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Summary

In this article, I explore:

• the concept of homeostasis;
• the role of the stress-survival response in hormonal health, particularly growth hormone (GH); and
• why most women probably need a carbohydrate intake that’s higher than commonly recommended in low-carb advice.

It starts so innocently…

If you have any interest in health, fitness, and nutrition, you probably have at least some awareness of how sugary, crappy food contributes to poor health, inflammation, obesity, and insulin resistance.

Naturally, you as a conscious eater want to do The Right Thing. So you start reading labels and eating whole foods. You get rid of sugar, or at least cut your intake way down.

Pretty awesome start. You could probably stop right there and still be better off than most of the Western population.

But of course, every little positive, health-affirming step inspires you to take another.

You move towards higher-fibre, less-processed versions of traditional grains. Or you cut grains out completely. You probably end up with a more or less ancestral/Primal-style way of eating.

Again, you could quit right here. In fact, you probably should. Now you’re at 99th percentile of food and lifestyle quality. And with some practice, you could live that way pretty easily and sanely.

…and then…

You keep reading. You swirl down into the blogosphere of half-baked opinions, speculation, anecdotal evidence, pseudoscience, and what my colleague Dr. John Berardi so aptly terms “hysterical negativity”.

This is where the rabbit hole of madness begins.

Because you start to think: What else could I do to be better? How could I nudge this generally pretty decent situation into awesome? Into perfect?

And naturally, you work harder. You train harder. You Paleo harder. You cut harder. You pound that shit in. To. The. Ground.

You’ve heard that cutting carbs is primal. So you go for rock bottom.

You’ve heard that cave people never ate Food XYZ so you’re restricting everything that isn’t a dead animal or something green.

You’ve heard that wasting an hour on a “workout” is bullshit. Cave people got ‘er done hard and fast. Ready for anything. So you trash yourself with 100 rapid-fire power cleans or 2 miles of sprinting sled drags or box jumps until you can literally hear your Achilles tendons sobbing. You do it again the next day. And the next. And the day after that.

You throw in some fasting just for good measure. Cave people didn’t have 24 hour buffets, after all.

For a while, this feels great. Heroic.

You often have lots of energy because you’re running on the fumes of your body’s stress response — natural painkillers and adrenaline. Your skin glows and your joints feel fantastic because you’re not eating processed junk that inflames them. You’ve shed some pounds and are sliding effortlessly into your skinny jeans.

Plus let’s be honest. You’re also feeling the high of being smug as shit now.

You’re a zealot. A recent convert. Fuck the hatas and deluded drones of Big Food. You have your Cavepeople Club and it feels stupendous — or is that the endogenous opioids your body is pumping out to kill the pain of another vomitworthy workout?

This is how hardcore you are.

Yeah, this feels great. Until it doesn’t feel so great.

6 months, maybe 12 months, maybe a couple years along, the cracks start to appear.

First, it’s nothing special. Maybe a funny period or two. It’s hard to sleep lately too. But whatever, last month was kinda stressy with work and whatnot. No biggie.

You start to put on weight. Your belly’s looking a little bloated. Or you retain water. You can see it when you take your socks off, like a railroad of little dents in your ankles.

Well that’s a little odd but hey, maybe you just need to clean up that diet again. After all you’ve been having some food cravings, maybe indulging a little too much in “forbidden” foods. Back to Paleo-ing harder and slicing those carbs down.

That doesn’t work. Now your eyebrows are looking weird — sorta thin on the ends — and is that hair in the drain? Or worse, on your upper lip? Your skin, once incandescent, is starting to look sallow. A few zits are popping up too. Damn it, you thought you left adolescence behind!

You’re cold. Constipated. Starting to lose your mojo. Small indignities are starting to pile up — little naggity injuries, a snuffle or cough that won’t go away, waking up feeling crusty and creaky.

Then — oh jesus fuck — the weight really starts to pile on. And you can’t seem to do anything to stop it. That shit is a fast-moving freight train and you’re tied to the tracks. You panic. Train harder. Paleo harder. Harder.

All hell breaks loose.

Your mood swings into anxiety, sadness, and screaming, random rage are turning you psychotic. Your partner, children, and/or friends dive for cover behind the furniture when you walk into a room. You feel like you’re going nuts. You imagine you can hear the scale laughing at you as it conspires with the waistband of your pants.

Your food cravings are making you mental. You’d consider having sex with a delectable, forbidden loaf of bread, if you had a sex drive any more. But your libido’s gone, along with your period. (Or conversely, your periods are crushing you with cramping waves of pain and uterine tsunamis.)

What the hell just happened?

Hopefully, you haven’t gotten this far. Hopefully, you’re just reading this for interest because you’re simply considering cutting down your Pepsi intake. Great.

Stay at those early stages of nutritional and hormonal sanity. Make a few key improvements (such as eating more vegetables and getting rid of garbage non-food) and then get on with the rest of your life.

For the rest of you… if you recognize yourself… you might want to keep reading.

In this article, I’ll explore:

• the general concept of homeostasis;
• some hormonal effects of disrupted homeostasis and the stress-survival response;
• why — given these hormonal effects — you should consider your total stress load, including nutritional stress;
• why — again, given these hormonal effects — you might also consider keeping your (healthy) carb intake relatively higher than is conventionally recommended in lower-carb circles; and
• what to actually do to put this into practice.

Disclaimer

Now remember, we still don’t know everything there is to know about hormones and homeostasis. And the phenomenon of humans intentionally restricting nutrients while training hard under the environmentally and psychologically stressful conditions of 21st century society is still relatively new.

Some of this is speculative or informed guessing; extrapolation based on experiential and clinical data that is still incomplete.

I’ve personally coached hundreds of women and overseen the coaching of hundreds more in our Lean Eating coaching program at PN (which originally lasted 6 months and now goes for 12, giving us some pretty awesome longitudinal information). To date, about 10,000 people — probably about 2/3 of them female — have done the program.

So I’ve gathered some pretty good real-life applied data on women specifically. (Unlike many internet warriors who have never trained a single — never mind a female — client. Just sayin’.)

Nevertheless, I’m simply thinking through some observations and connecting some dots.

This isn’t gospel, nor is it the full answer. Biology is complicated shit.

