Leaning into Fat - My First Post

No carb…low carb…no meat…lots of meat…low fat…no salt…low salt…sea salt…salt from the Himalayan mountains….sure just bathe in salt! Do HIIT…join a gym…climb a mountain…find a running club…lift a dumbbell…lift a kettlebell or anything that’ll make ya sweat like hell! Sigh… Well I did them all, I stuck with them all and I have t-shirts in an array of different sizes to prove it. The results came and the results slipped away! It didn’t matter if I was weight-watching, South Beaching or eating for my blood type or to match the RTE Guide…the results were consistent – short-lived and unsustainable. The highs of success and the lows of failure with a stench of shame left me even more depressed and angry at my weak will-power and inability to get my body to do what I wanted it to do.
YES, I heard you cheerleaders for ‘everything in moderation’ and I love the concept, but you see for a food addict like me, it kinda ends up looking like Augustus being sucked out of the chocolate river by an umpa lumpa!
AND YES, I have ‘eaten a little less and moved a little more’ and spent many riveting hours meticulously balancing my calories in with my calories out! I have lost stones on various versions of this theory and I have always hit a plateau…so I’d eat a little bit less and I’d move a little bit more for teeny, tiny, minute results and had the added bonus of being completely miserable and so hungry that I really could eat that small baby! Well before you report me to Child Services…I didn’t actually eat the baby but I did eat his equivalent weight and that of his twin brother and probably a few of their stuffed toys as well…yeah… not pretty!
Result? Bypass square one, heavier than ever and feeling like a loser!
Interesting observation of people who took part in low fat studies and how it impacts our brain and our behaviour to such a degree that in one such study, subjects reported being angrier and (wait for it) most likely to commit homicide!!
As a teen I had a poor relationship with food but I wasn’t overweight so that equalled HEALTHY in the 90s! When I was 23, I had buried my parents and my weight ballooned. I lost it for my wedding and piled it all back on afterwards plus, plus, plus… But hey, my parents were dead so I was entitled to be an emotional eater for the next ten years, right? EHH-EHHHHH Wrong Answer (we’ll get back to that later). I should mention that around about here I adopted the low fat, low salt diet as recommended by the Irish Heart Foundation!
A twist of fate led me to look into alternative therapies to help me with another issue where conventional medicine was failing me and a whole new world opened up. YEP, I definitely went very far right brain for a while…but before that I had been very far left…I’m an all or nothing kinda gal,as my husband says “full duck or no dinner” (he has a poetic way with words, doesn’t he?), but lately I’ve settled for middle ground between the two worlds (let’s just say I’m back on Earth). I now question the way we do things and why we do them, and “because that’s the way we always did it” – doesn’t qualify as an answer anymore. What exactly is the benefit of low-fat because science and history is showing us that since we introduced it we have gotten significantly fattier as humans as well as a long list of brain related disorders, like MS, ADHD, OCD, depression to name but a few. And am I supposed to believe that everyone of those overweight and obese people are emotional eaters too with poor will power …or could it be possible that messing with nature, extracting fat and replacing it with sugar does not do our biology any favours?
When I stopped dieting and tripped over real food (the kind that our habitat…our planet actually provides) I started to feel human again (not sure what species I had felt like up until that point) but weight started to melt off me. I wanted to shout Ta-Dahhh every time I slid my trousers down over my hips without opening them. I stopped living in my head and started embracing the real me. I even let my locks return to its natural red (soul or not I embraced the ginger!)
I’ve done a lot of experimentation since with juicing and a vegan diet to see how I felt and have gone back on many processed foods and grains to really figure out what suits and what doesn’t. Reintroduction of some had no effect, but many others do not suit my physiology. I’m slowly hacking my body and figuring it all out and boy have I a lot to learn but I know more than I did, so I’ll keep hacking.
I’ve decided to trial the opposite of what I have always tried in the past so I’m going to forget calories and snuggle up with FAT. Not so new research is showing that eating fat does not equate to body fat and I’m going to put that theory to the test. My latest experiment with spelt and gluten over the last few weeks has left me bloated and gaining 10lbs!!! So it’s a good time to lean into the fat and see what happens, plus I like the science and the scientists behind it. We are not machines that work on an energy in, energy out thesis. We have complex biology with a brain made of omega 3 fat that requires omega 3 in the bloodstream for fuel. When there isn’t enough fat available in our blood, our brain suffers going into chaos thinking we are starving, sending out signals of hunger prompting us to overeat… and here was me thinking we were a species of emotional eaters when it was simple biology all along!!! All these low-fat foods has sent our brains into terror and tension, commanding that calories are stored and locked tightly in all of our cells.
What am I going to do about it? I’m going to give my brain what it needs to survive, lots of fat, (no I’m not going to be eating doughnuts fried in vegetable oil) I’m talking the good fats, the omegas (remember when granny gave you a spoon of cod liver oil?!). I will also be eating protein and low GI Carbs. I don’t believe eliminating a whole food group is a sustainable way forward either. I’m aiming to cut down significantly on refined sugar & processed carbohydrates.
I'm going to use this lovely new platform, steemit to document my journey and I hope you will follow me through my unlearning of all that I know about food and testing the opposite of everything that hasn’t worked for me in the past and hopefully reconnecting with my body along the way!

What do I hope to gain?
A nourished, satisfied and calm brain, healthy hormones, clear skin and YES weight-loss, the slow, steady and sustainable kind (I’ve 40 lbs plus to release….I say release because our brains are wired to find that which we have lost and brain if you’re listening… I’m NOT planning on playing hide and seek with those pounds!!)

Excercise?
Minimal and only if I enjoy it.

What sources am I using?
Dr. David Ludwig MD – Always Hungry
Dr. Mark Hymen MD – Eat Fat, Get Thin
And pretty much anything by Dr. Josh Axe & Dr. David Perlmutter.

The countdown begins…I’m in the prep phase
“Fail to Prepare and you Prepare to Fail” – Benjamin Franklin

Disclaimer: The experiences and opinions expressed in this post are my own and are not intended as advice or recommendations!