period. Once again, this is due to big rises in catecholamines primarily. However, you’d destroy yourself in a hurry if you overdid this ? and the fat loss/high catecholamine period is met with big meals and some good rest ? usually following a workout in which you are burning maximal amounts of fat (towards the end of a 16-24 hour?fasting period).
Then there are the exercisers, who raise catecholamines and burn fat during exercise, and lower catecholamines and replace fat after exercise. Those who do the most exercise and rest the least, lose fat the fastest but do the most damage and cause the most metabolic adaptation. Once again, you need both fat burning/high catecholamine spurts followed with rest and rehabilitation for it to work long time without working you over.
And of course the best approach is one that combines elements of all of those approaches in a very shrewd and sustainable manner with great caution and a great understanding of both anabolism (low-catecholamine states more or less) and catabolism (high-catecholamine states more or less).
The best out there currently appears to be Martin Berkhan of http://www.leangains.blogspot.com/
Martin does just a small amount of exercise (a few hours per week), which he times with big periods of overfeeding, including lots of carbohydrates, for maximal muscle growth following the workouts (carbohydrates, when paired with protein, provide better protein deposition into muscle cells). He has even been known to eat entire Cheesecakes at one sitting ? not something you’d picture being a habit of someone with 5% bodyfat, but, done intelligently with the right timing, may actually be effective for fat loss and improving body composition.
The rest of the week, he eats a more low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet (but not ketogenic, which is important) while going long periods (16 hours) without food each day. He calls this Intermittent Fasting, but it’s not truly intermittent fasting. I would call it ?decreased meal frequency,? and I suspect it would be just as effective to eat 3 meals per day spaced 6-7 hours apart (the first 3-4 hours after meals are a low-catecholamine period? after that you are burning fat ? so the longer you go between meals and snacks the more fat you will be burning) as it would be to skip breakfast to increase the fasting period. It would certainly achieve some of the effects, and would be a little easier on the adrenals for those that really have issues there ? which includes a great many people who have flocked to 180D no doubt.
Anyway, some food for thought for those who feel they have really rehabilitated themselves from some of their dietary and heredity follies, and are inspired to pursue a little risky narcissism.
I personally will be doing a very high volume of exercise over the summer because I love hiking (… and fishing – and I have to walk a long way to find fish as big as the one in the photo below dumb enough to?go after?what I throw at them), but high volume exercise like that (15-20 hours per week most weeks) is too much to attempt carbohydrate restriction or intermittent fasting with the delicate adrenals I’ve been dealt combined with the damage I’ve inflicted upon them thus far in my life.
But you can bet I’ll be having some good rest days with big calorie surpluses and unfathomable amounts of carbohydrates. This will both prevent negative consequence and improve performance out on the ol? trail. (Note, on low-carb my hiking performance was the worst, the aftermath was the worst, but my body composition was by far the best? impressive body composition doesn’t necessarily = health).
More to come in the months ahead as I continue to review the works of:
Lyle McDonald
Scott Abel
Rob Faigan
Brad Pilon
Jay Robb
Martin Berkhan
Clarence Bass
Joel Marion
Dan Duchaine
Anthony Colpo
? and a handful of others who are implementing some of these ‘smart? approaches to fat loss without the standard pitfalls ? the greatest of which is the high-cortisol and/or downregulated adrenergic receptor rude awakening.
But please don’t get overly-seduced by any of these authors or the programs they recommend. As you’ll see in the comments section of this post I’m willing to bet, there are people who had both great and catastrophic results on each and every one of the strategies discussed above.
Great post! The coming weeks and months certainly will be interesting.
Oh, and btw, not that it really matters, but the photo has quite a weird perpective, your thumb is looking HUGE!
Damnit Madmuhhh, don't give away my "make a fish look bigger than it really is secret."
Okay fine…
1) Hold fish as far away from your body as possible
2) Hide your thumb much better than I did in the photo above
I'm in an unusual postion compared to most who comment here in that I low-carbed hard for the vast majority of two decades. As such, I now have severe adrenal fatigue and make almost no cortisol and have to take hydrocortisone (HC) to replace what I don't make.
The point I want to emphasize is about adrenaline. People who cannot make cortisol make incredible, insane levels of adrenaline as an adaption.
And it stops working as adrenaline at all. Adrenaline is the fight-or-flight hormone, it ought to make you utterly angry or terribly terrified.
For several years, when I was in a car accident, or otherwise had something occur that ought to cause an adrenaline surge, I was dead calm. I was always the most levelheaded person in a crisis. Looking back, this is because I had so much adrenaline all the time, I'd largely become immune to it. Except for pesky little symptoms like high bp, high pulse and low body temperature…
When I first began on HC, I slept around the clock for 3-4 days. I'd sleep 6-7 hours, wake up, and in a half hour, be too exhausted to even sit and have to go back to bed. This confused me as I thought HC would make me feel better since I make almost no cortisol. The effect evaporated after a time though. I understand this as a period of time during which I was "withdrawing" from adrenaline. Though cortisol ought to have allowed me to wake up, that being one of it's primary purposes, my body was on less "upper" than before since I was no longer oversecreting adrenaline and it took a while to adjust.
It took some time to work out my dosing of HC, as I had no adrenal reserves. During this period, I "crashed" 2 1/2 hours after each dose. The most common symptom of a crash was nausea, but almost as common was emotional hysteria. I would get incredibly angry or horribly anxious with absolutely no cause whatsoever. I specifically recall feeling this thing in the pit of my stomach and looking around to see what I was upset about. My poor husband was occasionally in my sights during these episodes! If he wasn't, I was likely to cry myself to sleep. Once I got the HC dosing worked out, the entire emotional thing just disappeared.
So often we think when we're emotional, it's hormonal, and we're right. But we usually think it's PMS, or otherwise the "female" hormones. And often, it's just adrenaline due to adrenal insufficiency. I wonder now how much I attributed to "female" hormones during perimenopause was just adreanline as my adrenals were not able to keep up with my cortisol need.
Adrenaline makes you WAY crazier than female hormones, it is specifically the hormone for fighting to the death or for outrunning a tiger chasing you. If the only fight you have on hand is why there are crumbs on the counter, you appear to be acting like a raving lunatic WAY worse than a bit of PMS.
Jpatti-
There must be some mistake. You see, low-carb is the savior of humanity. You just need to try harder. Perhaps it was some broccoli you had in your youth that screwed you up!
Very well put. Many may not be able to relate to this, but I sure as hell can. I constantly daydreamed about killing people with my bare hands when I was on Zero Carb – to the point where I was physically angry and sweating from the daydreams. This happened when I was starving in the wind River range as well after about 30 days. I actually started yelling out loud over an incident that had occurred at the DMV prior to my trip.
I'm a super mellow guy otherwise. Teddy bear personality. Very slow to anger.
I also had a stupidly-high pulse on ZC (up 30-40 bpm) and blood pressure was up about 40 points above my normal readings. Talk about high adrenaline. And yes, I lost fat and looked "awesome."
Yes, 20 years is too long to be on low-carb. 3 days at a time is probably more appropriate if you really are "dying" to try it.
Good stuff here. When I was low carb, I was so jacked up that I barely slept 5 hours a night and could literally feel my heart beating through my chest (not by putting my hand there, but I could just feel it beating it was beating so hard).
I also had my worst ever performance in school and almost became depressed by that. But hey, I had gotten down to 165 lbs (185-190 now).
Oh, low carb and your devilish seduction.
Scott
Jpatti, I can relate, except my adrenals were already a mess before I learned of low-carb, from a combination of stress, loads of caffeine, a junk food diet, and a bad case of mono. I know exactly what you mean about always being calm when others are losing their heads, though in recent years I feel like there's a layer of turbulence hiding behind the calm. I was always a quiet kid anyway, but by later years I'd gotten to the point where a pot-smoking friend once told me I didn't need it, because I was already too mellow.
After years of low energy, low-carb improved my energy levels and mood — for a while, just as Matt says. That may have been more because of the removal of refined carbs from my diet than from the low-carb itself, but eventually it wore off and the lethargy came back. I'm now learning that I was probably working my adrenals even harder, as they tried to convert protein to sugar to replace what I wasn't eating.
Interestingly, way back 20 years ago, a chiropractor diagnosed me with adrenal fatigue and told me to get plenty of sleep, lay off the 'white' foods like sugar and refined flour, and take an adrenal supplement. I never took the supplement because I couldn't swallow pills back then, and life was too hectic to sleep a lot, but I started eating bun-less burgers and more green vegetables in place of rice and pasta, and it worked. I had so much more energy I started biking every day. That diet wasn't extreme low-carb, though, and if I'd been able to take the supplements and get the sleep, I might have healed my adrenals and saved myself 20 years of struggle.
Now I'm thinking I need to get an adrenal test to see where my adrenals stand at this point, so I can treat them right once and for all.
I don't get why it would cause adrenaline to increase. The explanation that I've always heard (here I think among other places) is that when one's body doesn't have enough glucose and it has depleted its glycogen stores it will make glucose from protein, including muscle, and in order to make glucose from protein (muscle or dietary) adrenaline is needed.
If this is true then the body would only need to increase its level of adrenaline to make glucose out of protein if the diet wasn't supplying the minimum necessary amount of glucose. This seems unlikely to me as someone eating low carb would be getting the vast majority of their energy from fat. Only the brain and the red blood cells need glucose. Someone eating 100-150 grams of carbs per day would be taking in 400-600 calories per day in glucose. This should be plenty for the brain and red blood cells without requiring any protein to be converted to glucose via gluconeogenesis. I'm not seeing where a low carb diet is requiring an increase in adrenaline. If someone is not taking in enough calories at all and they aren't releasing fat from storage to compensate then I can see why gluconeogenesis would be needed, but on a typical low-carb diet that provides enough carbs for red-blood cells and the brain I don't see why it would be needed.
Just to be more clear on that last point – I understand that if someone is running a calorie deficit and they are not releasing enough fat from storage to compensate for the calorie deficit – they will need to release adrenaline to make glucose from muscle tissue. I understand that. But on a low-carb diet with a calorie intake that allows enough fat to be released from storage to compensate for the calorie deficit and with enough of a carb intake to satisfy the needs of the brain and the red blood cells for glucose, I don't see why adrenaline levels would rise.
Taylor, another over looked problem with low carb is chronic cortisol. Releasing cortisol at the wrong times and too much causes
1. Reduction of protein synthesis
2. Facilitation of protein to glucose
3. Halting of tissue growth
Which is pretty much the ultimate Catabolic Diet, hence why it is pretty much impossible to gain much muscle long term on low carb diets.
Sisson and DeVany claim to have much more muscle mass than when they were high-carb. They aren't very low-carb. Sisson says 100-150g/day.
Matt, I'm seriously considering some leaning out strategies this summer. I have a couple of issues though:
1) Basal temps are on average higher than when I started, 98.2, or 98.1 is the most common reading I get lately, with the occasional day dipping below 97 if my sleep or diet isn't good. I'm still not at my goal of even one 98.6 temp.
2) plantar facitis is making my preferred mode of exercise (hiking, trail running) tough.I'm thinking about doing a beginning strength training regime like this one:
http://www.stumptuous.com/the-less-thinking-more-doing-starter-program
So I'm wondering if I should hang back more and wait for the temps to go up, do more physio on my foot or whether I should start trying some IF or exercise or something?
Optical allusions aside, that is a big ass trout.
Taylor,
I think most low-carbers go a lot lower than 100-150g/day, or at least I think that's what people who low-carbed to exhaustion would report. Personally, I tended to stay well below 30g/day, because I didn't want to mess with counting, and I knew that if I stayed that low, my blood sugar would stay stable, which seemed like the goal.
I don't know if those levels caused my adrenal hormones to be higher than normal, but I can see how they could have kept my adrenals working and not given them a chance to rest and heal.
I gained a lot of good old-fashioned body-fat on HED or RRARF. I need to lean out and I can't do it eating lots of starch whether its from white flour or from sweet potatoes, yams and butternut squash. I just can't do it. I'm going Paleo w/ dairy. Meat and veggies mostly and yogurt smoothies with organic berries and an egg and some flax oil for breakfast. So far so good. No issues with excess hunger. I'm not counting carbs but I'd estimate I'm at about 100g/day. I don't think this will elevate my adrenaline at all. I hope not, but how will I know. They don't have adrenaline meters like they have blood sugar meters.
Hey Matt,
Thanks for the post. Glad you keep hammering home the point that short term results don't necessarily beget long term health. I'll be keeping an eye out for the summer's posts on body recomposition. As for me, I've tapered off my eating, and not surprisingly, my appetite is down. I also plan to do a few sprints each week, and a few 20-30minute strength training sessions, and see where I'm at, continuing to eat to appetite.
Question, though- my morning temps are pretty consistently in the 97s now, up from sometimes sub 95, but I'd like to see them go higher. Would you advise against adopting a (sensible) exercise regimen until the temps are higher? I've done more than the month of RRARF you suggest, and so this question may be relevent to other folks who aren't early adopters like so many here in the comments who have been HED/RRARFing for months. What to do when you've recuperated somewhat on the 30+ days, but aren't all the way there yet?
Thanks for any thoughts.
I can also relate to the being calm all the time thing. Loud noises that signal car crashes, gun shots, other disasters, etc. do not make me jump like they do "normal" people. I rarely feel startled – sometimes I even *try* to and I just *can't*. Before my adrenals really tanked, however, I remember going to see "Twenty Eight Weeks Later" and being so freaked out that I didn't stop feeling very scared for over 24 hours. I was jumping at everything. And I was a huge zombie movie fan. Maybe that was the last straw?
I got cortisol test results today. My levels are basically flat all day, so they are too low in the morning and a little too high at night. Also, epinephrine, norepinephrine and histamine (all stress reactions, my doctor said) are elevated.
I don't know for sure what these tests really show, but my doctor uses them and believes in them. It was interesting to see what I suspected (adrenal insufficiency) confirmed, and helpful to have her recommend the right mix of supplements in a phased approach to treat it.
Phosphatidyl Serine is an interesting supp I've already started using to help with insomnia. I have the classic wake-up-from-2-to-4am-with-a-pounding-heart adrenal fatigue insomnia, and PS is supposed to lessen cortisol to avoid that at night. So far it has been the only thing that has helped me sleep. I'm hoping it will also help with stamina and allow me to exercise again without it totally draining me.
It's all thanks to my history of extreme diets and extreme workouts…
Taylor,
I expect that's what I'll have to do, because really going high-carb just spikes my blood sugar too high. So we're talking Schwarzbein, basically: moderately low-carb in the 100-150g range, sticking to whole starches. I've been pleasantly surprised that including some potatoes or rice doesn't spike my blood sugar as much as, say, a piece of birthday cake, but I still have to limit it to one serving of starch to stay out of the danger levels. I hope it won't always be that way, but for now I don't see how pushing my BG up to 200 could possibly be good for me.
Interestingly, when I did the raw milk diet for 3 days, my BG never got over 110. I was drinking almost 2 gallons/day, so over 300 grams of carbs, and never saw a BG spike! That's pretty wild, since a normal meal with over 50 carbs would send it higher than that. Of course, I sipped at the milk all day, so it was about 20g/hour, but I expected the effect to accumulate, and it didn't.
I only stopped the milk diet because that was all the milk I had, and I didn't have time to make the trip to get more right away. So I'm thinking of doing it longer term, and then seeing how my reaction to carbs changes, if any. I like the idea of overfeeding, but if too many carbs spikes my BG and kills beta cells, and too much protein overworks my adrenals, that leaves me eating butter all day. That's not necessarily a problem, but it's kind of boring.
Aaron,
Are you type 2? I am surprised that you can get your BG up to 200 or more. Is that 1hr after eating? What do you eat when that happens. I can eat a couple of pounds of white potatoes and only get about a reading of about 120 1hr post.
What kind of diet history are you coming from?
Is salt allowed on the High-Everything diet?
Nice post… i too think martin at leangains has the best approach so far out of the bunch. Lyle and Anthony colpo are following close behind. I have recently dropped my set point weight down to 159, without even trying… i was lingering at 160-163 for the past 6 months or so… it was amazing when i stepped on the scale… and this was after a monster meal… and had been consecuitive.
cindy,
we are made of salt… eat celtic sea salt, or some other form of unrefined salt…
Can't wait to hear your thoughts on everyones elses work Matt.
troy
I've had really good success with the leangains approach. Been on it for 12 weeks and so far have dropped 10 lbs of fat without really trying. Starting to get a nice 6-pack for the first time ever. Bench has gone up by 45 lbs or 20 kg(180 for 8 reps to 225 for 7) which I think is really weird because I've always lost strength on other diets…. I dont know why but his approach works really well
Jonas,
Same here. First time EVER that I have lost weight while making strength gains in the 4 weeks that I have been doing Leangains. I love the after workout meal, I'm trying to put away 2000 cals in one meal!
Scott
Hm, I notice all the people you're going to review are… guys. I have nothing against guys, love guys, but as a 40-something woman I feel like we have different issues. I have no interest in gettin' lean or building body mass. I'm impressed with Martin, but he's not where I want to go. One thing I like about your blog, Matt, is you offer a kind of gender-neutral thang.
I have post-childbearing, pre-menopause bloat, but otherwise excellent health. I am weirdly unable to treat my body in a harsh manner: no crazy dieting, no over-exercising. Can't do it. I have a garden and grow my own veggies, have chickens for eggs. No sugar.
I can't seem to shake this 10-15 lbs of jiggly fat. Can you, dear Matt, include in your reviews some lady-oriented nutrition people?
Riles,
I've gotten BG readings of 180-200 from things like bingeing on potato sticks or sugary desserts. I don't know if I could get it that high just stuffing myself with baked potato, but I understand that anything over 140 is causing some damage. I've also had drops to 40 after those spikes, which is actually scarier. I've never been diagnosed as Type 2; in fact a recent urine test for insurance purposes said I wasn't. Since my fasting BG is always fine, I don't know if I could be. It's only high after meals.
My diet history is that I grew up on a farm with a mom who cooked, so I ate very well compared to most people today. There was plenty of white bread and other refined flour products, and we always had desserts around, but we also had lots of quality meats and vegetables, and we didn't have soda or junk food. My mom tried to get the four food groups on the table every day, even if sometimes in the winter things like canned sweet corn got counted as a vegetable.
Then I moved out on my own and subsisted on pizza and Doritos and Mountain Dew until my adrenals gave out. I gave up caffeine then and cut the sugar way back, but I didn't go low-carb until several years ago, and did that on and off.
I need to do more tests with starches like potatoes and rice to see just how much I can eat without getting my BG too high. I'll try to remember to report back when I do. I see the point in overfeeding, and my metabolism is definitely low with temps always below 97, so I want to eat as much as possible without doing further or different damage.
One thing that needs to be added to this discussion is stress management. Stress is a breeding ground for cortisol, leading to excessive gluconeogenesis and visceral fat accumulation:
http://healthcorrelator.blogspot.com/2010/06/cortisol-stress-excessive.html
Maggie.. obviously you didn't see the second testimonial down. A 45 year old woman.
http://leangains.blogspot.com/search/label/Client%20results
Am I the only one that thinks that photo of Martin Berhkan is kind of gross? I don't find men like that attractive in the least :P
@Jenny, IMO, your temps are not high enough to lean out yet. I'm not sure how long you've been at this, but if it's been a while, I'd suggest getting on thyroid. First step is bloodwork, at minimum you'll need to test FT4, FT3 and rT3.
BTW, it won't necessarily be forever. I'm on T3-only meds, and it took 100 mcg to clear the rT3 and raise my Dr. Rind temps to 98.6. But… I'm now maintaining on 25 mcg per day and we'll see, might end up weaning entirely eventually. I suspect not until I get bg controlled though… elevated bg is apparently one of the causes of rT3, so…
@Matt, I'd like to hear more about your ideas about the next phase *after* HED or RRARF or whatever you're calling it too. Assuming this works for me, which I'll be able to see via bg readings, what follows once you've reset your setpoint? Is there anything or do we just expect a natural decrease in appetite when the setpoint lowers ala Gabriel Method or such?
@Gazelle, you need to join the group and post your exact test results with ranges here: http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/NaturalThyroidHormonesADRENALS – if truly flatlined, you're going to need to treat with HC for a time to allow your adrenals to recover.
For adrenal-related insomnia, when you CAN'T sleep, we recommend taking 300 mg PS and 50 mg zinc 2-3 hours before bed and 1-3 mg melatonin at bedtime. That works for those who CAN'T sleep.
Those who WAKE are likely having an adrenaline rush. A bedtime dose of HC helps that, taken just as you're turning lights out so it will metabolize dead slowly and carry you through to morning, along with a protein/fat snack at bedtime to avoid overnight hypoglycemia.
@Riles, after my attack of pancreasitis a few years back, my bg did not go below 300 even FASTING for days. I joked that my body could make glucose from AIR.