It’s important for you to recognize this. Many “experts” won’t acknowledge that limitation.

YOUR body is YOUR best data point.

I’ll give some concrete suggestions about how to be your own science experiment, and how to know stuff is working (or not) at the end of the article. (If you want to skip the boring and possibly wildly speculative explanation, skip to the end.)

Go grab yourself a sweet potato to gnaw on, and keep reading.

Homeostasis

Some people assume that homeostasis is a kind of rigid “everything stays the same” situation, like a weird cloned universe of Stepford wives where deviation is punished.

I like to think of homeostasis as more of a dynamic balance, like standing on a moving train. To me, homeostasis is a kind of physiological aikido, always shifting and moving and coming back to centre after being disrupted.

There’s a flow to homeostasis. Nothing is stagnant or stuck. Homeostatic mechanisms are always like, “Hey y’all! What’s goin’ on now? What about now?” and then excitedly coming up with shit to do, kind of like toddlers who ask three billion questions in the space of a five-minute conversation and want to go on a roller coaster ten seconds after getting off a merry-go-round.

Homeostasis is a holistic phenomenon. Homeostasis is about the system. The big picture. The whole enchilada.

So homeostasis will throw some lesser shit under the bus in the service of the greater good, if needed.

Here’s a very scientific ranking list:

Most important shit

Avoiding death / staying alive

Breathing

Using (and if necessary, conserving) whatever fuel is lying around

Kinda important shit

Fighting off pathogens

Getting and storing additional nutrients

Regulating fluid and electrolytes

Meh, will get around to it

Reproducing

Repairing & growing

Recovering & regenerating

The hormone hierarchy

Hormones are often organized hierarchically.

Hormone A (say, in the hypothalamus) will tell Hormone B (say, in the pituitary) to tell Hormone C (say, in the gonads) to do something (or not). There’s often a clear chain of command: Hormone A is the boss. Hormone B is the middle manager. Hormone C is the worker bee.

Central vs peripheral hormones

Hormones secreted in the brain are typically centralized controllers or regulators. They’re like Mission Control, scanning the whole situation and getting a global sense of what to do next in order to maintain homeostasis.

Hormones secreted elsewhere — say, in the digestive system, adipose (fat) tissue, or gonads — can have both local and systemic effects. These peripheral hormones often have a relationship with what’s next door to them. For instance, hormones in the gut can respond to particular nutrients, such as cholecystokinin (CCK), which responds to the presence of fat in the small intestine.

Peripheral hormones can also act as sensors. They’re like worker bees out in the field, letting the boss know what’s happening on the front lines.

Most peripheral hormones have some systemic effect on brain function. So, CCK senses fat and protein in the gut, but it may also regulate satiety, sleep and wakefulness, and stress and pain sensation in the brain.

Mission Control is always gathering information about the state of the organism. That information can come from all kinds of sources, e.g.

• fuel (such as glucose) circulating in the blood
• adipose (fat) tissue
• environmental cues — light/dark cycles, temperature
• pain, pressure, movement, and other sensations
• what’s in the digestive tract
• our psychological-emotional state (including our thoughts and self-talk)
• mechanical loading or work (e.g. getting your sweat on)
• etc.

Hormonal interactions

Hormones interact with one another. We don’t know all the interactions yet. Nor do we know all the things a given hormone may do. We are learning all the time.

We can guess at some of the interactions based on things like:

Hormone receptors — If a given tissue has receptors for Hormone X, it’s a good bet that Hormone X does something with that tissue.

Hormone deficiencies — If a person or animal has a known hormone deficiency (whether genetic or as a result of some other factor such as removal of the gonads), we can look at what happens to them.

Hormonal excess — We can also guess at interactions by looking at the effects of hormone excess. This could be endogenous — or self-produced — secretion, or exogenous — i.e. from outside, perhaps something like an injection directly into a given site of action, such as the brain or the GI tract.

Molecular structure & synthesis — Nature is thrifty and biochemistry is sorta lazy. So many hormones are closely related in their makeup. Similar pathways govern hormonal synthesis, rather like intersections in busy city streets controlled by traffic lights and detour signals.

Sometimes you get a stoplight. Sometimes you can drive right on through. Sometimes you have to take a detour because something’s under construction. Sometimes you choose a different path because you’re cycling or walking instead of driving. Or whatever. You get the idea.

Even though the roads are the same, you don’t always take the same route. With hormones, things like genes or environmental cues or other hormones can be the traffic lines, stop signs, randomly placed pylons, or other switching mechanisms.

Symptomatology — The best way to know for sure what a given chemical is doing in our body is to measure it (or its metabolites) directly. But we can also look at symptoms.

This is often useful in cases where someone doesn’t show low or high hormones by a clinically defined range, but all their other symptoms say that those hormones are low or high for that individual. After all, reference ranges are statistical norms based on particular types of measurement methods, and biological organisms have a way of screwing up the tidiness of sorts of things.

For example, if you started out with 550 units of Hormone X, and you suddenly drop to 150, that’s a problem for you even if the clinically accepted “normal” reference range might be 100 to 600. And even if everyone else in the known universe swears that you shouldn’t have an issue if your Hormone X is over 100. Well, you fucking do have an issue because your body is used to being at 550 and now it ain’t, so that’s that.

We can also make working hypotheses based on physiological features like age, sex, ethnic background, bone density, and the way that body fat is being deposited.

So, key points here:

• There are central and peripheral hormones.
• These hormones interact with each other.
• Central hormones tend to be “master controllers” or regulators of whole-body functions.
• Peripheral hormones tend to act locally (i.e. wherever they are secreted) but also feed information back to the central controllers, and often have centralized actions too.
• Hormones are complex. We don’t know all the roles nor interactions yet, but we can guess.
• Optimal hormone levels can be quite individual.

Surviving vs. thriving

Recall the very scientific list of key body functions. Notice how “don’t die” is right up near the top and “reproduce” is near the bottom. Also notice how recovery, growth, and repair are luxuries while “get away from danger” and “use/store nutrients” are more like necessities.

As a shorthand, you can think of this prioritization as the difference between surviving and thriving.

People may say “Oh, you only need __ to survive.”

