I’ve had lots of people connecting with me who have also done a low carb diet, who are now extremely tired and can’t seem to eat carbs without them, as they put it, going straight to their waistline. So what exactly is going on? You do seem to be stuck in some kind of dietary hell. You know you can’t stay low carb because you have terrible symptoms (in my case it was anxiety, hair loss, insomnia, tiredness, feeling cold all the time, and generally feeling miserable) but the fear of weight gain is awful. Who wants to put weight on when we live in a culture that celebrates thinness? I certainly didn’t! It’s not just low carb diets that do this either, any kind of diet that is unsustainable will generally lead to some kind of weight gain eventually. Why is this? Mainstream advice for people who want to lose weight is always to eat less and move more, but is this really good advice? How many people do you know who have been on a diet, who are now happy with their size and just happy with life in general? Or are they miserable, hopping from one diet to another, losing weight and then gaining weight when one diet stops working? What about people who obsessively go to the gym (or zumba, or spinning, or whatever the latest trend is)? Do they suddenly get the physique they are after? Are they happy and bursting with energy? In my experience they are not. People on diets, who are exercising their lives away, are generally miserable and tired, and are constantly thinking about how they can lose the next/last x amount of pounds. We spend our lives chasing a ‘look’ that society tells us is acceptable. Doesn’t it seem just a little crazy that we should have to obsess so much about food and diets to get ‘healthy’? The word ‘healthy’ when connected with food can mean pretty much anything really depending on what crazy reports have just been released, i.e. egg scare, red meat scare, saturated fat scare, sugar scare, I mean really? What is there left for us to eat?
So, consider this statement that I have seen written in quite a few places lately…
You cannot lose weight to get healthy, you have to get healthy to lose weight.
So, consider this statement that I have seen written in quite a few places lately…
You cannot lose weight to get healthy, you have to get healthy to lose weight.
Two and a half years ago I had the body shape that society celebrates. I weighed 124 lbs and looked exactly like I thought I wanted to look. I also had no boobs, no booty and no periods! I can tell you that I was about as far from healthy as it is possible to get. When I started eating carbs again I put on a whopping 80 lbs in 5 months. To understand why you put on weight after a diet you need to understand what happens to your body when you go on a diet. You take in less food (calories) so your body immediately perceives a food shortage or a stress. One of the first things a body will do to compensate is to allocate less energy to staying warm. This is why many people feel the cold so badly. I hear many people complaining about our UK weather (not always that great but not really that cold either) and saying they have put the heating on in the summer! I used to be one of these people. We went on holiday to Tenerife (2 ½ years ago to celebrate my 40th birthday – just as my world fell apart) and I still had a cold nose! My feet were perpetually cold and I could not get them warm in bed! This signals a decrease in your metabolic rate which your body is lowering in response to being given less food.
The term ‘metabolism’ describes all chemical reactions involved in maintaining the living state of the cells and the organism. Keeping your metabolic rate high is one of the best things you can do for your health and will give you a normal body temperature of 98.6° F (37° C). Your body cannot keep your metabolic rate high if you are not giving it enough fuel (food) for energy production.
So you have started your diet (which ever one you picked – there’s enough to choose from!!) and initially it seems to be working. You step on the scales and you have lost weight. Hurrah! After a few weeks (or months – it will be different for everybody) the diet seems to stop working. Why? You’re still sticking to the diet so what is going on? Well, your body has now downgraded your metabolic rate to a rate consistent with the amount of food you are eating. Now if you want to lose more weight you will have to eat less food. Your metabolic rate declines further. You are so obsessed with losing weight that you miss other symptoms of your metabolic rate hitting the floor. Cold hands and feet are often one of the first signs, along with dry skin on hands and feet. You can also suffer hair loss, constipation, insomnia, loss of sex drive, mood swings and constant urination (these are some of the common signs but there are many ways a low metabolism can manifest itself). Some people on a diet will feel constantly hungry whereas others may totally lose their appetite, which is what happened to me. This is generally because stress hormones step in to save the day. Adrenaline can make you feel pretty darn good, which is why some people initially feel great on a diet. If you skip a meal your body will still need to get glucose from somewhere so that you don’t get hypoglycaemia. Your body does store some sugar in your liver and muscles as glycogen but these are quickly depleted if you are not eating enough fuel to replenish them. In order to get the glucose that your body desperately needs, your body will raise stress hormones to break down your own muscle tissue to make glucose. This is not a good state of affairs! Adrenaline is also an appetite suppressant so it will just perpetuate the cycle. You feel good when you skip meals so you carry on skipping them. This is a slippery slope! Stress hormones are only meant to be used to get you through brief periods of stress, not to carry you through life! Eventually they take their toll, like they did with me, and you are left thinking ‘what the hell has happened to my life’!
