by Amber WF | Mar 17, 2017 | Blog, Body, This Week in Paleo, Weight Loss |
If you know me, you know I’m not big on the calorie-counting and tracking mania of the rest of the diet world. I prefer to let people figure out their health intuitively, eating whole, healthful foods that make them feel good.
But in some circumstances I actually think tracking may be a good idea.
There’s no one size fits all way to know if tracking might be a good choice for you. You know yourself best.
But here are 3 reasons you might consider tracking food intake.
#1 Micronutrients
Even if you’re eating paleo, you may not be getting ALL the nutrients required for health.
Ever monitored how much potassium you’re taking in? I can almost guarantee it doesn’t meet the recommended daily allowance.
Now, I’m not about perfectionism and strict rule following.
But micronutrients are just as important, if not more important than macros.
Instead of worrying about what exact percentage or gram amount of carbs you’re eating in a day, how’s about worrying if you’ve got your daily allotment of vitamin C, or the B vitamins, or (gasp!) fiber!
You might be surprised. In fact, I’m pretty sure you will be.
Because if you’re not downing tons of non-starchy veggies and leafy greens you’re not getting as much as you could. And if you’re not going to make it a priority, it might be time to start thinking about the dreaded multivitamin to help prevent nutrient deficiencies.
I recommend this one in my post on multivitamins which you can find here.
#2 You’re having trouble losing weight
I’m a huge proponent of eating a naturally healthy diet and being moderate about the crazy counting calories stuff.
My program Weight Loss Unlocked works for a lot of people by helping them make healthful food choices without really having to count anything. But some people just have trouble with this method.
Did you know the average person underestimated their caloric intake by about 30%?
That number can rise even more if the person isn’t tracking calories.
And while I agree that calories are not the end all be all of weight loss, and certainly not of health, you can’t eat 3000 of them as a fairly sedentary person a day and expect to lose weight.
I don’t care if you’re eating cake or coconut oil, too many calories are going to derail your efforts.
This is where tracking can help.
Take a week and see where you’re at. That can give you a better idea of where you’re eating too much and where you’re just right.
Then try tracking a week at a more appropriate calorie count for weight loss and be mindful of how it feels. Then, when you stop tracking, you’ll have a better idea of what the right amount of food should feel like.
#3 You’re gaining weight or aren’t feeling well
Weight gain can be caused by a number of factors- hormones, water retention, medications, etc.
But if you have been gaining weight inexplicably, you haven’t done anything differently, or don’t feel you have, tracking your food intake may be helpful.
Perhaps you’re eating the same number of calories but have increased your carbohydrate count. If you have insulin resistance, this could cause weight gain. If you don’t, it could be water retention.
Maybe you feel like you’ve been eating the same, but are forgetting about those dark chocolate squares you sneak in throughout the day, or that new post-workout drink, or those new fat bombs.
Excess calories could be causing sneaky pounds to build up.
Maybe it’s just the second half of your cycle, maybe it’s constipation, it could be anything, but sometimes excessive weight gain can indicate an underlying problem.
If you track your intake and nothing is outside of normal, and the weight keeps packing on, it could be a thyroid problem or a side effect of a medication, or any number of issues.
You can use this information when you see your doctor, and you’ll be one step ahead of the curve.
Likewise, if you aren’t feeling well or are having increased anxiety, depression, or blood sugar crashes, tracking food intake alongside your mood after eating can help you pinpoint possible issues or trigger food/times.
Same thing goes for having digestive issues. If you know what you ate and at what time, it’s much easier to figure out intolerance.
—
Mindful eating is a skill. And it’s best learned in the context of normal hunger and satiety cues.
If your insulin is out of whack or you’re carrying a lot of excess weight, or have any kind of health condition or medication that interferes with your hunger cues, mindful eating is going to be remarkably difficult and could lead to feelings of failure and lack of results.
Nutritionists and nerds alike love the website cronometer.com. It gives you WAY more detailed micronutrient values than other apps like My Fitness Pal, though that is a great choice for busy people because it has an app.
Whether you choose to track or not, I hope we can all learn to be respectful of what works for us as individuals.
If mindful eating isn’t right for someone right now, they certainly don’t need to be judged for that. And likewise if counting calories is mentally unhealthy for someone, they deserve respect and support as they follow the natural cues of their body.
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Do you track food intake? Why or why not? What site do you like to use?
by Stefani Ruper | Feb 16, 2017 | Weight Loss |
Does it get harder to lose weight the older you get?
For many women who have already reached this point in their lives, the answer is an obvious YES.
Yet the question still remains of why this is the case, and if it is absolutely necessary. What is the science behind it? Can you avoid weight gain? How much of a challenge is it to keep the same shape and weight as before?
As it turns out, the answer is a bit unfortunate. There are real biological events that happen in your body as you age – particularly as a woman – that naturally lead to weight gain. But, fortunately, the more we know about them, the more equipped we are to take counter measures.
Here are the 4 most important reasons women in menopause gain weight:
1. Estrogen regulates appetite and fat storage
Arguably the most important facet of weight gain in menopause is decreased estrogen levels.