Well, you only need a little water and perhaps the occasional electrolytes every day to survive quite a long time in an underground hole while your body feasts on its stored fat and muscle. People have survived in the wreckage of collapsed buildings for several days.

But nobody would really recommend lying under a slab of concrete while contemplating your imminent demise and trying not to use up all the oxygen as a path to optimum wellbeing.

Nutrients & survival

Thus, surviving, for our bodies, means using only the nutrients we need to not immediately die.

In an acute-survival situation (the proverbial running-away-from-the-tiger scenario everyone loves to imagine as part of the daily routine of Paleolithic life), your body frees up glucose and free fatty acids. Fast fuel. Go! Run like a mofo! If those nutrients aren’t used right away, they go back into storage.

In a chronic-survival situation (such as starvation), the body starts to slow the engine and ration the nutrients, like WWII where everyone was hoarding cigarettes, butter, and stockings.

In neither case do you digest well and adequately. Your digestive system largely shuts down when stressed.

Motility is affected (so you get either plugged up or it’s “clear the decks!”). Your sense of taste is affected. You might feel nauseated or dyspeptic. You may lose your appetite or want to roll up the world in a burrito and eat it slathered in chocolate sauce.

Nor do you partition nutrients in a way that supports a lean, healthy, muscular body. It’s hormonal slash and burn. Fight, flee, or freeze. Dump the ballast. Survival by any means necessary.

Finally, the “nice to haves” — reproduction, rejuvenation, growth, and long-term regeneration — are not on the radar at all. No resources are allocated to these things beyond what’s needed to keep you from bleeding out.

You might get “stuck” in a rut of chronic inflammation as your body musters the defenses and blasts the system with trained killer cells (but forgets to tell the immunological SWAT team to calm down and stop shooting everything). Or, eventually, your immune system might just give up and go on vacation. Then you’re a sitting duck for every Tom, Dick, and Helicobacter pylori lying around.

Here’s a really important point, so pay attention:

Our bodies treat chronic nutrient restriction as a stress-survival situation.

That can be:

1. Overall energy restriction — consistently consuming significantly less energy (in the form of calories) than you expend (through activity and in basic metabolic functions).

2. Significant restriction of particular macronutrients — consistently consuming little to no fat, and/or protein, and/or carbohydrates.

3. Mild to moderate restriction in a context of other stressors — like doing #1 or #2 in the middle of an also stressful life, disrupted sleep, heavy training load, etc.

The big picture: cumulative load

Dig it? Are you putting the pieces together yet?

It’s holistic, baby. Homeostasis. The whole system. Your big fat life.

Everything from your environment, to your sleep, to circulating pathogens, to how much sleep you get, to your mindset and attitude, to your relationships, to the frequency and intensity of your daily movement, to your age, to your “stress blueprint” and natural resilience, etc. etc. plays a role.

If we took your eating habits out of the equation for just a moment… think about all the other factors in your life, right now, that could potentially be stressors. Just think. Really roll that around in the ol’ noodle.

Now, on top of that stress pile, add nutrient restriction. Add one more straw to the camel’s back.

See the problem?

At this point, you might be saying Oh great, does that mean I am doomed to never lose weight? That I have to quit anything strenuous? Are you saying if I don’t eat Twinkies with every meal I am going to die?

Of course not. I am saying three things:

Thing 1. Consider your whole life in totality. The whole system from macro to micro. What stressors are currently operating for you — system-wide — right now?

Thing 2. If you want to restrict energy or particular nutrients, you must balance the seesaw in other ways. If you add one stressor you must take at least one other stressor away, and/or chase recovery and restoration actively. If you are eating less you must also calm the fuck down, get some sunshine and vitamin D, and sleep. Don’t keep jacking yourself up with more control, more restriction, more heavy training, more life stress, more Type-A bullshit.*

Thing 3. Past a certain point, that seesaw is going to flip you off anyway. Laws of physiological homeostasis, I don’t make ‘em up.

*I’m a recovering Type A perfectionist nutcase myself, so I smell your kind a mile away.

Regulation of “need to have” and “nice to have”

Which brings us to one major way that priorities are regulated in the body: hormones and cell signaling molecules. A small number — say, a zillion or so — of these molecules are involved in maintaining homeostasis and an organism’s health.

We’re only going to look at one for the most part: growth hormone.

(Don’t get too caught up in fetishizing a single hormone or substance, as many people do. Indeed, focusing too much on a single substance — such as insulin or fructose — without considering the bigger picture and physiological individuality has arguably gotten us here in the first place. Just get the general idea that this is one possible pathway through which a homeostatic and stress-survival response might operate, in concert with many other things.)

Growth hormone

Growth hormone (GH) is secreted in the brain — in the pituitary gland, to be exact. Again, any hormone secreted in the brain probably has a good reason to be there; and GH is indeed a very useful and important hormone.

In the right doses, GH is good stuff.

GH is involved in growth and repair, as its name implies. One of the biggest pulses of GH occurs during puberty. In adults, GH gradually declines (which means that eventually, broken parts don’t get fixed so well).

GH increases lean body mass (including bone density) and helps keep the thyroid humming.

GH increases resting energy expenditure (REE) — which, interestingly, appears to go up independently of LBM or thyroid hormone conversion. In other words, GH also increases REE by other mechanisms than simply the larger demand of all that extra bone, muscle, and tissue, or the work of the thyroid.

GH is pulsatile — secreted in little zips and zops, blips and blops. One major blip happens once we drop into deep sleep; other smaller blips happen a few hours after eating.

GH is also generally higher during periods of physical stress. Keep that in mind.

GH, women, and exercise

GH is secreted more often in female than male bodies.

In fact, many folks feel that given women’s relatively lower levels of testosterone, GH may be one of the major hormones involved in building strength and muscle in women.

This is especially true when doing heavy weight training and/or intense, metabolic-conditioning-type workouts that suck oxygen and feel horrible while you’re doing them (but awesome when you’re done, once you stop making whoopie with the floor). Want a quick trip to GHville? Knock out a set of 20-rep squats the old fashioned way.

Remember, physical stress → MOAR GH.

GH activates lipolysis, or the use of stored body fat (particularly visceral fat) for energy. It also helps skeletal muscles use triglycerides (a form of lipid, or fat) for energy.

