Have you ever woken up in the morning and just knew that was the day “it” was going down?  I mean everything, not just food.  So if your co-worker was going to try to throw you under the bus again, she was getting an earful; if your man wanted to voice his opinion on what you were wearing that day, he was in for a beat down; if your kids thought that they were going to sass you that morning, they were in for the longest punishment given this side of the Mississippi; and when you went out to lunch that day with the office, you were having a piece of bread AND you were splitting a dessert.  Have you ever had one of those days?  Did you ever wonder where it came from in the first place?  What made you all “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” at 6:30 in the morning before you even got dressed? Serotonin.

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that regulates our mood, increases our pain tolerance, helps us sleep and curbs our food cravings.  When this little guy is in line, all is well.  When he isn’t, you start at one end of the kitchen and don’t stop until you make it to the other side eating anything with starch, fat and salt.  I’m sure your first question is going to be, “What makes him fall out of line?”  And my answer, plain and simple, for us is dieting.  Food restriction wears him down until he is at such low levels that he demands to be raised again by any means necessary and that means carbohydrate, lots and lots of carbohydrate.   When these cravings kick in, the only thing that is keeping you from blowing through a big bag of lays potato chips by yourself is the fact that they are not yours.  You just happen to be at your girlfriend’s house and those are her kids’ chips.  You don’t want her to think you really eat that stuff so you’re going to behave, but as soon as you get home it is on.

Here are some things to think about serotonin:

Symptoms when low: insomnia, depression, strong food cravings, aggressive behavior (pushing your cart into the woman in front of you at the grocery store was not cool), and poor body temp regulation.

Three things raise the level: carbohydrates, vitamins and estrogen.

When our period comes around: estrogen begins to drop dramatically which in turn drops serotonin.  Suddenly, we have the desire to eat 4 pounds of chocolate as a midmorning snack with a tablespoon of nuts to make sure it’s healthy.

At the end of a dieting phase: we are the lowest in terms of estrogen, carbs and vitamins.  It’s no wonder we walked into the neighborhood bakery with a can of pepper spray demanding that all half moons be placed in a brown paper bag while we slipped out the back.

How do we keep in check? High protein, vitamin B6 and fish oil.

Who Are Serotonin’s Aiders and Abettors?

Dopamine

You can thank dopamine any time you want a coffee first thing in the morning or a sweet after dinner.  Dopamine drives our desire for familiar foods that seem like rewards to us.  If we did all the right things in a given day by eating all of our veggies and not nibbling on foods in between, we want to be rewarded.  This means we want something sweet or yummy that feels naughty on our palette.  Or if we had a bad day and want to be comforted, hot chocolate or warm chocolate chip cookies seem to fill the gap.  What we desire on these bad days or at the end of the week when we feel like we’ve worked hard and deserve something good, is guided primarily by dopamine.

Galanin

This dude is no joke.  He has a bad attitude and the only thing that makes him happy is fat.  High levels of galanin make us crave fatty foods and desserts.  Why is he an aider and abettor?   Galanin increases with our estrogen levels just like serotonin does.  So once a month when our inhibitions are low (i.e. high serotonin means good mood all around) due to high estrogen therefore high serotonin and galanin, we feel like we can indulge ourselves with some high fat yummy food.  When we do that, though, our levels then drop with our blood sugar and carbohydrate cravings are there to lift our spirits once again.  This is a horrible see saw ride to be on and we do it all the time!

Endorphins

Ahhh…yes, endorphins.  We love these guys because they tell us that the beat down workout we just did earlier in the day was A-Ok.  They give us a natural high or what most folks know as a runner’s high.  They also like to make tasty food seem more fun than normal.  They literally encourage us to eat junk.  This means if you accidently listen to galanin or serotonin and eat something sinful, endorphins tell you to keep on going!  This is why you can’t stop eating the box of chocolates until they are gone.  WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS?  Jeez louise!

If you have ever wondered why you cannot stop eating chocolate, why you want a sweet right after dinner or why you can be a beast every so often for no apparent reason, there you go.  These guys are out to get us and it’s not nice.

Oh there’s more self sabotage on the way!  Wait til we talk about sodium, sugar and fat.  Honestly, it’s a wonder we all don’t weigh 1000 pounds knowing all this stuff.  Hang tight!  Woop woop!

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I began this series by pointing out the four phases of dieting which are success, rebound, dieting after rebound and maintenance.  Each phase has a unique characteristic of struggle associated with it that is present with almost all dieters when they are in that particular phase.  As we mature as dieters through experience (both positive and negative), we slowly but surely learn to fail forward.  These phases and their quirks no longer bring us down and we begin to make it through the obstacles faster.  Some of us do it by learning and some of us do it by adapting.  The latter is not healthy and if I remember, I will talk about this at the end of the series.  If not, it’ll come up again I’m sure and I’ll make you aware of it then.  Today, however, is dedicated to the characteristics of the rebound phase and how detrimental it can be.   Our girl did go on vaca and gain a few pounds, but it didn’t end there.  She came home and really sealed the deal.