Estrogen receptors are located all throughout a woman’s body. They are particularly concentrated in the brain. This is important, because studies have shown that one type of estrogen receptor–estrogen receptor alpha (the other type is estrogen receptor beta)–plays an important role in energy homeostasis. That is – estrogen regulates how much energy your body burns.
In 2007, in a series of animal experiments described at the 234th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, researchers demonstrated how important estrogen is to the regulation of food intake, energy expenditure, and body fat distribution.
Professor of Psychiatry Deborah H Clegg led a group of researchers investigating two ER-alpha rich portions of the brain. There is a part of the brain called the ventromedial nucleus. This area has been long recognized to play a role in energy regulation.
Clegg and her colleagues used a new laboratory technique called RNA interference. This enabled them to deactivate the ER-alpha receptors in the ventromedial nucleus (but not other parts of the brain) in rats. When they did so, the animal’s energy levels and metabolic rates plummeted. The animals also developed insulin regulation issues, an intolerance of glucose, and weight gain, even though their calorie intake remained the same.
This is so important it bears repeating:
Without estrogen in the ventromedial nucleus, rats ate the same amount of food as normal but developed severe weight gain, glucose issues, and low energy. Without estrogen, keeping everything else the same, they gained weight.
Plus, their weight was not evenly distributed. Instead, it went directly to the visceral, or abdominal area of the body. This area is linked to a much higher rate of inflammation and disease than fat in other locations.
Lowering estrogen activity in the brain throughout menopause and after has the same effect on women: the body natural starts to burn less fat, and to keep storing it in places like the abdomen.
2. Estrogen and progesterone combat insulin and cortisol
As I discuss at length in my program for weight loss, Weight Loss Unlocked: The Paleo Woman’s Solution (check it out here) – estrogen and progesterone play important roles in modulating insulin sensitivity.
Importantly, estrogen helps make you more insulin sensitive. As estrogen levels drop in menopause, this can be a big problem for keeping fat storage to a minimum, and especially around the abdomen, where it can be a health concern.
Importantly, estrogen and progesterone also help modulate cortisol levels. When estrogen and progesterone levels fall during menopause, it’s entirely likely that over time, the body shifts toward storing fat when calories are high (as opposed to building muscle), and reduces the amount of fat burned when calories are low (and burn muscle instead). This is an effect both of reduced cortisol suppression as well as reduced insulin sensitivity.
3. Muscle mass deteriorates more quickly than it used to
Oxidative stress, inflammation, and inactivity are important reasons that muscle mass decreases as women age.
Yet estrogen is also quite important. Estrogen helps move calcium into bones and therefore supports a strong skeleton.
Estorgen also helps build muscle.
Now, this might not make a lot of sense, since body builders are always talking about the importance of testosterone. Yet even male body builders recognize the importance of estrogen. The body needs a certain amount of estrogen to maintain androgen (male sex hormone, like testosterone) receptors, which then go on to stimulate muscle growth. Furthermore, estrogen receptor beta appears to encourage muscle growth itself. The process of muscle loss while aging – called sarcopenia – has been shown to be slowed by estrogen treatments (and estrogen receptor beta activity) in rats. Interestingly, these muscle-stimulating affects occur in both male and female mice.
4. When exercising the body doesn’t burn as much fat as it used to
Unfortunately, due to declining muscle mass and insulin sensitivity both, it becomes harder for the body to burn calories during workouts.
This is unfortunate, but also not without its solutions. Women who switch to high quality weight-bearing exercises (which you can find, or example, in Noelle’s amazing Strong from Home workout program) do maintain muscle mass, and therefore high quality, effective workouts. They just have to good about it. This is partly why I recommend Noelle’s program so highly – it helps you craft a fitness plan that is the perfect amount of cardio, weight training, and challenge for you.
You can be sure that the more you focus on maintaining muscle mass, the more intense and beneficial your workouts will be.
What to do about it
As I just mentioned above, you can help preserve the efficacy of your workouts by choosing ones that focus on lifting heavy weights. You can get an awesome program designed just for this purpose with Noelle’s wonderful Strong from Home.
You can also do everything you can to keep inflammation to a minimum. This will help keep your body from building up stress hormone levels and storing fat in your abdomen. This means eating a nutrient-rich, anti-inflammatory diet full of organic vegetables and fruits, organ meats (here’s a supplement in case you do not like to eat liver), eggs, fermented foods (on this page are my favorites) and the rockstar superfood cod liver oil can go a long way.
Finally, you can work on supporting your estrogen levels. I do not recommend hormone replacement therapy. Sometimes, a small dose for a short period of time can work great as an interim fix. But in the long term, it is probably best to focus on supporting estrogen with simple diet and lifestyle choices. You can do this getting plenty of high quality carbs (such as fruits and starches) and fats (such as olive oil and coconut oil) which can help boost estrogen production.
You may also be served by playing with your intake of phytoestrogens. Phytoestrogens are estrogens found in plants. They occur in high doses in soy and flax, and in lower but still sometimes effective doses in legumes such as black beans and chick peas. For some people they hurt estrogen production, but for many women in menopause it can actually help. Start with a small dose, such as a bowl of chickpeas or hummus, once a day to see if it helps make a change.