There is some evidence, however, that GH does not stimulate lipolysis as effectively in women, older folks, nor obese people, which may explain why younger, often relatively leaner men seem to do better with intermittent fasting.

GH, insulin and IGF-1

GH interacts closely with the same pathways as chemical signals that respond to blood glucose levels — namely, insulin and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1). There is “crosstalk” between the pathways stimulated by GH, insulin and IGF-1.

Some folks speculate that this is because GH and insulin-like peptides such as IGF are evolutionarily very old, pre-dating structures such as the pancreas, which secretes insulin.

GH has a complex relationship with these other peptides and hormones. Frinstance:

• GH stimulates β-cell proliferation, insulin gene expression, and insulin biosynthesis and secretion
• GH may inhibit the action of insulin, which is to drive glucose into cells.

GH and protein synthesis

Probably mediated by IGF-1, GH stimulates anabolic protein metabolism while inhibiting protein breakdown, which basically means getting swole. Under stress and/or fasting conditions this means that LBM is preserved as well as possible.

Cool… GH is good, right?

OK, higher GH sounds pretty nice so far.

Who wouldn’t want better growth and repair, higher protein synthesis, and better fat mobilization from visceral fat, maybe to be used as skeletal muscle fuel?

GH and triglycerides

Well, funny story, eheheh. GH may help release fat from visceral adipose tissue… but it also seems to dump triglycerides into the liver.

It’s not clear yet whether this is due to GH suppressing fat mobilization/oxidization or the creation of new fat storage (aka lipogenesis), but either way, you don’t want fat in there. Left unchecked, this fat deposition could lead to hepatic steatosis, or fatty liver, which is one of the leading causes of liver diseases in the 21st century industrialized world.

Oh, and by the way, high GH might also dump a little extra triglycerides into skeletal muscle too. Whoops!

Anorexics, in whom GH is often high, show a disrupted cholesterol profile relative to controls, although the exact nature of this depends on the type of restriction (e.g. restriction without binge-purge, restriction with binge-purge, etc.).

GH, insulin resistance, and stress

High GH can also induce insulin resistance, a situation in which cells stop “listening” to insulin’s signals. In insulin resistance, insulin has nowhere to drop its load of glucose, but of course more glucose keeps coming in, so both high insulin and high glucose end up roaming around the body causing all manner of nastiness.

Image from Møller & Jørgensen 2009.

Frinstance:

In the late 1990s, a large multicenter study including more than 500 patients in the acute phase of severe critical illness reported that high-dose GH treatment doubled mortality from 20 to 40%. The detrimental outcome was associated with significant elevations in blood glucose levels despite more than a doubling of insulin administration in the GH-treated group. (Møller & Jørgensen 2009)

So even though doctors tried to fix the glucose issue with insulin administration, the problems remained. Of course, this is an extreme case involving supplemental GH in critically ill people, but still…

Two known mechanisms that stimulate insulin resistance: lack of sleep and stress. Frinstance:

• A recent study in mice showed that psychological stress could induce insulin resistance.
• High GH along with stress hormones (glucocorticoids) is a factor in insulin resistance and progression to type 2 diabetes and CVD.

Recall that in conditions of stress (e.g. starvation, physical or psychological stress), GH is the predominant anabolic hormone that helps conserve protein and oxidize fat.

As one review of GH actions explains:

When subjects are well nourished, the GH-induced stimulation of IGF-I and insulin is important for anabolic storage and growth of lean body mass (LBM), adipose tissue, and glycogen reserves.

During fasting and other catabolic states, GH predominantly stimulates the release and oxidation of FFA, which leads to decreased glucose and protein oxidation and preservation of LBM and glycogen stores.

OK, interesting. GH actions are context-dependent. Stress or no stress. Huh. Let’s think more about the evolutionary reason for that. Keep reading!

This ability of GH to induce insulin resistance is significant for the defense against hypoglycemia, for the development of “stress” diabetes during fasting and inflammatory illness, and perhaps for the “dawn” phenomenon (the increase in insulin requirements in the early morning hours).

Go back to survival. In stress-survival situations, the body could not give two shits about insulin resistance, any more than it cares that you might break a toenail running away. Insulin resistance is chronic. Rampaging tiger about to nom your face is right now.

GH and leptin

High circulating GH may also lower leptin.

Leptin, secreted by our adipose (fat) tissue, is one of those peripheral hormones that is also a sensor. It’s like our “fuel-o-stat” — the sensor and signal that tells our bodies that we have enough nutrients and stored body fat for a rainy (or hungry) day.

Typically, fatter/well-fed people have more leptin, while leaner or chronically hungrier people have less.

This means that for most folks, there’s probably an approximate leptin set-point.

Drop too low (by restricting intake too harshly or getting too lean for your unique metabolic blueprint, particularly under stressful conditions) and your fuel-o-stat will fire up. You’ll start getting hungry. Real hungry.

Conversely, put on a lot of body fat and at some point (if the machinery is working properly, which it often isn’t), your fuel-o-stat will say “Thanks, that’s cool, I’ve had enough” and kick in the satiety mechanisms.

Thus: As far as our fuel-o-stat is concerned:

• Leptin low → potential starvation → more hunger
• Leptin high → body is fat and happily well fed → feeling satiated

When leptin was originally discovered, it seemed like a slam-dunk for fixing obesity. Just inject people with leptin and presto — they’ll quit eating. Ha ha ha! Wacky biodiversity! Joke’s on you, scientists! Turns out only a small percentage of obese people actually had a leptin deficiency.

Back to the drawing board.

Finding the sweet spot

By the way, lest you think I’m hatin’ on high GH, low GH is a problem too.

GH-deficient adults are insulin resistant— likely due to higher body fat, lower lean body mass, and poorer physical performance.

However, although they’re stronger, leaner, and denser, adults with with excess GH are consistently insulin resistant as well.

Biology — it’s all about the sweet spot.

There’s also a difference between acute and chronic for darn near everything in physiology.

Acute stress, in the right amount proportional to an organism’s recovery ability, that ends appropriately and satisfactorily in a timely fashion (with the physical discharge of any lingering trauma)… good!

Acute stress, too much for the organism’s recovery abilities, and/or which doesn’t have a satisfactory resolution… bad!