It didn't go down until I got on insulin, and I am definitely a T2 diabetic, I've been tested for T1 just in case I'd developed double diabetes after the pancreasitis, and I didn't.
When I got on insulin, around 100 units per day was needed to eat 50-60 grams carb! Insulin resistance is some seriously nasty stuff and is PROGRESSIVE.
@Anonymous, no… I find bodybuilding guys pretty unattractive also. I don't find a guy who looks like he might accidentally hurt me during a hug at all appealing. Obviously, tastes vary, but I think some of the bodybuilding stuff is like cock size, matters much more to the guys than to most of the chicks.
ROTFL!!! You got that right sista!
Oh, and another thing I thought about. This whole post seems to align very well with Riles' opinion that there is (pretty much) no such thing as overtraining, just undereating. As long as you are eating enough (carbs) and get some rest, exercise probably won't be able to do much damage and catecholamines will be regulated enough to not cause any harm. Seems, reasonable, doesn't it?
madMUHHH i really think it depends on the type of exercise. I still believe that very excessive endurance exercise can be destructive for the body however many carbs you eat :)
@Jedi: That's probably true. When I'm thinking exercise, I tend to automatically think about weight lifting.
Also excessive endurance exercuse probably makes it much much harder to make up for it with food.
Maggie,
I don't really think there is such a thing as lady oriented nutrition unless you are just looking for good marketers, not real expertise.
You are not willing to do any dieting or exercise, but you want to lose 15 pounds of fat off of your stomach!! If you are not willing to do these things then you should just focus on being happy with your current body composition. There is nothing wrong with having a little meat on your bones.
The only person out there who might fit your description and is a real expert and not a marketer is Ray Peat. He doesn't cut calories, doesn't recommend exercise, and focuses a lot on female nutrition. But, with his advice you would start eating more sugar and start taking thyroid medication.
Great article Matt! Might have to print it out and keep reminding myself of all the dangerous, but very easy ways to drop weight.
I wonder how so many of you 180 peeps got tested for cortisol or adrenaline. My HMO docs always rolled their eyes and told me it wouldn't matter since those hormones go up and down constantly.
As far as my history I've done the extremes, but think I fall into the "part-time" category overall. My biggest problems which led to all of the crazy low carb, cycling etc was the need to blunt my appetite. For many years I hardly slept, over exercised, dieted down and lost alot of muscle as well as fat and started to over-react to everything around me. I couldn't even watch the cartoon network because it was "too loud" so instead I watched alot of c-span.
My story sounds a bit like jpatti's story.
After hitting the wall and was told I had to give up all the appetite suppressants and caffeine–my life was turned upside down I was sleepy all day and wide awake at night. After weeks of what were probably withdrawls things evened out a bit and I actually saw my energy levels rise. My energy levels were good along without caffeine! The caff just screwed things up, but it helped blunt my appetitie.
So I call it hitting the wall since I have no medical proof that my adrenals burned out or cortisol was through the roof. It will always remain a mystery.
So I am still looking for a method to blunt my appetite. Any suggestions? I admit alot of it is mindless/anxious eating. Like other readers I'd like to know where to go when you feed you have HED enough. I eat HED when I just feel the need to feed.
Looking back the thing that should have been a red flag before I hit the wall was not sweating when I workout out really hard–no matter how hard–I couldn't break a sweat
Any thoughts on the "failing to sweat" thing Matt?
Could you add Berardi to your summer reading list?
@Jenny
I had PF for about 3-5 years at one time and I spent a bundle on this and that. What got my foot "cured" was Mephisto shoes–it was the basic model and I don't even know if they make it anymore. It had much less cushion that previous shoes. So a shoe that is actually kind of firm with some padding might be worth a try. I workout barefoot most of the time cos I do kettlebells. My transition to flatter shoes has been met with problems–they aggravate the old injury.
@jpatti, thanks for the suggestions. My doctor specifically said not to take Isocort (which I had tried and which I found very strong) or HC, but gave me specific herbal and amino acid supps. I'll check out the yahoo group though…
Taylor-
I believe that catecholamines and insulin have a tendency, in a well-functioning person, to exist on an axis. When insulin levels rise, catecholamines fall – which is why you tend to feel sleepy and relaxed after a big meal. A few hours later, insulin levels fall and catecholamines rise, not to liberate glucose from muscle tissue per se, but to liberate fat from fat cells for energy.
So, drop insulin and catecholamines rise. Spike insulin and catecholamines fall. That's why it's important to have a bit of both. Low-carb would be fine if you did it part-time. Even 100-150 grams per day can mess you up though if you do that day in and day out for years like I did – especially when combined with very high quantities of exercise.
Sure, go low-carb to lose some fat, but have periodic carb re-feeds to give your adrenals a rest – particularly before bed so you can sleep better, which is your other opportunity to rest the adrenals. More importantly, don't low-carb it for months on end, whether that be 100 grams per day or zero.
Maggie-
I agree that doing these difficult things to increase leanness is not for everyone. In general, this is how I personally rank the following…
1) Feeling good
2) Health
3) Enjoying great and highly palatable food
4) Physical appearance
Of course, if 4 gets really bad, it can easily bump up ahead of 3. When people get really desperate, they bump 4 ahead of both 2 and 1. That's trouble.
I am also becoming increasingly incapable of doing these types of things after so much self-taxation over the years and stupid diets. Because I feel so much better without them, physical appearance has moved down to the 4 spot. But even not caring about that, I'm seeing improvements slowly and surely throughout the year so far.
Aaron-
I know you want to avoid those blood sugar spikes. You also know that my goal is to help people be able to eat carbs and not have big blood sugar spikes – not recognize blood sugar spikes and run from carbs. To improve insulin sensitivity, the irony is that reducing fat intake will help you achieve more to that end than cutting back on carbs. That will take you farther towards fixing the condition instead of perpetually trying to medicate it. Each case is unique of course, but that's been my experience.
Failing to sweat-
Once in my life I was unable to sweat, even while hiking up several thousand vertical feet with 50 pounds on my back at top speed. That's when I was starving. While starving, my metabolism slowed down to a crawl, I was cold all the time, my ressting pulse was about 35 bpm, etc. What's ironic about that is that my fitness level was the best it's ever been by far. My body adapted to not burn calories when I exercised. So no amount of intense exercise could make me fatigued. I was an animal. That's why endurance athletes have low metabolic rates. It's actually a smart and efficient adaptation by the body – even if it does come with side effects (like being psycho and getting sick all the time).
@jpatti: Interesting thoughts on adrenaline vs. female hormone imbalance. Of course, all hormone systems influence one another so that could have lot to do with it as well. I know that my top two issues that still reside after two years of on and off recovery (mostly on with the occasional slip), are mood and excess fat weight. I do not seem to be suffering from many of the issues long-term dieters/low-carbers/overtrainders, perhaps because I'm young and I didn't burn myself out completely. But mood issues seem to still stay with me, though to a lesser extent than before. I often attribute it to female hormones but adrenaline may play a strong role as well.
Sisson does say he's better on lower carbs but he's also on way less cardio than he was before. He was a classic cardio-holic in previous years when his carbs were high. He still recommends high carbs for athletes.
Gazelle-
Thanks for the tip on the phosphatidly serine.
Maggie cont…
The problem with women's weight loss is that women who lose a bunch of muscle and fat together are considered attractive. Men, however, have spent more time focusing on how to lose body fat without lean losses. Their information is almost invariably superior because of their point of focus. But you can certainly follow some of their simple guidelines and have great success. Like Berkhan's for example – and I'm not saying we should all try to look like that. IN fact, some of his clients look extremely ill if they take it to a certain point. I'm not saying it's healthier either. But working out for an hour a couple times per week, skipping a meal (basically) on non-workout days, and eating huge, particularly carbs after your 2 workouts is not exactly boot camp. It's about how to increase your ratio of lean mass to body fat with the minimal amount of effort and without running into negative diet adaptation. Men or women, doesn't matter. A human is a human.
Hi jpatti.
Interesting yours and the Anon's comment about excessive muscularity not being attractive.
This fits well with a theory that testosterone markers in men evolved in part as costly traits to signal health to females:
http://healthcorrelator.blogspot.com/2010/01/evolution-of-costly-traits-challenge-to.html
They should be attractive, but up to a point, since costly traits by definition carry a survival cost.
Excessive testosterone levels lead to excessive muscularity in men. One of the downsides is that they apparently suppress the immune system.
Ned,
I disagree strongly with that theory as my experience has been the exact opposite. Women are usually sexually attracted to males that are more muscular. Especially when it is just a sexual encounter like a one night stand 99% of the time younger women who are in their sexual prime will pick the more muscular guy to mate with. But, when it comes to looking for a long term monogamous mate females will look for a male that is less muscular who would probably be easier to domesticate and less likely to cheat, so would be considered safe. I also think that older females who are lees likely to reproduce will look for a mate that is more likely to fulfill emotional needs and stick around.
But I can understand women not being attracted to the huge steroid physiques because they are completely unnatural.
There are bigger health consequences to low testosterone than there is for high.
Awesome article. Never knew about Catecholamines but it explains a lot about why fat burners worked so darn well a few years back in getting me lean and feeling great. That was before my adrenals got wrecked though so I could cope with them…..
I agree with the earlier request of Berardi's nutrition added to your summer list.
Thanks Chris-
Berardi has been added.
And remember, it's not always a case of the adrenals being wrecked, but the adrenergic receptor sites downregulating. Glands good, receptors sites down.
My theory with men and muscles is that they do it for other men. It's not that they're gay, but that they want to improve their place in the pecking order among their gender. This may have an indirect effect on women who tend to go for the alpha male. (Women also tend to pick men who are taller). Women use clothing to the same effect. Most women dress to improve their status among their gender. If they happen to attract a male by being well-dressed it is usually an indirect effect (greater confidence, etc.)
If I had to pick a guy for a one night stand, I'd go for the skinny tall guy, not the short muscled guy. The short muscled guy is usually trying to compensate for somethin. The tall naturally muscular guy is usually a hit in bed but not always. This is culled from years of frank talks with my girlfriends in our wild single years. The short muscled guy makes great arm candy though! I'm all for that if that's what you're after.
jpatti: I've never been tested for thyroid. My mother is thyroid deficient by the standard mainstream medical tests and her condition kicked in when she was around my age. But the fact that I have made temp gains during this year and especially in the last two months is encouraging to me. I probably should get tested but I want to avoid medication if at all possible. I've been at this about a year, with about a month of over feeding at the beginning and the rest of the time eating to appetite. I'm willing to work at it a bit longer though. In Ancel Keys study it often took more than a year, especially in the case of women, I think for body temps to return to normal.
So Jenny, you're like one of the hoodrats in this video?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHkj804LCl0
I wish I was a little bit taller…
Matt, that's an interesting idea, but why would reducing fat intake improve insulin sensitivity? I thought fat consumption had almost no effect on insulin.
If going as low as 100g/day of carbs long-term is harmful, how do you explain primitive societies that are healthy on a high-fat, low-carb diet? It seems to me that what societies like the Kitavans and Inuit prove is that the macronutrient composition of your diet doesn't really matter, as long as you eat whole foods, process any seeds in appropriate ways, and get the right nutrition and sunlight. (Of course, if you get away from that as most of us have and become unhealthy, that may change things.)
Great article as always Matt. Adrenal fatigue is very underrated and can cause many health problems. I know the adrenals are related to digestion, either directly or indirectly, so a person with weak adrenals would have poor digestion. Why is this? Also, it seems the more carbohydrates I have with a meal, the better my digestion is. For example, having 1 cup of brown rice with olive oil and a chicken breast digests better for me than only 1/2 cup of brown rice with chicken and olive oil. Is there anything to be said about more carbohydrates triggering more HCL/pepsin/gastrin/enzymes than a meal with a small amount of carbs? I just find it strange that the more I eat in a meal, especially carbohydrates, the better my digestion is. Finally, does vineger (apple cider) before a meal increase HCl production to allow better digestion of a meal, especially protein? Thanks to anyone for their responses.
Ha Matt, I knew exactly what that was before I clicked the link. The amount of time I spent in my youth watching Yo MTV raps is perhaps only exceeded by the amount of time I spent watching Dukes of Hazzard, The ATeam, Magnum PI, MASH and Remington Steele.
@Jenny: I agree with much of what you said. I may be young and lack a lot of the experience you peeps have. But I recently have read a lot about the psychology of mating/dating etc. and coupled with my own limited experience I definitely think that a great part of why muscular men are often more attractive is simply because they think they are more attractive and are more self-confident because of this. Now, I don't know whether they actually do it to improve their social status. I think most men simply only view things from the male perspective. Good looking women are unarguably more attractive to men (though that's certainly not all there's to it) so they tend to think that they will be more attractive to women when looking better, which to them means being more muscular. And I'm not saying this has no effect at all, but I honestly think that many men overrate the role the looks play in attracting the opposite sex.
Hooray for totally off-topic stuff!
Hi JT.
We are partly in agreement. Somewhat muscular but not too much. I think it has more to do with fat distribution than muscle.
Male models are not (typically) very muscular. Mark was a model, when he was not very muscular. (Check his site.)
I think Jenny is right on target, although what she is saying is counterintuitive to males in general.
Often men think that something is attractive when it is not. Often what I hear and read from women is that fat in the right places is more attractive than a lot of muscle.
Men often think that their big biceps matter to women, when they actually brings in some respect, but from other men.
Often women will say that they find a men's behind more attractive than his biceps (or even chest muscles). That is often a surprise to heterosexual males.
Again, fat, not muscle.
Aaron-
There were relatively few humans that subsisted off of a diet with less than 100grams of carbs. Many that did went very high carb in the summer – eating seasonally.
Very high calcium intakes and a whole foods diet were probably the keys – along with excellent heredity and natural inborn adaptation to lower carbohydrate intakes from the womb.
But it seems clear to me that a low-carbohydrate diet is a stress, and one that many modern humans aren't up for.
If you don't think lowering fat will lower your postprandial glucose readings, you should try to prove me wrong. There's a reason why every book ever written about reversing diabetes advocates 10% of calories from fat.
Michael said:
"I just find it strange that the more I eat in a meal, especially carbohydrates, the better my digestion is."
Me too. Happens every time though. It seems that it must be related to gastrin somehow as I relayed in my heartburn blog post a while back.
Apple cider can help a little bit, but that's about it.
Sorry, I meant to say "Martin", not "Mark".
@Jenny: "My theory with men and muscles is that they do it for other men."
Haha, I totally agree. I mean, yes, a fit guy looks great. But we girls don't really care whether your bicep is a half an inch bigger or if you have three more lbs of lean body mass or sub 9% body fat. And I definitely don't care if one guy's abs show somewhat more than another guy's. Beyond normal fitness and muscularity, the guys are doing it for themselves and and to impress each other. We girls just aren't that picky. We definitely don't line guys up and pick the one with the ultimate physique.
One more thing. Male peacocks obtain favorable positions in leks, where they display to females, by intimidating other males.
Part of that intimidation is achieved by displaying large and brightly colored trains (aka tails), which the females do find attractive.
The trains happen to be costly traits, as they make it difficult for males to flee predators.
Now excuse me. I need to do my weight training to try to look more like Martin …
Wait a minute. Let me rephrase that. I think social status play a very important role as well. I just think that's not all there's too it. Confidence, as I said, plays a great role aswell.
Yeah, the figure I remember from anthro class is that the diet is 75 gathering and 25 percent hunting. There are bound to be a lot of carbs on the gathering side.
From Staffan Lindeberg's Food and Western Disease (2010):
p. 32
?In order to increase the caloric yield per workload, root vegetables may often have been an optimal dietary choice. An illustrative example is the Machiguenga tribe of the Amazon, among whom one woman can dig up enough root vegetables in one hour to feed 25 adults for one day. The excellent health status among this and other starch-eating ethnic groups, including our own study population in Papua New Guinea, contradicts the popular notion that such foods are a cause of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Madmuh, I think confidence is an indirect effect of status. In the old days a man was a good provider if he could display his material wealth (dressing in fancy silk and lace). These dudes looked like chicks pretty much. But they were rich and therefore higher status. I don't think women were actually like "rawr Sir dudley looks smoking in those white silk stockings." They were like "rawr, I bet sir Dudley pulls in 5k a year easy. I will be able to feed my children and never have to work a day in my life."
And you can bet Sir Dudley was as confident a fellow as you could ever want to meet.
Nowadays status is on display in lots of ways, clothing, accessories, cars and muscles. But its about the pecking order in our own gender. To the victor go the spoils.
"If you don't think lowering fat will lower your postprandial glucose readings, you should try to prove me wrong. There's a reason why every book ever written about reversing diabetes advocates 10% of calories from fat." — Matt Stone
I'm not saying it won't, but I'm interested in the mechanism. If lowering fat intake improves insulin sensitivity, there ought to be an explanation why. Schwarzbein suggests lowering saturated fat, but she never explains the connection. I guess I need to check out some more books, starting with Dr. Bieler's. I plan to start having lots of Bieler Broth in a couple weeks when our green beans are ready to pick.
hay everyone
i've posted a few times before about how HED has done good things for me but not fixed my main problems. anyway now i've worked out that the source of my problems are adrenals glands that were wrecked since i was a child, don't know why. often good but fluctuating temperature and feeling cold even when its 99f+ and warm when 97.5f, don't sweat, what feels like ridiculous amounts of adrenaline, extreme anxiety and most other adrenal problems. no fatigue though. over a year on HED now and pretty much zero effects on these issues.
for the last week i've taken a 50mg b complex and an additional 550mg of b5. my temp is 98.6 all day, and i feel pleasantly warm, neither too warm or too cold as before. also i'm actually starting to sweat.
my diet should be high in b vitamins (loads of potatoes, eggs, regular liver) but it seems for someone with truly fucked adrenal glands (for sure me) that its not enough.
Ha ha I think Jenny is right on the money about males jockeying for position within their own group Just look at animals in the wild–there is usually an alpha male who gets his way with with the ladies. However there are some animals that mate for life.
And I would like to add while looking at the wild kingdom–the males are usually the homebodies and the females are more wild. Even is some semi-domesticated pets e.g: a male rabbit will follow you like a puppy dog and a female rabbit will run for her freedom given the chance. Always found that ironic considering men do all they can to domesticate the women folk.
I think basically you are dealing with competing energy sources. Fat has been known to trigger insulin resistance since the 1930's – and possibly even earlier than that. Whether it's saturated or unsaturated probably doesn't make a huge difference, but I lean towards saturated because of the metabolic properties of short and medium chain triglycerides vs. lots of omega 6.
Right now the 2 dietary options can really be narrowed down to high in carbohydrates and low in fat, or low in fat and high in carbohydrates. Either way, this is a dietary restriction, because when you take hypometabolic people and expose them to lots of fat and carbohydrate at the same time, they develop health problems from it – namely insulin resistance and rising insulin levels.
But both diets are stresses, and usually end with health problems stemming from long-term imbalances. This leads people to do the carb cycling thing, which is certainly better than one or the other exclusively I suspect.
However, some people can eat both fat and carbohydrate together without any problem. It's known that if you have a high octane metabolism, you will never become insulin resistant from consuming the two together. And, common sense tells us that fat and carbohydrate mixed together is superior. No one wants to eat butter by itself or potatoes by themselves. Both are generally unpalatable. Mix the two there and you have culinary magic. Humans want both. I'm interested in how humans can have an appropriate, hypermetabolic response to a mixed diet instead of an insulin resistant response to the combination of them both.
The answer lies in metabolism and mitochondrial activity, and the post by Stephan Guyenet on butyric acid (a short-chain saturated fat) that I discuss in the free eBook hints at what can happen when metabolism reaches the optimal state – hunger decreases, insulin levels fall, insulin sensitivity increases, cholesterol falls, weight falls, yada yada.
What I haven't figured out how to do yet is eat fructose and lots of fat together, but the answer may lie in a large fiber intake – producing lots of short-chain fatty acids in the digestive tract (butyric, proprionic, and acetic acids).
Perhaps as Robert Lustig says – fiber really is the antidote for fructose.
Good post. I used to always judge a diet by it's immediate effects, which is not always an accurate measure of whether it is helping you or not. Especially when it comes to low-carb, the immediate improvements are deceiving. I still think that some people can do well on a low-carb diet, but for me it is not practical. I couldn't eat an apple or drink a glass of milk without feeling wired after from the sugars. And eating so much meat and fat gets boring once the novelty wears off. I also suspect my adrenals are quite weak, so they don't need any more stress.
Do you think weak adrenal glands play any significant role in high prevalence of digestive problems and food intolerances?
Hell yes Brian. Allergies and intolerances of all kinds are inextricably linked to adrenal function – either the health of the glands themselves or how active the receptors are. Autoimmunity as well, which is why dieting and overexercising is the best way to develop an autoimmune disease.