I talk in more depth about the effect of hormones on weight maintenance in my manual for permanent weight loss for women, Weight Loss Unlocked: The Paleo Woman’s Solution. If you’re looking to find a way to keep losing weight as you age, this may be a great resource for you. Plus, it’s 100% risk free – you can try the plans without any hassle or risk. Check it out here.
Importantly, I personally have not gone through menopause! Everything I’ve shared here I’ve learned through research. Please if you have any comments or ideas or experiences share them below!
by Stefani Ruper | Jan 16, 2017 | Blog, Body, Hormones, Libido, PMS & cramps, Weight Loss |
“Estrogen dominance” is not a term typically used by the research or professional medical community. If the condition were described to them, however, they would be able to identify it. It is a real and common thing for women to have excessive estrogen levels. It just so happens that the natural health community is deliberate about addressing it.
The basic problem of estrogen dominance is that estrogen levels are too high relative to other hormones, specifically progesterone. Usually it occurs when estrogen levels go too high, though it can also happen when progesterone levels fall too low. It can occur at any time during life — during reproductive years, perimenopause, or even menopause.
It can also be coming from a wide variety of sources within a woman’s diet and lifestyle. This makes estrogen dominance a bit of a complex nut to crack. But a holistic approach to health (you can read my recommendations for women’s health in my best-seller, here) should at least get everyone on the right track, and provide a proper learning environment in which you can figure out precisely where your dysregulation is coming from.
Estrogen dominance: symptoms
Estrogen dominance can cause a wide variety of symptoms, as well as increase the risk for a wide variety of diseases and conditions. Symtpoms associated with estrogen dominance include:
Weight gain
PMS
Mood swings
High emotional sensitivity
Heavy periods
Breast tenderness
Headaches
Decreased libido
Sluggish metabolism
Menstrual cramps
Conditions that appear to be more common in women with estrogen dominance and that may in fact explicitly develop as a result of estrogen dominance include:
Cystic Fibroids
Ovarian Cysts
Endometriosis
Adenomyosis
PMS
PMDD
Depression
Hypothyroidism (estrogen is antagonistic to thyroid hormone)
Breast Cancer
Ovarian Cancer
Cervival Cancer
These aren’t problems we can just shrug off of our shoulders. In many ways, we can reasonably view estrogen dominance as contributing to the deaths of thousands of women every year.
Estrogen Dominance: Causes
The causes of estrogen dominance are wide and varied, but largely have to do with metabolic dysregulation and organ malfunction. Some dietary factors may also offset the balance.
1) Being overweight:
Fat cells perform a function called “aromatization” which converts testosterone to estrogen. The more body fat, the more the body tips the balance towards estrogen and away from testosterone.
Now, this does not mean testosterone levels are necessarily low in overweight women. To the contrary: testosterone levels tend to be high in overweight women. This is not always the case but is quite common: it’s because testosterone production is stimulated by insulin, and many overweight women have some degree of insulin resistance.
Woman predisposed to insulin insensitivity often experience increases in both testosterone and estrogen levels. Progesterone receives no bump from weight gain, however: progesterone thus remains incapable of offsetting the estrogen increases associated with higher body fat percentages in overweight women. (To learn how to lose weight in a way that is healthy, sustainable, and hormone supporting, check out this resource)
2) Overburdening the liver
The liver is responsible for clearing the body of “old” hormones, especially estrogen. If the liver is overburdened with a hyper-caloric diet, with high volumes of sugar, with high volumes of alcohol, or with high volumes of processing chemicals, then, it becomes sluggish in it’s ability to process everything. When the liver slows down, estrogen ends up becoming back-logged in a way, and wreaks havoc on the reproductive system as it waits for the liver to heal and to catch up in its bloodstream clearing capacity.
This effect is interestingly even more pronounced in men than it is in women, and it accounts largely for the development of breast-like fat deposits in heavy drinkers. Being overweight and being stressed may also contribute to this process in men.
3) Stress:
Stress wreaks havoc on all body systems. Perhaps most pressingly for women, however, it decreases the production of progesterone in the body. When a woman is stressed, her adrenal glands “steal” the precursor to progesterone and instead use it to produce cortisol, the stress hormone. This process is called “pregnenolone steal.”
High volumes of stress can yank the rug out from under progesterone, which can precipitously tip hormonal balance in favor of estrogen.
4) Consumptions of phyto and xenoestrogens
Much as I have difficulty with soy in my own life, I typically preach caution when talking about soy. I honestly believe that it is a good therapeutic tool for some women, and each of us needs to use it appropriately. Sometimes it can be helpful. More often than not I think it is probably harmful.
In every single case, however, soy, flax, legumes, and other sources of estrogen interfere with natural estrogen production.
Phytoestrogens can increase the aromatization process in fat cells that I described above. They increase the rate of testosterone and other hormones being converted into estrogen.
They can also simply just dump an increased estrogen load into the body, which automatically tips the balance. In a properly functioning metabolism, the liver should probably be able to clear out this increased estrogen load. But sometimes the load is too heavy or the liver not quite strong enough, and that becomes an impossibility.
