This whole series came about because I wanted to send a wrap up email about my last series and when I tried to do that I just about lost my mind. I simply wanted to say that I knew what those folks were going through because I had been there in some shape or form in my life and I could relate but it was not coming out of my fingers properly; hence, Reverse Engineering. There is a distinct difference, though, between what I am about to share in this series and what those women were doing which is that I thought about all I did, they actually said all that they said. At the time I was going through all of this, I don’t believe anyone knew how deep it went but I am sure I had some frayed edges somewhere. We all do at some time…

My youngest cherub was born January 11, 2006 via emergency c-section. He was 5 weeks early, less than 5 pounds and looked like a greased up Cornish hen awaiting the oven; he was adorable. Why he came early is another series for another time but I was ecstatic because I was HUUUUYOOOUUUUGGGGGGE. I mean wooly mammoth huge because I had issues with my amniotic fluid and yadda, yadda, yadda so getting him out early was a blessing. I know I have said this on here somewhere before but babies are THE BEST THING to reset your metabolism. If you have been yo-yo dieting for years and now it takes an act of nature to move the scale, pop out a baby as your act of nature and you will see the pounds fall off after that (ask Jennifer Hudson). Do I even need to tell you that I had plans—no, I mean plans–for my maternity leave? This was right after I just gained a half of a llama during Armageddon and then immediately got pregnant so I had spent 8 months dreaming of this day to come to “get back to normal”.

As planned, I breastfed him but for only 3 months because I had issues there, too, but again that’s for that other series at another time but it, like my pregnancy, was an omen that hormonally I was still not right. Sometime during the middle of March I am given the ok to get back to working out and I get to it like a crack fiend in a back alley brawl. I was a psycho about it and for 9 straight months I pounded the pavement in every way I knew possible. I dieted, lifted, did cardio, thought light thoughts and so on. Basically, if it was possible to do—I did it. I lost nothing. No…I mean…nothing. Zero, zilch, zip, nadda, not one. stinkin’. pound. I will tell you, if you told me back then that that was possible I would have told you that you were a liar. I was shocked. Actually, I was a whole lot of other things but you’ll find that out by the end of the week. For now, shocked is a good word. I was raised to believe that if you ate right and exercised you would lose weight. It is was a simple as that and up to that time I had great genetics in that if I even thought about losing weight, I would. If I was ten pounds overweight, I just took an extra poop that day and dropped off 7 of those ten pounds and the other two would come from cutting back on something. I had never ever gone through 9 months of dieting and exercising and not lose even ONE pound. Did I say not one? This set me up for the longest year of my life, 2007, aka Damned If You, Damned If You Don’t.

Every so often I run into someone who lies like a rug. They say something cute like, “I love to workout. I love the way it makes me feel. I’ll never ‘not workout’.” Let me preface this by saying that they are always in shape, they are never overweight or could stand to lose a few. Typically I ask them, “Have you ever been heavy?” and they always answer “no” and I then tell them in a very nice manner to Shut. Up. Do NOT talk about what you have never experienced because you are full of crap. Do you want to know why we like to work out? Because we can see the fruit of our labor and it affirms the thoughts we already have of ourselves: we work hard…can’t you see? The minute you take that away you will see how hard it is to keep that fire burning. It. Is. Hard.

The year 2007 was the second worst year of my life (the first being 1994 but I’ll never talk about that year unless the photos show up on the internet somewhere and at that point I’ll plead the 5th) because it was the apex of all that I talked about in The Most Painful Diet. This is where it all came to a head and I began to truly understand that I didn’t just mess up and gain some weight, I royally screwed up and did some irreparable damage to my body and this was not going to be a quick fix. If I had a desk job, I am sure I could have handled it a little better. But I did not…I was a coach who put girls on stage for fitness, figure and bodybuilding. Oh joy. This is like finding out I just inherited my father’s tobacco company a day after getting a prestigious position as a director of a cardiology department at a famous hospital. You have to be kidding me. So essentially I am large and in charge and wishing I was decked out in camouflage. Awful. In come the struggles:

I struggled with authority:

Why in Heaven’s name would anybody listen to me? So, I became really good at what I did to shut everybody up and a total *B* to shut everyone down.

I struggled with mean comments:

Things like…
“Do you take your own advice?”
“How many plans do you give out before you do one yourself?”
“Clearly living what you teach isn’t necessary. What do you need then to do what you do?”

So I stopped talking to people.

I struggled with the loss of control:

I still couldn’t quite accept that I just couldn’t “diet” to lose the weight so I had manic fights in my mind that I must just be lazy and why couldn’t I work out harder? So I berated myself for being lazy or I worked that much harder at my job to silence the noise. I did not emotionally eat; I was a starver at this point.