I ask because I have difficulty cutting out gluten although I seem to feel very tired/foggy after eating it. I'm kind of hoping I would be able to get myself to digest it better through other dietary changes that take care of the adrenal weakness (cutting out caffeine, low sugar, etc.). Or do you think it is necessary to cut out the intolerance, perhaps temporarily, to give the body a chance to heal it?
I think to find out if you really have an intolerance you should eat large quantities of wheat for several days – maybe even an entire week.
I can feel tired and foggy after a big pasta meal too if I haven't been eating a lot of starch. This week, however, I've been eating whole wheat pasta by the kilo, and by the 3rd day of doing that a couple times a day I felt no tiredness or fatigue after eating whatsoever.
In my experience, overstepping the typical carbohydrate load makes for that feeling of insulin coma, but the body adjusts quickly to better handle it in just a few days time (for some it may take longer). Because grains are so concentrated, they have a unique ability to trigger such a feeling – but I have my doubts that gluten has anything to do with it.
Real problems with gluten would manifest most likely in lots of physical pain, digestive distress, emotional chaos, other allergies, etc.
Ned,
I think the physique most women end up wanting is the men's fitness model type, not the huge steroid bodybuilder type. Even though these guys aren't huge, they are very muscular and extremely lean compared to the average guy. Most of these guys are also on drugs as well.
When it comes to the 300 pound massive bodybuilders, Jenny is right. This desire to be huuuge is a way for the males to increase is standing among other males to become the alpha. Girls usually want the alpha, but in our time the new alpha has more to do with money than muscles.
Lean is the new rich! Well, not yet, but it's moving in that direction, as being lean is proving to be a much more formidable challenge (and rarity) for an American than becoming rich.
Matt, I do have those other symptoms as well. Joint pain, especially shoulder pain that has been bothering me for 10 years. I went to physiotherapy and it just made it worse so I stopped. Also digestive problems which have improved with time but not perfect.
They could be unrelated, I don't know. I could try a week of heavy wheat munching to see how I feel.
Matt,
Regarding mixing high carb and high fat, look at many of the traditional cultures. The indian in the Andes consume tons of potatoes without adding fat to it, in the amazon the eat tons of manioc plain, in asia it is white rice, sweet potatoes in in Papua New Guinea. All of these are very low fat high starch diets that they all find very palatable and healthy.
I agree with Kwasniewski. Even though his Optimal Diet is high fat and low carb, he thought that a low fat high carb diet like the japanese could be healthy as well. What is unhealthy is the high carb and high fat diet. Most of the top diet and fitness experts at least agree on this. How many foods do you find in nature that are high carb and fat?
If my goal was to gain fat as fast as possible with minimal muscle gain I would eat a high carb and fat diet with low protein.
Good point on lean being the new rich. I agree that having a lean physique (but muscular and not scrawny) will increasingly raise ones social standing, especially as obesity rises.
Just chiming in with all the ladies saying excessive muscle is not a turn-on. Alpha/muscular, yes. Appears to be obsessed and/or desperate to be seen as alpha? No.
JT,
Great points about the fats and carbs. I personally feel that fats like sugar were seasonal, held in high regard and as such were eaten at special occasions.
That is why fatty meats and rich desserts are always associated with high society(kings and well-to-dos) and festivities.
Most peoples sustained themselves on a lean protein source(fish, chicken, rabbit, squirrel, shellfish) and then a starch to stretch the protein source out and create a meal.
Large fatty game(cow,pig,buffalo,whale) was eaten mostly during feasts or special occasions
That is pretty much how I set my diet up. Starch and lean protein 90% of the time with a fattier meal every once in awhile.
Brian,
My wife is having good luck with a gluten-free diet, after being diagnosed with a gluten intolerance and taking a DNA test that showed she inherited it from both parents. She's had digestive issues for many years, and this seems to be the first thing that's clearly helping. And it doesn't have to be a restrictive diet: you can still get plenty of carbs from potatoes, rice, and other sources.
Yes JT, but there are other who consume much more fat with their starch. The isolated Swiss Price reported on. Very lean, very healthy. What about today's French – and their traditional diet when they were even healthier than they are today? What about the Thai people, eating rice swimming in coconut milk?
I'm not saying that the approach that you and Riles are using isn't smart – or even that it differs much from my own preferences right now, but clearly there are people who are hypermetabolic, don't overeat or become insulin resistant – when they eat a diet that is both high in fat and carbohydrate.
That is many a modern human's response to the fat-carb combo., but why? It shouldn't be this way. Milk isn't pathological and doesn't make infants diabetic – and as they continue to milk they see big increases in lean mass and decreases in body fat as their growth hormones start to ramp up.
I've read where some of you talk about having cold feet/hands and after HED, they warm up. I currently eat low carb and have for the last year or so. My temps are low, 96.5 this mornin, but I am extremely "hot-natured". If it's above 74 degrees I'm sweatin. I have a job where I work outside and am constantly having to drink water just to keep up. I get headaches often in the summer which I think is related to overheating. My wife keeps an electric blanket on her during the summer at home because of how cold I keep the house. You get the point.
So, I don't want or need warm hands/feet/arm pits. Will the HED make this worse? Will it make it better?? If I start eating paleo will all my dreams come true? Thanks.
Ned, I think that "testosterone suppresses the immune system" theory is challenged by one study that have shown that this isn't the case.
Yes, the handicap principle is a nice theory, and that "testosterone suppresses the immune system" an excellent example to promote that theory. But still we need to avoid confirmation bias.
Thanks, Matt. I should explain: I exercise every day, either jogging 2 or 3 miles or walking an hour. Plus heavy duty gardening/farming. I'm not try to look gorgeous with no work. I'm just not going to kill myself to lose weight. Looks are only a little part of it.
Mostly my fear is…. cancer. Yep. Pretty much everyone older than me in my family has it or has had it. I read over and over again that extra weight put on after age 20 is a big risk factor for breast cancer. And I've put on 15 lbs since then. Wouldn't it be stupid to die for 15 lbs?
I've been reading this blog for a year or more, though I don't comment. I'm just interested in nutrition, and I *hate* most other nutrition blogs. You are so sane, Matt!
As a 42 yr old woman with no health problems (yet), I haven't wanted to try HED. No healing needed, really (maybe a slightly sluggish metabolism?), and I'm pretty sure I would just get fatter. I know, I know — but I've had enough experience with my body to just have a hunch. I also know that diets are much, much, worse.
So, I'm looking for another way.
Thanks for an always fascinating blog.
I guess what I'm saying is, I'm a bit body-buildaphobic. As some of the other women on here have said, Yeah, not attractive. And I can't help but feel like their goals are different from mine.
@maggie: Are you in a normal weight range, or do you think you're overweight? Were you a healthy weight at 20?
There's a heck of a lot more to cancer than weight. If one person put on weight eating whole, natural foods I highly doubt their risk of cancer would be remotely the same as someone who put on weight with soft drinks and fast food fries. I think lifestyle is a far better judge of cancer risk than weight. Just my two cents.
Matt, I think I remember you mentioning that you were suspicious of the new Armour formulation. Can you explain more? I'm about to go back to it after months on Cytomel…
Matt,
Speaking of cancer, I was wondering if you had heard of this new hypothesis on it by Gershom Zajicek M.D. and whether it seems plausible to you.
http://www.what-is-cancer.com/indexFrame.html
@Aaron: Thanks for the feedback. I got a blood test done so I'm still waiting for the results, can take up to a month. Unfortunately blood tests do not seem to be very conclusive. But I've been trying to cut it out for the past few days to see how I feel.
While I would be very happy to minimize my consumption of it, the difference between 90% and 100% is a huge pain in the ass, especially for restaurants and social occasions.
I second Matt on the starch+fat issue. I eat ungodly amounts of fat every day in the form of butter and tallow. I add it to bacon, eggs, meat, fish, vegetables, starch, broth, you name it. The only things I don't add it to are nuts and non-berry fruits, but I seldom eat these anyway. So I am basically always eating a bunch of fat on top of whatever else I happen to be eating, including daily sweet potatoes and potatoes.
For the time being, at least, it appears I have to eat lots of fat with starch at every meal, because if I eat only high-fat or only high-starch (and I mean really high), I waste away. Seriously. I've been underweight on both high-fat/low-carb and high-carb/low-fat. I don't have a high metabolism, either. My morning temps average around 97 and I have many other symptoms of a sluggish metabolism, including exercise avoidance. Perhaps it helps that I'm 6'3", but my girlfriend is a foot shorter and she seems to waste away on high-fat without enough carbs, too, so I don't think so.
Now, perhaps I'll weigh 300 pounds in ten years, but based on my experience to date, fat and starch not only taste better together, they also seem capable of promoting health together, too… perhaps not in all cases, but at least in mine.
Matt,
What the hell are you talking about, lowering fat to reduce insulin resistance? I thought this was 180 Degree Health and you were all about the fact that fats are healthy.
Also, why do you (and others) read all these books at the store? Why not just go through pubmed.gov and/or other similar sites and perhaps buy a membership and get much more information in one place? Remember, just 'cause someone published it doesn't make it true. ;-) Plus books are about ninety percent fluff anyway. Maybe it's just me, but I like to get down to the facts that matter, not random stuff in between that I can deduce on my own by logic.
Riles,
If low carb is bad, Arctic peoples seem to do just fine on a low carb diet, eh?
jpatti,
How do you know you have cortisol/adrenal problems? I have a speech problem at the moment that is hard to quantify so people might be able to understand exactly, but I think cortisol and adrenal problems are hard to quantify as well. How is that different than feeling stressed or tired? Perhaps chronic use of HC may be hurting you and you might want to consider getting off to return your body to homeostasis, eh?
Matt, I was told I was gluten intolerant via the only slightly elevated test results of a stool test (they use an anti gliadin SIgA screening marker for gluten sensitivity). After having been off gluten for a year and a half though I feel no different (I still have the shoulder pain Brian H.! plus migraines) and I miss bread! I am really skeptical of this gluten intolerance thing. It seems to almost be a 'fashion' to be gluten intolerant. I do not doubt that some people have a real problem with gluten but I just think it is overrated and I wonder if you have any thoughts on this. I'm thinking of slowly adding wheat to my diet again. I was also off dairy for a year too and actually my migraines increased enormously … I'm surprised in retrospect I stuck to it for a year … what an idiot!
Elizabeth — I guess I was low-normal when I was younger, high-normal now. Nothing drastic; I could live with the extra, even though I look a little more potatoey than I would like.
But there's this: since I've gained the weight, my breasts get sore half the month. I think it's the extra fat making more estrogen.
When I jog a lot, there's less soreness.
When I brought it up with my doc, she said, cut out the caffeine. Made no difference.
Anyway… the fat/hormone thing is of great interest to me. Probably far more complicated than I'll ever be able to get my brain around.
Derek,
I'm not saying that low carb is bad for all people. But if you are to eat a low carb diet, I think that there are certain criteria that should take place in doing so to avoid the possible downsides that are commonly seen.
1. really forcing enough food
2. eating enough protein
If you eat like an Inuit/Arctic Explorer you will probably do OK with it.
Brian H, you might find some answers to your problems in Alexander Haig's books about uric acid. Joint pain, migraines, even what appears to be gluten sensitivity! Uric acid!
His books are online at books.google.com.
Uric Acid: an Epitome of the Subject
Uric Acid as a Factor in the Causation of Disease
Uric Acid in the clinic
@Matt please clear up your statement about low carb/high fat versus low fat/high carb diets. Cos I think what you are trying top say is that dieter's metabolisms are messed up and may become insulin resistant when trying to eat fat and carbs together. So will they recover? Or are they setting themselves up for failure?
I remember the low fat/no fat craze and I totally blimped out, but they told us it was OK to eat all those carbs as long at they were fat free!
Oh it all sounds doomed now. So pass the bag of Oreos!
Organism,
Interesting points on the sexes misconceptions of attraction. Most women I have met have more misconceptions than men. Women think that men are attracted to status and clothes but this is not true. Hip to waist ratio is the biggest thing I have found men to be attracted to.
Regarding muscular females, men usually find muscularity (not drug induced)attractive in women, as it is a good indicator of health.
But, women do not gain large amounts of muscle on a paleo diet and nether do men.
Maggie,
You and many other women have an misguided phobia of bodybuilding. 99.99% of women CANNOT build large amounts of muscle, especially in the upper body unless you are taking drugs. Most women don't know how to train, so they do lots of cardio and avoid weightlifting,and this is only good if your goal is to become skinny-fat.
If your goal is to prevent cancer then you should read Ray Peats work on PUFAs low fat diets.
Matt,
You will find a few isolated groups that are health and ate larger amounts of fat with their carbs, but this is the exception and not the rule. If you higher physical activity levels you will be able to get away with more mixing without harm. I also believe coconut oil acts differently than other fats and seems to have a pro-metabolic effect, so should be in its own category.
Riles,
We are in complete agreement with this. High level bodybuilders and coaches have know this for a long time, maybe people should start taking them more seriously.
Derek,
It doesn't matter if the arctic people did well on a low carb diet unless they are your direct ancestors.
Hip to waist ratio is the biggest thing I have found men to be attracted to.
Anorexic women have a lower waist-hip ratio than the average American women. Perhaps that's why so many men are attracted to anorexics. It's not their low weight, but their low waist-hip ratio.
Yes, muscular women are attractive. But most of those muscular women carry too little fat, which lessens their attractiveness. Some fat is needed to appear attractive.
@dinosaur: That's interesting that you did not have any improvement even after a year. I also have a history of migraines, although it is only a couple per year now. When you say no improvement, what specifically are you referring to?
@Betsy: Thank you for the suggestion, I have not heard of him before. I will look more into this. There does not seem to be any free previews, is there one you would recommend for purchase?
@Riles, it seems that not eating enough on a low-carb diet is a big problem. The appetite just isn't there, and most people seem to like the ability to eat much less food and be satisfied.
On low carb I can easily eat half the amount of food that I eat now and be fine. This is not a positive thing, I need my full appetite in order to take in enough calories.
@Organism as a Whole
If we weren't living in these modern times and living a more pastoral life like the Amish I think men and women would be looking for a mate that was strong. Women would want a provider and a protector and men would look for a women with wide enough hips so she could give birth to strong children. Before modern medicine women often died during childbirth. Even today it still requires a massive amount of energy for a woman to carry a child to term.
Because we live such a luxurious existence we can debate such things and find a partner with a compatible eating disorder.
Ah, I love it when men and women start second-guessing each other.. It's always such fun:). I am going to go on a tangent for the menfolk who might have become diverted by all the advice about what we women are apparently really attracted to.
As I woman, I disagree that "Social Status is a big turn-on for women" . Worse than that, some men (& women) in higher status roles have deliberately chosen that path in an attempt to "prove something" (similar to the "trying to be seen as alpha" observation of Rebecca's) which is anything but attractive. Like the point made about building unnaturally large slabs of muscle, this seems to be a tool for proving alleged "superiority" that does little for females (except to encourage us to note, at times, what a try-hard tosser said-male appears to be).
My opinion (as a woman) is that women are attracted by genuine confidence (note, not arrogance) and you will see some correlation between confidence and social status (and body image, and many other things). Also, the men women are most attracted to tend to be the same type of men who inspire other men with confidence and are more likely to be promoted into roles of higher status. However, we will be just as turned on whether they've been made a leader or not by the time we tumble into their bed.
My brilliant deduction from all of this (:p) is that if you want a woman to think you are hot, forget about social status.. Follow what you want to do, and be skilled, happy and secure in whatever that is. And yes, being healthy and in shape is going to give you a big advantage. See the silver lining in the epidemic of degrading health and physique most people are experiencing today. Sort out your own health and become a diamond in a sea of coal. Gain the unfair advantage!! :)
Professional body builders and fitness coaches should have to know this for a long time, maybe people should start taking them more seriously. Thank you for the suggestion.
JT was right that it's not possible for women to grow muscles as large as men, even if they eat a HED diet.
Women secrete higher levels of growth hormone than men, yet they aren't as muscular as men. What explains that? It's because growth hormone doesn't stimulate growth in itself. It's a hormone called IGF-1 that stimulates growth. IGF-1 production requires both growth hromone and testosterone. Because women have low testosterone levels, they will not make enough IGF-1 to grow as muscular as men.
Jessie, I think you are agreeing with me, we are just using different meanings of "social status". I define "social status" as how successful a man is. It's obvious that a women are attracted to rich, successful, and famous men.
Men do "prove" their superiority by competing with other men in sports, wealth, and attention. Of course, we could be referring to different things…
Thanks for your opinion.
Woah, so many good stuff in here.
@Organism as a Whole: Very nice quote. This comes very close to what I believe as well, especially the part about each genders interpreting their own preferences as the other gender's preferences.
@Jessie: I agree, but I also think that Organism as a Whole is correct that it depends on the definition of social status. You wrote:
Also, the men women are most attracted to tend to be the same type of men who inspire other men with confidence and are more likely to be promoted into roles of higher status.
I think you could also call this "social status". It probably isn't as much about pecking order or being somehow "superior" but about being respected, getting along well with people and positively influencing the people around you.
And I totally agree that confidence and following your own path and just being yourself and being confident about is, is probably one of the biggest factors.
And one last thing I agree on (so much agreement). I think women should stop bein afraid of becoming "too muscular" because of weight training or diet. That's simply not true. Weight lifting will make women more attractive than any kind of aerobis, excessive cardio ever could.
it is encouraging to read that men find muscular women attractive. My natural physique is muscular, i was often asked if i trained with weights before i ever touched one. I have lifted heavy weights (in the 1-8 rep range) for the past 4 years and my arms and back often "look" stronger than many male friends. However sadly the feedback from both my male and female friends has been that they find i am too muscular. I am now just lifting once a week to try and maintain LBM for health reasons.
Maggie-
I certainly don't believe that the extra 15-20 pounds is what causes breast cancer or any of the other diseases associated with middle age weight gain. Rather, the weight gain is another associated symptom of something gone awry. Just like rising blood pressure or rising blood sugars – which do not cause heart disease, but are strong signs that the physiological changes taking place are setting you up for it. But I do know that Martin Berhkan does far less exercise than you do to achieve 5% body fat. I can exercise 2 hours per day and not lose an ounce eating to appetite. The only way I've ever used exercise specifically to lose weight is when I did such a large quantity that I could not physically eat as many calories as I burned.
You may be body-buildaphobic, but without a smart approach to body recomposition, you'll catabolize a lot of lean tissue if you make an attempt at weight loss. There are ways to pull it off without lifting weights, but jogging is definitely not one of those ways.
Gazelle-
Armour changed their formula and long-time users of it were in an uproar – saying it was less effective. You can read about that controversy at http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com
Mike Jones-
Thanks. My experiences echo that as well.
Dinosaur-
Really well said.
Derek-
It is factual that reducing fat improves insulin sensitivity. It is also a fact that reducing carbohydrates lowers insulin. I'm interested in learning how to do that as an automatic response, like a healthy person has, without restricting either. My experiments with it are very telling – lowering fasting and postprandial blood sugars while combining both starch and fat together.
Fat or carbohydrate restriction are short-term measures that give the appearance of success in the short-term and often cause rebound when you finally start craving what you've deleted from your diet.
I also know great researchers that have spent a decade on pubmed trying to find answers. One is Russ Farris, who had a stroke last week. Data without the logic of how people pieced what they believed together is misleading and blind. I'd rather read what someone has concluded after 30 years of reviewing pubmed, working one-on-one with clients, etc. than deduct everything I believe from isolated studies myself. In other words, I feel like I've gotten 200 lifetimes of research out of reading the lifelong research of 200 authors.
As for Artic peoples having great health on low-carb, make sure you are chewing up enough bone to make up for calcium losses until your teeth wear down to little nubs like the Eskimos (and all carnivores). That's probably the only way to pull it off. That or drink copious quantities of milk per day like other lower-carb cultures.
It's awfully tough to make these generalizations about what is and is not attractive. Much is psychological as well, and many seek out mates that embody certain traits that they don't possess. That's ultimately what attracts people to others – the search to be completed.
Personally, I like a short, muscular, small-breasted woman… assuming she is an in-your-face, aggressive, outspoken, dominant bitch.
I do NOT find girly girls attractive at all. My biggest turnoffs could be summarized as…
1) Lipstick
2) Heels
3) Breast enlargement
4) Pencil legs
5) Being nice
6) Being submissive
7) Being polite
Oh and Betsy-
I just added some Alexander Haig to my Amazon cart. I'm certainly intrigued by it – knowing that humans do not produce uricase enzymes to avoid uric acid buildup like carnivores and many other omnivores.
Turbo-
I'd certainly have to see someone "blimp out" on Joel Furhman, Neal Barnard, or Doug Graham's diet to believe it.