Chronic stress… super extra bad!

Acute GH pulses, in the right amount at the right time, probably good!

Chronic GH pulses, either too much or too often, probably bad!

Exclamation marks! Too many exclamation marks is also chronically stressful! Because I’m screaming, you see! And it’s good once! But then it’s just annoying! After a while it just grinds you down! See the point!? Of course you do!!!!!!!

When GH attacks

When do we have high levels of GH? Many factors can be involved.

Also be aware that with hormones, there’s always a range. The increased pulses of GH we’re talking about here may still be much less than someone with true excess GH. However, remember that these pulses could be higher than normal for a particular individual, and that’s what matters.

Barring anything like a pituitary or genetic disorder, increased GH secretion can occur in response to:

• high levels of ghrelin (one of the hormones, secreted in the GI tract, that makes us hungry)
• physical stress (e.g. intense exercise)
• nutrient deprivation — starting a few hours after a meal and particularly in the true fasted state (such as first thing in the morning after 8 hours or more of no food)

Now, remember that “nutrient deprivation” can be kinda vague, to the body. We’re wired to be attuned to potential starvation, especially as females. Reproduction is a low-on-the-list “nice to have”, especially given the incredible investment of physical resources required for pregnancy.

By the way, dig this — it blew my mind when I first discovered it — even persistent thoughts of starvation and restriction can trigger the starvation response (including menstrual disruption), even if you aren’t actually restricting. This is known as cognitive dietary restraint and it can screw you up just as bad as really doing it.

So — depending on your unique stress sensitivity — your body is hair-trigger-wired to sense any kind of stress or deprivation and shut that babymakin’ shit down ASAP if needed.

That “nutrient deprivation” stress can mean:

• generally low energy availability (i.e. fewer calories coming in than going out) (GH is typically high in anorexics)
• low macronutrient availability (i.e. significant deficits of fat, protein, and/or carbohydrates);
• low micronutrient availability (i.e. vitamins, minerals, quasi-hormones such as vitamin D, etc.); or even
• perceived low availability (as in cognitive dietary restraint).

GH secretion over time (using continuous blood flow measure) in control group (left hand column) and anorexics (right hand column). Notice how anorexics’ pulses are more frequent and often higher. From Lawson and Klibanski 2008.

However, it appears that given GH’s relationships with insulin and IGF-1, and given women’s relatively higher levels of GH, carbohydrate restriction may be more salient than some other types of restriction. (Remember, this is a working hypothesis, but bear with me.)

GH resistance

In rats fed a low-carb, high-fat diet, bone growth and bone density was impaired. More concerning, the rats accumulated visceral fat and developed GH resistance.

(In case you’re curious, this occurred apparently regardless of levels of fat/protein, which suggests the determining factor was the availability of carbohydrate. However, adequate protein did appear to protect lean mass to some degree — as the researchers noted, “protein intake is of critical importance for the regulation of the GH/IGF-axis” – which reminds us that getting enough protein is key when running a caloric deficit.)

Hormone resistance can occur when hormone levels are chronically elevated.

Recall homeostasis — if something is persistently out of whack, the body will self-correct, or try to. So when a hormone is blasting through the system constantly, loudly announcing its presence, the body will often try to “turn down the volume” by making tissues increasingly “deaf” to that hormone.

Hormone resistance implies that you then get too-high circulating levels of that hormone, because tissues are less receptive to it. (Recall the explanation of insulin resistance, above.) The hormone still gets released, but tissues don’t give a shit. Now the hormone has nowhere to go. But it’s still there. And eventually, it has to go somewhere.

So GH resistance means potentially high GH without the tissues using it properly. It also means that the complex system of feedback that governs the actions of insulin, IGF-1 and probably related cell signalling molecules and other hormones are disrupted.

Now, rats aren’t people, of course. But it’s food (ha) for thought.

Remember, we probably want short, moderate, relatively regular blips of GH. Right amount, right time, right reason.

We also want all our hormones and cell signals playing nice with each other.

We want GH working properly with its buddies insulin and IGF-1. When insulin and IGF-1 are low (as, again, during periods of food deprivation), the “good” anabolic effects of GH (such as repair and regeneration) are often blunted, but the “bad” effects (such as insulin resistance) are often — eventually — elevated.

Somatostatin

Somatostatin is a hormone that’s produced both in the brain and digestive system, which gives you clues about its importance and mechanism of action. And it’s involved in regulating other hormones.

Somatostatin is basically a digestion killer. It suppresses the release of important gastrointestinal hormones:

• gastrin
• cholecystokinin (CCK)
• secretin
• motilin
• vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP)
• gastric inhibitory polypeptide (GIP)
• enteroglucagon

Somatostatin thus slows down gastric emptying and peristaltic muscle contractions as well as blood flow in the intestine. It inhibits the release of pancreatic hormones, insulin, and glucagon.

Somatostatin is released in response to high circulating levels of growth hormone (GH), and inhibits GH (in fact, it’s sometimes known as growth hormone-inhibiting hormone (GHIH)). Conversely, GH production is stimulated by (wait for it) growth hormone releasing hormone (GHRH).

The perfect stress storm

So let’s imagine the possible scenario of consistently elevated GH and/or even perhaps GH resistance in the face of chronic stress.

1. Stress stimulates increased GH secretion.

2. GH is now persistently high. But now, because GH release is so frequent and high, maybe the tissues aren’t using it properly.

3. The body’s master controller notices that GH is high and releases somatostatin to inhibit GH.

4. Now somatostatin is high. And GH will eventually pop back up, because the stress persists.

5. Thus, possibly, we might have high somatostatin alternating with high GH. And neither hormone is doing good work. Instead, we’re probably seeing the worst faces of both. Frinstance:

Maybe high somatostatin is making digestion crappy. (Har dee har.)

Maybe high GH is lowering leptin (making you hungrier). Or creating insulin resistance. Or stashing TGs in the liver.

And — something I haven’t mentioned here, but it’s relevant — it’s a good bet that if your GH/IGF-1 axis is screwed up, other hormonal systems (such as your sex hormones, adrenal hormones, and/or thyroid hormones) are also screwed up.

In any case, if this proposed scenario fits your experience, you’re probably feeling lousy by now.