I struggled with working out:

The thing that used to bring me happiness at one point in my life now brought me nothing but pain. Why am I bothering? What’s the point? No one thinks that I do anyways. If I do, nothing changes. If I don’t, nothing changes. Everyone wanted to tell me how to diet and workout even though I, myself, was putting girls on stage. Unreal.

I justified, reasoned, denied, did a good bob and weave, emotionally stuffed, rebuffed and at times just gave life the finger. I lived out my folly publicly and had no idea how much this truly affected me until November 2007 when I went to see a naturopath. This woman, who was as disheveled and scatter brained as I was at the time, told me in the most calm, sweet voice all that my blood work told her and it was not good. She spent 30 minutes telling me all about my adrenals and a bunch of other things that we were going on and then in the most matter of fact tone said, “You’re not lazy, nor are you crazy.” With that I stood up, went to my car—it was pouring rain outside—and I sat in it for 30 min crying so hard that I think I pulled a tummy muscle. Sobbed like I lost a child. I had no idea how badly I needed to hear that but that ended the “Year That Never Was” for me and I realized I had to change my mindset if I was going to move forward.

First, self pity is not your friend. He is a menace and you need to stomp on him right away. I was too far into a pit to even realize that I was wallowing in it, but I will tell you that I was definitely wallowing in it. Here is the thing that you need to be mindful of if anything like this ever happens to you (like an injury that sidelines you for a while): self pity doesn’t look like self pity when it creeps up on you and you vacillate between it and everything else I’m going to talk about this week. It is nowhere near as defined as just sitting around in marinating in your own juices. It ebbs and flows and it disguises itself in many insidious ways mostly by bogging your mind down with nonsense justifications. We can smell it on other people but we are impervious to our own. Get a good friend to come in and tell you to get your head out of your butt after she has you empty your heart of all your junk.

Second, I had to realize that what happened to me was a reflection of my stupidity but not my work ethic. That was huge. If everybody wanted to judge me by how I looked then God Bless ‘em but I’ll be darned if I begin to believe that I am not worthy of being a nutritionist anymore because I looked like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Now who understands that that took me a while to really get that into my marrow before I could truly walk that out? There were times of justification, pain, anger, resentment and so on but on a whole, that thought guided me like no other. I was good at what I did and I was more than what my body was telling people.

Third, I am more than just my work ethic. This is our struggle ladies. This is it in a nutshell. We lament gaining 5 pounds or having anyone seeing us less than ideal because they are not judging our appearance, they are judging us. How smart we are, how good we are at what we do, how talented we are and so on because we excel at all and our body is no different. If you see me looking “less than” then I must be lazy, out of control, not disciplined, not fit to be a [mother, sister, friend, leader, trainer, etc] so we should just hang it up now and the list goes on. Our weight says we are ‘worthy’ and I can tell you after this many years since Armageddon that that is a lie from the pit of hell.

All or None is tomorrow. This is just the tip of the glacier. Woop woop!

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Once a month I go to a leadership type of meeting. No, I’m not a leader in anything and am quite happy with that but I do enjoy listening to the ladies that are there and learning from them. I am typically the youngest one in attendance so there is much to learn every time I go.

About 4 months ago, a new lady showed up to the meeting and really stirred things up. We probably have a new person come every 2 to 3 meetings or so and it’s always nice to get a new perspective and we really do welcome new people with open arms. The meetings, themselves, are centered on leadership and helping each other out in our respective positions so it is always nice to put it into practice by being accommodating to new people. The meetings are not about health or anything fitness related at all as we come from different professions and all walks of life and occasionally we will focus on one particular person’s field of interest, but that’s not the norm. We are there for the purpose of leadership development and supporting each other so who knew that the new woman at the meeting would cause such a raucous this day by not adhering to our purpose.

This is where I want to break and talk about meetings in general with women. WOW. What an eye opener. If you ever want to see the word *insecurity* in the flesh—a meeting will definitely do it. Now, I am not talking about these ones in particular because they are very small and focused, but more in the broader sense. Women are like a pack of dogs all searching for the alpha position—whether they want the position or they are looking to find out who has the position it doesn’t matter, they are all searching. And should you find yourself not knowing which one you are, you can be mowed over by the one who is claiming alpha or pushed out of the way but one who is aggressively looking for the alpha. YIKES.