But those are very different diets than what was pawned off as a low-fat diet during the low-fat craze. That was all just a license to eat more refined sugar and white flour – which are fundamentally different from unrefined carbohydrate-based diets.
I do believe that each of those diets can and often does cause major rebound weight gain though. They are great ways to increase cravings and hunger – and in a world with Krispy Kreme doughnuts on every corner, the diet that blunts appetite will always have an advantage.
"I do NOT find girly girls attractive at all. My biggest turnoffs could be summarized as…
1) Lipstick
2) Heels
3) Breast enlargement
4) Pencil legs
5) Being nice
6) Being submissive
7) Being polite"
gee I must be just like Aurora then :) :) :)
@Matt
in response to your "girly girl" list I had to remind myself that you are in Cali cos I don't see much 5,6, or 7 where I hail from:)
Brian, they are all online at http://www.books.google.com. I would post the link but their links are terribly long. If you search the name of the book + haig and add books.google it may come up as one of the first choices.
Matt, yes, it is interesting. And if you read all his detailed research on humans, it is very difficult to find a loop hole.
Oh, and Matt, I have skinny legs.
In Colorado actually, not Cali.
Don't worry about the skinny legs Betsy. If you verbally abuse me, and rudely display your intellectual superiority to perfect strangers, I'll still fall in love with you.
I'm glad to see that you are more interested in character traits than physical appearance.
@Gazelle, everyone shouldn't be on HC, but it depends on your salivary results. And no offense to your doctor, but I've never heard of one who really "got" this stuff. Even a couple of the "name" adrenal doctors who publish great stuff on adrenals, patients haven't had a lot of luck with them. One guy gives more and more HC to ridiculous levels, another keeps HC too low and won't treat during pregnancy as if a baby developing with no cortisol around is somehow an OK thing, etc.
The group has more experience treating adrenals than any doctor anyways – we're talking tens of thousands of people who've recovered over the past ten years. Not sure your doctor is wrong, he might not be. Need to see the actual results with ranges though. Normal is described on the last question of this page, and it's NOT just being "in range" as the ranges include folks with adrenal insufficiency: http://faqhelp.webs.com/salivatestingfirststep.htm
In early phases, either licorice or rhiodolga/ashwaganda is good (depending on the results), medium stage Isocort works, severe stage you need HC, at least for a while, but not necessarily permanently. Even the sickest amongst us weans after a few years and most folks manage to earlier. I've been on less than a year and am weaning already.
Basically, when the HPA axis is fubar'd, going on HC sufficient for your needs so the adrenals can rest and recover seems to do the trick. I think of it as "rebooting" the HPA axis so it works right again, as it seems to me it's not just adrenals, we seem to have a few folks with pituatary issues according to their ACTH-stim, yet they recover, and rarely people with vasopressin issues too, so it's the whole HPA axis that seems to get downregulated. Taking HC will "rest" not only adrenals but hypothalamus and pituatary also.
We recommend for everyone with adrenal problems, unrefined sea salt, vitamin C and a good B-complex. And no, you can't get enough from diet, when you're already sick, you need more. Diet fixes people who aren't already ill, but there comes a point where a good diet is necessary but not sufficient. You just can't get enough from diet, at least partially because so many of us wind up with GI problems.
As an example, we like to see serum sodium in the 140-145 range, potassium at 4.2-4.3 – much tighter ranges than the lab gives. Some folks have to take CRAZY amounts of salt or potassium to get those up. Reason being, they've been low for a long time, and serum levels have to stay within a certain range or you die, so the cells wind up drained of electrolytes. When you take sodium or potassium under those circumstances, it doesn't raise your serum levels at first, but cellular levels. We've verified this via rbc testing with potassium, that the rbc levels raise with treatment even when the serum levels don't.
Dr Myhill has verified similar stuff with Mg, that giving Mg shots to chronic fatigue patients doesn't do much for serum Mg levels, but raises rbc values.
Generally, there's a lot of that sort of weirdness… we find if you have low vitamin D or B12 or Mg or ferritin, it takes crazy amounts of supplementing to get those up. And we DO base everything on labwork and experience, we're not a bunch of flakes. ; ) A few thousand people sharing and discussing lab results is WAY faster than working with a doctor as we figure things out cause we have so much data compared to a doctor who might have 5-10 patients at a time with AF, we have hundreds at a time.
@Gazelle continued…
Also, cause… well, a few of us are in the research literature regularly so know stuff long before doctors do. For example, I don't know of any doctor that knows that elevated bg causes rT3, but there's gobs of reserach that both T1 and T2 diabetics have elevated rT3 and low T3 when diagnosed as diabetic. The vast majority of doctors are not going to know this until a pharmaceutical sales rep has a treatment to sell for it. Not the fault of doctors per se, but few of them have scores of hours to spend on research of every disease each week, and hundreds of research articles get published weekly, so those of us with a particular disease tend to be ahead of our doctors on understanding our problems.
You also should test thyroid, as adrenal insufficiency causes hypothyroid as your body needs cortisol to get T3 into the cells. So it's very common to wind up with a reverse T3 problem, which you clear by going on T3-only meds for a while. So test at minimum FT4, FT3 and rT3. There is a specific rT3 group, but realistically, the adrenal group will advise on that too, it's all related anyways.
Doctors tend to run out of ideas early on and then offer us antidepressants. However, the only "antidepressant" that works for us is T3, which some shrinks now use to treat "resistant" depression. It amuses me how they still don't realize what the problem is.
When depressed, you have no motivation. If a friend comes over and drags you out to party one night, you can do it. You just need someone else to provide the motivation cause you've got none. Fatigue is the exact opposite, you have lots you want to do, and you CAN'T. If you push yourself and do it anyways, you wind up having to recover. Very few doctors can distinguish between these, Dr Myhill being one who does "get" it to some degree.
Armour was reformulated will cellulose instead of sugar and a lot of folks don't digest cellulose and wound up hypo on the new Armour. For a while, people were using Naturethroid, but then they reformulated too. This keeps up, we're gonna have to raise our own hogs just for the thyroid! Lately, most seem to have switched the Efra thyroid from Canada. Search the stopthethyroidmadness.com web site for more info.
But… do not switch back to dessicated until you have adrenals well-supported and are sure rT3 has cleared. Some of us can't switch back ever, for some reason, our bodies keep making rT3 if we EVER have any T4 around. But most seem to switch back successfully.
@Matt
You said priorities are:
"1) Feeling good
"2) Health
"3) Enjoying great and highly palatable food
"4) Physical appearance
"Of course, if 4 gets really bad, it can easily bump up ahead of 3. When people get really desperate, they bump 4 ahead of both 2 and 1. That's trouble."
We have people on the adrenals group who FREAK when they go on HC and gain weight. Our process is first to support adrenals, then treat thyroid. Reaosn being, thyroid doesn't get into the cells without sufficient cortisoil. So lots of folks gain weight in the early bit of the process, completly misunderstanding that they're going to lose once thyroid gets stable – WITHOUT dieting or exercise. I got my temp up to 98.6 and lost 17 lbs in two months. I mean, they're often bedridden or housebound and they FREAK out cause they gained 5 lbs on HC.
Those are REALLY sick people, but… I talk to my daughter, who is young, and tell her if she focuses on health first, the weight will work itself out… and she thinks she should lose weight first and THEN worry about health. Can't get it across to her. It's very frustrating.
@Ned IME, what guys find attractive about themselves is not what *most* women find attractive in guys. Not all, of course, as women vary in tastes.
I think it's evolutionary to some degree, and I suppose if there were lots of saber-tooth tigers around, I might find the powerful looking guy attractive.
I don't think it's cause they guys are "less likely to cheat" per se, as I can't imagine ever caring about that issue myself as why would I be with a guy, of any phsysique, who I couldn't trust implicitly? But again, that's also an evolutionary thing as women being perfectly fine without a guy rather than with the wrong guy is a recent development in history. It wasn't a choice for most women a hundred years ago unless she was Catholic and willing to be a nun.
I also think Jenny has a viewpoint similar to most women I've known, again not *all*, I've met exactly 1 woman in my life who cared about cock size, so there are *some* out there who care about the same things guys do, but not many. And while many women have different taste than me, I have NEVER heard a woman rave about a guys abs or biceps, though I agree your butts are a big deal to chicks.
Also, in the current world, being smart is much more useful in a mate than being strong. Most guys now "hunt" food for their families by going to sit in an office, not doing physical work, so "smart" equals good provider better than "strong" does. Alpha in the gym is not alpha in the workplace. But…
I think what most people of both genders don't truly "get" about attraction is that things have changed significantly because most women don't need most men anymore. We don't need you to be good providers, whether it's smart or strong, most of us are not gonna wind up hungry or homeless without a guy. That has drastically changed how each gender perceives the other versus even a few decades ago.
And Matt, IME, guys find chicks attractive regardless of that stuff. My husband finds one of my younger home health aids attractive; I'm bi, and do not at all. She is a moron and a bit of a girly girl like you describe, and I can't get past that, but he does. I mean, he wouldn't want to marry her, but he wouldn't mind a one-night-stand, whereas she's just a complete turnoff for me. Also, she's got no boobs, and I'm into boobs. ;)
@Jenny, you may well be young enough to heal without going on thyroid. Depends how bad you've fubar'd your system. Most of the people I talk to regularly are on the adrenals group, and many have gotten themselves very ill from all the stupidity we're talking about here. We're also mostly older than you guys… 40s, 50s and up, though we have a few who got sick in their 20s and 30s, it's much less so.
However, I'd really HIGHLY recommend not specifically trying to lean out without your temps getting up so as to avoid becoming one of us sick ones. When your temps raise to normal, it's likely your appetite will decrease and your desire to exercise will increase. When I got my temps up, though I used thyroid to do it, my body just dropped 17 pounds in the first two months, with neither diet nor exercise. I mean, the grocery had Pepperidge Farm layer cakes on sale buy-one-pget-oine-free for over a month and hubby kept bringing them home, and I lost weight!
I'd be quite happy if it decided to do something like that again, but… well, I'm trying to wean the meds. I'm having some success, in that I've been able to drop a lot of thyroid without losing the temp and drop a lot of the HC without getting sick again and my bg is dropping with minimal insulin (though it's still way too high). I kind of think I can't REALLY heal without getting off the hormones to some degree, as the whole endocrine system is so interconnected. But I needed them to jumpstart the process too cause I was just too sick. Matt's "eat and rest" thing, I did that the first two years I was disabled, not through chocie but because I couldn't do anything else most of that time, and it did nothing for me until I got on HC and T3.
It also turns out once you've been disabled 3 years, you lose a LOT of interest in weight loss. I'm interested in things like being able to lift a gallon of milk without pain, increase the number of times I can climb the stairs per day, being able to get dressed without a home health aid, never getting bedridden again, etc. So while I've noticed weight loss during my journey at times, I genuinely don't care. I'd be quite happy to double my weight if it bought me the ability to go camping and paddle a canoe.
Except when I talk to someone like you or my daughter, much younger than me, then I care about weight loss in that I wish I could "implant" my lack of caring about weight loss in every one of you.
@everyone – About butyric acid, it's a fatty acid named for where it was found, which was butter. No one outside of the WAPF uuniverse seems to "get" that butter is a HUGE health food. If from pasture-raised cows, it's also got lots of CLA and vitamins A and D. And when the grass is growing fast, it is the highest level of vitamin K2 you can get. I buy from a local dairy that has no ingredients except heavy cream from pastured cows in it, and when it gets dark yellow, I buy 20-30 lbs and stick it in the freezer. This stuff is a SERIOUS health food, to the degree of almost sounding like a patent medicine, it fixes so many things… heart disease and stroke, osteoporosis, and GI problems. I'd hazard to guess the cream portion of whole milk is why the milk diet has been considered a healing diet by so many in the past. Butter is a POWERFUL food, I think it even outranks coconut oil (though not for frying, so much, unless you clarify the butter first).
@Organism – what is most attractive to the opposite sex has no correlation to who breeds, because the less attractive people breed with other less attractive people, and thus unattractive traits still get passed on. So "survival of the fittest" doesn't really apply cause even the unfit get horny. ;)
@Derek – You can get a clue via temps, see this page: http://faqhelp.webs.com/temperatures.htm
But to get a good feel for treatment, you really need the 4x (or more) diurnal saliva test. Cheapest place to get it is canaryclub.org, which uses ZRT labs, but cheaper than you can get from ZRT labs directly.
@Matt, you need a forum. Email me if you want me to install one for ya as this is getting ridiculous!
@jpatti, thanks again for the suggestions. My doctor does give her patients HC or Isocort sometimes but she wanted me to start with herbal/vitamin/amino acid supplements (AdreCor, 5-HTP, Taurine). I didn't tolerate Isocort very well. I am still doing sea salt, D and C… but no licorice at the moment.
I'm very wary of going down the rabbit hole of a zillion tests and measures and levels and supplements. I just want to feel strong and energetic again, not like my body is some damaged, delicately balanced thing that can't function properly. I am extremely careful about what I eat in a HED kind of way and avoid all the bad stuff. I kicked my caffeine addiction recently and have cut way back on alcohol. My main concern these days is eating good food, minimizing stress and trying to sleep through the night.
@Gazelle: "I just want to feel strong and energetic again, not like my body is some damaged, delicately balanced thing that can't function properly."
I relate to this feeling so well. I definitely feel I've made progress in my recovery, but many times it's two steps forward, one step back. And while you're one step back it can feel so discouraging. I also feel the same way about testing. On one hand I'd like to test for the zillion things just to see if there *is* something specific going on. But on the other hand I feel like that will just waste my time. Plus, it's really too expensive for me at this point.
Matt,
Good points there. Was Russ Farris' diet whole, natural foods?
I didn't realize Arctic peoples actually ate bone. Well, large bones at least.
My approach to diet is whole natural foods and the idea that if some traditional culture in the world has been eating something for generations, it must be healthy.
Matt,
Are you joking about your list of biggest turnoffs? You are really attracted to women that are mean and rude? These character traits could make an attractive woman turn ugly very quickly.
We have exact opposite tastes in this regard. The most attractive thing to me in a woman is if she is kind and polite, not just with me, but everyone.
I agree with you on the lipstick thing, most guys I know including myself hate it when women wear a ton of makeup. Heels: I could care less about her shoes. Doesn't bother me if she gets her boobs done or if she has skinny legs, but I prefer natural chicks with muscular legs.
jpatti,
I appreciate all your adrenal info. It appears you have a decent amount of mental energy, at least! I am curious if you are aware of any role played by magnesium in relation to the development of, as well as recovery from, adrenal fatigue.
Also, do you (or anyone else) have any opinion on using salt baths to help the adrenals–specifically the use of dead sea salt, which is said to consist of 35% magnesium chloride, 24% potassium chloride, and 5.5% sodium chloride?
Matt, I am concerned that a health researcher had a stroke – shouldn't he have it all worked out and not be having a stroke? What kind of diet did he follow? I am interested in NOT following his dietary advice!
Jpatti
Your adrenal information is fascinating. Which is the best brand of B complex to take – I have heard that one with high B5 is important but I don't know if you have found that to be true – and what is your take on isolated synthetic vitamins being toxic to the system? I have been taking synthetic vitamins most of my adult life (20 odd years) and I don't think they have done anything for me so I am suspicious of them.
To Gazelle also, I was taking Armour and on increasing my dosage (from a measly half grain to one grain) I experienced a really scary bright red inflamed rash on all my joints and a butterfly rash on my face – it happened about 15 minutes after I had taken my Armour and lasted about 20 minutes. I had never experienced anything like it and it freaked me out. I immediately stopped the Armour and have been fine. Don't know what this means but obviously my body was reacting to something in that stuff. Perhaps it would have reacted to any of the thyroid medications. It has made me nervous of messing around with them. (This happened about 6 weeks ago.)
Brian H. – I felt no different off gluten at all. None of my annoying health problems changed one iota! (Hypoglycemia, night sweats, overheating in hot weather, freezing cold in cold weather, breast pain (this I cured by not wearing a bra with underwire – woman take note – the pain took a week or so of non-underwire bra wearing to go away and it hasn't come back) and various other complaints.) My migraines increased from twice a year to 7 times (I had never had more then 2 or 3 a year previously) and in all other respects I remained the same and have actually developed shoulder and neck pain whilst off gluten (and dairy) so I came to the conclusion that all these dietary restrictions were ridiculous. I was so fed up with the whole thing that I was hugely relieved to find Matt's blog which makes far more sense than all these books which blame everything on a food group/type.
Having said that I think it makes sense not to eat wheat at every meal – which is very easy to do: breakfast cereal and toast for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, spaghetti for dinner BUT i think just having one serving of wheat a day or thinking outside the 'gluten' box when planning meals is the route I am going to take – but I am going to start eating it again. I'll let you know if things get worse.
Plus I have to say that putting dairy back into my diet and eating more carbs (as per Matt and Ray Peat combo … still waiting for Matt to do a proper 'critique' of Peat) has helped a lot with the migraine frequency and duration although has not cured it and has not sorted out the shoulder pain. I'm still on the search for the reasons for that and was interested, like you, in Betsy's comments re: uric acid.
Re: The gluten issue–I tend to agree that unless you're celiac or sure of a gluten sensitivity there's no point obsessing over not eating it at all. And I agree with dinosaur, no reason to eat wheat at every meal, either. Potatoes, baby! :) (Do we need to add an Irish commune in with our Tahiti retreat and Appalachian getaway?)
@jpatti
Totally agree with you about butter. Never heard of T3 for resistant depression–very interesting. And I agree 180 needs a forum. What is your diet like in general?
I've only been eating wholesome foods for a rather short period maybe 6 weeks or so and I can't imagine going back to lowfat milk or my starches without butter. But if it boils down to energy in-energy out in the end I'll have to figure out a new plan.
@Mike, brain fog is a common symptom of either adrenal fatigue or hypothyroidism; I have decent mental energy cause I'm recovering. I was stupid for a LONG time; at one point, I was having difficulty reading even children's books.
Mg is necessary for mitochondrial DNA to work and the step to make cortisol in the adrenals occurs in the mitochondria. However, I think it's much more likely that low Mg directly effects energy levels via interfering with mitochondrial respiration than doing so via lowering cortisol. But I'm also not sure yet, I have only gotten somewhat into the mitochondrial literature recently and have a lot to learn yet.
Generally, on the adrenals group, we tell people to test B12, D3 and Mg… just because even if they have adrenal insufficiency and hypothyroidism and correct those with meds to appropriate levels via labs, they're still going to be fatigued until these nutrients are right.
Dr Myhill's site has a lot of information about magnesium, I'd refer you to her. She finds Mg and B12 shots cure a whole lot of folks with chronic fatigue so it's her first treatment. My general understanding is that to increase cellular levels of Mg requires serum levels to go high, at least temporarily, which is why she likes shots. She has also seen increases in rbc Mg values using a nebulizer.
I have read research of folks raising serum levels with epsom salt baths, but… it's a minor raise and requires a LOT of the salts, to the degree that people complain it's too "soapy". So dead sea salts would probably require crazy amounts and it's doubtful it'd effect the cellular levels since the serum level increase is modest.
Some of the mods who do the adrenal and related thyroid groups have used that Ancient Minerals (brand?) magnesium "oil", just slathering it on after showering, and have gotten rbc Mg up doing so. I seriously doubt your body cares if it's magnesium oil from that company, "pure" because it's a bazillion years old or whatever. You could probably mix some up yourself as the "oil" is just MgCl in water. Could probably use the Dead Sea stuff if you already have it on hand, but it'd be cheaper to buy MgCl and make your own "oil".
@dinosaur, I don't have a strong opinion about B complex pills; I buy whatever is cheapest at the time where most of the Bs are at 100. I take sublingual B12 simultaneously with the B complex.
@turbogirl, my diet was generically low-carb for a couple decades due to T2 diabetes, usually around 30-50 g/day, but I wound up on insulin and having a heart attack, so can't say that worked for me.
Researching after the heart attack, I decided to go WAPF. So… lots of raw milk, lots of butter, lots of coconut oil, pasture-raised meat and eggs, and probably half my plate usually was nonstarchy vegetables. With the milk and so much veggies, I wasn't terribly low-carb anymore, more like 100 g/day, but on insulin, you can get away with that.
However, since treating adrenals and thyroid, I'd been craving carbs a lot, so lots of cheating.
I've since decided specifically to eat starch and avoid sugar, as the stuff on this blog, and a few bazillion other places this blog led me, to decide to try the experiment. I'd already cut out most PUFAs due to WAPF, so just avoiding sugar and adding starch to my diet gets me to Matt's diet. I'm weaning HC and T3, and have cut back on the insulin a lot, as I don't see how my body can heal if I'm "forcing" it; my bg has been coming down the past couple weeks though it's still high, and my temps are staying up on 1/4 dose of thyroid, so something interesting is going on. So we'll see…
@dinosaur: Good luck with adding it back in, I am curious how you will handle it. Did you order the tests online? I know that the stool tests are not really the accepted "standard" they they seem to result in a lot more people being gluten sensitive than the blood tests do. On the other hand the blood tests will often miss out on people who actually are celiac.