Phytoestrogens are from plants. Xenoestrogens are from chemicals in the environment, such as BPA. Plastics and aluminums typically have BPA and you may ingest it if you aren’t careful. Here’s my favorite BPA free coconut milk, and an awesome bottle that I use for my water.
It is also entirely possible to become estrogen dominance as a result of birth control pill use – a process which I describe in great length in this PDF.
5) A low fiber diet
Estrogen is processed by the liver, but it is also processed partly by gut flora, and also excreted through the digestive track.
It has been shown many times that low fiber diets are associated with estrogen dominance. There are many cofounding variables that may play a role here, but the general idea is that estrogen can be reaborsed through the intestinal walls. With poor gut flora and with slow intestinal motility, estrogen can sit too long in the gut and gets reabsorbed back into the bloodstream.
If you are constipated, this may be an issue for you.
So the answer is not necessarily fiber – fiber may not be what helps get rid of constipation for you – but it is one potential option.
Fiber is generally correlated with improved digestive pace and motion, though not exclusively. A proper amount of fiber helps push things along in the digestive track. Too much fiber can obviously be damaging. It causes something health advocates like to call “roughage.” It is abrasive, and it can lead to gut deteriorating conditions such as diverticulitis. In any case, however, regularly consuming fruits and vegetables can be quite helpful for gut motility… as well as the rest of the body.
If you are really struggling with constipation still you could always try paleo fiber. Though I believe magnesium (my favorite here) may be a healthier way to supplement for constipation. The best possible thing to do however may be to eat fermented foods like these or consider a probiotic supplement like this.
Estrogen dominance: treatment
The best possible thing for estrogen dominance is a natural, paleo-type diet. Cooling inflammation, supporting organ – and particularly liver – function, minimizing phytoestrogen intake, and maximizing nutrient status are all excellent, estrogen-managing aspects of paleo.
A paleo-template type diet includes healthy, grass-fed or wild-caught animal products (with both the protein and the fat), seafood, fruits, vegetables, olive oil, coconut products, starchy vegetables, and to some extent seeds and nuts.
However, in an estrogen dominant system, seeds and nuts can act as phytoestrogens and tip the hormonal balance in favor of estrogen, so they should be carefully stepped around.
Foods that support thyroid health such as seafood and seaweed should also be quite helpful for boosting metabolic health and hormone clearance (if you do not consume seaweed regularly consider a small dose kelp supplement).
Foods to emphasize for estrogen clearing are those that boost B vitamin levels, omega 3 levels (fermented cod liver oil is an excellent way to meet the body’s need for omega 3 while also getting the rare but crucial vitamins A, D, and K), choline (for the liver!), zinc (here), magnesium (here), calcium, and vitamin D.
For that reason, eggs (choline), fish (omega 3 fats, iodine, selenium, and vitamin D), liver and other organ meats (vitamin A, vitamin K, B vitamins, and iron, zinc, manganese, etc), and high quality animal protein may be your best companions in this journey.
Foods to be avoided are all processed sugars, grains, omega 6 seed oils, phytoestrogens which include soy, flax, legumes, seeds, and some herbs, which I list in great detail here, and alcohol.
Some herbs have also been rumored to be helpful. Personally, I don’t love to recommend herbs, especially ones that affect hormone balance, such as chasteberry. (Though chasteberry, and I did link to a good grand, has been rumored to be quite effective). They simply have not been studied to any significant depth. Everything we know about herbs and hormones comes from what people say – not science.
If you are still interested, the absolute best herbs I can recommend for estrogen dominance are ones that support liver health and may help support estrogen excretion. For that the absolute best are milk thistle and/or dandelion root, in my opinion. You can see a good milk thistle here and a good dandelion root here.
Additionally, L-taurine promotes bile circulation, which enhances estrogen’s excretion out of the body.
Exercise is incredibly important, as it can speed up the liver’s detox processes, sharpen insulin sensitivity, boost weight loss, help mitigate mood swing problems associated with estrogen dominance, and reduce levels of stress hormones in the body. You can read all about my exercise recommendations in this book.
Getting off of the pill or getting on a very low-dose pill is critical. You can read about the side effects, risks, and management tricks of birth control in this PDF.
Stress reduction is huge. I cannot emphasize enough how important this is. Without progesterone, it is nearly impossible to rectify estrogen dominance. They must be in balance. Even if every other aspect of estrogen mitigation is in place, if progesterone is low then estrogen dominance may persist.
Estrogen dominance: In sum
Estrogen dominance plagues a wide variety of women, and at all stages of life.
Supporting organ health, reducing stress, and generally focusing on healthful foods should get us most of the way there towards greater hormone balance.
There are, of course, many other things you can to do help mitigate problems associated with estrogen dominance– for example, experimenting with neurotransmitter supplementation or boosting neurotransmitter health with diet and supplements in order to mitigate mood swing problems– but those are wide and varied and left for their own places in this blog at an upcoming time.
Foods and supplements I have linked to above and which I have personally seen work really well with some clients:
Desiccated liver (in case you don’t like eating it!)