The meeting time is set for the morning so when we get there our hostess typically has a light breakfast assortment out for us to choose from. The choices range from healthy to nowhere near healthy so everyone there is represented and it is at her house so honestly, no one is expecting her to be IHOP with a menu of choices. I’m happy she’s hosting it, for crying out loud, I know I wouldn’t want to do that monthly. So in walks Dr. Mercola—I mean the new woman. Holy Interruption, Batman! Yes! I am all about health. Yes! I care about the choices that you make and why you make them. But heck no! am I going to torture you if you choose something that is not so healthy.

I need you to know before I go on explaining what went down with this woman at this meeting that I am working on some major things in my personality. One of them is not stomping on people in conversations. If you know me, you know I have my work cut out for me, but dang it—it’s worth it. I can, if given the opportunity, dominate a room…no, wait…obliterate a room full of people if you pick a good enough topic. About 3 years ago, I had to free myself of that burden; too much carnage in my wake and it feels awful when you are done. So, I liberated myself from being the know-it-all that I can be. No…really…I did…stop laughing…sigh. But I also have an incredible knack of blending in the background, too, so that no one knows that I am there and I just sit back and watch the drama unfold. I brought the silent woman to this meeting in case you wondering.

So Dr. Mercola, as I will now call her, systematically went through the room shaming everyone for their choices in a very passive aggressive manner. It looks like this:

“Oh, I love Danish. I haven’t had any in such a long time. They cause too many gastric issues and they’re not good for you. I gave up anything with white flour or any refined foods for that matter. I’ve lost over 100 pounds in 2 years. I don’t let anything unhealthy pass my lips.”

My immediate reaction to this was sarcasm…in my mind. I wanted to say some things out loud…but I’m reformed. My biggest problem with what she said is the “I am better than you because I can make a better choice than you can” kind of tone. It was mean and it was a pot shot. Essentially she was picked on and debased when she was heavier so now it’s her turn to unleash the cracken on someone. Not cool.

The ladies at the meeting are just that: true ladies. So they let Dr. Mercola have her say for a minute or two and then moved right into the meeting. OH…but the nonsense did not stop! The meeting was barely in motion before we heard about how alcohol was so bad for you and that not ONE drip should ever be consumed because it is so poisonous. And studies show that…[my eyeballs begin to bleed]…

Why did I take such offense to that? Because in her ranting she neglected to stop and find out about the people at the meeting and who we all were. One of the participants—whom I have truly grown to love—is a newly life living ex-alcoholic and she needed to hear this like I needed someone to ask me if I ever take my own nutrition advice (another story for another time). It was only about her and it was apparent. The other thing that made this very difficult for us was how much she tried to make it seem like it wasn’t about her and how she wanted to help everyone. Oh how I wish that people—more trainers than anyone else—could see that their soap box is just that—theirs! When you are in the business of helping others…help them! And helping them is not making them look and act like you. OY!

We barely got through the meeting that day. Every way that she could interrupt, she did. She had the most extreme ideas about food, health, health care and so on. I was mortified. And I was also silent. I said not one word. Who can believe that? Not one. Why? For two reasons:

Why bother? Years ago I came to the realization that in the fitness industry everyone is a nutritionist and everyone is a trainer if they, themselves, have dieted themselves or worked out at least once and had some measure of success. If you cannot handle this, get out now. Almost all people operate under the fallacy that ‘if I have gone through it, I am now qualified to take you through it’. This is why you see guys/girls do one show and become a coach. It’s frightening and dieting is no different. Once you have dieted and had success, you are now officially a nutritionist. I have to say that this is the number one reason I avoid social engagements that are centered around food. They are just not fun for me. I either get challenged by someone in the room or I have to listen to Dr. Mercola, Dr. Oz and a splash Oprah all night long.

…the second reason…

Where would I start? That woman’s pain was sitting all over her sleeve. Torment, anger, resentment, vengeance and pride were all abound. Which one would I pick on first? None of that was about food. She wouldn’t know good nutrition if it took her out to dinner for goodness sakes. No…that was 100% about her personal pain and she drags it with her everywhere she goes. I will spare you her diet regimen but she was so rigid about what she ate and how she ate it that I think I let a tear fall down my face for her daily eating plan. We can all be like this at times, ourselves. We truly need to be mindful of this monster because we develop a false sense of security in the rigidity of our choices and the routine of our lives. We think that somehow we’ve erased a painful past or challenging circumstance because we count out 10 blueberries and avoid sugar all day long.