Ok…so this is a hobby horse but you get the point.

Unpacking

It’s been 3 days since she’s landed back home and to say things have gotten worse is an understatement.  At first it was all about ‘just feeling better’:  you know…stop the bloat, eat healthy and feel ‘clean’ again.  But no matter how much she wanted that, she couldn’t stop eating junk.  Lots. And lots. Of junk.  Suddenly she hates chicken and the way it feels on her teeth when she chews.  And she loathes the smell of tuna fish from a can although she’ll eat it from a packet.  And don’t even mention cottage cheese! OY!  Amid all this repulsion of good food, is this strong desire to eat ANY kind of bad food.  Chips in any form, chocolate, bread, ice cream and peanut butter is all she had on hand when she first came home and that wasn’t enough to stop the onslaught.  She went out to dinner with friends and killed a bottle of wine by herself AFTER she ate the bread basket, all the oil that came with it and the dessert she ordered.  And this was all in the first three days!!  As she unpacked her clothes, she sat in shock of how much she’s packed in her mouth in 72 hours and the pounds keep adding up.

Myth: We have control over our eating and when we don’t it’s a lack of will power.  This is true if you’re talking about turning down dessert not when your dessert starts on one end of the kitchen cabinets and ends on the other.

Fact: If she does not intervene, this will not “just end”.  This will go on for a good amount of time.  For some it’s weeks, for others it’s months.

Failing Forward: Our girl will soon learn that when the sugar monster shows up, he must be tamed by the FAT guy.  Good fat silences the sugar demon.  It’s not perfect, but it’s better than this.

Stressing

When the initial smoke cleared from her free-for-all, our girl mistakenly thought it was ‘safe to go back in the water’ and 2 days after the first eating spree ended, the second one began.  This one was less fervent and far more insidious because instead of her eating a ton of junk endlessly, now she ate really well all day but then lost it at night.  Or she would have a crappy breakfast, great lunch, no dinner and a box of junior mints to top off the day.  She didn’t know how to eat and she didn’t know how to stop the onslaught.  She feels bigger than she ever did before she even started dieting and now she’s out of control.  What the????????

Myth: Now that I eat healthy, I’ll never go back to eating crap again.

Fact: We are driven by emotion, not by health.  If you think you eat the way that you do because of health, you have another thing coming in way of revelation.

Failing forward: Stick to eating small meals often even if they are not super clean.  When this goes down, give up the rigidity of rules or you’ll hold yourself down longer than need be.

Lamenting

Now what?  Why go through all that dieting only to end up here?  Our girl feels trapped.  Who can she tell?  Who would understand?  Better yet, who would care?  She has never felt so lonely before in her life.  This has got to stop.  This weekend is it, she decides.  I’m getting back on plan and I’m going to get this all off.

Myth: You can just get back on plan.  Good luck with that.  You’ll probably take a hostage by meal 2 and demand a ransom of a gallon of ice cream and some fudge sauce or you’re fleeing with your hostages.

Fact: Your issues at this point are out of your “will’s” control.  They are hormonal and emotional, there is no will in that.

Failing forward: If this ever happens to you, lose all structure.  Stop trying to conform to something and just accept that you are a hot mess and no amount of planning is going to fix that.  As soon as you let go, you’ll be more in control.

There’s more to this craziness.  Pull up a chair and stay tuned.  We need to talk about when she starts dieting again.

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Women are natural sadists—well, while dieting at least, because I swear we diet just to beat the living tar out of ourselves.  Although, most of us will tell you we diet for a specific reason:  vacation, wedding, event and so on.  Our girl is no different.  She was going on vacation.

It looked so peaceful.  Too bad it had 14 pounds lurking in the tide.

After 12 weeks of dieting, endless hours of cardio and more poundage moved in the gym than on a shipping dock, our girl is looking darn good (if I don’t say so myself) and traveling through the airport with confidence and ease.  She made goal and she is pretty darn pleased with her results.  She couldn’t wait for this day and has been having dreams of drinks on the beach with all inclusive meals and treats while lying pool side in Aruba.  This has been what all the suffering was about and she cannot wait until she is on the beach in her new bathing suit feeling comfortable in it for the first time ever.

I don’t know if any fitness professional has ever told you this so I am going on record saying it now:  do not ever diet into a vacation.  Do not do a 12 week countdown into drinking, merriment and revelry.  The only thing worse than dieting into vacation is going into an all you can eat buffet with someone getting off a 40 day fast.  Don’t do it. Not to mention metabolism-wise, it is the biggest mistake ever.  Lots of damage done with this one.