My favorite fermented foods for gut healing, healing constipation
cod liver oil for reducing inflammation and getting the important but rare A, D, and K vitamins
Milk thistle for liver support
Dandelion root for liver support
Paleo fiber
A great probiotic supplement like this
My favorite magnesium here
A list of my favorite fermented foods here
A good small dose kelp supplement
L-taurine
BPA free coconut milk
BPA free water bottle
And that’s a wrap!
You can check out my quick guide PDF on birth control and how to manage it’s symptoms – here – or check out my extensive work on another alarmingly common hormone condition, PCOS – here.
For the real skinny on the impact of hormones on your life, see my book, Sexy by Nature, at its site or read reviews and buy it directly from Amazon!
In the meantime: what is your experience? Does paleo help with these symptoms? Are you estrogen dominant? What parts of your diet and lifestyle are best for keeping you hormonally balanced and healthy? What’s worked, and what hasn’t?
by Stefani Ruper | Jan 1, 2017 | Weight Loss |
I’ve been a blogger the natural health scene for several years now. This means that I have seen half a dozen New Years celebrations come and go. As I have done so, I have helped usher literally thousands of people through their New Years Resolutions.
Some have done amazingly well.
Many, unfortunately, have not.
There are many reasons, I think I have learned, as to why. There are many mistakes that people commonly make. Yet one of them is the most glaring to me, and also one of the easiest to fix.
This is the mistake:
People set weight loss targets – or goal weights.
Why is this a problem?
Setting a weight loss goal, say, of “I am going to lose 30 lbs by June of this year” or “I am going to finally reach my goal weight of 130 lbs” makes it harder to lose weight and keep it off.
It tends to keep your mind focused on the number on the scale. This draws you into making comparisons, judging your progress, and obsessing over how well you are doing. You may end up focusing on your appearance. This is bad because it keeps you away from the healthier and more sustainable alternative, which is to focus on other benefits of eating healthy and losing weight such as gaining energy, developing fitness, and freeing yourself from common complications of heavier weights such as joint pain.
When I was at war with my body fat for the first twenty or so years of my life, I constantly focused on my goals. I measured my hips with a tape measure after every workout. When I did that, I noticed immediately if I had done “good” – that is, if I went down a half an inch. This was cause for celebration – which might lead to me feeling confident and eating some ice cream (here’s a link to the good stuff). I also noticed immediately if I had done “bad’ – that is, if I went up half an inch. This was cause for frustration and disappointment, which might lead to me feeling terrible and eating ice cream. Even if I resisted eating the ice cream for a while, it always won in the end.
When i was finally successful at reaching and maintaining a healthy weight that felt good on my bones – I had done so because I stopped obsessing over my goal. I stopped day dreaming about where I might be some day. I know that sounds weird – if I didn’t think about my goal, how could I be motivated? But trust me.
What I did was focus on a system. I decided to think about health. I decided to eat well. I developed a plan (which I describe at length in my manual for weight loss, Weight Loss Unlocked: The Paleo Woman’s Solution) and I followed it. I might have vaguely noticed my “progress”, and I do still vaguely keep track of my size — mostly by whether or not my clothes still fill — but this was not my obsession.
It was okay for me – and it would be okay for you – to distantly keep an eye on how you are doing. But that is entirely besides the point. If you start on a program that you trust, and know that it is rich in health benefits no matter your size, then it is good for you, and it is the system worth focusing on, not the goal.
Don’t think about where you are going, or what you want your body to be. That would be focusing on the destination. Instead, think about the how of your every day life, and the benefits that it is bringing you on a day to day basis. This would be focusing on the journey. Sure, you might drop weight in the long run, but in the short run are you not experiencing better sleep, clearer skin, less painful menstrual cramps, or anything else?
The key to losing weight is dropping the obsession over losing weight. This doesn’t mean you can’t try, or shouldn’t care, which I talk about at length in this blog post: My 6 Favorite Reasons for Losing Weight. What is does mean is that the goal is best as secondary, in the background. Implementing a system, doing it well, and enjoying the benefits along the way is the best way to keep yourself both mentally and physically happy as you move into a new year and a newer, more energetic, more alive you.
If you do happen to be looking to lose weight in a sustainable, permanent, and healthy weight this year, I personally have had great success – as have many of my clients and my audience – with the methods I explain in Weight Loss Unlocked: The Paleo Women’s Solution. If you are possibly interested but not sure, don’t worry. You can try it on for size and if you don’t like it you’ll get
All my best and love to you on your new years journeys, whether they be weight oriented or not. Other great suggestions, and ones that I am personally thinking much about, might be committing yourself to more service, donating more money, or finding and developing your passions.
Implement systems; not targets. Don’t think about your goal, think about
by Stefani Ruper | Sep 22, 2016 | Self-love, Weight Loss |
The health care system in the UK is becoming overly expensive and overly burdened, almost to a tipping point.
So now – in an effort to stay afloat – nearly a third of UK hospitals are now denying health care to patients with a BMI over 30.