What does it all mean?

Hello? Are you still reading? OK good.

Let’s talk practicality.

What can you do right now to address any potential hormonal problems that might have occurred with nutrient deprivation?

If you think you have a hormonal problem related to the above set of circumstances…

Figure it out

Get tested. I suggest a full sex hormone panel plus thyroid and 24-hour salivary cortisol. GH/IGF-1/somatostatin tests are less common and typically only used where docs suspect GH deficiency or excess, particularly in children/teens. Start with your doctor/endocrinologist or a qualified naturopath and see what you can negotiate.

Make a complete list of everything you’re experiencing. Even if it doesn’t seem relevant (like sleep, or mood, or cravings). Start to become an archaologist of your own biology. Dig shit up. Pay attention. Check in. Learn your physical and psychological cues, such as:

• mood, anxiety/depression, mental health, cognition, irritability, etc.
• energy levels and fatigue
• quality and quantity of sleep; normal sleep-wake cycles
• heart rate
• body shape and normal fat gain patterns for you
• appetite, hunger, and satiety
• cravings and food behaviours
• physical performance and perceived effort
• immunity and injury/illness recovery
• digestion and GI health
• skin
• reproductive cycles and libido
• pain perception and awareness; shifting patterns of pain and/or inflammation
• sense of overall wellbeing and mojo

Almost nothing, if it happens more than rarely, is irrelevant.

Low-hanging fruit

If you’re fasting regularly, stop. Now. Just stop. Especially if you’re relatively leaner and exercising regularly.

Eat relatively regularly, every few hours when you’re genuinely hungry. You don’t have to be rigid about this, just be aware of your physical hunger signals. If you’re doing this right, you should be genuinely physically hungry about every 3-4 hours. Eat until you’re satisfied.

Eat breakfast. The folks who seem to genuinely do well with breakfast skipping tend to be young male ectomorphs who may have a different GH machinery than you. Alwyn Cosgrove — who documents his clients’ progress obsessively and now has hundreds of data points — says that whenever he gets his female clients to eat breakfast, they start losing fat. True story. Hormones have a daily circadian rhythm, which can vary between individuals. A morning meal for someone who’s previously been nutrient-depleted can potentially fire up the furnace again, because it can send a signal of “Phew, food’s coming in, we’re going to be OK!” to a body that is feeling pretty anxious about famine.

Add a small portion of slow-digesting, high-fiber carbs to every meal. It doesn’t have to be a lot. A cupped handful will do. If you’re far enough into hormonal fuckedupitude that you’re dealing with insulin resistance, your body needs time to recover and respond properly. Depending on your individual dietary tolerances and food preferences, opt for things like:

• sweet potatoes/yams
• other starchy tubers such as yuca
• potatoes
• bananas (green or ripe), plantains
• other fruit
• beans, legumes, peas, lentils
• whole, unprocessed grains (soak them first if possible)

My hunch is that starches work better than fruit here because of the way the brain perceives glucose vs. fructose. But don’t overthink this. Just put the frickin’ sweet potato in your appropriate sweet-potato-related orifice and get ‘er done.

Do your best to ensure good food quality here, and try to go as unprocessed and primal as possible (e.g. a baked potato beats a potato chip). I am definitely not giving you a license to go hog wild into the brownie tray. Keep it real and sane. Don’t bullshit yourself. But honestly, if you’ve been restricting like a mofo for a long time, the details are less important than just getting into the habit of steady carb intake. If you can tolerate bread with no ill effects, the occasional slice won’t kill ya.

Pay attention to how you feel. I know I already said that. But it bears repeating. By the time we start circling the hormonal toilet bowl, there’s a good chance we’ve ignored a lot of body cues.

Bigger-picture stuff

Review your eating habits and patterns. You may need to eat more in general, more carbs, and/or more often. There’s good news: Abnormalities in the GH–IGF-I axis are reversible with refeeding. Look at your intake and ask yourself: What might count as metabolic stress?

Remember that the cumulative load of stress is the real problem here. Being an anal-retentive dietary fussbudget will cost you. As will flipping out about every single fucking thing you eat. As will overtraining and under-resting. As will worrying about whether you’re going to die of face cancer from eating a bagel. Just eat the damn food and lighten up.

Kill stress. Kill it with fire. Root it out with extreme prejudice. Get real about your sleep, your psychological environment, your self-talk, your work habits, your training load and intensity, your (lack of) rest and recovery protocols, your expectations, your relationships, and everything else that could be draining your tank. Get over wanting to be a superhero and embrace your vulnerable humanity. It’s OK.

Stop reading shit on the internet (except me, of course, ha). Step away from the computer into the real world of YOUR body. Worry less about the details and more about the big picture. My whole hypothesis here could be totally useless for explaining YOUR situation. Doesn’t matter. Just follow the real-life evidence wherever it leads you. Got a theory? Great! How’s that working for YOU?

Stop saying “should” and start saying “is”. Maybe Dietary Protocol X should work according to Expert Y or Anecdotal Evidence Z… but if it doesn’t feel good for you, it doesn’t fucking work for YOU and YOUR body. That is what it is. If you argue with reality you will always lose.

Consider your unique “stress sensitivity” and metabolic blueprint. Again, forget about “should”. You are YOU. Special snowflake YOU. If you’re someone who’s typically more sensitive to other things like sensory input, light and noise levels, nuances of things, tastes and textures, drug doses, food intolerances, etc. there’s a good chance you’re more metabolically sensitive too. (Even if you’ve tried to kill your sensitivity, or numbed it out, or pretended to be a badass.)

Consider the source. If you’re a middle-aged woman, don’t listen to a damn thing that young males say, unless said young males have a wealth of hands-on experience and research knowledge in the field of middle-aged women’s health. And even then, be suspicious.

Match your body to the information. If you are female, start by understanding that hormonally and evolutionarily speaking, a female body — especially one of reproductive age – is not exactly the same as a male body. An older body is not exactly the same as a younger body. A body in 21st century Western society is not exactly the same as a Paleolithic body. A human body is definitely not a mouse body. (Yes, I know I mentioned a rat study above, but take it as a starting point rather than gospel.)