The resort is gorgeous and the weather is surreal.  She thinks this is going to be the most amazing week she’s had in a long time.  Her journal entries are as follows:

Day 1: I am exhausted.  Had to beat the front desk down because they messed up my room but when they saw the look on my face that said, “I’m about to blow a gasket.”  They suddenly found a solution.  I need a drink but I want to be good.  I told myself that I was only going to have a treat a few times this week and I really want to save it more for the end of the week.  I want chocolate bad but I am waiting for the midnight chocolate buffet on Wednesday night before having any.   Time to check the menu for healthy options.

As newbies we all start out with good intentions.  But then it soon goes to hell in a hand basket.

Here is where we begin to fail: unrealistic expectations of ourselves.  First, vacation is meant to have fun–not spend a week dieting in a different country.  This isn’t her lifestyle, yet.  She is working on making it so, but it’s still so fresh in her system that to expect her to go into an eating and drinking smorgasbord and not lose her mind borders on being irresponsible.  Second, she forgot to factor in the fact that she will have no will after the first drink.  At that point, all bets are off.

Day 2: Who knew that I was gonna be that much of a lightweight now?  Hope no one got a picture of me dancing topless on the fondue bar.  I am so bloated and feel like crap.  I swear I just killed all the work I did to get here in one night.  I could not stop eating the bread they brought to the table.  Ugh!

At some point in our dieting we all end up being humbled by the Carb Demon.  This guy is no joke when he shows up.  Whatever control you may have thought you had, goes right out the window whenever he makes an appearance.  Some of us have been known to defy physics with some of the things we can eat on a “bender”, our girl was lucky enough to stop at 2 bread baskets and 3 martinis.

Nothing on here said anything about it causing grown women to eat entire back rooms of restaurants.  They should have warning labels.

Day 6: Obviously I blew this week on Sunday so the rest of the week has been a wash.  I’m glad I was smart enough to pack another bathing suit just in case.  The only thing I can fit in right now is a moo-moo.  I don’t know why I can’t stop eating like this.  I will never get my act together.  I knew it was too good to be true.  I’m meant to be heavy for the rest of my life.  Those chics in the magazine are just gifted.  Why bother.

I get it when we feel like this because at the time we are so low emotionally that it is sad to even think about sometimes.  But this has to be the ultimate in inaccurate statements.  The girls are not gifted and you can stop eating like that.  What we didn’t know before we began to diet was what our bodies were going to go through at the pinnacle of our dieting:  low estrogen levels, high cortisol levels and a mind ready for a fresh game of “highs and lows”.  Alcohol after dieting is a no-no.  Carbs after dieting without being interrupted by fat first is a no-no, as well.

Plane ride home: I can’t let anyone see me.  I am so embarrassed.  All that hard work out the window and for what?  A bunch of drinks?  I can’t wait to get back and just clean up the diet and feel good again.  I just want to ring myself out dry and empty my stomach of everything.  Oh man I feel like death.

Little does our girl know that this is just the beginning of her drama.  Just having her girlfriend pick her up at the airport put her in a frenzy because she didn’t want to have to explain why she looks so different.  The emotion brought on from a sense of failure and the difficulty she is about to have thinking she can just “lose that weight again” may be more than she bargained for…

Tomorrow I walk you through all the ways she could have failed forward on her vacation and saved the amount of damage that was done in this one week.  Once this whole vacation week and the following week are all said and done, our girl will have gained 14 pounds in 2 weeks.   Much to talk about…

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Normally I would use a story like this to lead into a series but since this is the week of randomness, this isn’t going to lead me into anything but drama.  And to tell you the truth, I would have it no other way.

I recently had a doctor’s appointment that was really a consultation for a procedure that I want done.  I am going to immediately dispel some rumors right now so I can move on with the story.  I did not go to find out about…

• Plastic surgery. With my luck, I’d be on the table and they would have lost what I wanted done so they would just wing it.  And then charge me extra, cuz that’s how it always happens with me.  Not only do they get my order wrong, but then they charge me for it to boot.
• Removing warts, skin tags or wisdom teeth. I’m too old for that stuff.  You do that in your late 20’s and early 30’s when it makes a difference.  Right now I’d be afraid they’d mistake something usable on my body for that and take it off while I still need it.  And then they’d charge me for it, too.  See #1.
• Liposuction or tucking anything anywhere. There is no need for that.  I am about 5 to 8 years away from my skin sagging enough that I can do it myself for free using duct tape.  I’d never pay for that.
• Any other miscellaneous, nefarious, random, exotic thing out there. Nothing exciting over here.  Boring.