These hospitals have restricted knee, hip, and other lower body replacement surgeries from obese patients and active smokers, saying that the interventions are “wasted” on the obese.
There are so many unfortunate things about this scenario. One of them, however, is in my opinion the worst of all.
It’s that they might actually be making the problem worse.
Why? Because
Fat shaming causes overeating.
This is something we have been saying here at Paleo for Women for a very long time (read my book on it, here).
Four years ago, I wrote a post on what I call the ‘binge-restrict’ pattern of overeating. This is what happens to people who are fat shamed.
When fat shamed, you feel guilty about your body. This motivates you to starve yourself. You “eat clean.” You do a bunch of whole 30s. You might even “feel great.”
But after a while it wears on you. You begin to obsess over what you’re restricted from. You feel hungry and irritable all of the time, perhaps. And you develop very, very, very strong cravings.
So then you ultimately (and inevitably) fall off the wagon, and overeat.
This makes you feel guilty again, so you starve yourself again. Then you develop cravings again. Then you overeat again.
And again, and again.
Restricting food intake has drastic consequences, especially with an unhealthy mindset.
This is exactly what happens with “obesity awareness”
The more that our culture shames people for the size of their bodies, the more we doubt themselves.
The more we doubt themselves, the less capable we are of making changes that focus on health instead of weight loss.
And the more we doubt ourselves, the more we hate our bodies, and resent our bodies, and therefore develop unhealthy relationships with food. We fall into binge and restrict patterns.
Here at Paleo for Women, I often talked about this phenomenon as though it was definitively true. And I did believe that it was.
But now we know more certainly that it is, and that it affects our society on a broad scale. It didn’t just happen to me. It didn’t just happen to Noelle. It didn’t just happen to you. It happens to cultures as a whole.
It is happening to the world.
With such big players like the UK and US health care systems at bat, there is a lot at stake.
The science
This article interviews Researcher Eric Robinson regarding his study of obesity awareness. He says of obesity and the intentions behind it that:
““There is quite a substantial body of research showing it is not really very much fun being an overweight person in this climate,” said Robinson. “It is a stigmatised condition. Realising you are an overweight individual is in itself likely to be quite stressful and make making healthy choices in your lifestyle more difficult.
“It is a tricky finding for public health intervention work. You would hope that making a person aware they are overweight would result in them being more likely to change and lose some weight.”
What Robinson and others instead found is that, from a study of 14,000 adults in the US and the UK, perceiving yourself as overweight actually has the opposite effect. Thinking you are overweight doesn’t incentivize you to lose weight.
Instead, it is strongly associated with weight gain. And this is entirely independent of people’s actual size. It has everything to do, instead, with their own perceptions of themselves.
In the study, the authors write that, “Individuals who identified themselves as being ‘overweight’ were more likely to report overeating in response to stress and this predicted subsequent weight gain. These findings are in line with recent suggestions that the stress associated with being part of a stigmatised group may be detrimental to health.”
So now we know. This happens to people. It wasn’t just me. It isn’t just you. It’s all of us. It’s a part of how we work. It is basic human psychology – that we do, for any number of reasons, overeat in response to negative body image.
But what do you do about it?
You may find yourself then in a bit of a Catch 22. If you already have these feelings about yourself, what do you do?
Does this study actually help? Can it help you choose love, or self-acceptance, or weight loss for the sake of health or energy, instead of for validation?
I think that it can. It can affirm your humanity. It can provide proof for your suspicions. It can help you throw off the condemnations of people around you, and perhaps start looking for ways to stop thinking of yourself in a negative light.
You may want to sit down and think seriously about the relationship between your size and your health. “Health” is no longer a good excuse to starve one’s self. As it turns out, the relationship between health and weight is much more complex than we ever thought. It is totally possible to be healthy and to be overweight.
You may also want to think about the “health at every size” movement. Since it is possible to be healthy at any size, becoming a part of a community of people focused on living well instead of restricting food intake could be great for you. I wrote about why I love Healthy At Every Size in this post.
You may also want to consider thinking about food intake in terms of setting minimums, not maximums. In this post, I describe the way that I like to do macronutrients. Instead of saying “only 100 grams of carbs a day” or “only 50 grams of fat a day” or “no more than 1800 calories a day” I set minimums: “at least 100 grams of carbs a day,” I say. “At least 50 grams of fat.” “At least 2000 calories.”
You might also want to think about fitness in a new way. Many people do work outs because they have to, because that’s what you do in order to lose weight. But what if you engaged with fitness because it was fun…because you found an activity that makes you come alive? I talk about that a bit in this post on why I will never run a marathon.
I have provided a few of our resources in the paragraphs above that I think could be helpful for your relationship with your body fat percentage, whatever that may be. Of course it is all insufficient – our need for self-affirmation and love in this society is truly never ending. So perhaps I should just leave with this thought:
They may that you are not enough. You may sometimes feel like you are not enough. But what you are is beyond enough. You are acceptable, and then some. You are a powerful human being with a body that lives and breathes and thrives no matter how rocky your relationship has been in the past, no many how many hardships it has been through. You are a body that is strong and lovely and your home, and seriously screw any body, any resource, any lingerie company that may make you feel otherwise. You can be healthy at any size, and you deserve it as much as you might deserve anything. You deserve to be nourished more so than anything, to let food be your friend, to let your body be your friend. Your body really does love you. All you have to do is let yourself love it back.