@Elizabeth: I agree if you don't have an actual intolerance there is no reason to be paranoid. The problem is that it is very confusing trying to figure out if you are. There is no test that is completely reliable, the standard blood tests will NOT always detect celiac disease. Some people are not even able to produce the antibodies that the test detects, even if they have a bad reaction to gluten.
The other thing is that maybe people with celiac are actually asymptomatic but if a biopsy is taken from the intestine you will see damage to the villi. So some people are diagnosed as celiac without having any physical symptom, they just happened to have been tested with the rest of their family or something. And even if the biopsy finds nothing, often at a later biopsy they do find damage.
This seems like a major problem to me, if this so-called disease can exist without symptoms, and that the tests to diagnose it are not very effective.
I'm open to the possibility that this condition is hugely hyped up, but based on what I've read it seems to be a very real issue. I've had stomach problems for years and have lost about 40 pounds which made me about 5'11" and 120lbs.. I gained it back but nobody has ever been able to tell me what is wrong, so I have to be open to things like this.
Wait a minute – if high fat and high carbs causes insulin resistance, what does this do to the HED? Obviously it makes you gain weight when you push it, but I thought we were lowering insulin resistance. Or am I missing something?
@Jedi,
You keep lifting ya hear. Your friends are likely way off base IMO. Any woman I have known who does some sort of resistance training, ie weights or advanced bodyweight stuff, and is NOT a cardio junkie looks just fine to me. Yum, yum, actually if I may be blunt!
And while we are at it, I do like me ladies in heels (although not ridiculous 5 inch + stuff) and modest amount of makeup. The overdone makeup look is scary to be honest.
And as far as what ladies find attractive, it varies of course, but in the end being fairly fit and muscular is not the deal breaker in their eyes, but just a nice bonus. I speak from experience, trust me.
Lorelei,
I believe that the ultimate goal is to raise metabolism. At that point, a high fat + high carb diet is no problem as the increased metabolic rate allows for high rates of of fat to be burned for fuel as this quote from Broda Barnes' indicates:
??with administration of extra thyroid, the animals could tolerate much larger quantities of fat without elevating the level of fats in the blood. If the levels in the blood are elevated in hypothyroidism (too little thyroid hormone), it is no surprise that they should be found low in hyperthyroidism since the elevated metabolism would burn up more fat.
That is why athletes can consume macro-nutrients of any combination as they have incredible oxidizing rates of the foods they eat through their raised metabolic rate that is induced by the exercise/sports the perform.
About the whole high heels issue: I partially am with JT there. On a conscious level I like women without high heels better and I'm kinda sorry for every woman who goes through that much pain just because she thinks she needs to wear high heels.
But on a subconscious level I am not sure whether I really like women without high heels better. Why do women wear high heels? Because it makes their legs seem longer and usually, longer legs are considered more attractive. Now, I don't think women with longer legs are more attractive, but then again, this is my consciousness speaking. But the unconscious mind in general has great control over every human and I might be attracted to things which i don't even consciously notice. That's why I think high heels are a tricky issue. It could easily be that high heels do make women more attractive to me without me even noticing it.
I like this post a lot Matt. I was just writing on my blog about how the paleo blogs are becoming potato friendly. I think a lot of them are starting to accept potatoes because they are, perhaps unconsciously, realizing the effects of low carbohydrate diets.
So much of mainstream health is about avoiding certain foods–red meat, fat, carbs, gluten etc. When people start reading health blogs and books, it's hard to escape the idea that if they just avoid one or two things, they're going to have perfect health. I remember how, exactly as you described, I felt invincible, like I could accomplish anything so long as I didn't eat any carbohydrate. I should have realized that it was unlikely I could become healthy within such a short time span.
Thanks, jpatti.
On an unrelated note, Matt, I just revisited the comments section on a certain blog post titled "180+180=360." Wow. Kind of ironic to hear the insulin-is-everything crowd saying your views on hormones "lack nuance." Keep up the good work.
Matt,
So let me get this straight. Fat reduces insulin sensitivity. Carbohydrates increase insulin. Each of these, in and of themselves or together, are not a bad thing.
I'm gonna ask this one last time. Hopefully you or someone can help out. Before recently, Asians never ate brown rice. Perhaps at some point before rice was milled, whether during the industrial revolution or before, they did, but not for generations. And generations of eating white rice did not seem to affect their hair health. What are your thoughts here? And how might it relate to an analogous situation in Europe, where people have eaten ground wheat in the form of whole wheat bread and white bread for generations?
Matt, I love you, but one thought. I, like I'm sure many others here, have an obsessive personality when wanting to know everything about nutrition and nutritional biochemistry. But at a certain point, with so many blog posts, so many comments, and various websites, it becomes a bit overwhelming. It's almost like college where there tends to be so much reading why even start, right? I just wonder what your site will look like in a year, or in five years! How can we sift through the essentials?
Riles,
That is why I have been trying to get Matt and his followers to understand the need for a good exercise program when restoring your metabolic health. If you are sedentary it will make your insulin sensitivity even worse, and then doing an HED high fat and carb diet diet on top of being sedentary will make it even worse again.
From the beginning I have said to either be high carb or fat, but not both. Then get active and in shape. Then once you are healed and have a high activity level you could be less strict about diet because your metabolism will be better.
A lot of people on here like MISquote Schwarzbein as a justification for avoiding exercise. But actually she says people should exercise in the healing phase. She wants them to use resistance exercise instead of cardio, which is what I promote as well.
Wow, looks like Matt struck a chord, LOL!
As far as training for women goes, here is a link to an article from Rachel Cosgrove, whose husband is Alwyn Cosgrove. There are a couple of pictures of her. The first one is of her running during a triathalon. Scroll down and there is another one of her after training with less cardio and more weights. She is actually leaner in the second picture. The second pic may be leaner than what some women may want to be but keep in mind that she is a professional trainer and it takes a lot of dedication to diet and training to get that way. Ladies, you will not get to that point by accident. To look like that, you will have to eat and train a certain way (unless you are genetically gifted).
https://www.enhancedfp.com/training/final-nail-cardio-coffin-rachel-cosgrove
Also, if you read the article, she explains that when you do lots of cardio, your body's preferred source of fuel is fat so the body will preferentially store fat vs glycogen.
On what women want in a man…men will NEVER know what women want. Even if they tell us what they want, we won't know. And just when we think we know what they want, they will change it…because we aren't supposed to know what they want, LOL! :-)
Seriously, peoples tastes vary. I knew a girl whose boyfriend was chubby and she loved it because he was soft and cuddly. I have known people that have preferred almost every different body type on the opposite sex, men and women alike. Some guys like their women thin and lean…others like them curvaceous. There is someone for everyone.
@Derek, you don't ever figure it out.
I had figured it out in graduate school when I was a biochemist, "the answer" was low-carb and lots of vitamin C ala Pauling.
After my heart attack, I found all this research about flavanoids, and two brand new hormones… amylin and leptin. That's what happens when you don't update your knowledge for a couple decades… the "right" answers aren't anymore. Science proceeds thus "the answer" changes.
I have the idea that 20 years from now, we're going to think our knowledge today was skimpy. Actually, this is largely why I lean towards WAPF now, though I don't agree with them about everything. So… basically sticking to real, whole foods is the best bet and forget about both macronutrients and micronutrients, just eat real food.
I am of the opinion that when you sit down to eat, half your plate should be nonstarchy veggies of different colors (preferably organic). A quarter should be protein (preferably pastured). Both veggies and protein should be palatable, which means lots of fat on them (that should be good fats, mostly coconut oil and butter, olive oil or dairy if you're doing salad).
That only covers 3/4s of your diet there, but buys you more nutritionally than the vast majority of folks on SAD ever get.
If you're doing HED, the other quarter should be potatoes or rice or pasta or low-sugar fruit. If low-carbing, the other quarter should be more protein or veggies or low-sugar fruit. If you don't have issues, the other third can be cake and ice cream and you still come out ahead of most people cause you're eating good food for the majority of your meal.
If you follow those two basic rules of 1/2 your plate is nonstarchy veggies and 1/4 is protein, and eat *quality* foods, you're doing better than most no matter what school-of-thought you're currently following.
jpatti,
Half of your plate should be nonstarchy veggies!! If I did this I could NEVER meet my calorie requirements. I know of many dieters who do this, especially those who are on low carb and paleo. Eating this many nonstarchy veggies can also cause extreme gastric distress in many people. You should check out some of Ray Peat's writings on vegetables and who defines food.
Why eat only low sugar fruit? You can get more energy from high sugar fruits. Seems more efficient.
But, I think your advice would be good for most people who are sedentary and eat junk diets. If people would just eat real whole food they would be better off.
@ the person who wrote this:
Phosphatidyl Serine is an interesting supp I've already started using to help with insomnia. I have the classic wake-up-from-2-to-4am-with-a-pounding-heart adrenal fatigue insomnia, and PS is supposed to lessen cortisol to avoid that at night. So far it has been the only thing that has helped me sleep. I'm hoping it will also help with stamina and allow me to exercise again without it totally draining me.
One way to get rid of this is to have some Mg before bed. I get this problem if I overdo it with beer in the evening. These symptoms are to do with the magnesium depletion causing hypoglycemia.
I have also recently discovered that taking Mg with HCI really does seem to improve the absorption of the Mg, i.e. my "usual" arrhythmias completely stopped and I was so shocked by this that it kept me awake!!!
Lorelei-
Riles's summary was excellent – and kudos to Riles for the Barnes quote. Noice!
Combining fat and carbs causes insulin resistance in the hypometabolic. So you have 2 choices – become hypermetabolic or carb cycle (excluding doing low-carb or low-fat indefinitely).
Exercise increases mitochondrial activity temporarily, which allows someone with a low basal metabolism to get away with eating fat and carbs together (it burns up all the blood fats). But someone with ideal basal metabolism doesn't need to exercise to burn up blood fats.
That's why my main focus has becoming the unique pursuit of becoming hypermetabolic – not dependent on dietary restriction or large quantities of exercise to perform the simple task of burning blood fats, which should happen at rest in a healthy person.
Note, I have nothing against exercise. Exercise is healthy and part of an overall healthy lifestyle. But eating starch and fat together on a hypercaloric diet while sedentary improves insulin sensitivity. It is not a positive feedback loop, but a negative feedback loop. The higher your weight goes, the more your body pushes against weight gain by increasing metabolism and becoming more insulin sensitive. Insulin resistance is a part of the human famine response that keeps energy out of muscle tissue but instead shuttles it into fat cells.
Dinosaur-
Russ Farris is not on any particular diet. Farris believes that heart disease/stroke/etc. is all caused strictly by infection – the only reasonable defense being immunization, sterilization, and medication.
JT-
I was not joking about my taste in women. I admire people who express themselves honestly and authentically without putting on a show to protect other people's feelings or worry about causing them discomfort or grief. Which is why I like ol' buddy.
I also have a natural tendency, in person, to be the comforter – putting my own feelings aside to make sure everyone else is happy and comfortable. I view this as a tremendous weakness, and deep down, it always feels like it stems from a phobia of being disliked.
So I'm naturally attacted to those that are more ferocious, fierce, outspoken, and courageous.
My theory on what both men and women find attractive…
What they don't have.
GREAT blog post Matt, thank you very much. so much to ponder on :)
I just noticed a really awesome question and was also wondering what the answer might be. Thanks!!
He said:
I've read where some of you talk about having cold feet/hands and after HED, they warm up. I currently eat low carb and have for the last year or so. My temps are low, 96.5 this mornin, but I am extremely "hot-natured". If it's above 74 degrees I'm sweatin. I have a job where I work outside and am constantly having to drink water just to keep up. I get headaches often in the summer which I think is related to overheating. My wife keeps an electric blanket on her during the summer at home because of how cold I keep the house. You get the point.
So, I don't want or need warm hands/feet/arm pits. Will the HED make this worse? Will it make it better?? If I start eating paleo will all my dreams come true? Thanks.
Thanks Mr. Lawrence.
HED definitely tends to increase peripheral circulation, and makes people feel warmer. However, the systems responsible for more efficient cooling during hot weather also perform better if you are able to improve your overall health.
But it's not always so black and white. Aurora has a warmer body temperature than I do, yet she sleeps with blankets and I sleep without them. I feel much warmer than she does, even though I'm not.
With sufficient carbohydrate intake, Paleo can make your dreams come true. Too low in carbs and you'll be lucky to dream at all – or sleep for that matter, if you are anything like me.
If your dreams are to become the local area karate champ, I would recommend NOT training with John Kreese – although, he is a pioneer in a complex and deadly move known as "sweeping the lick."
Oh and Derek-
Still no major theories on male pattern baldness among rice eaters for you.
I was wondering if anyone has experience or knowledge about hypoglycemia. I have no doubt it is related to my exhausted adrenals, from stress/work/ironmans/marathons/overtraining. Is the HED beneficial for hypoglycemia, or is it smarter to stick with the 5 meals a day, limiting the carbs to 50-75c each meal? If i have too many carbs in a meal I get an adrenaline rush (heart races, sweating, feeling really good afterwards) but I'm pretty sure this is not a healthy response to a meal. Therefore, 3 big meals a day just doesn't work for me because of this adrenaline response and if I skip a meal or don't eat close to bedtime I sweat profusely and can't sleep. Any suggestions for curing hypoglycemia or will it get better from rest and consistently eating 5 moderate meals a day? Thank you
Nicholas-
In my experience, hypoglycemia is easily conquerable by pressing through the initial reactions and going at least a couple weeks with bigger meals and lots of carbs – particularly starches.
It may exacerbate your problems at first, but it gets to the core of the problem, which is a slow metabolism and exhausted adrenals, which fail to trigger glycogen release in between meals.
5 meals per day can help too if you eat well and rest hard, but that which medicates often exacerbates. I think you'd be best to think of your hypoglycemic condition like you did feeling a little tired while you were training for the ol' Ironman.
Heart racing and sweating is hypoglycemia leaving the body. LOL
Seriously though, I think a lot of people have been able to overcome what you're dealing with in short order.
Jpatti, thanks for your response. I'm 40 by the way, so I'm not as young as might have thought.
I certainly don't want to undo the gains I've made. Like I said I have evidence that my temps are heading in the right direction without medication, but I've worked too hard this year to want to throw that out for another stupid diet.
I've decided to work on my PF and my temps for the foreseeable future.
Thanks! I hope you continue to heal and stay healthy.
Jenny
@JT Veggies are most palatable when covered with butter, mayo, deepfried, or otherwise with lots of fats. So if half your plate has veggies on it, there can be gobs of calories of fat going along. Cover your plate with okra fried in coconut oil and tell me how you can't get enough calories; wilt a big salad with hot bacon grease and tell me how it's too low calorie for you to eat. ;)
Veggies are only low-calorie if you want them to be cause you're doing low-fat. My "basic" plan lets you do low-fat, if you want to. It lets you do low-carb, if you want to. It lets you do low sodium, gluten-free, basically any darned diet you want. It lets you follow any diet you want as discoveries change, or any weird fad that comes along, but minimizes the damage because you're always getting loads of antioxidants and sufficient protein.
It's also how I summarize to people who don't research themselves as half your plate as veggies and a quarter as protein is understandable to most people – much moreso than that dumb pyramid. Someone can tell me they're doing nearly any diet in the world, and I can give them the same advice… eat lots of veggies and sufficient protein.
As for low-sugar fruit – well that depends. It's all you can do on low-carb to maximize micronutrients for the carb intake. But if not limiting carb, it's up to you. My "plan" is only for the 3/4 of the plate as the *basics*, everyone does other things with the other 1/4 depending on their needs.
@merryweather There's two kinds of cortisol-related insomnia. The kind from high cortisol prevents you falling asleep. For that, PS and zinc before bedtime lower cortisol so you can sleep.
The kind where you wake up with your heart racing and starving in the middle of the night is from low cortisol though. You get an adrenaline dump, and subsequent hypoglycemia, during the night and can't get back to sleep until you eat and the adrenaline levels recede. PS and zinc would be counterproductive for that type of insomnia. Instead, you want a high protein & fat snack and a dose of HC right at bedtime, just as lights go out, to carry you through to morning.
@Jenny Oh, well hi there ya old lady. ;)
I'm pushing 50 myself. I kinda got the feeling here that most folks were 20s-30s or so.
Also, age kinda depends on how long you've been sick. For me, it's been 20 years since I was diagnosed with T2 diabetes, so by that measure I'm a LOT older than almost all of you guys.
I'm doing well now, my temps are holding. I'm down to 25 mcg T3/day, whereas I had to go up over 100 mcg to get them up originally. Yesterday afternoon, hubby said I felt cold and I checked… 98.7 – so weaning the thyroid is working well.
I'm going back up on HC though cause at 10mg/day, I was getting too moody in the afternoon and late evening. Apparently, my thyroid is getting fixed up a bit faster than my adrenals are. Still, I'm down from a high of 45 mg when I began and 30 mg during most of my treatment.
The real question will be will my bg keep coming down with starch and not-enough-insulin… we'll see. Seems to be, but not enough data yet.
So let me get this straight. Fat reduces insulin sensitivity. Carbohydrates increase insulin. Each of these, in and of themselves or together, are not a bad thing.
I think the carbohydrates' insulin sensitizing function is due to its lower satiety than fat. People eat more on a high-carb diet. So a low-carb diet causes insulin resistance by setting the body into starvation mode. As you know, starvation increases cortisol levels, which causes insulin resistance. But that applies to muscle insulin resistance only.
The higher your weight goes, the more your body pushes against weight gain by increasing metabolism and becoming more insulin sensitive. Insulin resistance is a part of the human famine response that keeps energy out of muscle tissue but instead shuttles it into fat cells.
Excellent theory. If your body fat is above your body-fat set point, then your metabolism and insulin sensitivity will increase. Conversely, if your body fat is below your body-fat set point, then your metabolism will decrease and you will become more insulin resistant. As you theorize, it's a way to keep calories out of the muscles during starvation mode.
For example, Matt Stone has increased his insulin sensitivity after he gained a pot-belly.
But that only applies to muscular insulin sensitivity. The body adjusts its muscular insulin sensitivity according to its stored fat levels compared to its body-fat set point.
But there's a flaw in this theory. Anorexics are more insulin sensitive than people with average weight. Also, "weight loss" is associated with increased insulin sensitivity. ("wight loss" may include muscle loss).
It it because anorexics have lower growth hormone levels? Chromium or nutrient depletion? There's plenty of other contributors of insulin resistance rather than starvation. I'm trying to figure this out for days. I'm trying to avoid confirmation bias here.
I think that increase in insulin sensitivity with weight loss is often a transient and temporary effect. What good is increasing insulin sensitivity if it gives you out of control cravings for food in a reduced metabolic state afterward?
Like I've pointed out in other posts, blood sugar, insulin, blood pressure, triglycerides and more all fall when you cut calories. But this also induces rebound hyperphagia – and often other health consequences, so it is pointless to become infatuated with it like so many health researchers have.
Anorexia is an entirely different animal altogether. I expect that an anorexic dips so low in calories as to induce the human fasting response – totally different from mild calorie restriction. Extreme catecholamine hunger suppression – trumping even the fact that they have hardly any leptin circulating through the system (which should make them ravenous).
Interesting thoughts about low-carb vs. low-fat, but I don't think that's necessarily true. I do think that high-carb/low calorie is the most damaging in many ways, as it catabolizes the hell out of lean tissue (whereas low-carb/low-calorie will always be more muscle sparing). But as I've experienced, a hypercaloric low-fat diet is COMPLETELY different.
"For example, Matt Stone has increased his insulin sensitivity after he gained a pot-belly."
Compelling evidence. Wanna buy my alien autopsy video? It's equally convincing.
Matt,
You don't have the negative consequences if you do it right! That is the problem, nit many people know how to do it right.
I did it right, so I healed my severely damaged metabolism on a high carb/ low fat hypocaloric diet with lots of exercise. I also didn't have rebound hyperphagia.
@JT: What is the difference in how you did it compared to what will cause negative consequences for others?
JT- I thought you healed your metabolism a la Schwarzbein?
Yeah, you can't always exercise if you have a screwed up metabolism.
I just started exercise a couple months ago, after almost 3 years of NONE, meaning my life was organized around minimizing climbing the stairs cause I'd get trapped. My "exercise" is ten minutes in a CHAIR.
Exercise only fixes "metabolism" if your adrenals are rock solid, otherwise it fubars your adrenals, and then your body can't get T3 into the cells and you wind up hypothyroid, and it's downhill from there…
Exercise is for healthy people and you don't have to "make" yourself do it cause it feels good when you're in a healthy body to move it.