But I went to the girlie doc for this consultation and it was supposed to be a simple discussion about the possible things that could happen if I go ahead with it.  The doctor himself was the nicest guy.   A little on the awkward side but you would be too if you were a girlie doc all day long.  I’ve had 3 kids and I have yet to meet a socially acceptable male girlie doc.  He had no problem explaining all the ins and outs of the procedure to me and didn’t try to sugar coat anything he told me.

Now for me to have this consultation, I was weighed (who remembers Ginny), blood pressure measured and heart listened to all for me to sit in this office and hear about the procedure.  Not to have it done; just to hear about it.  So I get this feeling that this guy is very thorough.  I have never met him before, I only need to know him to have this done so I have no idea what he’s like and he has no idea that I’m unhinged a bit dramatic at times.  All is going well until the end when he says, “Oh.  And for me to do this, I need to give you the Depo Provera shot for at least 6 months.”  He said it like he was saying something as nonchalant as how his day went that day to his wife.   First, for what I am having done, no I don’t need to have a Depo shot.  It is completely unnecessary and it’s like he’s throwing it in there because I’ll be on the table.  It would be like me telling someone to pick up something they dropped and while they were bent over I ‘might as well do a proctology exam since I have access’.  Really right now?  Second, he would have been better off telling me that he was going to make me clean all his instruments for the day…by hand…with no gloves…in a kitchen sink…than tell me that.  I almost Lost. My. Mind.

Let me lay down some foundational information for you so you can understand why my afro grew 2 feet in the office and the doctor now will never see the original version of Clash of the Titans again (the remake was awful).  If you are new to my blog, you may not know my history.  About 7 years ago I gained a little less than 55 pounds in four months due to some heinous shenanigans on my part through bad dieting but also from the bad hormone dosing on my doctor’s part and then went through heck trying to get it off.  Not all the way there, yet, either.  The chief culprit given to me back then?  Depo Provera.  And with every round that I went through, I gained an average of 15 pounds.  By the third round I was done.  I was also sufficiently obese.  And then I got pregnant–immeditately.  OY.

So here is Johnny Come Lately with his Depo shot comment and he follows it up with, “And you may gain a pound or two but you can take that off…”  He didn’t get to finish the sentence.  Both my butt cheeks held me down to the table while the inside of me took a page from the book of Jimmy Snuka Fly and leapt onto that man’s head like a cat on a mouse.  Who can just imagine this conversation that started with, “Just 2 pounds?!!!!” and ended with something along the lines of, “You have no idea who you are talking to…?” while tufts of hair are flying around the room like disrupted feathers.  And then I cried.  Needless to say, they’ll be no Depo.

Ok.  So my point of all of this?

1)      Do not take a hormone for any reason what-so-ever unless you know without a shadow of a doubt that it is necessary.  They make you feel powerless and you are not.  You can say no.  And please do.

2)      Understand that although they are doctors, they do not always have your best interest in mind.

3)      Drug companies have a big stake in what goes in your body whether you realize that or not.

4)      Docs get paid big bucks for that and the reason why he wanted me to take the hormone was so that he could be the one who did the procedure.  It’s all based on timing and without the Depo, there’s no guarantee.  Shame.

5)      Lastly, Knot Today hair elixir mixed with Curl Assurance Fix hair gel makes my hair smell yummy.  Thinking about that in the appt calmed me down.  Felt like letting you know that.

And so the random week goes…  Woop woop!! )

Did you ever have a girlfriend who stuck up for you all the time when you were younger?  She would gladly talk for you whether you asked her to or not:  Someone talk trash?  She was on them.  Someone lie on you?  She’d shut ‘em down.   Someone get in your face?  She’d come between you and them, be all over them and then shut ‘em down.  She was awesome—at first.   And then, as you got older, you found she was buttin’ in even when it wasn’t necessary.  Some of the things she would say would not always be right or even nice.  You started to feel like it was more of a hindrance than a help and at times, she was bordering on being offensive.

But now, you have a dilemma.  This is your bestie.  Your other half who you have been super tight with since Kindergarten.  You share everything.  Telling her that you want your independence is not only going to hurt her feelings, it may even turn her against you.  The girl who spent half of her own childhood defending you could now become your worst enemy if not handled well.  You need an exit plan and it better be well thought out.

And so it is with The Pill…

Nowadays, more thought is put into the foundation we choose to put on our face than the choice of whether to go on the pill or not.  Medicine has done an excellent job of making the decision seem as basic as ‘paper or plastic’ and that we should not be concerned about any health risks or side effects because they’ve been around for years.  When you go into their office for a consult or annual appointment and try to discuss it with them, they give you a list of options like you were picking out a different flavor of ice cream for the first time.  They barely go over the options, they smooth over all the side effects and they never tell you what can happen if you choose to stop one kind and head over to another.  Essentially, you are at the mercy of their bedside manner which is not always great for doctors.