The saddest thing about this is that she looked gaunt. She was not super thin at all, her weight was fine, but she looked unhealthy. I believe that was simply because her frayed edges were showing and she couldn’t hide them anymore…

More to come tomorrow…

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My, my the months are flying by.  It seems like eons ago when you cleaned up your diet and really put your mind to getting in shape for the summer.  All those hours in the gym and kitchen have done your body some good in that you look great—probably the best you have in a long time—but you feel like crap and your absolutely petrified about stopping what you’re doing because you do not want to go backwards again.  This is the second time on the weight loss roller coaster and not only is it getting harder, but it’s truly getting old.  Peace seems to be fleeting and there has to be someone who can honestly make this happen on a daily basis.  You’re starting to think that you’ll never achieve maintenance, that it’s all a big lie and somehow you’ll be a prisoner forever of this body you once wanted.

I am so tired of the gym.  It’s gorgeous outside.  I want to try the new bootcamp class at my gym, I heard it’s hard, but I can’t do that, lift and do my cardio.  I’m not giving up my lift, I don’t know if it’s “cardio” enough to replace my cardio.  I also want to try the outdoor standing pilates class.  Ugh!

Burning out makes you:

Irrational. Many of us think what got us here was whatever the last thing we were doing.  We cannot for the life of us see the sum total of all that we do and because of that, we are held hostage by the thought that  “I did A + B and got C” and if I don’t do it in that order and in that particular way, I’ll lose all my hard work.  If you stay at this pace and mindset, though, you’ll implode.

Working out makes you:

Confident. You realize that it wasn’t one specific thing that you have done to get here and it won’t be one specific thing that keeps you here either.  You’ll keep a close watch on how your clothes are fitting, but this is summer and you need a break from the indoors.

You begin to write out your current schedule so you can see where you can cut corners but you’re not getting anywhere.  On the one hand, you need a break.  Being inside, lifting weights, the boring cardio all bother you and you know that you can change it up a little but you’re not sure how much.  On the other hand, changing it right now sends your mind into a tail spin:  What do I keep in?  What do I get rid of?  What matters?  The more you read, the less you know and the more adamant you become that you are not doing this all over again.

Burning out makes you:

Aggravated and confused. Because you are operating out of fear, you are not making sound decisions which in turn make you feel trapped and resentful.   Ultimately, you realize that you are not going to blow up overnight but you can’t seem to shake that nagging feeling that you are making a big mistake.  This sends you on an internet/FB frenzy of seeing what other people are doing for the summer.  However, this only makes you more manic and you’re about to ‘not work out altogether’ out of pure stress.  Yes, not smart and worse than if you just went to boot camp but emotions are incredibly powerful as you are now finding out and they don’t always help us in our time of need.

Working out makes you:

Satisfied and lucid. After writing out your schedule you decide to keep 2 days/week as a lift, 3 days of boot camp and cardio on an ‘as needed’ basis.  You’ll try out the pilates first to see if it’s challenging and if it is, you may try to fit it in.  But you already know that you’ll be going away a lot on the weekends so you’ll be making lots of adjustments all summer long.  This will not be the only time you do this, this summer.

One of the biggest mistakes that we make in fitness is basing what we do off of what someone else is doing rather than basing it off of what we need.  Instead of learning what our bodies really respond to and what truly makes us tick, we blindly follow behind those we admire and stalk on the internet, not realizing that 50% of what they post is fiction and the other 50% they are not telling you because it’s a “secret”.  There are reasons you do not trust letting go of the reigns and they’re more than just worrying about the outcome:

• Not understanding what “worked” in the first place
• Putting too much value on your appearance
• Wanting to follow random people’s programs because it’s easier and heck, they look great so why not
• Wanting, needing and relying on structure but then resenting the restriction of the rigid structure

If you allow these things to continue to control you, you will struggle FOREVER every time summer, the holidays and wedding season comes around and you WILL burnout.  I know I said it before but it bears repeating because I’m not stirring this up without follow thru:  I promise I will give you some firm guidelines at the end of this series.  In the mean time, though, learn your body!  I can guarantee you that it requires much less upkeep than you think and that most of you are just continuously beating it into submission until it no longer wants to listen to you.  And that’s not good.  Woop woop!

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I am becoming more of a lover of naturopathic medicine by the day.  I literally have fears of waking up a few years from now in a remote forest, wearing just leaves, listening for the sound of deer while I’m foraging for herbs.  Seriously…because this passion is getting out of control.

However, there is a fair amount of nonsense out there, too, so you have to be careful when you begin to look for answers for every day ailments outside of the traditional medicine network.  First, know that whatever you choose to go with it is not as potent as a drug so it will take longer to work and you will have to play with the dosing.  Second, start with well known and proven cures before venturing into the land of weird and bizarre.  And lastly, if it sounds wacked out, it most likely is wacked out and at that point you should use it for pure entertainment purposes only.