Hey Matt, enjoying the "what's attractive in the opposite sex" discussion.
I was just wondering if your advice about Crohn's, IBS, etc. is still similar to that of your "diver-tic-u-losis" or something like that article.
High fat, low fiber, low sugar, moderate protein, low carb
wasn't sure if you had changed your opinion on that specific disease since you have become more accepting of carbs.
Sorry this is completely off topic
Oh, won't you look into the Buteyko method too. I'm sure there are some interesting connections to breathing and metabolism, but I can't figure it out….
Oh, and to comment upon the whole rage – low cab thing, when I was low carb (oh, it feels SOOOO good to say that in past tense – thank you Matt!!!), my psychologist thought I was suffering from PTSD Iw as raging so much….I'm also otherwise a 100% calm person….And yes, my heart was racing too and beating so loud it actually disturbed me a lot….
Brian H,
I did metabolic enhancement training, a full explanation is too much for the comment section. Most people go wrong by doing too much cardio and not enough resistance training. See Scott Abel's work for more info.
Katerina,
I started out on Schwarzbein, and then transitioned to a typical bodybuilding diet. It is not that different really, just a little higher carbs and lower in fat, eating 5-6 meals a day.
jpatti,
That was not true for me. My adrenals were completely fried due to years on a low carb/paleo diet. I am not one of those people who just guesses what my problems was, I had tons of lab work done multiple times to diagnose my problem, and then track my progress. The first doctor I went to who specializes in adrenal burnout said I was the most severe case she had ever seen. My cortisol levels were completely bottomed out, and she said that she had seen many people that couldn't even get out of bed with better levels than me.
Exercising was essential to fixing my metabolism. I had to force myself to do it in the beginning because I was so tired all of the time. In the beginning I needed to take more hydrocortisone to be able to handle it, but now i no longer need to take any at all. My thyroid labs also improved, so it didn't cause me to become hypothyroid either.
Schwarzbein recommends that her adrenal fatigued and insulin resistant patients exercise to help their recovery.
I am not saying this is good for you or anyone else though. Everyone is different and you should see a doctor. Might want to see one that specializes in HRT or anti-aging medicine so that you can check all of your hormones out, as a 50 year old woman hormones may be a big issue.
Working with GOOD doctors including a REAL ayurvedic doctor was also essential to my recovery.
JT,
Do you feel your continued exercise is essential to your maintenance of hormonal balance, or is it mainly for fun and body composition at this point?
To put it another way: exercise helped get you where you are, but having healed your metabolism, could you now stop exercising and still have remain healthy and hormonally balanced (albeit with a reduced muscle mass I'd guess)?
I"m not challenging you; just curious. I was pretty active through age 19, but after 7 years of being sedentary (while losing weight against my will without dieting), regular exercise is the one major lifestyle intervention I've yet to reimplement.
Paragraph 2 in my post above should read:
To put it another way: exercise helped get you where you are, but having healed your metabolism, could you now stop exercising and still remain healthy and hormonally balanced (albeit with a reduced muscle mass I'd guess)?
Is anyone who did the milk diet still drinking milk? The more I cut it out of my diet, the more I think I should cut it out all together. (another 180 degree, I know, am I crazy?) I started to eat only the curd part of it, and this might sound strange, but the skin on my face has been feeling sticky, the way the whey feels. Have you ever separated the whey from the curd? Whey is nasty! For a couple of days now I've hardly had any of the curd part, either, and my bloated abdomen is flattening out and my arms don't feel so chubby. I didn't gain a lot of weight (2#) while eating mainly first milk and cheese and then kefir and cheese, but I feel as though I puffed up. Ray Peat says that the amount of estrogen in milk is minimal, but perhaps the amount of growth hormones is adequate to cause problems.
So the potato diet is starting to sound interesting. I can't remember who is doing the potato diet.
@Matt, with respect to what you said about yourself not being able to be blunt and feeling as though it is a great weakness, it does help you to win friends and be able to influence people. Some people have to read books to learn how to do that! I had been thinking that you're always very cordial in your replies, and I admire that.
But of course now that I know that it's just a big show to make people like you…..I'll be able to read between the lines better.
(only kidding, of course!)
I am sooo not attracted to alpha males. That alpha-ness irritatingly gets in the way of my being able to turn a man into my bitch.
I'd much prefer a happy, funny and caring man with a potbelly to a muscular douchebag, any day of the week.
Hey JT,
I've been suffering from severe adrenal fatigue for several years now and can't seem to find a good doc.
How did you find yours? Also, what different kinds of docs did you see, besides Ayurvedic?
Matt/Riles/Anyone,
As far as white rice versus brown rice, my idea is that refined rice is either not that bad or Asian diets are so good otherwise that eating white rice has a minimal effect, if any. Perhaps it's a reason why Asians are generally shorter than Africans or Europeans. Although Amerindians are generally shorter and most consumed corn traditionally. Although in the Wikipedia article on human height, it mentions some American Indian tribe in the Great Plains being the tallest in the world.
I'm probably going to try hyperbaric oxygen this week. I've read that simple aerobic exercise is a weak form of oxygen therapy. I wonder, though, why some peoples in the world don't do any aerobic exericise, eat well, and have no oxygen-deficiency related diseases. Throughout my soymilk rave, I did have periods of doing some running and/or rowing, but saw no improvement. However, since I've been off soymilk since mid-October 2009, I haven't run but for about five days.
Betsy,
I drank raw whole milk for thirty-five days. Eight quarts a day. I'm still drinking milk. Although about four quarts a day, sometimes more sometimes less. I don't strive for everyday. Haven't noticed a difference in my skin. I think you and Ray Peat think too much. At the end of the day, I think biochemistry of food is so complicated it might be worthwhile to trust that eating whole, natural foods is your ideal diet. Which is another reason I think blogs are mostly a waste of time. I love learning about biochemistry, but I'd rather save blog posts and announcements for certainties, not speculation.
Derek, thank you for including me in the same category as Ray Peat!
Swede and Jonas, did you guys go for Martin's counseling or did you just go by the website? Are you going full-bore with the workouts and supplements or are you just doing the 8 hours fed/16 hours fasted. How deep are you guys in? Just curious. Thanks.
Jpatti, do you mind sending me an e-mail? I have a few questions I'd like to ask you but I don't check out comments often and would miss your answer.
verbeke_martin@hotmail.com
Thanks a lot.
Matt, I see that you have cooked with coconut milk, do you have any life experience to share about using coconut milk, coconut water, and coconut oil? I am trying to switch over to coconut stuff, and would like to hear from anyone who has used coconut as a main stay.
@Betsy: The only thing I can say about coconut oil is that I would recommend the refined one. Extra virgin has a very strong coconut taste. I've recently tried adding a few tablespoons per day of it and I can barely get through the whole container I'm sick of the taste. From what I've read the refined stuff is not any lower in quality and is just easier to get down.
I usually cook with butter because I love the taste, and just take the occasional spoonful of oil.
@JPatti – Could you send me the address of the yahoo group? I went and looked at the faq, but couldn't get to the group to join.
@ Matt: Wow, am I glad to have found this post! I just recently discovered Schwarzbein, and many pieces of what has happened to me over the last 7 years are falling into place.
I suspect that I've always had adrenal/ thyroid problems. However, 7 years ago ( at 44) I did my first stint at low-carb, following PP guidelines – 30g/ day of carbs. I lost 20 lbs. quickly and easily. However, within six weeks I developed what I thought were major hot flashes – some 50 per day, that left me drenched. Forget sleeping – I couldn't. I thought that I was going into some abrupt menopause thing, and so started down the bioidentical hormone route. Four months later, no difference. I started to learn about adrenals, thyroid, and was tested and found to have severe adrenal fatigue. After starting on Cortef, I started to feel tremendously better. However, I kept trying to LC, because that's what I was told would heal me.
This past January, I went on Optimal Diet ratios, and while I lost more weight, and felt better eating high fat than high protein, I ended up on the couch by spring. Literally, doing the simplest things like returning a phone call or writing an email seemed overwhelming. When I was recently tested, my adrenal function is much worse. i'm back on Cortef and now can sleep again….and move.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR POSTING THIS! I have always felt that I wasn't doing something right, wasn't trying hard enough, wasn't dedicated enough. I'm beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
@Brian: I already have two jars of extra virgin, Jungle Products and Tropical Traditions. The Jungle brand tastes good, haven't tried the Tropical Traditions yet. I was starting to use coconut products before I restarted the raw milk. I started drinking coconut several days ago after having an earache, glandular pain, and a scary pain on the inside of my thigh from the milk diet, and started to feel better. Today I used some coconut oil and butter on my pasta, as I don't like plain coconut oil taste either. I will have to think of different ways to eat it. I used to melt it with some cocoa butter, spread it in a dish, and refrigerate it. It looked and had the texture of a chocolate bar without the chocolate or sugar, if you can imagine that. I also have melted it and poured it over frozen cherries, and that tastes good. I have some coconut cream, too, which tastes much better than the oil, but I can't figure out what to use it with. Necessity will help me come up with some ideas. You can make ice cream out of it, if you have an ice cream maker. Then you pour melted oil over the ice cream and it freezes and gets crunchy. It's probably good to continue with some butter for the Vitamins A&D.
Still experimenting!
I wrote: For example, Matt Stone has increased his insulin sensitivity after he gained a pot-belly.
Jenny replied: Compelling evidence. Wanna buy my alien autopsy video? It's equally convincing.
I actually intended it to be a joke. Even though Matt's pot-belly verifies his own theory, I had then rejected his theory later to be inconsistent. It's inconsistent because adipose tissue decreases insulin sensitivity via inflammation.
So I never considered that as evidence, since it's inconsistent with the real theory.
It's kinda funny though.
Ok, off topic a little here. So I am 70 pages into 180 Metabolism and I can't wait any longer to start HED. I have been on low carb for a year now except for the occasional pig out every few weeks. After karate practice last night, for dinna I had my usual serving of beef, mashed cauliflower with plenty of bacon & butter, some green beans tossed in butter, AND I bought some taters and fried em in butter. Does that sound good? Need more butter? This mornin I had some eggs fried in coconut oil and a big bowl of oatmeal swimming in butter. Of course I had a big glass of raw milk with both meals. My temp was 96.8 this morning. Bring on tha carbs baby. I think I'm good except for I'm not sure how much of plate should be comprised of starch. Tell me somethin good…..
JT, I hate to actually question your experience, as we all have different experiences. However, let me give you an analogy…
We know weight-bearing exercise increases bone density, so we know it's good for bones. However, if you told me you healed a broken leg by doing squats, well… at best, I'd assume your leg had not been broken or had not healed, that you had somehow misunderstood the situation. At worst, I'd assume you were trolling.
I don't have Schwarbeins books handy here, but I read two, and seems like I'd remember if she recommended something so bizarre as that people who don't make enough cortisol for normal day-to-day life should engage in activities that require extra cortisol.
I'm not going to get into a pissing match with you, as I'm not entirely certain you're not a troll. You may well be genuine and have different experiences, but it seems to me I don't get much out of arguing your experience with you either way.
In the adrenals group, we have people all the time who are still exercising and we advise them to stop until they have their adrenals well-supported and are no longer hypothyroid. Some listen, some don't. Some who don't wind up crashing later. But we are asked so often why they can't keep exercising that last time a person posted that they HAD to exercise, I wrote an FAQ about it, which also explains my experience exercising with AF. It's the last FAQ here: http://faqhelp.webs.com/offtopics.htm
And that is pretty much all I have to say about that.
I missed this before:
"If we weren't living in these modern times and living a more pastoral life like the Amish I think men and women would be looking for a mate that was strong. Women would want a provider and a protector and men would look for a women with wide enough hips so she could give birth to strong children. Before modern medicine women often died during childbirth. Even today it still requires a massive amount of energy for a woman to carry a child to term."
I live near the Amish, but they wear too many clothes to tell if any of them are hot. ;)
I would make a distinction between a body builder and guys who do hard physical work for a living. I remember when we watched the videos "The Very Efficient Carpenter" telling my husband that Larry has a really hot body even though he's old. Then when Food Inc. came out, I made similar observations about Joel Salatin who I'd never seen before, just read his books.
Guys who are lean and slightly muscular from hard physical work are hot. Guys that have giant chests and biceps and six-pack abs are not, they look bizarre and vaguely dangerous.
Of course, liking the guy trumps the body anyways. I liked Joel from his books, so he was "attractive" before I knew what he looked like. The body is just a bonus, like… wow, he's not just attractive but hot too!
But what do I know? IMO, the two most attractive men who ever lived were Linus Pauling and Robert Heinlein, and that was all about the brain. I have reacted since my teens to these guys like a groupie, just crazy about them, and absolutely would've borne either of them all the kids they wanted, no negotiation necessary. I cried when each died, etc. This is probably not a typical female response, I doubt either of them had groupies in real life as generally scientists and authors are not rock stars. ;)
I still love the extra virgin coconut oil, even after using it extensively for a year. I use the nutiva brand, which I've always found to be very light and fairly subtle. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but so far…
One thing I've noticed since doing oil pulling, I don't really like doing it with the extra virgin coconut oil. I'm going to get some refined for that.
Betsy-
My forehead was really sticky in the beginning of the milk diet too. So nasty. My forehead felt like glue while sunbathing.
On coconut oil, I'd agree that the less taste the oil has, the more you'll be able to use it in your cooking. Almost every time I cook anything, I use coconut oil – and to do that, it has to have very little flavor. Jenny is right that the lightest-tasting virgin is nutiva, but Tropical traditions expeller pressed is what I use and a I love it ta pieces.
And Betsy, don't stress too much about protein. On a eucaloric or hypercaloric diet, there's virtually no such thing as protein deficiency, as protein intake automatically goes up when you eat to appetite or beyond and protein requirements fall the more calories you eat. Orange juice cures Kwashiorkor a lot faster than tuna.
JT and those interested in JT –
I'm reading Scott Abel in July and will go into detail on that, saving JT the effort. We do really appreciate your experiences JT.
Organism-
My pot belly is almost gone. Damn. Just a little bit left.
Pattymelt-
Yeah, screw low-carb. I'd suggest, to rehabilitate, eating the patty melt without the patty or the melt.
Johnny-
Coming off of low-carb, I'd suggest eating a lot more carbohydrate than you think you should. The average Chinese citizen (who, by the way, eats 33% more per unit of bodyweight than Americans with 20% lower bodyweight, hint, hint) eats about 500 grams of carbs per day. You won't get there eating a bunch of fat and meat, and flipping a coin between fat and carbohydrate as a primary fuel source, carbohydrate usually wins. Pound it. I'm hoping to do a post in a day or two on fat vs. carbs, or the differences between a high-carb hypocaloric diet vs. a high-carb eucaloric diet. Too much to say, as always.
On inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)…
I now feel like relegating oneself to a low-carb diet is an absolute last resort. There's also a huge difference between soluble and insoluble fiber. I feel, for a sufferer from IBD, that soluble fiber from lots of fruit (by itself as part of a 'cleanse'), starch, and vegetables (regular diet) would be great – while avoiding legumes and grains is all the restriction necessary. Low-residue would provide temporary relief, but wouldn't do much for re-establishing healthy gut flora, mucosal lining, etc.
Feel free to email me or keep commenting as you experiment to make sure you're responding well.
Oh and Annabelle, I love you.
jpatti,
I appreciate all your comments recently- you seem to have a lot of experience with hormonal issues and how they affect us and our recuperation. This past week, after RRARFing and putting on weight, I decided to start exercising- two weight lifting sessions the past week, about 30 minutes long, and one 4 minute sprint session. Doesn't seem like too much. My morning temperatures, by the way, hover around 97, though they can fluctuate by more than a half degree a day, which I hear points to adrenal, and not (just) thyroid issues. But I seem to have really done a number on my forearms and biceps doing dips. Maybe I pulled a tendon or just overstretched or something, but I've been unable to have full arm mobility without pain since Sunday. I can't stretch my arms out fully without tightness and pain starting at about 2/3 extended.
So, I'm going to take it easy for a while, but I continue to wonder whether I need to just take it easy for a while longer and not take up this exercise regime, however modest in minutes it is. I want to feel good, I want to have a healthy and desireable body composition. I'm eager and ready for a breakthrough. And maybe endocrine health offers it. But I can't shake this feeling that adrenal and thyroid recovery is just one more path that may not lead to everlasting happiness, something I feel like I've pursued and crashed on before. There's always some new right answer for me that allows me to live happily, healthfully, forever if I just stick to it. But they never seem to pan out. RRARFing makes sense as a tool not just theoretically for me, but also emotionally- stop beating yourself up and just relax and nourish yourself. The answer lies not in deprivation but in really not demanding too much from yourself.
I'm not sure exactly if I have a question for you, just some thoughts and gratitude to share. I have this vision of getting over a hump finally, when things no longer feel like an uphill battle, when losing weight is easy, when building muscle, and becoming more physically adept at the things I want to improve on is easy, when going through the day is a joy, when there's excitement and gratitude for the tasks at hand rather than exhaustion and a sense of being overwhelmed. That's what I want, and I'm suspicious of the ability of a workout routine at this stage to get me there. I liked what I think you wrote at one point, that working out when you're healthy is easy, because it feels good to move a healthy body. That makes sense to me, and I've experienced that. I just don't know how best to get there.
(cont'd…)
(cont'd…)
RRARFing is good, but the low omega 6 thing and minimal fructose cause me stress. I wonder whether the sausage and eggs I love to eat are doing me in or the olive oil in my salad dressing, whether the watermelon, sweet sweet watermelon is disastrous because of it's high fructose content. Matt, I know the point is to get past restrictive diets, but I can't get out of the mindspace even that sees dietary plans as all restrictive in some way, including HED. I don't eat tons of nuts, any refined oils, no refined sugars, but man- I want to be able to have tasty olive oil based dressing, and chicken and pork with the fat and yes- all the summer fruits coming up in the Shenandoah Valley here. And I get paranoid about these foods because I wonder whether I'm undermining my attempts at health, and whether in the end, RRARF is not just another restrictive plan that I can't sustain.
And I also wonder about the role of other elements of our lives. I know for me I've felt stressed and unhappy for at least the last few months, and diet is one of the big ways I try to nourish myself. But when that's a stress too for teh above reasons, when things aren't progressing as I would like them to, and I wonder whether I'm doing it 'wrong,' I get stalled and frustrated. RRARFing got me fat and as a result depressed, but on reflection offered at least one benefit- decreased transit time and increased frequency, and I wodner whether that was a cue I should have listened to, to keep pushing forward.
Anyway, there's lots going on for me, as my perhaps rambling post here suggests. But maybe this resonates with other people floundering too, and so I'll go on with it. Any thoughts or reflections would be great, from Matt, jpatti or anyone. Thanks y'all.
Rob A, I can understand very much what you are saying. Our psychological/emotional well-being is just as important as the nutrients that we take in and need to be taken into account.
If getting fat is making you depressed, then I say stop the overfeeding. If stressing about omega-6/fructose is stressing you out, then do not obsess. There is nothing wrong with eating fruits they will not destroy your metabolism.
I have also jumped from one thing to another looking for an answer. Most "plans" do not take into account our emotional and psychological health which are just as important. Not every single symptom that we have is caused or solved by diet.
The biggest lesson I have learned here is to feed myself without feeling guilty. I have been undereating and underweight for a long time without really knowing it, and now that I've gained back weight to a healthy level I feel much better for it. But personally I would not overfeed if it was making me fat and depressed unless it was having miraculous benefits.
So don't stress out. No matter what health advice we follow it is only us who can choose to incorporate it without obsessing about it.
Yeah, Rob, when I started on HED I just ate to appetite and didn't restrict anything, but the bad refined carbs like white flour and sugar. After I'd been doing it a while I started to back down from fried chicken and bacon. But I admit I had some awesome fried chicken bento as a treat today for lunch. It was the first fried food I've eaten in months and months. It's nice to splurge now and again.
jpatti,
Your response to my experience with personal attacks on me shows you obviously have strong emotional attachments to your beliefs. This is understandable given that you have been dealing with your health problems for such a long time. It wouldn't be easy to hear that someone else has overcome some of these same problems by using a different approach. You are a smart lady, and I hope you are able to open your mind to alternatives and find a way to heal.
Don't get too hung up on analogies and metaphors, this leads people to hold beliefs for the wrong reasons. Maybe a damaged HPA is not like a broken leg at all. Maybe it is a system that need to be stimulated in order to restart.
I have had many tests done by many doctors who specialize in this area confirming my diagnosis and treatment results. Why would this make it seem like I have misunderstood my situation?
I have been posting on Matt's blog for a long time and my story has always been the same and I have never made any personal attacks on anyone. Is this the profile of a troll?