If you understand the pill’s role in your body, you understand why it is so important for you to be on top of the choice you make.  The above story is a good representation what the pill does in your system.  It’s your advocate.  It snuffs out all the other “voices” (hormones) that your body has such as estrogen and progesterone and does not allow them a chance to speak.  The problem is, just like in the story, that’s not your voice.  So it doesn’t get it exactly right.  There are some things misinterpreted and as time goes on, less and less of what it “says” corresponds to what you need or want.  After a while, it’s doing its own thing and you’re just a bystander in your own story.

Once you know this, think about who you are and how your system is different from every other dieter on the planet.  You have chosen to be on the leaner side.  This means that the balance in your hormones is in a much more delicate state than someone who is of average body fat.  You walk the thin line between respecting your body and thumbing your nose at your body.  Depending on where you are in the diet, you could be doing either one.  Therefore, you cannot afford to have an advocate who is shouting the wrong message at the wrong time.  This is the difference between gaining a pound or two when your cycle comes around and ballooning up like a floatation device every time you think of eating a starch.  I don’t know about you, but I prefer the former for sure.

If you are using the pill as contraception, knock yourself out—that’s out, not up.  Just sayin.   I am not here to poo poo the pill entirely and I want to make sure I say this so no one misinterprets this post.  As contraception, that’s your personal preference.  But as a fix for your hormonal nightmare going on, it’s not a very wise choice.  It does not “fix” your hormones, it masks them.  It will not “regulate” you like they say it will, it just causes other issues to crop up while you search aimlessly for the formulation that won’t break you out, make you fat or give you migraines.  And any change in your pill formulation will halt your dieting for at least 3 months while you wait for your body to stabilize.

I know firsthand this lifestyle can be challenging.  It’s a lot of work to pack meals, plan your workouts around an already packed week and still live life so having another thing to keep track of is annoying.  But of all the things that can truly affect the beautiful vessel you are living in, it’s this.  Pay attention to your hormones, particularly your cycle.  They are the Town Criers that you need in your life to keep you on track and to keep you healthy for real.  Listen to them.  As always, let me know what you’re thinking below.  I truly love to hear.  Woop woop!:o)

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Every Friday I will be posting an audio message for your enjoyment. I am working on getting video going, too, so look forward to that coming soon.

Feel free to comment below and let me know if you have experienced anything close to what I am talking about in this week’s post.  There may be 2 more posts in this series so hang tight while we get to The Silencer…the Pill.  Cool?  Woop woop!

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Play Now:

 Why Our Cycles Are Important [8:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Remember in the last post that I said there is a lot of info out there–some good, some bad?  We need to put this whole issue into perspective by at least reviewing the information that is out there and then discuss how it does or does not apply to us:

Your cycle is a barometer by telling you:

Whether your hormones are balanced or not.

Find yourself crying because they made your coffee wrong that morning?  You may be a bit unbalanced.  Also, ladies, if you find yourself with a 5 o’clock shadow and it’s only noon time, you may have a problem there.  Shaving your beard on the way to work in the car is not cute, no matter how discreet you are.  If your chest hurts for weeks at a time (and you are not menopausal), you have extreme exhaustion from 2 to 5 pm, up all night long staring at the ceiling, some days you are Hercules—other days you are Pee Wee Herman or lastly, you have night sweats.   Any of these scream hormonal imbalance.

Whether your metabolism is fully functioning.

Gaining weight just watching fast food commercials?  Time to see if the thyroid is up to snuff.  Ate a piece of bread and it was as if someone opened an umbrella in your tummy five minutes later?  Could be issues with your gut which in turn mess with your metabolism.  Have a gall bladder issue and you aren’t your typical candidate for it?  Sounds like a possible thyroid problem there.  All of these things say, off kilter.

Whether your moods are in alignment.

Punched your husband in the face because he ate the last of something and then said, “so what?” about it?  Your free testosterone might be a bit too free, eh?  Feel like you need to have a baby yesterday and you are happily single and under 35 years old?  Get a hold of yourself, girl!  What’s wrong with you?  Sorry…that was my own personal interjection.  What I meant to say was, “You may be a bit estrogen heavy there.”  Gave somebody the finger in traffic and then realized it was your boss?  That progesterone may be getting the best of you.

If your cycle was off before you began clean eating it may be because of:

• Menopause/perimenopause
• Stress/Exercise
• Significant change in weight—up or down
• Medications
• PCOS/estrogen dominance/hormonal imbalance
• Nutrition
• And at least 5 other things that aren’t worth mentioning in this post

Most doctors help their patients manage these issues by:

• Focus on nutrition
• Limit stress
• Vitamin supplementation
• Prescribe the pill

This gives you an idea of what every woman faces whether they have chosen to lean out or not.  All of these are real issues and well documented in the medical community.  The question then becomes, “How is this different for you?”

