Slaying the Beast

My Dietary Plan

 

I personally can say that I have fought the beast and I did slay it. I was gaining weight slowly over the course of my life from the time I turned nineteen until two years ago. I weighed about 150lbs at the time I was married and at 61 years old I was weighing in at 196lbs. Now I know that to many folks this doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but to me it was a big deal.

Besides the weight gain, the enlarging waistline and puffy cheeks and swollen neck I was starting to experience other things as well. I began to have back problems, stiff knees, shoulder aches, breathing problems, sleep disorders, and frequent illness to mention a few, and with this came discouragement.

I knew I had to do something. I tried so many things over the years to stop or reverse the relentless march to obesity but to no avail. I finally determined that the only thing left was to stop eating. I would starve myself, that would do it.

About that time my brother introduced me to Dr. Bosworth on YouTube. I purchased her books and committed to her program. It worked. Six months later I was weighing in at 149lbs. There is no doubt that her program worked for me. I knew while I was doing it that there were some things I didn’t agree with in principle, but I would address those after I gave her program my full effort.

I started Dr. Bosworth’s program in September of 2021, and I reached my desired weight in April of 2022. I have continued to study and learn about nutrition and health since that time and have learned some things that I would like to share with you.

I’ve added a few things to Dr. Bosworth's program not because I think I’m smarter, but because I think new research has taught me additional things that were not a part of nutritional scientific knowledge at the time that Dr. Bosworth wrote her books. Neither do I include the wonderful helps and cautions that she includes in her writings. That said I strongly encourage you to research her on YouTube, listen to her videos and read her books.

One of the most important things she encourages, even requires, is that you decide at the onset what your purpose is in pursuing this course. What is your goal? Why are you doing this? My goal was to lose weight. I wanted to see the scales register 148bls. What is your goal, or purpose. You need to know, and to write it down. It will help you to stay the course.

I see three phases to achieving health through diet.

1.     Initiation and withdrawals.

2.     The therapy

3.     The Lifestyle

Initiation and Withdrawals.

It takes a definite amount of time to overcome the cravings and habits associated with processed foods, drugs, and timing. I won’t lie, it’s hard.

Let’s take my analogy of slaying the beast. Suppose the beast is obesity, or health issues of some kind. To be able to slay the beast you would need to suit up with the proper armor, choose an adequate weapon and then practice defensive and offensive strategies. To approach the beast without proper preparation would mean certain failure. Phase one is bootcamp.

You will be tempted to quit before you even get started. But hang in there. It takes anywhere from two weeks to four weeks to cross the summit of addiction recovery.

During this phase you should do the following:

1.     Eat all your food within an eight-hour window. Preferably between 8:00am and 4:00pm, or 9:00am and 5:00pm. No eating outside of this window, none. You can drink water, but no food.

2.     Try to be aware of your carbohydrate intake. This is a tricky one. The easiest way to do this is to limit your total carbohydrate intake. We can talk about quality later, but for now just count the carbs. This alone will impact what you eat. If you feel that you need to move into this by increments you can, however that will postpone the effectiveness. You can decrease carbs by so many per week if that seems easier. The goal is to not consume more than 20 carbs in a 24hr period. As soon as you can do this you are ready for phase two. I found a helpful way to count the carbs is to use an App, such as “Cronometer.”

3.     Increase fat intake. Just like fighting fire with fire, fat can be fought with fat. I know it sounds completely backward to everything we’ve been told but believe me it’s true. The human body was designed to use fat for fuel. In fact, there are more nutrients in fats than in any other food. You will need vitamin packed fats as you decrease the carbs. Increasing fat intake will encourage the body to look to fat as the source of fuel rather than carbohydrates. This condition will lead to the unpacking of fat molecules for conversion to fuel and the liver will produce Ketones to activate the process. Again, just get started. We can talk about quality a little later. High fat sources are foods like meat, eggs, and dairy, especially cheeses and butter.

After a few weeks you will be surprised to find that you are becoming less hungry. Fats are filling while carbs are not. There are two kinds of “Full” sensors in your stomach. One is “full of volume” and the other is “Full of nutrients.” Both must be satisfied before you feel a desire to stop eating. Have you ever felt so stuffed that your stomach was tight as a drum, but just wanted to keep on eating? Packaged and processed foods have little to no nutrient value, so you never really feel full. This is also why you can eat a large meal and feel hungry just a few minutes later. Fats will satisfy both the volume and the nutrient demands of the bowels.

The Therapy.

I call this phase “The Therapy” because it’s not intended that it will be a lifestyle, but rather an intense means to an end. Once that end is reached the therapy ends and a lifestyle begins.

The therapy will focus on radical measures to restore health and give the body’s metabolism control of that health. There are four important parts to this phase.