<3
(“Your body is a natural body with natural needs, that, when loved properly, loves you right back” is actually the “golden rule” of our community’s best-selling manifesto, Sexy by Nature. Check it out on Amazon!)
by Stefani Ruper | Apr 28, 2016 | Weight Loss |
Last week I published a post “My 6 Favorite Reasons to Lose Weight.”
I also, and importantly, began that post with a HUGE disclaimer:
“This post is intended to be very sensitive and also a bit in jest but not really.”
Yes, most certainly!
That post and this post are somewhat hyperbolic. I do not mean to say, at all, that anyone is acceptable or unacceptable based on the motivations they have for wanting to lose weight. Not at all. Your reasons are fine! I have no desire to cast judgment on people for the way that they feel. I personally have probably had just about every single motivation for losing weight out there — or at least all of the negative ones.
But I understand entirely why I had them, and I have so much empathy and sympathy for the woman I was.
And some days, I still feel like that.
So all of the reasons for wanting to lose weight are of course completely acceptable. Since I have a program out that helps women lose weight (Weight Loss Unlocked: The Paleo Woman’s Solution), I wanted to be clear why I think weight loss can be a good thing.
I wrote a post on that last week, which you can see here.
And on the flip side of that, sometimes wanting to lose weight can be a bad thing that negatively affects us.
To that end, today I bring you a somewhat flippant but also totally serious post: my definitive list of some of the worst reasons to want to lose weight.
1. Thigh gaps
Thigh gaps are a terrible reason to want to lose weight!
Whether a woman has a thigh gap – regardless of how little body fat she has – is entirely dependent upon her genes. Some women’s legs bow out more from the hips than others. That’s just a simple fact of genetics. Some women have very little body fat but still have thighs that touch, simply because their knees are situated closer together, as a necessary fact of their skeletal structure.
So if you spend your days staring at yourself in the mirror, measuring the distance between your feet on the floor, and measuring the distance between your thighs, stop it. Don’t. I did this for ten years of my life. I was enamored with the thigh gap before the official thigh gap even existed… back when I was around 12 or 13 years old. I had no idea that it was a physical impossibility for me, and if I had, it might have saved me years of anguish.
Of course, physically impossible is not the only reason a thigh gap is a bad reason to want to lose weight.
It is also a bad reason to want to lose weight because no particular socially-constructed idea of what a woman’s body should look like should ever be your motivation for losing weight.
Thigh gaps, six pack abs, hourglasses, bikini bridges, J Lo’s body, J Law’s body, any woman’s body… your body does not have to look any particular way in order to be sexy. It really, truly doesn’t.
(If you don’t trust me on this one, read my best-selling book on it, might change your mind ;))
2. Last Five Pounds
Please, someone, for the love of everything that is holy, tell me why any of us care about “the last five pounds.”
There is nothing healthy about losing the last five pounds, for one.
In fact, it seems as though it might be entirely unhealthy to lose those pounds. This is especially the case for women, whose bodies are extraordinarily sensitive to caloric restriction and intense efforts to lose weight.
So if it’s not about health… what’s it about?
Conformity to a standard ideal?
Demonstrating your level of discipline?
Demonstrating your level of moral superiority?
Showing off for your girlfriends?
I think the answer to all of these questions is “yes.”
Fortunately, they don’t have to be. You don’t have to be ideal to be attractive. In fact, I think the opposite is true, and being uniquely yourself is the most attractive thing you can do.
You don’t have to demonstrate your ‘discipline.’ Your diet may be disciplined, and that’s fine. If it is, good for you, you don’t have to be super slim to show that off. And if it isn’t, that’s fine, too. Mine certainly isn’t, and I’m personally proud of myself for escaping the trap of discipline I was stuck in my whole life.
You don’t have to demonstrate your moral superiority. No one is ‘better’ or ‘worse’ if they look a particular way or eat a particular way. That’s just straight up stupid. Don’t let your peers or the media make you think otherwise. Being a good person is about being compassionate, empathetic, kind, strong, proactive, and the like. Save your energy for the tasks that the world actually needs us to perform, not shaving off pounds to meet some random social standard.
We often feel like we need to lose weight because our friend groups put pressure on us. You don’t have to cave to this. You can either get new, better friends (I endorse this!) or you can stand up to your friends and feel proud of yourself for doing so. There’s no need to compete, here. You’re all beautiful and awesome in your own ways. If they disagree with you, tell them otherwise or kick them to the curb.
3. Because mom/friend/boyfriend/husband said so
No one else deserves to tell you what to do with your body, period.
I work with a lot of women who suffer under the scrutinizing gaze of their mothers. I find this to be more sad than I could possibly say.
I know a lot of women in the world who suffer under the scrutinizing gaze of their boyfriends, and who try to meet some ideal in order to please their boyfriends and get the validation they have promised.