Hormonal Imbalance

This is a given for us the first time we diet down to anything.  It doesn’t matter if we went from 200 pounds down to 180 pounds; dieting throws your body into a tail spin.  Some of us make it through unscathed, the rest of us are still picking up the pieces years later.  It’s different for everyone.  How it shows up, though, after dieting is anxiety, bingeing, mood swings (very high highs or very low lows), metabolic disturbances and our cycles.

If your cycle was off after you began clean eating it may be because of:

• Too little fat in your diet
• Too much exercise for way too long
• Too low of cals for way too long
• Too much exercise with too few cals for way too long
• Anxiety/depression medication
• Adrenal fatigue
• Insulin resistance
• Metabolic syndrome

What your doctor will suggest you do to help:

Eat right and exercise.

I know.  Don’t hit them.  Seriously.  But they will tell you that you need to eat healthy foods and make sure you do some cardio.  This is after you bring them 6 months worth of food journals and a plate loaded iso-lateral chest press machine for their waiting room.  You’ll be amazed at how many of them think that you are not doing enough even though you did the whole appointment with them on your own personal treadmill that you carried into the office all by yourself. Crazy.

Limit the stress.

This is about as effective as using chapstick as a gluestick.  Do they know who you are?  You’re Mrs. Type A.  You’ve already worked out, did 8 hours worth of work and made all your meals for the week and it’s only 9 am.  Getting you to relax is as laborious as 10^th grade summer reading list.  Totally no fun and getting it done takes forever!

Supplementation.

Not a bad thing to add in here but most likely, you’re already taking what they will suggest.  But it’s a good start.

Take the Pill.

WHOA NELLY!  This is the next post!  Sit tight!

There’s more to come and on Friday, I will have an audio post for you to listen to.  If you have never heard my voice or my crazy antics, now you will have your chance.  Can’t wait!  Woop woop!

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I have truly mellowed out in my old age.  Back in the day, I assure you, I was a much feistier gal.  I would like to say that that was a good thing, but alas…it wasn’t.  I have many a dead body behind me of those who entered into an argument with me and I wouldn’t say they “lost” but they lost something (i.e. limb, voice, money, life—who knows.  It wasn’t pretty.).  And those losses didn’t come because I knew something and was smarter than them—because that’s definitely not the case.  They came because I was ferocious at defending my end of the argument at all cost.  Whatever I knew to be true was true as far as I was concerned…and then I got older.

Getting older meant that I had to concede that I may know the truth or I may be “right”, but there could be a whole segment of information that I have never been exposed to that could stomp on whatever I am presenting as fact at that moment.  This doesn’t mean that I didn’t know what I was talking about; it means that I had limited knowledge in the topic being discussed.  This happens to all of us in some way, shape or form.  Think about how dumb we used to think our parents were when really, we were the dummies.  Or, say you are a trainer and a client tells you something that sounds odd to you and in your mind you call “bullcrap” because you think she just doesn’t want to diet or workout hard.  Then like a year later you find out that not only was she telling the truth, but now you have what she was talking about and you’re upset because now no one believes you.  Things like this happen all the time and I expect some of this to crop up during this series.  I need to debunk a lot of junk (wow, can I use that somewhere else?) that is floating around out there in the land of Greek Mythology, aka girl talk, surrounding our cycles and I expect some raised eyebrows.  There’s a ton of misinformation and we need to slog through the details to get to the truth.  Here are a few to start with:

1. Getting to the truth.

There’s no such thing.  There isn’t a central location of hormonal information that you will find that all of the medical community is going to agree upon.  There are two types of medicine that I am familiar with and I refer to them all the time:  Western medicine and naturopaths.  Western medicine is your traditional doctor who tells you what the insurance companies let them tell you.  They are not bad people, just limited by the system.   I will qualify this later so don’t get your underwear in knots if you don’t agree.  Hang tight.  Naturopaths are not exactly MD’s but they have a much more open view of tackling medical issues which is what you need when it comes to hormones.  The problem is, when you need a drug—you ain’t getting’ one there.

These two professions tend to be at odds with each other.  This is tough on us, the little guy, because we look to them for the answers and then find ourselves having to make a choice between the two without any real information to back up our decisions.  YUCK.

2. My cycle has always been messed up.  It’s just the way it is.

Umm…no it’s not.  And don’t accept that either.  Here is where I qualify my above statement.  Unfortunately for doctors, they do not have the resources to make you well.   They only have the capability to make you better.  That is not the same as being well.  Doctors look at the symptoms you present and make them go away.  They do not necessarily cure you.  And when it comes to a syndrome or chronic condition, they can only ask for so many things to be done that insurance will cover because after a while, they start getting vetoed.  Again, not their fault—it’s the system’s.  Hormonal issues require patience, lots of lab work and a good eye for detail.