So we come to the time where we know we have to eat more food to get better and to get our bodies back into a healthy state. Unfortunately our metabolism is now in the gutter and it’s going to take a bit of time to put right. My first bit of advice would probably be… don’t do what I did! Lol! In my desperate attempt to get better quickly I upped my carbs and my calories immediately to a very high amount, and because I had no real urge to eat much real food I ate tons of crap in the mistaken belief that the calories alone would push my metabolism up. I completely disregarded (just didn’t think about) the fact we need plenty of vitamins and minerals to function well. Also, as your metabolism rises, your body will need more vitamins and minerals. To up your metabolism you need to eat more food and this is where the weight gain comes in. Possibly, if you increase your calorie levels slower than I did, and you include some real food with vitamins and minerals, you won’t gain as much weight as I did, but you should expect to gain some weight. Your body has been under the impression that you have been through a famine and now it’s going to store a level of fat that is appropriate to its environment (for a more detailed description of weight and set point theory you can read Billy’s blog article here http://www.billycraig.co.uk/blog/category/diets). According to Matt Stone in his ‘Diet Recovery 2’ book, this increase in body fat is important as it increases the hormone leptin, which then sends a signal to your brain that triggers a big rise in metabolic rate. Along with the fat gain, I also had a lot of water retention, which is taking a long time to go away! Although the other day I noticed that I can now kneel down. For over 2 years I haven’t been able to because of the amount of water retention in my legs! So it is slowly receding. Getting into water retention in more detail will take another blog post (!), but suffice to say that in a low metabolic state (hypothyroidism) carbon dioxide is deficient and salt is excessively excreted, and it’s likely that the cell will hold onto water, calcium and estrogen. All a bit technical I know, without a more detailed explanation, but I want this blog post to end sometime soon!! So to get rid of water retention you just have to raise your metabolic rate, which is what we want for our health anyway. Unfortunately there is no quick way to do this. I tried to up my calories too fast, without adequate vitamins and minerals and just ran into more problems! You’ve probably taken years to get your body into whatever state it is in now (I know I did the low carb thing for over 3 years) so it’s going to take months, maybe even years to put it completely right.
At this point people are generally saying ‘so what should I eat?’ Well this is the million dollar question! If I started laying down the law about what you should eat then I would be no better than 99.9% of the ‘health’ sites out there! It’s probably better that you don’t have a strict plan anyway. Stressing about your food is one of the worst things you can do. Try to relax and eat some ‘real’ foods. What do I mean by real? Foods that have good vitamin and mineral content, like potatoes! Ha… you knew I was going to mention potatoes first right? No, you don’t have to go out and buy potatoes if you don’t really like them, but yes they do contain a good portion of vitamins and minerals. Just eat a variety of foods and don’t stress over the odd crappy meal. Look at signs from your body that suggest you are on the right track. Are you sleeping better? Are you feeling happier? Sometimes, when you first start eating proper, regular meals you will feel worse. Yes, that’s right, you will gain weight and possibly feel worse! Ha, run away, fast!! I’m joking! The reason for this is that when you actually start to eat good, nourishing food again you switch your stress hormones off. Yes, that’s a good thing but then your body has to start functioning using your ‘in the basement’ metabolism, so give yourself a break. Try to get plenty of sleep (if you can – it took me a while to be able to sleep but you will get there) and relax. Be kind to yourself, you are not lazy, your body needs a chance to fix itself. If you rush off to the gym the minute you put some weight on then any extra energy will be going on that activity rather than fixing your body and raising your metabolism.