Think long-term. Something might be working great for you now. Will it work in a month? 6 months? A year? 5 years? Face up to the inconvenient question of sustainability.

Balance the seesaw. If you add stress in one place you must take it away elsewhere. If you’re trying to lose fat and/or training hard, you must actively chase recovery and restoration. You must also do de-stressing, parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) dominant activities such as low-intensity rambling (especially outdoors in nature while getting sunshine), yoga, relaxing swims, laughing, cuddling, meditation, etc.

Stay checked in. Calibrate constantly. Try something and observe how you feel. Remember that it may take time to notice the effects. Go slowly, step by step. Be generous with your time, self-love, and patience. If you’re deep into this thing, it’ll take you a while to get out.

YOUR body is your boss. Nobody else. Love it, and listen to it.

Final word: What’s the “best diet”?

OK smartass Krista, what do YOU think is the “best diet”?

Well, obviously, there isn’t a single “best diet”. But here are some guidelines.

Don’t be crazy. Like S/M, be safe, sane, and consensual. If food, eating, and reading/thinking/arguing about food/eating are taking over your life, that’s being crazy. Unless being crazy is your job, like me.

Lower the stress load. That might mean eating a little more carbohydrate than conventionally recommended by low-carb folks. It means eating enough to support YOUR needs, whatever those are. It means removing inflammatory foods (sugar, wheat, maybe dairy for some folks, etc.) as much as possible, calibrating based on YOUR symptoms and individual body blueprint. Both over-restriction and bingeing are stressful. Try to find a middle ground of…

Eat when you’re physically hungry, and stop when you’re satisfied. Learn the body cues that will tell you what both of these things are.

Eat real food. Not processed crap. Not “edible food-like substances”. Eat stuff that comes from the ground or the field or the water. Animals and plants will do nicely.

Help your body do its job of digestion and nutrient processing. Eat fermented foods and probiotics. Occasionally eat something from your garden without washing it (assuming no animals are using your soil as a litterbox). Keep your gut happy and healthy.

Eat slowly and mindfully, in a relaxed setting. Stress — of any kind — shuts down digestion and harms bacterial flora.

Chill the fuck out. Don’t overthink this. Be real. (See “Don’t be crazy.”)

References

“__ all the things” meme from Hyperbole and a Half. If you aren’t reading this blog, you totally should be. This artist is a friggin’ genius.

Insulin… An Undeserved Bad Reputation from Weightology. This blog gives you teh smart.

Bielohuby, Maximilian, et al. Lack of dietary carbohydrates induces hepatic growth hormone (GH) resistance in rats. Endocrinology 152 no.5 (May 2011): 1948-1960.

Lawson, Elizabeth A. and Anne Klibanski. Endocrine abnormalities in anorexia nervosa. Nature Clinical Practice Endocrinology and Metabolism 4 no.7 (July 2008): 407-414.

Møller, Niels and Jens Otto Lunde Jørgensen. Effects of growth hormone on glucose, lipid, and protein metabolism in human subjects. Endocrine Reviews 30 no. 2 (April 2009) 152-177.

Simpson, K. J. Parker, J. Plumer, S. Bloom. CCK, PYY and PP: The control of energy balance. Appetite Control: Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology 209 (2012): 209-230

Vijayakumar, Archana, Ruslan Novosyadlyy, YingJie Wu, Shoshana Yakar, and Derek LeRoith. Biological effects of growth hormone on carbohydrate and lipid metabolism. Growth Horm IGF Res. 2010 February; 20 no.1. doi: 10.1016/j.ghir.2009.09.002

Yuen,K.J.C., L.E. Chong, M.C. Riddle. Influence of glucocorticoids and growth hormone on insulin sensitivity in humans. Diabetic Medicine 2013. DOI: 10.1111/dme.12184

I can’t remember what I was doing that day; maybe the dentist, or sorting my sock drawer, or something. (This is a lie, of course. My sock drawer is about as organized as a post-colonial banana republic’s government files.)

I feel a little badly about that. Like maybe I should have given the apocalypse some more attention.

To be fair, a lot of other people were showing up at the apocalypse’s party so I didn’t think it would miss me; I had already clicked “Decline” to the apocalypse’s Facebook invite and posted a jaunty noncommittal note: Hey apocalypse! I believe in science so I can’t make it! Let’s never get together! :) Luv ya babe xoxo K.

Nevertheless, the tongue-in-cheek-but-hedging-our-bets-anyway tone of the general discourse suggested a larger cultural preoccupation with finding The Big Explanation.

Have you ever looked for The Big Explanation? You know, the thing that will make it all work?

The diet that will never leave you hungry or dissatisfied? (And certainly never contemplating making a cookie-prosciutto-peanut butter sandwich if the alternative is to be left alone with your thoughts, gazing into the void on a Saturday afternoon?)

The “fat-blasting” workout regime that promises METABOLIC DESTRUCXXXION?

Especially when combined with things like RIPPED FREAK, GRENADE THERMO DETONATOR, MAN-SCORCH, DYMA-BURN, MELTDOWN, XYIENCE XELERATE, MUSCLEOLOGY LIPOBURN, AMPHETALEAN, RIPPED ADRENALINE, PANTHERA PHARMA DIAMOND FIRE X7 (Panthera — wasn’t that a guy in Thundercats?); ANADROX (pump and burn, says this one) or XAT-7? Those are all real names. Google them. (LIPOFLUSH kind of scares me — wasn’t that what Olestra did? You know, the delicately named “anal leakage” fake fat?)

The adventure race that is so HARDCORE EXXXTREME that it involves a cattle prod, naked skydiving, a habanero enema, something involving “duct tape tap dancing”, and being locked in a cage with Ted Nugent — and that’s the warmup?

The grammatical reason why all these things and sports supplements have ridiculous names and Xs in them?

And perhaps most importantly:

The place where you — yes, you! lumpy, quotidian, funny-pelvis-alignment, PMSing you! — belong?

Because isn’t that really what it’s all about?

The gender warrior and great pioneer Kate Bornstein once told me (YES KATE FUCKING BORNSTEIN TALKED TO ME HOLY SHIT HOW AWESOME IS THAT WHO WANTS MY AUTOGRAPH!!?) that identity is really about two things:

• being (who are you?)
• belonging (where do you fit in?)