3. My doctor diagnosed me with “fill in the blank” so that’s what I have.

Maybe so.  I have no right to argue that in any way.  I am not a doctor and do not profess to be.  But I am an advocate and I challenge you to get a second opinion.  Especially if what they told you that you had was a syndrome.  Things like PCOS, fibromyalgia and so on that do not have definitive tests (although PCOS does but few get the ultrasound done) but more like a list of things that you seem to have in common with them.  Syndromes are a great way to say, “I-have-no-idea-what’s-wrong-with-you-but-I-know-you-need-a-diagnosis-or-you-won’t-be-happy-so-I’m-going-to-tell-you-this-so-you’ll-leave-my-office.”  They have no true way to “fix” them but they give you something tangible to hang on to because it makes you feel better.  Not become well.  Just feel better.  And even then, you may not feel better, you may just be symptom free.

Why do I bring this entire subject up?  Why do I care so much?  I know some of you are thinking, “I was just fine before you started kicking up all this dirt.  Now you have my head spinning.”  (Or maybe that’s just Kas thinking that  I bring it up because if you are not optimal at normal body fat levels, you are REALLY not optimal when you get lean.  And for some of you, it’s what’s keeping you from getting the body that you desire.  Your cycle screams “I am not well” and to lose weight, change body composition or be the best you can be:  you need to be well.

Much more to come.  This is a big topic when it comes to changing your body for the better.  If you have any horror stories, you know I love them.  Hit me up below.  Woop woop!

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Is it me or does my littlest one look like he just saw something gross right before the shot was snapped?  These CIA agents have zero loyalty to their mother.

My kids are awesome.  Yes, I am biased in saying that, but truly, they really are awesome kids.  However, they tend to throw their mother under the bus on more than one occasion.  They say they don’t mean to, but the two older ones are worse than the town crier.  The main thing they tattle on me to their father about is the high flying antics stuff that happens when I drive them to school.  Now I am one of the most aggressive and psychotic cautious drivers there are out there so I’m not sure why they find it necessary to tell their dad that we were driving on two wheels to school but they do at times and it is very inconvenient.  Clearly they got to school by the hair of their chinny chin chins because they weren’t in my car when I got back home nor under the tires and the school didn’t call to say they were psychologically damaged absent so obviously they were fine.  So there are days I just want to hush the two town criers in my back seat by forcing them to listen to their father go on and on about it bopping them upside their heads—but I can’t.  But there is a town crier that we are silencing that we should not be and it is usually warning us of impending peril.  This would be our cycle.

Cycles are very funny because we loathe having them but we hate missing one even more.  They possess an uncanny ability to show up the week you go on vacation no matter when you book it and they make every day activities uncomfortable and cumbersome.  They’re about as welcome as a tummy virus is after a Sunday dinner with the family.   But missing one, for some of us, is more traumatic than being robbed at gun point so let’s just be honest that it’s not like we’re rejoicing because we skipped a month.  And even if missing one doesn’t send you into cardiac arrest, it still makes you think in the back of your head, “What’s wrong here?”

If you hop on the web and start googling, you will find a ton of information regarding missed periods, or as the medical community refers to them:  irregular periods.  Some of it is inaccurate, not all because there is some good info out there on the more prominent websites, but almost all of it is inapplicable to the lean community.  We are a special breed that is incredibly underrepresented in medical studies and on the medical websites.  We are lumped in with the general public and when it comes to issues regarding our hormones or how our bodies react to dieting, we aren’t even close.  But contrary to popular belief of us clean eaters, we do not lose our periods because we are low body fat.  Very few of us ever get that low of body fat to say we lost our cycle for that reason.  I know I have mentioned this before, but we have a warped sense of what our true body fat is.  I have heard girls say they are 8/9% body fat at their leanest and that is a far from the truth.  They are most likely 11/12ish but highly unlikely they as low as 8 or 9%.  The thing that most of seem to miss is that the accuracy of the measurement tends to decrease as you move out to either extreme.  Super lean BF levels and super high BF levels are normally not accurate because they are out of the range of accuracy for that measuring tool.  This is another post for another time but just know that unless you have some ribs showing and your femur perfectly outlined, you are not 8% BF.

We lose our periods due to high levels of the stress hormone cortisol.  It is the grand interrupter.  Cutting your cals and beating your body into submission is a great way to raise your cortisol levels which in turn messes with your sex hormones.  (Of course, this beats the old fashioned way of fight or flight which just shows that we have become bored with more traditional ways of jacking ourselves up and moved on to more sophisticated methods.)  Once that balance is off kilter, so is your period and it can take an act of Nature to get it regular again.  But why the fuss and who really cares?  If I’m missing my period, why don’t I just take the pill and make it come back, right?  That’s up to you but your period is the best loud mouth you will ever have in your body.  It’s forever telling you how you are doing medically.  Silencing may not be the most prudent thing to do.