Yes, you should read your Schwarzbein books again. She does say that even people with burned out adrenals should exercise. But, she like me advises doing resistance and flexibility exercises and not a lot of cardio. This is what I do weightlifting and yoga with no cardio. I have already said that I had to take hydrocortisone in the beginning to be able to exerxise. She has helped thousands of people get over their severe metabolic problems. She is one of the most important medical figures to promote the existence and treatment of adrenal problems.
Has what you have been doing worked for you? If so, then keep doing it. How did you end up with type 2 diabetes in the first place? It seems like your self medication with low carb might have been what led to your adrenal problems.
Mike Jones,
Yes, I believe that me being physically active is necessary to obtaining and maintaining a healthy metabolism. I think being sedentary is very unhealthy.
Some people may not be able to do a lot of types of exercise due to physical handicaps. So they have to just do what they can. Maybe doing some breathing exercises and qigong would be good.
I advise seeking approval from a medical professional before starting an exercise program. Figure out what is really wrong with you. I used to work at a gym and I was there when a guy had a brain aneurysm and bled out and died while on the treadmill.
Matt S. says:
Pound it.
Johnny says:
Let the pounding begin.
JT-
Well put. Both exercise and sedentarism can be used as medicine. Perhaps my personal bias is towards sedentarism stictly because I became very physically imbalanced from too much physical activity, not too little, which is probably more common. Still to this day, taking a 6-month hiatus from exercise was the most healing thing I've ever done. But that's not a promotion of sitting around all day doing nothing. Just an acknowledgement that deep rest and relaxation does have a role in health, and that exercising too much can be quite harmful and draining.
Rob-
To clarify, RRARF is a temporary healing regimen. The restrictions on fructose and omega 6 are not permanent either. The goal is to be able to enjoy a greater variety of foods, more dietary freedom, greater dietary leniency, etc. long-term.
I'm not entirely sold on the fact that omega 6 and fructose restriction is highly necessary either if the fructose is coming from real fruit and the omega 6 from unadulterated, high-quality sources like raw nuts, or avocado, or extra virgin olive oil.
But I have had tremendous problems with fruit in my diet in the past, and even the king of fruit, Doug Graham, still acknowledges that fruit causes a heck of a lot of problems on a high-fat diet. Likewise, eating a very low-PUFA diet makes fructose more tolerable – or at least that has occurred in me over the past year.
But hey, I'm eating tons of fruit now, which, as part of a low-PUFA, moderate fat, high-exercise regimen seems to not only be acceptable, but preferable like JT has noted. Physical performance is certainly heightened with fruit sugars.
Anyway, just think of RRARF like you would the milk diet or a cleanse. It's temporary. A specific strategy. Something you do to heal before getting back to your enjoyable and less restrictive life.
Thanks Matt,
I get that RRARF is temporary, and I'm also not sold on the idea that high quality sources of 06 or fructose are bad. Glad to hear your research hasn't led to a conclusive indictment.
I guess my question from way up above was: after a month or RRARF, what next? My temps aren't very high, and I've stopped actively overfeeding. Now what? Is a movement program appropriate, and if so, under what conditions? I hear jpatti saying- chill, don't exercise, just heal up. Ok- but how if someone's trying to do a food-based RRARF style recovery and isn't on hormone therapy? Do I continue to take it easy and not exercise, and just eat to appetite, maybe waiting to see if temps continue to rise? Do I start moving around more? Do I wait until I spontaneously desire more than anything to move? Or do I rally the troops like JT talks about, get myself motivated to do a routine, in the hopes that that can move along the recuperation, maybe kick-start it even. A part of me wants to move, but I also fear digging myself in deeper if I do, and so I find myself uncertain of the next steps.
Matt,
I agree with you completely on that. If someone has been tearing themselves down with to much exercise and not eating enough, then being sedentary for a while would be a good idea. On the other hand if someone has been sedentary for the past couple of years and eating wrong, then it would be good to fix this imbalance by becoming more active.
I view it from an Ayurvedic perspective. It is all about balancing the system.
Rob-
Every person is in a different metabolic state, with a different history and a different set of individual circumstances. It's always tough to dish out a "do this, don't do that," even if one did have every last detail to base recommendations on.
My inclination is always to obey the needs and cries of your body as much as possible. It is usually the most likely to be right. But I think being able to eat a mixed diet to appetite while sedentary, with strong temps and a complete cessation of fat gain is an important prerequisitve for pursuing any dietary trickery or substantial exercise program (by that I mean hard training with goals like muscle growth or increased performance in mind).
Movement helps circulation, which is really important for good health. If you have fatigue or adrenal issues, you can just start with 5 minutes or so of a type of exercise that increases circulation such as yoga or y-dan. Even short walks can be good to get your blood moving. And as someone else said, if you are too tired to do any of those, do deep breathing. I think, in other words, whatever you can wisely and comfortably do, do it.
Fair enough, Matt. That makes sense. I don't like to put folks on the spot asking detailed questions with litttle relevence to anyone else, but it seems I've gone and done it. Appreciate the help you're able to offer. Cheers, man.
Matt,
Speaking of obeying "the needs and cries of your body as much as possible," have you ever read either The Yoga Of Eating or Transformational Weight Loss by Charles Eisenstein? Both of those books are 100% about getting into harmony with your body with regards to diet and eating. You can read the Transformational Weight Loss book online either free or for a donation, here:
http://www.foodsanity.com/
I think this aspect of health, both in general and in regards to diet, is not emphasized enough, even here on your blog. You mention it often in the comments, but damn it needs to be front and centre like all the time.
I say that because in my case I calorie-restricted myself all my life without even knowing it, and it was only with some reflection on my part that I realized it.
As a kid I was always hassled by my parents about eating: "You'll ruin your appetite!" "But you just ate!" "You must have a hollow leg!" "But I just made you a sandwich!" I mean, I heard that stuff all the time.
In my mind I had always consciously rejected those comments, but I guess I adapted to it anyway subconsciously because it wasn't until, in the aftermath of a health breakdown about a year ago at age 28, while reading your blog and really thinking about HED/RRARF and starvation studies that I realized that I wasn't really ever eating to appetite at all.
It used to be like I'd be hungry all the time, but until my hunger reached a certain threshold I wouldn't think about it or do anything about getting food to eat. The result of that was I slowly semi-starved myself to a minor degree for years, which in part contributed to all kinds of symptoms that slowly increased over the years. Things are feeling much better now that I keep my mind on getting something to eat even when I'm "just" a little hungry.
The point of all this is that not only is obeying your body important, but even when people read about obeying their body and not fighting it, they may not realize what they're actually doing to themselves. I sure didn't realize it for a long time.
Rob, while temp stability is an indicator of adrenal stability, and temps being high enough is an indicator of thyroid health, these are not the *only* things that can give you wonky temps.
But since your temps are unstable, I highly recommend doing a 4x (or more) diurnal salivary test to be sure. Cheapest way I know to do it is through canaryclub.org
I don't want to give anyone the idea I'm anti-exercise, not at all. When we feel well, we want to exercise, it's natural. It feels good to move when we're healthy! And when you're strong and healthy, you can get away with pushing past your natural desire for exercise to some degree.
But… I'm a Type A personality and find it really EASY to just "decide" I'm going to do something like exercise or iet and then push myself to a ridiculous degree. It's actually a very common type of personality for those with adrenal problems, the very fact that we are this way makes us high cortisol until we burn ourselves out and wind up low cortisol.
RRARFing makes sense as a tool to me also, for the exact same reasons you said. When I started treating adrenals and thyroid, I got lax on my diet and started cheating a lot.
When I found the idea of this, eat starch and just worry about limiting fructose and PUFAs, that "fit" for me. Somehow, not "cheating" and just having this general idea of I can eat carbs has made it really easy to avoid sugar itself, so I'm both not beating myself up as much and eating better. Too early to tell what will happen with the diabetes, but so far, I'm feeling pretty well.
Heck, maybe it's not the biochemistry at all, maybe it's just not beating yourself up over wanting some potatoes or rice. Maybe the MENTAL health of not being on a limiting diet is the benefit. Maybe it's all placebo, but I'll take that as long as I keep getting better. ;)
Sausage and eggs are good. Watermelon is good too, it's a relatively low-sugar fruit, I ate it in one cup portions even on low carb. It's mostly water, that's how it got it's name, ya know.
One of my own concerns about the anti-fructose business is people thinking fruit is bad. Fruit has lots of lovely micronutrients in it. On low carb, I stuck mostly to melons, berries, kiwis, all of which are relatively low-sugar fruits. Not caring so much about low carb, I'm back to citrus, peaches and apples too. These are not in the same league as candy bars, cakes, doughnuts, etc… piles of sugar without any nutritional value. Fruit is a good food, unless you go MASSIVELY overboard and become a fruitarian or something ridiculous.
IMO, fructose became a problem when we started eating sugar and a bigger problem when we began eating HFCS. Nobody ever got the problems we discuss here back when the primary source of fructose in the diet was fruit in season.
I think in the spirit of RRARF, we're not trying to avoid every molecule of PUFA, but just not use the nasty vegetable oils, stick mostly to fat from meat, dairy, coconut oil, butter, and yes, I love olive oil for some things (which is mostly mono, not polyunsaturated).
I also feel very strongly that when we're healthy, it will all work itself out. I remember being a small child and running for the JOY of it, no idea of it being exercised, running just FELT good.
And I remember not eating much at many meals and snacks cause I just wasn't hungry. And actually, that has happened to me to a large degree on thyroid meds also once my temps got up – not trying to limit myself, but just… not being interested in eating as much as I used to.
I think when we get well, it stops being a struggle.
Matt,
What do you think of alternative medicine techniques for healing, like applied kinesiology, acupuncture, color therapy, cold therapy, low laser therapy, homeopathy, etc. Acupuncture's been around for three thousand years, so it must have some effect, right? Not sure if I asked about applied kinesiology before. Is this stuff pseudoscience or not, and if so, how do we know for certain it doesn't work? All of these techniques seem to be practiced by many chiropractors.
jpatti-
Can you send me an email? I am interested in the Yahoo group. I am a candidate for adrenal fatigue and am interested in whatever support/supplementation will help me recover. One of your earlier comments caught my attention:
"When depressed, you have no motivation. If a friend comes over and drags you out to party one night, you can do it. You just need someone else to provide the motivation cause you've got none. Fatigue is the exact opposite, you have lots you want to do, and you CAN'T. If you push yourself and do it anyways, you wind up having to recover. Very few doctors can distinguish between these, Dr Myhill being one who does "get" it to some degree."
The fatigue condition sounds exactly like what I'm experiencing. I'm already supplementing with Vitamin C (with bioflavinoids), Magnesium, and Brewer's Yeast. I want to know what tests I should consider doing, what other supplements/herbs I may need, your thoughts on RRARF and exercise/no-exercise, and possibly finding a good doctor.
Thanks,
AaronF
Email
The fruit discussion here is endless. I don't think fruit is bad, even though I don't eat lots of it myself. I seem to do better without it. I limit myself to a few pieces of fresh fruit per week. When I was using fruit as a sweetner (before just giving up sweeteners) I was cooking it and concentrating the fructose. This was adding to my problems, I think. Fruit juice is similar, even the fresh squeezed gets to be a lot of fructose really fast. It takes half a dozen oranges to make a small glass of orange juice, etc. Fruit is good for you, but we should be able to go weeks without eating any and not see any negative effect. If fruit is messing with your ability to heal, than a fructose fast for a few weeks can be very effective. I know it helped me get off my allergy meds, so I'm all for a fructose fast, used as a tool, in the way you'd use overfeeding.
Thanks for the comment Samuel. I'll keep that in mind. After all, obeying your body and treating it really well was the foundation of 180D. I only go on big tangents because I'm a big nerd.
Betsy-
I recommend no-sugar because I've seen, like Jenny points out, that going no sugar for an extended period has unique healing properties.
I also don't believe that eating a lot of fruit, per se, is a negative. I've also had unique healing effects from eating mostly fruit for extended periods of time, including a huge drop in allergies similar to what Jenny reports from eating fruit-free.
Fruitarianism may be a net negative if continued for so long that it creates imbalances, but that doesn't mean that the fruit cult is totally whacked, or that some of their ideas aren't applicable in some circumstances.
But like I said in my last comment, there are always many factors to take into consideration. Fruit in a mixed diet gave me a lot more problems 3 years ago than it does now. Fruit on a low-carb diet was the worst possible combination. Doug Graham has testimonial after testimonial in his 80-10-10 book about people who developed candida, tooth problems, weight problems, blood sugar problems, acne, and on and on and on from eating fruit with a high-fat diet.
Removing fat, and eating sufficient calories, reliably eradicated all of that. My experiences with it are identical.
Matt, I've read the 80-10-10 book a while ago. I think it is good that he emphasizes getting enough calories, but who wants to be a fruitarian for the rest of their life? He's a bit of a nut and his evolutionary theories are questionable.
I think the problems that people run into come more from combining lots of fruits with PUFA, which interferes with sugar metabolism. Raw foodies eat a ton of nuts and can consume a huge amount of PUFA, which would explain the problems. I don't think fruits with meat/dairy will cause the same issues. The good man Peat doesn't see any problem with it. But raw vegans will not consume any of these dead and cruelty-filled foods.
I like to have a meal of fruit, cheese and honey. Tastes great and I feel great afterward. Fruit alone just doesn't do it.
Thanks Brian. I agree. I'm not saying we should be vegans, or that Graham isn't a crackhead, or that some of his theories are embarrasingly dumb.
I write about this very same topic in the post I'm about to put up in the next half hour.
I also think that a fruitarian diet is extremely dangerous if continued for too long – decreasing your ability to digest and metabolize a mixed diet if you ever decide to return from monkey chow and become a member of society again.
People here might be interested in the most recent post on cheeseslave: http://www.cheeseslave.com/2010/06/15/a-weekend-with-julia-ross-author-of-the-mood-cure/ It's about Julia Ross' mood cure. Matt, what do you think about this?
Eating fruit with fat removed removed from diet, we are talking lowering PUFA's or going low fat altogether (SAT, MUFA, PUFA)?
Off topic here, when I started RRARF'in after a year of low-carbing my 1hr PP BG was 120-130. I don't test often anymore, but last night it was down to 97.2. This was after a typical large meal of 1.5 pounds potatoes, ground beef and 1/2 quart raw milk. So down about 30 points over 8 months.
Morning basal temps are still low but very stable at 97.3 everyday, still very slowly responding. Been thinking I will try a 4x cortisol test to see how the adrenals are, then following up with my doc to test thyroid. Appreciate the posts that jpatti has added about this.
I think Julia Ross is okay. Most of her miracles can be achieved by eating the hell out of some food though – undereating and restricted dieting being primary causes of caffeine addiction, low serotonin, beta endorphin downregulation, and so on.
Undertow-
Just posted on this. Awesome results on your blood glucose readings. That's exactly the kind of results I'm after, and people who think that eating a high-fat/high-carb/high-calorie diet while sedentary increases insulin resistance are wrong. My own personal postprandial BG's are friggin' ridiculous. I ate 300 grams of carbs in one sitting this morning with a 1-hour postprandial in the double digits (barely – 99).
Don't let the above comments or today's most recent post confuse you. The goal here is generally to be able to eat a mixed, satisfying diet with both lots of fats and carbs and metabolize and digest it optimally – and any dietary restriction tends to work against achieving that goal.
My pursuits with lowering fat intake are mostly for increasing athletic performance.
@Anonymous,
I read the post about Julia Ross and it gave me the willies a bit. It sounded a lot like amino acids were getting fetishized as a miracle cure. I'm really not sure about giving 5-HTP to children with abandon for instance. Don't you want their brains and bodies to get balanced naturally, without a lot of supplementation?
I do think there is a place for thoughtful and specific application of amino acids to treat legitimate conditions though. I took them willy-nilly for years because my doctor liked to suggest them, but until I really understood what was going on in my own body, did I understand what I should and shouldn't be taking. I think in the past I could have easily done more harm than good thinking I should just pop them all. Now I know that it can counter-intuitive what you should and shouldn't take at certain times.
I had my neurotransmitters tested with my adrenal function recently. I'm not sure if those tests are considered very accurate, but I showed high GABA, serotonin, etc. but was still prescribed 5-HTP temporarily to address stress and help sleep.
I do like a lot of Ross's message however – getting off caffeine, eating regular meals with protein, etc. All good stuff.
JT – I've seen you mention Ayurveda a couple of times, and I agree that it has a lot of wisdom to offer. The three "doshas" are like metabolic types, aren't they? Personally I'm a classic Kapha and I find that all the recommended Kapha foods are the ones I naturally like, and the foods bad for Kapha are generally the ones that give me trouble. Macrobiotics has some sound principles as well, before it became associated with soy-and-vegetable starvation dieting. I read a quote from one of the Macrobiotics founders that could have been taken from 180 Degree Health – it was something along the lines of "Our true goal is to be able to eat anything and remain healthy".
Samuel – I second your endorsement of The Yoga of Eating. Thanks for the link, I'll check out his new book.
Gazelle-
5-HTP is not just an amino acid, but an pretty psychoactive form of tryptophan, which has drug-like properties.
Yeah, alcohol makes you happy and helps you fall asleep too. Wee, let's give it to our kids!
Daisy,
The ayurvedic concept of the 3 doshas is similar to metabolic typing but not identical. Most of the modern typing was heavily influenced by ayurveda.
Matt,
Please check out Ori Hofmekler and his warrior diet, it is very much in line with what you are writing here.
Matt and Everyone else.
I have been doing HED for about a month and a half. My Body Temp was 97.2 in the morning and 97.6 around 4pm now it is 98.1 in the morning and 98.5 around 4pm. I have been as high as 98.8 after a nice meal. I gained a total of 5lbs from 242-247 lbs. I feel like I have restored my metabolism. I would really like to do Carb Cycling. I was planning on going Mon-Thursday without Starch or Fruit and then adding Starch and Fruit back on Friday-Sunday. Does that sound like a good idea? Is there a problem with having 4 low carb days in a row? I dont want to do anything to hurt my metabolism.
BobbyO
BobbyO-
Carb cycling is not for pussies. It may sound good in theory, but it isn't always a happily-ever-after. Some people really feel lousy with carb cycling, myself included.
Having said that, you'd probably do best following a very structured carb cycling program for losing body fat. Berkhan's Leangains program, Rob Faigan, or Jay Robb might suit you well.
Robb doesn't go more than 2 meals without a refeed. Faigan, from what I understand, goes 2-3 days low-carb before re-feeds.
But I've also had some people succeed by eating low-moderate in carbs all week long and then have a huge carb day on Saturday or Sunday – mostly fruit, but also some mixed meals, juices, and desserts.
What exercise are you planning on throwing in there?
I also wouldn't do 4 days and then 3 days. Carb cycling is usually built around doing low-carb most of the time with single high-carb meals once every day, once every 3 days, or full-out carb days once every 3 days.
However, if you do a big weightlifting session right before your carb refeed, followed by another right before you come out of your carb refeed, you may do quite well. This is very similar to the ideas governing Lyle McDonald's Ultimate Diet 2.0.
Matt,
Thanks for the response. I plan on lifting 3 days a week and walking for an hour on the alternate 3 days and playing basketball 1 day out of the week. I used to be a college football player…when I graduated in 2006 I quickly went from 300lbs to 227lbs in less than 5 months…I believe this really messed up my metabolism. At the moment I am 6ft 245lbs at about 19% body fat. My goal is to reach 200 lbs by the end of the year. Is that goal too lofty? Is there a better plan that carb cycling? I remember you saying it is not good to be in a calorie deficit on high carb, so that is why I am considering cycling. I will look into the resources that you gave me.
BobbyO
Wow, it's taken me 30 minutes to get through the comments.
I've been trying hard to do rrarf, or at least HED for about two months I think. I've gained about 15lbs I think, and for someone who was pushing 250lbs that's scary. My temps are getting higher, but some days are low still. I am like Matt, I feel hot, but the core temp is low. One thing I've noticed is that I am missing and wanting to exercise. This is great because I haven't consistently exercised since I was in highschool, 10 years ago.
So, what if while doing the rest, refeeding and rehabilitation program I have a hard time kicking caffeine and sugar? ( you know, like when the baby decides to be awake from 2-4 am, then you don't get to sleep till 5am, then you have to get up by 7am because all of the other children are up, like today?)
And I'm feeling pretty nervous about the weight gain…can someone calm my fears??