The following is a list of things you may not have thought of to help you with your digestive and gastric issues:

Aloe Juice

I have no idea what this tastes like, but the sound of it makes me want to want to wash my hair with it not drink it.  Odd.

• It’s good for soothing GI distress.
• It’s the only plant source of Vit B12.  Who knew?
• Get it organic and uncooked.
• If you can, get it with glutamine added.

Prebiotics

Most of us have heard of probiotics, but prebiotics help your probiotics work better.  Now are you actually following that loop?  You will take probiotics to help you digest food and promote good bacteria in the gut and you’ll take prebiotics to help the probiotics flourish.  Really right now?  What’s next?  Postbiotics?  “No flushing necessary folks; this supplement obliterates your food right in the colon.”

• A mix of both pre and pro biotics is known as symbiotics.
• For probiotics, make sure you get one with 2-6 billion cultures and at least 2 strains.
• Doing one without the other is nowhere near as effective as taking both.

Enzymes

I ended up doing so much research on these that they’ll have their own series soon.  The biggest thing to know right now is:

• Should contain protease, amylase and lipase.
• If this is a tummy acid problem, get an HCl based one.

Fiber

I am partial to a particular fiber product that I have been promoting for years now.  I love it.  No…seriously…I love it.  I do not get paid by them nor am I an affiliate of any kind.  I just love them.  www.drnatura.com Do NOT look at the website photos while eating lunch.  I’m just warning you.  Also:

• Get a product with both soluble and insoluble fiber.
• Do not use Metamucil which is probably the least effective product ever.  Go to Whole Foods and find one.
• Borage, flax or rice fiber should be in the ingredient list somewhere.

Antioxidants and Amino Acids

The word antioxidants makes me want to stick a fork in my eyeball.  Probably one of the most bastardized words in the food marketing industry today.  It’s a runner up to “all natural” which nowadays really means, “you can’t prove it one way or the other, so there!”

• Zinc is a mineral that gets overlooked way too many times when it tends to be the culprit.  Take note of him.
• Glutathione.  Not sure what series he’ll show up in but he’s worth the write up.  Big benefit putting him in your diet.
• Arginine enhances wound healing and works well in the GI tract.
• Glutamine is a must if you find yourself constantly getting sick or just overall, general malaise.  You want to go high dose with this, though.  Don’t mess around on the 5g end.

This wraps up the gut series.  I purposefully left off any dosing or specifics because I do not want you to use this site for that.  When it comes to medicinal issues, I want to steer you in the right direction but not lead you to the water to drink.  You need a good doc to work with or at least a good doc’s website.  Cool?

Also, the thyroid is its own series coming soon, too.  It’s way too big of a deal to lump into this series.  Hang tight for it.

Not sure what’s coming up next.  Stay tuned to find out.  Woop woop!!

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I went to school for biomedical engineering at Northeastern University and at that time it was not an actual major because it was just bursting on to the scene of engineering so I had to major in both mechanical engineering and biology to make it happen.  At Northeastern, you had the option of doing Co-op jobs for full quarters (they were a quarter based school back then) with top companies that came to campus to recruit cheap labor.  The thing that most people do not realize about Co-op jobs is that they really are more like temp work than internships.  So you go work for someone for 3 or 6 months and then go back to school.  It was very intimidating to be honest.

Because I had a dual degree focus (I dropped Biology my senior year—long story) at that time, I could take anything for a job because I had such an eclectic background so I chose to work in a biomedical company on the manufacturing floor doing quality assurance.  The man who interviewed me for the position was the nicest guy ever and I was to work directly for him which made it a no-brainer as to my decision of whether to work there or not.  He seemed so laid back and he had a great sense of humor.  Part of me thought that would be bad for both of us because we’d never get anything done laughing our heads off.  Well it was not to be because the first week of me being on the job, my cool guy bled out on his bathroom floor and went on a 6 month sabbatical that he ended up making permanent by not coming back.  Why did this happen to the nicest guy ever?  NSAIDs.

NSAIDs, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (aka Motrin, Advil, Aspirin and Aleve), are over the counter miracle workers that help every athlete/gym rat through their injuries and painful times.  They are essential to our everyday living but they are as caustic as a mofo.  For most us, we pop them like candy:  800 mg here, 600 mg there…400 mg every 4 hours til the inflammation goes down.  Very few of us ever think of the long term effects of these drugs and yet they do some serious damage long term.

Most of the time that I talk to folks they will say, “I never take anything.  It makes me sick to my stomach.”  Or they’ll say they ‘don’t like to take anything.’  But then in casual conversation, they’ll tell me they’re popping Motrin like breath mints.  Umm…which is it?  And why would I care?  Here are the last of the gut ailments I see you ladies with:

Chronic Erosive Gastritis

What is it? Inflammation of the stomach or said more succinctly:  OUCH!