Yes, putting on weight can be depressing but after a while something miraculous begins to happen. You start to feel better, not just in your body but in your mind. You no longer care that you are ‘fat’ because you feel good, your moods are stable, and, dare we say it, you are happy!! I find that I am generally very silly now with my kids! We laugh… a LOT! I laugh even on my own! At myself! Ha…even writing that made me laugh! The freedom from worrying about your body size is incredible and I say that with a body size 18, having been an 8-10 all my life. Follow Facebook sites or read things that inspire you, not ones that big up dieting/celebrate thinness/do anything to add to your woes!! One of the ones I have followed for quite some time is Erin Brown (https://www.facebook.com/iamerinbrown?fref=ts). She used to be called Fit Mama Training, and yes I admit I initially started following her because she used to be bigger and she managed to get herself a nice figure. Gradually, though, I realised she stood for a lot more than that and her posts often bring a tear to my eye! She speaks out about, well, just about anything really and refuses to apologise for being big. If you are looking for female solidarity then Erin is it! I owe her a huge thank you for helping me realise it’s ok to be whoever you are, whatever your size.
The fact that I put on a lot of extra weight could also be down to the stress I was under in my relationship. My ex didn’t like the weight gain and thought I was crazy (I probably am!). It’s hard enough to deal with weight gain and feeling awful, without your partner running a mile because of it. Stress can be a huge factor in how well your metabolism functions. It’s often easier said than done to reduce stress in your life but even just reducing it a little can make a big difference. For me, moving out of the house I shared with my ex made a huge difference to my stress levels. It was like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders.
So we come full circle, back to… you can’t lose weight to get healthy, you have to get healthy to lose weight. There is a big difference between losing weight and losing fat anyway. Mostly when you diet you lose water weight and muscle mass, as your body will try to hang on to your body fat. You really want to keep the muscle mass and lose the fat (duh!!) so you have to do that by building your body back up. Yes it takes time but I think in the end it’s definitely worth it. In fact I know it’s worth it, even just to feel better before losing any weight at all!
Now my temperature will go up in response to meals (initially it might go down as you kill the stress hormones) and it will often go as high as 37.2° C, which gives me a nice warmth in my fingers and toes! I still can’t sustain it for more than an hour or two though, and my fingers (and often my nose) will go cold and won’t warm up until I eat again. It will just take time. As I’ve said before, you learn to have more patience! You can’t force things – that’s generally what gets us into a mess in the first place!
I hope you have enjoyed my ramblings and that I haven’t put you off trying to heal your body! Remember my thoughts are exactly that, my thoughts and you should never just blindly listen to somebody else. That’s also what gets us into these messes! That said, it’s difficult to research health because there is so much stuff out there it’s difficult to know what to believe. That’s why I’m now a big believer in listening to your body and learning to be more intuitive. Eat good food, plenty of it (or enough that you’re not going hungry), eat regularly, and try not to restrict anything. Once you start restricting things you generally want them more. Allow yourself to have them now and again. Fill yourself up with enough good food and my guess is that you won’t crave things so much. Often cravings stem from just not eating enough in the first place. Try to focus on things other than how you think you look. It might not seem like it now but really, in the grand scheme of things, it’s just not that important. It’s only really important to the people who make tons of money from making us feel that way in the first place! If people don’t love us for who we are, well, what’s up with that?! I walked away (eventually, obviously it’s very traumatic at the time) because I believe I’m worth more. Ultimately, isn’t that what it comes down to? What you believe you are worth?
As always, I’d love to hear any thoughts, comments or stories from you. I believe sharing stories and making connections can help you feel better, and to not feel so alone. I wish that I had been able to read some stories like this when I was going through the worst of it. Take care and remember, this is just me thinking out loud! x
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