One more thing, my husband has ALWAYS been very underweight. (how's that for opposites in attraction, 29 year old, 5'7 130lb male falls for 5'10 200lb 18 year old girl, this was 9 years ago)No one could understand HOW he could eat so much food and be so thin. Well, now that we've been eating more, an he has had a lot more stress, he has a belly. Like, love handles. I can't believe it! I'm not sure if it's just added stress or added food though…
Jessica
Matt I would like your opinion on whether or not drinking a quart of raw jersey milk from a mainly grass fed with some grain fed cow would be detrimental to my health I eat a very clean diet and limit my omega 6 to this alone. I also would greatly appreciate any info on healing the body after recovering from a 15 year struggle with bulimia. Do you have an opinion on Byron Richards Leptin Diet? I love your blog it a breath of fresh air and honestly examines the good and the bad of the array of diets in the alt health arena. Thanks Rose
Can anyone point me to any research on adrenal fatigue? I've been told information that conflicts with what I've heard here that there is no good evidence that prolonged carbohydrate restriction results in any adrenal gland problems. Is there some research that you have in mind when you make this claim? I'd like to read that research.
@Matt: I didn't realize there were second pages to the comments, and just found this page.
I guess I was doing the worst thing possible making kefir with full fat milk and then adding fruit and sugar. It gave me more energy than milk, which made me need two or three naps a day, and at first it made me look better, too, but after 4 weeks, my face was puffy and I was getting other issues not even worth mentioning here. Well, when I quit the kefir, I quit the sugar. Now I do eat fruit, but I still do eat some coconut oil with it. I will have to think about what you said again tomorrow morning; is there a possiblity that coconut oil mixes okay with fruit? And that olive oil mixes okay with potatoes and pasta and tomatoes?
Thanks for your input. I don't know how you keep up with everything and everybody.
Matt, the only hard evidence that you site in this post is the starvation study. That is not necessarily applicable to low-carbers who are eating maintenance levels of calories. The fact that insulin levels and adrenaline levels tend to have an inverse relationship in no way implies that extended low-carb has a similar effect to starvation. Are there any studies on adrenaline receptor regulation on low-carb? Are there any studies on serum adrenaline levels on low-carb? Are there any studies that show damage to or insufficient output from the adrenal glands on extended low carb?
Rose-
I think the Jersey milk is probably great, but don't force it if it doesn't make you feel well.
Jessica-
I think what RRARF allows people to do is reset their ability to lose weight. Almost everyone loses weight easily the first time they try to lose weight with calorie restriction. However, they do it in a way that is not metabolically-sound, and gain all the weight back. Next go around is even tougher. The body becomes increasingly resistant to weight loss the more you try it. This recovery period I think will allow a lot of people to lose weight without plateau, and I'm excited to put out some good information on that this summer. Stay tuned.
Taylor-
It's simple physiological fact what happens to adrenals/insulin on restricted diets vs. overfeeding. That is not in question.
I am not aware of any studies, but am doing the best I can to try to understand and explain why people experience what they experience on a low-carb diet (typically, not in every case).
I want to know why my allergies and asthma got better, and then got worse. I want to know why Aurora's allergies and asthma got better, and then she developed an autoimmune disease and deadly food allergies on low-carb. I want to know why I felt amazing mentally the first few months on low-carb, and then later turned psychotic. I want to know why I lost fat and never was hungry, then gained fat and was never satisfied.
All of these point to an adrenal honeymoon of sorts.
That and the fact that I could never sleep on a low-carb diet, which is a very common reaction to it, among other things.
I think it's pretty clear the adrenals are involved, and why wouldn't they be knowing that adrenal output is increased when the carbohydrate content of the diet is dropped?
Whether they develop "fatigue" from all this work or whether or not the receptor cites downregulate is more speculation in an attempt to explain all this.
Well then I guess the question is : does a low-carb diet (maintenance calories) bring adrenaline levels up to a more normal evolutionary level as insulin falls or does it cause adrenaline levels to rise above a normal evolutionary level to an unhealthily high level? Everyone's favorite starch-eating hunter gatherers, the Kitavans, have insulin levels below those of modern western peoples. Stephan's blog post of August 17, 2008 talked about this (http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/08/cardiovascular-risk-factors-on-kitava_17.html). This must mean that they have higher adrenaline levels than modern western peoples (at least if the relationship between insulin and adrenaline retains). Maybe, just maybe, it is overeating of any and all macro-nutrients that raises insulin too high and lowers adrenaline to low. Maybe it is under-cosnsumption of calories in general regardless of macro-nutrient composition that causes adrenaline levels to rise to unhealthily high levels. I don't know how many calories you were consumsing when you had problems on low-carb.
Perhaps anyone wanting to lose body fat will need to have adrenaline levels higher than a typical modern westerner. I think it would be good to establish some desirable level of adrenaline so that low-carbers could monitor it to see if it is getting too high.
One thing is for sure, reducing carbohydrates in the diet increases the demand for adrenal hormones. For many, this will be undesirable.
When I was on low-carb I made a conscious effort to eat a lot. Although I didn't track daily, short tracking revealed that I was just under 4,000 calories per day with moderate to high physical activity by modern standards.
When I first ran into problems, I was easily at 5,000 calories per day while doing a very high level of physical activity by anyone's standards.
Perhaps the Kitavans do have higher adrenal output. But perhaps this higher output is because they are well-nourished. Their anti-inflammatory diet could insure that they do not eat more calories than they burn through metabolic activity and exercise as well (leptin sensitivity).
But one thing is for certain, this body weight maintenance is automatic, not an act of will or discipline.
I do believe that low-carb can have a place in weight loss. It must be used shrewdly though. Get the weight off, and once it is off, stop low-carbing and keep the weight off. It's, for most in the words of Low Carb Confidential – "a one-shot deal."
Matt, the adrenal honeymoon from low carb is explained by Haig in his books about uric acid. If you look through the index, you will find asthma, sleeplessness, mental issues, autoimmunity(if you look at it as toxicity of microbes), I think allergies, too. The honeymoon period is when everytime you take in some uric acid, it clears the blood of whatever uric acid is in it at the moment and causes it to be deposited somewhere, anywhere, in the body. That would improve ones circulation and make one feel mentally alert, be able to breath better, improve one's vision temporarily, more energy, etc. But then the uric acid comes back and makes everything much worse. So since the low carb diet consists of mucho high purine foods, and the uric acid in the high purine foods is making the blood more and more acid all the time, as time goes on, less and less uric acid will be excreted from the body, more and more will exponentially be deposited, and problems will only get worse. Since uric acid is cleaned out of the blood in the kidneys, they of course tend to be a very common place for buildup to occur. And since the adrenals sit on the kidneys, anything that affects the kidneys, affects the adrenals. But also, I have read elsewhere that when the body is under stress, the adrenals secrete more uric acid. I haven't come to terms yet about what that could possibly mean in the whole picture. But another thing that may tie in is that uric acid holds onto microbes(everyone knows that an acid blood makes you more prone to diseases of all kinds), and the Th1 branch of the immune system is responsible for dealing with the microbes. If at the same time, the adrenals(Th2 branch of the immune system) are being stressed trying to keep the blood sugar up due to not enough carb intake, the body will spend a lot of it's energy on that, and the Th1 system will not do a good job at cleaning up the microbes. But also the adrenals (Th2 branch, deals with allergies) will get overexcited making allergies worse. So you end up with both branches of your immune system underfunctioning, a ton of uric acid deposited in your tissue, and whenever the environment is conducive to uric acid coming back into solution, you will have an overload that can do a lot of harm. Eye diseases, if you google a specific eye disease + uric acid, you will usually find that someone has done a study and found that there is uric acid involved. So many things….I can't explain it very well; it takes pages and pages; but Haig's books are a good start on the topic. If I accidentally misrepresented any of the facts, please excuse me, still learning.
"But one thing is for certain, this body weight maintenance is automatic, not an act of will or discipline."
Not only that but that guy in the picture is diesel and I'm pretty sure he doesn't 'work out'.
Thanks Betsy. Excited to get to Haig. This would also help explain why I kept getting gastrointestinal infection in the latter days of low-carb as well.
A lot of guys that get to be that size and refinement, to hulk levels or even to looking like Mens Fitness magazine cover levels, alot of times can just be competitive with themselves and want to be the best they can be. I won't lie, there are lots of immature guys that might do it for other reasons. And there are lots of immature women that look to build a good looking physique for very immature reasons. Most guys that get to be that size were previously athletes or had been athletic all their lives so it's natural to them. Others might do it for modeling or preforming arts. There are those guys that are overcompensating for something. IMO, I'm a medium height of 5'9" and from my personal perspective it's actually been the shorter and taller guys that usually overcompensate for something.
–(My theory with men and muscles is that they do it for other men. It's not that they're gay, but that they want to improve their place in the pecking order among their gender. This may have an indirect effect on women who tend to go for the alpha male. (Women also tend to pick men who are taller). Women use clothing to the same effect. Most women dress to improve their status among their gender. If they happen to attract a male by being well-dressed it is usually an indirect effect (greater confidence, etc.)–
Though attracting better status would be another goal men and women have when developing more attractive physiques or dressing nice. That's really apart of having good self image. Though I personally wouldn't find greater confidence from being in a more higher pecking order than the dumb guys I have been around. I can sort of see myself being that way around a more intelligent person but I don't ever meet people like that where I live and the places I've hanged around. I see more intelligent people online, rarely in person.
Getting up to 300 pounds isn't for everyone. Not many people choose to do it. The ones that are muscular at that weight do it for their career. A couple examples are Brock Lesner, footbal players, and bodybuilders such as Jay Cutler. Jay Cutler is 5'9" and IMO the top bodybuilder out their. Mike Tyson was shorter, 5'11, and competed at 220 pounds and in his prime was unstoppable. He keeps getting into legal trouble and losing lots of money and yet after all that loss he still has millions of dollars. If he needs more he just competes in a match where he might even lose. Because of his reputation he gets payed millions for just one match. That beats people that work full time and write books to max out at best with $200,000 a year income. Most people don't even come close to that, only making $20,000 to $80,000 a year. It's a dog eat dog world and most people don't care about you. It's great to be ahead with the income and have the type of freedom you can earn with that money.
I'd like a girl that is beautiful inside and out. She can talk anything out with me and reason things out. She doesn't play games and doesn't let her friends think for her. She's not a slave to her parents. No drama. We should resolve an issue with a person, even if they were in the wrong we should still work to understand why they made that choice in wording. High heels are attractive but I'd rather someone that doesn't take an hour to go anywhere except on special occasions when it's necessary. As far as fitness goes, a blend of proportionate body fat and muscle for health and looks reasons. They if she were just naturally beautiful without the weights that would be fine too. As far as health is concerned it would be a bigger concern as it affects her mental attitude, her daily responsibilities, her ability to enjoy various activities and occasions, and her long term health. There's a lot concerning health psychologically, diet wise, and physically. I'm surprised your lists were as short as they were. You're probably better at wrapping comments up than I am. I'm a little late for this thread but I thought I'd add in my input too.
It's difficult to describe what you want in a women. It's easier to walk around in a mall or a public place and just point out the women you're interested in pursuing a relationship with. It's almost impossible to make an online list as when you meet someone you love they may not fit the requirements you had put down on a list. I am a strong believer in standards and it almost seems like they were imprinted in me before birth, as I just know something's good when I see it and I know when something is garbage. Though sometimes it's almost as if you don't have a choice with who you actually want to interact with.
That's a dumb stereotype to say muscular men and highly physically attractive women only go for one night stands. Younger adults in general would go for one night stands because they don't have anything figured out and they can't commit to anything. Nor do they want to commit to someone that has no plans for the future even if they themselves have something planned for the future. They may be going to college and haven't had a women or man that fits their specific needs in a relationship. It would make more sense that good looking men with muscular bodies and confidence avoid less attractive women without confidence and a plethora of comfort zones. They may find someone to commit with, but the women would be outgoing, takes care of their health and their bodies, fun, expressive, has a beautiful personality, intelligent, and puts herself in what others consider uncomfortable situations. She doesn't necessarily have to be muscular nor does he, but their active in different ways such as hiking, bike riding, going out to places, sociable, and/or just having fun. The kind of men and women that don't match these descriptions are what I would term weirdos or low energy people and are very off putting.
There are men and women that lack some of these qualities, are muscular and good looking who only go for one night stands but that's not all muscular attractive men and women.
Of course I would stay committed to that beautiful women, even if she doesn't know where she wants to take her college experience, and love her faithfully if she is loyal.
Matt,you mentioned stimulants.
Ephedrine? Wait; Matt, could you be implying that 9 years of Ephedrine was somehow bad for my adrenals? Oh Sh**…felt good at the time, no hunger,eat just about anything i wanted(once a day a'la "warrior") and not gain a pound, my workouts were powerful. I would do interval workouts until a strange "ammonia" like smell would come from my breath.
then about 2 years ago, everything just STOPPED. woke up one morning with a pain in my back which later tuned out to be reflux disease, and have since been plagued with multiple symptoms that are SO all over the map…so much so that docs think it's "all in my head" this has been going on for 2 years solid…I'M BEGINNING TO BUY INTO THIS ADRENAL FATIGUE THING, though mention it to a doctor, and their eyes glaze over. it's frustrating. What i would do just to feel normal and pain free again. I'm going to br looking into having my free Testosterone levels checked as well since i seem to b experiencing "andropause" like symptoms. bottom line, my endocrine system is jacked, and I'm just trying to find my way back. thanks to you, I'm looking at possible solutions i would have otherwise never considered. thanks
Good luck Chris. When doctors are baffled it often is due to adrenal fatigue and/or adrenergic receptor downregulation.
We're all pulling for ya.
OK now I am really confused. I haven't made it through the e-book yet, so maybe some of this will clear up then. I have severely exhausted adrenal hormones (cortisol that is) along with severe chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, etc. and my dr. who specializes in adrenal issues told me to go off grains completely. So I think I am seeing how this might help my cortisol levels to come up right? But is this actually going to exhaust my adrenals further in the long run?? The thing is, I don't feel any less fatigue eating like this. I do feel a little more alert, but doing low carb has not made me feel any better. Am I already too depleted?
…Confused but hoping to somehow improve the mess of health I'm in.
Natalie-
I think that's an overly simplistic way to look at things. Your adrenal output is probably low because your adrenals are somehow burnt out or undernourished. Doing a bunch of things to stimulate more adrenal production only makes the problem worse, even if it makes you feel better. Amphetamine is probably the most efficient way to raise adrenal hormones, but is that really the proper medicine to heal the condition? Hell no, even if it makes you feel awesome.
That's the primary problem with how Western Medicine looks at health problems. When you make symptoms go away with artificial forms of stimulation (drugs) the root problem tends to get worse, or yield a new set of ailments.
Thanks for the response Matt. Yeah my adrenals have been fried so I guess I gotta let them rest. I totally agree with what you said about Western Medicine. Although if amphetamines made me feel good for once, I want them! Just kidding.
Matt, Is it possible that now that I have none of my 'crutches", meaning caffeine, chocolate, cacao, larabars, dates, fruit etc.. that my true demon is adrenal fatigue? After two weeks off all my "drugs" I feel sort of worse.. really tired, really cranky, just blah. I do my exercise and do fine.. but the rest of the day is super hard to get through.
My temps are up.
Can it be that my leukemia and/or menopause is falsely elevating my temps? Cuz no weight is coming off at all nor inches.
Help me, I'm literally melting…..brain/energy wise.
deb
Matt,
Any chance that intermittent fasting reduces catecholamines?
I just found this article on ajcn.org with full free text available:
A controlled trial of reduced meal frequency without caloric restriction in healthy, normal-weight, middle-aged adults
The 1-meal/day significantly reduced their Cortisol and it was about half of the 3-meal/day.
I would love your take on this as I know you have a lot of research into this stuff and I value your opinion.
link to the table: http://www.ajcn.org/content/85/4/981/T4.expansion.html
Interesting Seand,
Cortisol is an adrenal hormone but not necessarily equated with epinephrine and norepinephrine. It's interesting that it was NOT calrorie restricted, as I'm sure that made some difference.
But the other material I've come across seems to always suggest that higher meal frequencies keep cortisol lower vs. larger meal spacing.
Not sure how to reconcile that, but it's interesting and I appreciate you passing it along.
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?'Stress and poorer metabolic health (greater adiposity, insulin resistance, and
cortisol) correlate with shorter telomeres' too
"Dietary restriction," as typically assessed by selfreport,
is associated with dysregulated patterns of eating (fasting,
bingeing, and purging) (45). Frequent missed meals followed by
overeating, may cause some ?metabolic strain,? in the form of
more frequent and greater fluctuations in insulin and glucose
levels, and such exposure is hypothesized to accelerate telomeric
loss (46).
–
http://is.gd/ovuURz
'dietary restraint.pdf'
DR =dietary restraint; BMI
TL = telomere
length;
One might wonder how these findings are related to the
literature on caloric restriction. In animal studies, caloric restriction
enhances longevity, and delays the onset of the diseases of
aging (37?39). Caloric restriction may have similar effects on
promoting longevity in humans, in that it improves biomarkers
that predict longevity (39?42). The relationship between TL and
caloric restriction has not been studied in humans. Caloric restriction
may promote TL maintenance by increasing insulin
sensitivity, which has been linked to longer telomeres (43). On
superficial examination, our results might appear to contradict the
hypothesis that caloric restriction slows aging and telomere shortening
in humans. However, caloric intake is not strongly related
to DR. Self-reported DR assesses only the intention to reduce
caloric intake, not actual restrictive behavior; DR is not consistently
associated with weight loss or caloric intake (2,4 ?7,20,44).
Rather, it appears to be related to eating less in controlled conditions,
and overeating when self-control is challenged, especially
if one scores high on the tendency to overeat in response to
food cues or emotions (20).
The distinction between unhealthy and ineffectual attempts at
weight loss, which are frequently reported by chronic dieters, and
successful DR induced by behavioral interventions, which increase
well-being and aid weight loss (6), is important for interpreting
our results. We propose that behaviorally successful DR,
and the consequent decreases in habitual caloric intake, lower
glucose and insulin levels, distress, and therefore should slow rate
of telomeric loss. Free (unrestrained) eaters tend to eat meals
more regularly. Conversely, DR, as typically assessed by selfreport,
is associated with dysregulated patterns of eating (fasting,
bingeing, and purging) (45). Frequent missed meals followed by
overeating, may cause some ?metabolic strain,? in the form of
more frequent and greater fluctuations in insulin and glucose
levels, and such exposure is hypothesized to accelerate telomeric
loss (46). These findings therefore call for assessment of eating
behaviors in conjunction with self-reported DR, to distinguish
?healthy? DR from ?unhealthy? DR. Until this research is conducted,
we can only speculate about the mechanisms to explain
the relationship between self-reported DR and TL in humans.
Additional limitations of these studies include the small sample
sizes and exclusive focus on women. Further, in the first study, a
subset of the DEBQ was administered over the phone 18 months
after the other assessments. Despite these limitations, the results of
these two studies were consistent with each other and not explained
by obvious confounding factors, such as BMI, age, or reported
tendency to overeat in response to stimuli or emotions.
In conclusion, we find that self-reported DR is linked to shortened
telomeres. Given the replication across two samples, among
pre- and postmenopausal women, the relationship between DR and
TL appears to exist at least phenotypically. Findings from this
preliminary test of the hypothesis call for experimental and prospective
assessment of this relationship to determine if the relationship is
causal, and whether it is due to cognitive, behavioral, or physiological
pathways.
Wow. this is so interesting! I just came off of a ‘Paleo’ style diet and definitely gained fat after initially losing some of it (and I’m a small female with not much to lose, just a little “extra”) yeah, definitely gained fat.
It’s interesting that you posted about Lyle McDonald. I bought his book ‘Ultimate Diet 2’. Really neat information. Calorie counting takes a while and is kind of a LOT of trouble, anddd I think I only did his diet for two or three weeks….but man, my legs and arms started looking pretty ripped in that short amount of time.
Yeah, Lyle’s UD2 sounds awesome until you try it. Felt too miserable to make it to the 3rd day!
Dudes kidneys will be weakened in the years to come, and the acidic environment he’s creating on a continual basis will create more cholesterol and leach calcium and other minerals out of the bone to neutralize his pH. Guaranteed this dude has a hard life in his 50’s with a high carb and high protein diet.
Hey, I just happen to find your blog post and I love it! This is a great way of explaining why Leangains is so much more superior to the rest of the diets. It all comes down to body chemistry and how you utalize your hormones for maximum effect. There’s also a powerful testosterone and dopamine effect that goes along with it that helps people to reduce the risk of various mental problems as well. Thanks for the awesome post, I will reference it in my blog soon.
-Yossif
I just stumbled across this post and it opened my eyes to a few things. I’ve been recommending (I’m actually writing a book about it) a low carb, paleo-style approach with carb cycling depending on activity level. Martin Berkhan and Ori Hofmekler have had a big influence on me in this perspective. I recently got a question from a guy who didn’t have much success with fasting and I wasn’t sure what was the problem, but now I realize that important carb-cycling (refeeding) is just as important. Thanks for this post.
I discuss carb cycling, glycogen storage, fasting, and other things that could further improve your book and perspective on things in 12 Paleo Myths.
Yahoo’s approach turned out too be fully backwards.