Hang on tight while we jump into what your period really tells you on a monthly basis and why the pill may not be the answer you expected it to be.  Can’t wait, ladies!  Woop woop!

Ahhh…there’s nothing like a fresh batch of peer pressure to make us do something completely uninformed and irrational.  Gotta love it.

Everybody loves a challenge—especially us.  We love them more than the average person does, to be honest with you.  We can seriously get a little sick with it by setting crazy goals like 5 marathons in 5 weeks and of course, at the time it sounds completely rational.  It even sounds doable.  However, about halfway through the goal we know we are in trouble but we keep on going for pride sake. How about we avoid this calamity by giving you some things to take into account as we head into another year of the obstacle course races?

Let me remind you of who you are.   If you are reading this blog, then you are someone who may or may not realize that you are an athlete but you definitely realize that your physique is part of your overall health and fitness goal.  So it’s not ‘by any means necessary’ to reach the finish line because none of us here would be willing to go up 10 pounds to make the goal happen.  Instead, we will rethink it when we realize that it could take weeks to get the 10 pounds off again and we’ll most likely move on to another goal.  It is what it is.  This gives you an idea of what this series is about because it is not about getting you ready for the Tough Mudder or any other killer race.  No, it is about getting you ready for them safely while taking into account that you will need to be smart about how you fuel for the training, actively recover from the training and psychologically deal with the training. This is not the same as just plain old running or bodybuilding type lifting and if you are not aware of that you may either blow your diet, go crazy or the worst of them all: get injured.

Over the next three days I want to tackle 4 things:

• Tough Guy syndrome
• Nutritional challenges (how to work the STarch thing)
• Active recovery
• Injuries and their ramifications

In less than a month I turn 42 years old.  WOW.  I don’t feel a day over 41 30 yo when I do things, but the next day I feel like I am 75.  I honestly remember the time when I could wake up, decide to run a 10K that day (even though I was not training for one and never ran more than the 10 feet it takes me to get into the shower) and then get up the next morning and do it all over again.  Crazy.  If I did that today someone would be peeling me off the asphalt—and that would be at registration!  Shame.  I need to warm up for my warm up and I know that’s from years of abuse brought on by Tough Guy syndrome.  This malady affects almost all trainers, some group fitness instructors, avid runners and nearly every single physique athlete out there.

Tough Guy syndrome (TGS) is a peculiar syndrome because it crosses the blood brain barrier and renders us dumb as dirt as to the workings of the body and metabolism even though we could school a client on it in a heartbeat.  Somehow, we’re impervious to this information.  We can dispense it, but we can’t use it and because of this, we tend to do some of the dumbest things known to mankind.  It’s unbelievable.

TGS’s power is exacted by finding the weak spot in our immune systems: our egos.  Once it finds that chink in the armor, it quickly spreads throughout the Central Nervous System causing awful symptoms like signing up for and completing the Tough Mudder without any training for it and then systematically bragging about it like you’re a hero or something.  Frightening.  Fevers and chills can result if it goes undetected as people are hot with jealously or cold with disdain around you because you decided to just “pop into” the race.  And because TGS is a syndrome, there is no “one-size-fits-all” cure and normally diagnosis comes only with the egregious symptoms coming to light such as injury or accidents.

But there is hope.  You can take preventative measures to keep from developing this syndrome by realizing a few things:

1)      If you are under 18% bodyfat, you are of the lean community.  You cannot, and should not, put your body to the ultimate test without properly preparing it and fueling it.  Do not eat the same diet you are used to now and then just “jump into” an obstacle course type race.

2)      If you are allergic to starchy carbohydrates because you think they make you gain weight and want to just eat starch the week of the event, you’re in for a big surprise.  We’ll talk about this tomorrow.  Just know that you need to eat them long before the week of the event if you want to use them to fuel your race.

3)      You do not recover the same when you are lean.  You have fewer reserves in the tank and you must keep that in mind.  If you deplete them now, they will not be available to you when go back to working on your physique or just even maintaining it.

4)      You run the risk of injury—major injury—when you are leaner.  This truth comes in handy when you feel the urge to bounce out of bed and conquer the world.  One day of heroism could cost you 10 weeks of working out.  There’s a sobering thought.

This will be a short series.  I am only going to yell at you a little bit (I’m really yelling at myself but I’m using you as the punching bag.  Sorry.) so meet me here for the next 2 days as we get ready for an obstacle race.  Cool?  Woop woop!