1.   Stick to the plan. Every time you break from the plan you set yourself back and make it harder to succeed. Stick to 20 carbs or less and increase fat. You will discover ways to prepare meals and you will decide what kinds of foods you can stomach. Your pallet will change and with a little creativity you will begin to really enjoy the food. I will post some food ideas and meal plans to help you out.

2.   Clean it up. As you progress to the second phase you should start cleaning up your food choices. Many foods while boasting “Low Carb” are full of other inflammatory substances. Things like sugar substitutes, plant oils and food additives. Cleaning these things up will increase insulin sensitivity and decrease insulin resistance and inflammation. Read the labels on your food and learn about the additives.

3.   Intermittent Fasting. This simply means increasing the number of hours that you go without food. After a few weeks on phase two you will find that you are less hungry when it’s time to eat. Some people actually forget to eat and skipping a meal is easy. When you reach this point decrease your eating window to six hours, five hours and then four hours. During my phase two period I ate breakfast at around 8:30am and lunch at around 2:00pm. At first, I experienced days when I was hungry in the evening, but I realized later that I was experiencing an habitual reflex rather than actual hunger. You can do some things to reprogram your eating reflexes like drinking electrolytes (Watch out for the ingredients).

4.   Autophagy. If you really want to get things rolling you can do some longer fasting, like 24hrs, 36hrs or even 48hrs. I occasionally fasted for as many as 72hrs. You might wonder what terrible insanity could have overcome me? I learned about something called Autophagy. This is a metabolic state that is brought on by starvation. When there isn’t enough “food” in the blood the body begins the process of digging into the hard-to-get places where fat has been stored to convert it into fuel. This is a survival response and is not only harmless, but very beneficial. When fat stores become low the body will seek out damaged, broken and even dead cells and recycle them for fuel. This amazing discovery by Yoshinori Ohsumi won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016. Since that time aggressive research has found that prolonged, medically monitored fasting reverses cancer, heals scare tissue, cures auto immune diseases, allergies, heart disease, diabetes, etc. The list goes on. Autophagy begins as soon as twelve hours after your last bite of food and ends with your next bite. (Check out the links on this blog for videos about Autophagy)

As you progress through this second phase you can increase or decrease your intermittent fasting according to the amount of progress you want to make. Obviously, the more you fast the more dramatic the results.

Lifestyle

Once you’ve achieved your goal it’s time to settle into a lifestyle that will ensure that you can maintain that goal.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that almost everyone who tries some kind of a weight-loss diet seems to gain the weight back and then some as soon as they quit that unsustainable diet. Why is that? Well, it’s because what they did was unsustainable. Most weight-loss diets are just starvation. They are in fact just another packaged, processed food. They lack the nutrients to sustain life and therefore don’t. If you continue such a diet indefinitely, you will die from it. Furthermore, they never offer an exit plan. The manufacturers of the diet don’t want you to have an exit plan. They’re in it for the money so why would they want you to stop their plan?

The lifestyle that follows this dietary journey is simply to continue what you’ve been doing with a few tweaks.

1.   Carbohydrates are not bad, but there are bad carbohydrates. Continue avoiding processed carbs. Naturally occurring carbohydrates such as those found in all whole foods will not make you fat, increase insulin resistance, or lead to disease. In fact, these naturally occurring carbs are important to an overall healthy lifestyle.

2.   Continue to include substantial amounts of fats in your diet. Look for a balance of omega-3 and omega-6. Processed fats are extremely high in omega-6 and very low if not completely lacking in omega-3. Saturated fats are poison.

3.   Be careful not to fall into over-eating. Remember that like other addictions it is more a mental and emotional thing than it is a real hunger. I like to remind myself that I want good health more than I want a treat. It’s a good idea to evaluate which habits are enticing you to eat outside of your feasting zone. For example, maybe you love to sit in front of the TV in the evenings and you feel a desire to snack on something. This is because you are tired, and your body wants a stimulant to stay awake. You could try a different activity like my favorite, sitting in the hot tub and listening to a good book. You could satisfy that need with something that would not compromise your diet, such as a flavored electrolyte drink. Check the labels. I use a zero-carb powder made by Key Nutrients. Dabbing a little Pink Salt on your tongue with stop the cravings. Continue to fast because fasting is a natural part of the human metabolic system. Fasting will improve your health and protect you from illness and disease.

4.   Continue learning about good health and food. Learn about food additives, plant oils, sugar substitutes etc. Be proactive about your health. Learn how to prepare foods using whole foods and pure, natural, organic, raw ingredients. This will take time, but I encourage you to make time for it.  

     In conclusion, I have found that along with an improvement of health through healthy eating comes an increase in spiritual, mental, and emotional health as well. You will find that you truly love what you are learning, what you are doing and how you feel. It becomes easier to do, it becomes most desirable to do. You will feel a freedom that you didn’t know you could enjoy. Your love for others will increase. Your love of God will increase, and you will find it easier to feel good and to embrace it.