Normal Causes: H. Pylori in the gut but it needs a catalyst.  H. Pylori alone won’t do it.  Typically stress triggers it.

Notable Cause: Too long of exposure of tummy to NSAIDs irritates the lining of the tummy.  The mucous layer is slowly removed which in turns exposes the lining to these drugs and over time it is debilitating.

Leaky Gut Syndrome

What is it? Mucous lining of the small intestine becomes too porous allowing food to get through.  In other words, the screen door blew off the house and now the bugs are getting in.  Ewww.

Normal Causes: Stress, eating too fast, overeating.

Notable Cause: NSAIDs causing irritation of the intestinal tract.  Using them for long periods of time blocks the body’s natural ability to repair intestinal lining.

Gastroesophageal Reflux (GERD)

What is it? A digestive disorder in which partially digested food from the stomach, along with hydrochloric acid and enzymes, back up in the esophagus.  Liken this to a nasty traffic jam in the chest.

Normal Causes: A sphincter gives way allowing things to come back up.

Notable Cause: NSAIDs.  They irritate the lining of the esophagus the same way they do the lining of the tummy and the intestines.  OY!

The treatment looks the same for all them:  BACK IT DOWN.  Very simple…see?  But who really knows it’s not that simple and it’s not that cut and dry either?  Here are some things we need to think about:

• We are high stress by nature so we are prone to GERD and gastritis.
• Working out too close to when we just ate exacerbates GERD.
• Researches think that 2/3 of all autoimmunes come from activity in the gut.
• We are more than likely creating our food allergies from our own food that we eat because it keeps passing through our intestines undigested.
• There is no diagnosis for leaky gut but they assume you have it when you keep cropping up with more and more autoimmunes.
• It would be wise for us to rotate the NSAIDs we use:  Motrin vs. Aleve vs. Tylenol so that we can avoid this from happening as much as possible.
• If we don’t need to take them, don’t.  Save them for injuries and severe PMS.
• When we do take them, keep track of how much and how often.  This is the easiest way to spot abuse.
• There is no limit as to how much is too much—it’s highly individual.

My guy ended up being alright and he came by to visit me on my second Co op at that company.  I often wonder how that would have turned out had he stayed because essentially I took his job while he was gone.  So much for being trained…  I was thrown right in to the lion’s den.  But I learned at an early age how destructive these seemingly innocent OTCs can be.  Like I mentioned in the first post of this series, we are supposed to be the healthy ones.  Be mindful of what you are doing/eating because many of the fixes of these problems we already put in practice so we escalate straight to medical intervention.  Let’s avoid that shall we?

More to come!! Hang tight! Woop woop!

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I know—no, really…I know!—that I can be a nag about certain things.  I’d be amazed if you did not know that I was a psycho about good fat in your diet or variety in your meal plan.  In fact, I’d think there was something wrong with you if you didn’t know that about me.  But there really are reasons for the broken record lectures that come out of my lap top every week.  This series would rank up there as one in the top 3 reasons I am the psycho I am about the way you diet.  Not just that you diet, but exactly how you do it.  Most folks focus on just your body, others focus on your body and your general health; I would say I focus on your acute symptoms first, general health second, emotional stability third and body fourth because I have seen the damage first hand when the (outside of the) body is the top priority.

Variety is my bat and your menu is my ball and I literally beat the living tar out of it every week.  Occasionally I’ll get a homerun, but for the most part I’m just swinging at it hoping for a line drive (for you to change anything).  Eating the same thing every day, day in and day out is boring, restrictive and will make you manic.  But more importantly, it sets you up for food allergies and intolerances that once they set in, you have most of them for a long time or for life for some others.  Nothing is worse than having a favorite food that you can no longer eat because you ate too much of it and now it either makes you sick or makes you sick when you eat something else with it.  Ok, well I lied.  There is something worse.  And that would be developing an autoimmune disease or condition because of the foods that you are eating such as Crohn’s disease, diverticulitis, gastritis, IBS or Ulcers.

Each one of these conditions have no real known cause as to why you have them but all of them can be triggered by food allergies/sensitivities.  Crohn’s typically runs in families but just because your parents have it does not mean you will.  What really needs to happen is that you provide it with the right environment to thrive and then it will kick in when it’s ready.   Ulcers are very much like that, as well.  They are caused by H. Pylori bacteria that flourish in our stomachs but not everyone who has H. Pylori has ulcers.  This means that we needed to get our bodies in such a rut/mess that we cultivated that condition.  I would hate to know I brought something as painful as ulcers into fruition because I insisted on eating XYZ every day.   We would like to think that because we are eating so “healthy” that we no longer have to worry about these things.  Only people who eat crap get these things.  Wrong!  Oh so wrong!