This is terrible. There are a few ways to handle this: you could confront your aggressor and attempt to have a rational conversation about how your body is your own and not somebody else’s to judge, and explain why their words make you feel bad; you could tell your aggressor to piss off, that is, if they aren’t receptive to your concerns, it may be time to liberate yourself from them as much as you can; or you can ignore your aggressor whenever they make you feel judged. This isn’t the most permanent or helpful course of action, but it can be helpful in the interim while you try to figure out what to do.
The bottom line here is that your body is your own, and you are perfectly lovely and smart and kind and good and beautiful in all the ways, and the people in your life should see you as a whole person, rather than a collection of physical parts.
4. Popularity
For most of my life, I lived under the delusion that if I lost weight, people would find me more physically attractive, and like me more.
To a small extent, that is true, because we live in a society that so highly values thinness.
But that is really only to a tiny extent.
I learned this personally when, after starving myself for several months, I became quite thin. While I was thin, I gained confidence. When I behaved with confidence, men efflusively complimented me and asked me out. When I was having a “bad body day” on the other hand and had hardly any confidence at all, men kind of ignored me, even though my body was exactly the same.
Then, when I regained about fifteen pounds and kept my confidence, I found that men continued to compliment me and be enamored with me.
The moral of this story is that it wasn’t my particular body size that drew people to me, but the effervescent and fun person I became when I learned how to be confident. This applies to men, to women, to romantic interests, and to platonic friends. People love when others are confident and fun. They really, in the grand scheme of things, couldn’t care less about your body. The most important thing is that you are happy, and that you can share your happy delights with those around you.
5. Because overweight people don’t “deserve”…
Buried deep in most of our subconsciousnesses are notions that overweight people don’t deserve to eat, don’t deserve to be happy, don’t deserve to be loved.
We think these things because society has rammed them down our throats. Corporations that sell weight loss products, clothing, make up, perfumes, and the like all make more money the worse we feel about ourselves. Advertisements promise us that if we buy a particular outfit we will be attractive and all our woes will go away…. corporations aren’t selling clothing to us per se, but rather the dream of all the positive qualities we might have if we decide to buy their stuff.
So they deliberately manipulate us to keep us feeling down on ourselves. This is a very, very real thing.
One thing you can do to help mitigate feeling this way is shutting yourself away from media, catalogs, and the like as much as possible. Ignoring them will help lessen the din they can create in your head.
And the rest of the time you simply need to remind yourself that your amount of body fat has nothing to do with how good of a person you are, how productive you are, how rich and full your life is, how much you have to be grateful for, and so much more. You are not your body size, and your body size does not mean you deserve less.
You deserve everything that is good and beautiful, because you are human.
6. Because being overweight is “immoral” and “lazy”
Just like thinking we don’t deserve things, we tend to think that body fat is a signal that someone is lazy.
This could not be further from the truth.
I know plenty of super slothful, super lazy humans who eat crappy food and are quite thin.
I also know plenty of heavier people who are super hard workers, ambitious go-getters and world changers, who eat almost nothing but beautifully clean paleo diets.
No one’s body fat percentage reveals anything about their food habits. No one’s food choices say anything about how moral or lazy they are as a human being.
Period.
7. Because men think its hot
So lots of heterosexual women want to lose weight because of the opinion of men.
And I understand to an extent – our society does, for one, have a fair number of men who hate, who literally hate, overweight women. I don’t really understand why, except maybe these men just don’t like that overweight women haven’t conformed to the patriarchy demand that all women become as thin as possible.
But for men who are reasonably well educated and a part of your social groups, having a super slim body really doesn’t mean much of anything.
When it comes down to it, heterosexual men like women, and if anything particularly sways them to find them attractive, it’s the embodied, confident way in which women inhabit their bodies that excites them the most, not fitting into a perfect size. It’s the happy way in which women who are comfortable with who they are are more than happy to be themselves.
The race to super lean bodies is less driven by men than it is by women. Ask almost any man and he’ll say he’s more than happy to be with a woman who’s got some meat on her bones. It’s only we women who impose on ourselves the idea that we have to be thin in order to be attractive or loved.
So let go of that illusion, and see for yourself. I personally have been a reasonable slew of different body sizes, ranging from about a size 00 to a size 9 (though admittedly never a “plus size” so I can’t report on that end of the spectrum, and please take my apologies for my ignorance), and have found that I have literally zero difference in my reception from men in terms of attractiveness. Zero difference.
Zero.
And even if I did, your love for yourself and your body is worth so much more than that.
So much more than that.
Men are not the answer. Validation on the street is not the answer. Knights in shining armor are not the answer.
You alive in your own skin – and happy – that’s the answer.
So that draws me to the end of my totally definitive list of less than awesome reasons to want to lose weight.
Obviously there are so many more out there! What do you think about my reasons? Do you have your own?
While you’re at it, head over to the post: My 6 Favorite Reasons to Lose Weight, and let me know how you think these stack up against those.
And, if you are on a weight loss journey but want to do it healthfully and while coming to love yourself and your body even more, check out my program for women’s weight loss, Weight Loss Unlocked: The Paleo Woman’s Solution. If not, even better.
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