One of the requirements to work with us is to fill out a health history questionnaire.  In that questionnaire we ask if you have any medical conditions that we need to know about.  Time and time again, form after form you will see someone list a gastrointestinal condition as something they are struggling with.  Shoot down to the section on food and they will say, “Every day I have…”  and proceed to give me their food diary.  Is this their fault?  No.  No one talks about variety the way they should and most of us are happy we eat something never mind trying to mix it up.  But now that you do know, you are responsible for your health and you need to get to mixing it up!

Here are some things that you need to know when it comes to these five conditions:

Do not stack slow metabolizers

I talk about this as ‘caustic combos’.  These are foods that are not bad but should not be eaten close to each other.  Salmon, steak, sword fish, beans and pasta come to mind when I think of these.  They are foods that typically take a long time to move through the colon.  Therefore, eating them on the same day or having them day after day is not a good idea.  Slow motility (the amount of time food spends in your colon) is a major factor in diverticulitis and IBS.  The longer food sits in your colon, the more damage it can do.  And yes, we eat a lot of fiber but that means nothing.  Constipation is out of control among clean eaters (hence this series).

Binge on more than just chocolate

Chocolate is mucus forming and can really do a number on the colon.  Mucus is a primary symptom of IBS which basically says that there is major inflammation somewhere.  Say you work out and do not replenish your water adequately.  Then you come home a little later and have a salmon salad for lunch.  Now you’ve jammed up the highway during a drought season.  Then you lose your tree that night on some chocolate (I know…you’d never do that).  Now you have a chief aggravator waiting its turn for exit in your colon while sitting behind pink stucco.  Great.

Easy on the offenders

Dairy, wheat/gluten, egg whites, nuts, soy, popcorn, chemicals in food, caffeine (yoohoo diet coke lovers), chicken and fructose/sweeteners of any kind are known allergens.  Eating them in large quantities is just asking for trouble.  Back in the day, Walden farms marinades were all the rage.  Then people started cropping up with all kinds of health issues—not because there was something wrong with the marinades, but because they were going through a bottle a week.  It was crazy.  I am sure Walden Farms did not want people eating their product on that level.  But that’s what we do, we KILL foods we love.  KILL them dead!  We eat them until their pouring out of our skin.  So much of what we go through is incredibly preventive.

Listen, if you made it this far….wow.  There is more.  We need to talk symptoms of the above, supplements for everything and thyroid stuff.   This goes much deeper than you think.  Woop woop!

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Yesterday I introduced the three most popular conditions that I hear about when it comes to tummy issues and I did it in a very “basic information” sort of way.   You can find a ton of info out there about them but most of the information is very general in that all the sites sort of say the same thing.  Any time someone wants to tell me to “eat better” as a way to fix the issue, I tend to tune them out because we, on a whole, have already solved that problem.  This then sends me on a hunt as to what may also be the issue or what may be the alternate remedy.  The other thing is that I am not really interested in solving the problem with an Over The Counter drug simply because if we are working this hard to eat clean and exercise, an OTC seems out of place in our lives.  We tend to want a natural remedy that reflects our more natural type of lifestyle.  This brings me to today’s post.  I am not about to give you a host of remedies, I think that would not be cool; But I am going to show you how detailed you can be about what you are going through and that it really benefits you to be in tune with your symptoms.

If you ever have the pleasure (I say that with a giggle) to speak with me, you will find that you cannot say something to me in passing and I just let it go.  I have been told that I am a dog with a bone, worse than someone’s mother, a pitbull and so on when it comes to your health and what you think is nothing is typically something.  There’s also no such thing as TMI in my book.  Please…keep that in mind.  I will ask you ALL kinds of questions if I think that there is something fishy going on.  I always say this, and I do mean this, I am not a doctor.  What I am is an air traffic controller and I am here to keep you from ignoring the big pink elephant in the room.

This is why I am about to provide the following two lists for you, because if you could, you would just ignore what your body is telling you and just keep trying to lose weight.  But here is another thing I always say, ‘only healthy people can lose weight.’  If you are backed up or leaking like a cracked pipe, you can forget changing your body composition.  Your body has priorities and healing is number 1.  Not weight loss.    You may think the occasional bout of constipation, diarrhea, gas or bloating is no big deal, but maybe you’ll think differently if you know it comes with other symptoms.   The following two lists are different ways each of the 2 conditions can manifest in your body.  Each bullet point is its own manifestation.  You should only have one bullet point.  If you have more than one, get to a doc even faster.  The lists come from Prescription for Natural Cures by James Balch MD, Mark Stengler MD and Robin Balch ND, 2004.

Constipation

• Going days without going and when you finally do it’s hard and dry.  You also have sudden, noticeable memory issues.
• No desire to go at all and when you do it’s hard and dry.  This comes with great thirst, irritability and you may have a headache.
• Chronic constipation with chills and clammy hands.  You may also feel overwhelmed.
• Constipation with bloating and bad gas.  Cravings for sweets are out of control and symptoms are worse in late afternoon.  You feel better when you drink something warm.
• Constipation with a strong craving for salt and water.  You may be depressed and also light sensitive.
• Having an urgent feeling to go but can’t.  You may be irritable and/or feel overstressed.
• Constipation with PMS or menopause.  Could be chilly, irritable and having a really hard time going when you do.
• Can go but it is work!  Not coming out without a fight.  May have chills also and you are generally lean.
• Back and forth between constipation and diarrhea.  May have strong thirst for freezing cold drinks.

Diarrhea

• Comes with rumbling and gurgling in the tummy followed by an explosion.  Could be discolored and mucus filled.
• Comes with anticipation of a stressful event or eating way too much sugar.
• Diarrhea and vomiting together.  You may be anxious, restless and chilly.  There may be blood in stool.  This could be food poisoning if the first time happening.
• Comes with extreme exhaustion and weakness.
• Comes with nausea.
• Painful diarrhea that’s accompanied by extreme sweating and spasms of the intestines.
• May just be watery but not fully diarrhea.  Typically smells foul.  You may be anxious and crave cold drinks.
• May happen after eating greasy foods or certain fruits.  You feel better in open air than in a warm room.
• Burning, explosive diarrhea that smells like rotten eggs.  You have extreme thirst for cold drinks.

There you have it.  The TMI list of all TMI lists.  But I want to tell you how necessary something like this is.  Many times we discount the thing we’re going through as it’s all the same thing and it is not.  So when your doctor, or someone psychotically detail oriented like myself, asks you questions  you may not understand why.  Or when you slap a general remedy on it but it doesn’t seem to help.  Each one of these has a different cause and a different natural remedy.  It is imperative to pay attention to your digestive system because just like your period, it is an infamous Town Crier ready to tattle on you at the drop of a hat.

We’re moving on.  Yes.  There is more TMI to be exposed.  We’re a hot bed for conditions.  Woop woop!

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There comes a time when an issue is so worth discussing that we have to look past the embarrassment factor that it may cause.  When I first started eating clean, I never thought about anything but the outcome.  All I cared about was what I was going to look like when I reached goal and the methodology behind what I was doing to get there (remember, I started this to do what I do now for a living, not to just look good).  I had no idea that I could crave foods more than a pregnant woman in her 9 month or after a period of dieting hate chicken with a passion reserved for mean people and animal abusers.  But what was the real shocker was the gastric disturbance caused by all of the veggies and artificial sweeteners in my diet.  Even after I cleared out all the sweeteners, I could still level a 4 story building with one shot if I wasn’t careful.  You know it’s clinical, when you are burning so many candles that you change the temperature in the room that you are sitting in.  That’s serious business right there.

This is going to be a TMI series at some points and a great help at others.  What I have found in the clean eating community is an abnormal amount of gastric issues when they should be cleared up with our initial diet change.  IBS, heartburn, constipation, Crohn’s disease, gastritis and so on are rampant amongst the ranks and it seems as if it shouldn’t be.  So I want us to take a look at what we are doing right, what we’re doing wrong and what we don’t even know that we are doing that is furthering these conditions.  Whenever you read a book on these conditions, the first thing that they tell you is to clean up the diet and we have already.  So what gives?

I will be talking about these conditions and how they affect us both physically and emotionally because both play a role in our overall health.  Since we tend to be type A folks, we have to look at what that does to our stress levels and our colons alike.  Most of us at some point in our dieting careers are like wound up balls of yarn waiting to unwind at any moment.  That does a number on us long term and since adrenal fatigue is a concern nowadays, we need to be prudent in the way we relax as much as the way we diet.

I won’t be starting this series until Monday.  There will be no blog on Thursday and the Friday audio post will not be posted until Saturday afternoon.  I owe you sweet and savory so I’ll be getting that on the blog this weekend.  If you have anything you want to see covered in this next series, hit me up at Jodi@trans4mationstation.com.  Cool?  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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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!