The funny and sad thing about humanity in the 21st century is that we’re all convinced we’re unusual or special. It’s one of the most common logical fallacies. For instance, the vast majority of people think they are “better than average” drivers.

And right now, there are shrinks’ offices full of sobbing people who are explaining through snotty tears that they “don’t really fit in anywhere”.

Well, news flash: Unless you are one of those douchebros who popped out of the womb with your sunglasses resting atop the backwards-turned brim of your baseball hat, whose hypocephalic cerebral cortex has never entertained even a random electrical fart of abstract self-critical consciousness, you’ve probably thought you “don’t really fit in anywhere”.

And nobody cares about your dreams. (Bear with me. This isn’t as mean as it sounds.) In fact, I thought about calling this Rant of the Month “Nobody Cares About Your Dreams”. NCAYD is a little catchphrase that dates back decades.

One of my friends, who is now a Harvard-educated history professor, was a precocious, imaginative little child. Every night, much like Ralph Wiggum (“Sleep! That’s where I’m a Viking!”), my friend would drift off into an exciting land of Nod, full of elaborate narratives and exuberant, fantastical characters. Every morning, he would wake up and regale his mother with long, Greek-epic-type explanations and analyses of the previous night’s events.

One day, his probably busy/rushed/exasperated-with-4-kids mother finally blurted, somewhere in the middle of a 20-minute exegesis, “Rob! Nobody cares about your dreams!”

And thus, a childhood trauma plus notable catchphrase was born. (Along with “A company hymn?” and “How’d they get the monkey to be so mean?”, which will, for now, be left unexplained as your enigmatic Moment of Zen.)

Nobody cares about your dreams.

I like this.

On the one hand, of course you could argue that this is an insensitive declaration of the world’s general lack of concern for your tenderhearted feelings and innermost aspirations. And you’d probably be right.

But on the other hand — which is the interpretation to which I subscribe — it means that Big Daddy In The Sky isn’t watching you. You’re free. You don’t have to justify or explain yourself to anyone.

All that shit you worry about? Nobody cares. The spot of mustard on your shirt? Nobody cares. Your abs? Your WOD time? Whether you were “good” or “bad” at dinner? Seriously, nobody fucking cares.

I used to have this weird belief that when I died, the most embarrassing moments of my life would be replayed to me, like a Film O’ Shame. You know, things like picking your nose while sitting on the toilet, reading Flowers In The Attic. Or when my childhood BFF blabbed to the bass clarinetist whom I sat next to at band camp (YES BAND CAMP), and upon whom I had a mild crush, that I’d told her he made gross ffffff sounds with the spit valve, thus crushing the crush forevermore. That sort of thing.

It all seemed to MATTER SO VERY VERY MUCH. Like, enough that an omnipotent, universe-creating God would make the time to fire up the ol’ E-Zy Cam and take notes. 6th May 1979. Took a break from causing all galactic chemical chain reactions and celestial bodies to orbit in order to record this gem: Krista farts into red velour shorts while roller skating. Ha ha ha, I can’t wait to see her face when I show her this one!

Later, as an adult, I translated this imagined Watcher (kinda pervy, if you really think about it, BTW) into introjects that constantly observed my performance and body, like a ticker tape of snarky TV producers.

Uh oh, bad squat day. That’s gonna cost us a few thousand viewers and a shitload of credibility.

Hey, those chunky quads are testing poorly with our 18-24-aged females. Could you lose some of that? 

Look, I don’t mean to sound harsh, but that’s a seriously giant zit. The Noxema sponsors are complaining.

Especially fierce reproaches, of course, were reserved for areas that seemed to define my “status” as a “fitness and nutrition expert” (oh har dee har har har). No, really, pause to appreciate the insanity of this.

SCENE: Boise, Idaho. A gang of women watch a flickering computer screen breathlessly.

DONNA: Wait! She’s coming on now! [collective gasp]

SUSAN: Is that…

NANCY: I think it is!

SUSAN: Holy crap! Krista just totally stunk up that deadlift!

JILL: And look! There’s a muffin top over her leggings when she bends over! What a fat piece of shit!

[All the women scream in unison.]

SALLY: Oh God! What a fraud! I believed in her! 

CARLA: I bet she’s at least 19, 20% bodyfat. Maybe even 20.5. I can’t see any shoulder striations, and you know what that means, amirite? [makes oinking noises]

RACHEL: I knew it. I always told you guys that Krista was a joke.

I can’t decide what’s worse, the bizarrely ludicrous narcissism of thinking that anyone on the internet actually gave a shit, or all the mental real estate that was scorched and burned because of years of these parasitic idiotic thoughts.

Now, here’s a funny irony. Which is that people actually do care about your dreams. Just not the ones you think.

Most of us have at least one person in our lives who might, in fact, be interested in our most meaningful experiences and desires. That person may even have generously, silently, indulgently tolerated your whiny self-criticism and self-excoriation with a sense of quiet puzzlement.

Because perhaps to this person — your BFF, your mom, your partner, your kid, the homeless person for whom you buy a coffee every day, hell maybe just your dog — you are a wondrous and magical creature. And all that shit you worry and fret and self-flagellate about don’t matter. Not to them. They either don’t see it or don’t care.

They think you are beautiful when you wear a red scarf. They like the smell of your hair. They think your goofy-shaped feet are adorable. They may have a vague idea of what a WOD is but they aren’t quite sure what 13:25 means, and anyway they’re more focused on telling you this hilarious thing Chad said that they totally know you’ll find funny so they saved up the story to tell you because they were thinking about you and your smile, as they often do.

They are the ones who care about your real dreams. The ones like “I want to help people” and “I want to make a difference” and “I want my life to have purpose”.

They are the ones who really hear you. Years later they say to you Remember when you told me that ___? and you think Holy shit, you were paying attention?

And they are the ones you’d call if the world were ending, just to hear their voice (or perhaps their bark) one last time.

Shame researcher Brene Brown has a fun little exercise. Cut a piece of paper so that it’s 2 inches by 2 inches. Yes. Very small.

On that paper, write down the names of those people (or the dog) that are truly, deeply important to you. The people who see and accept you as YOU. Completely. Fully. In all your flawed nose-picking splendour. It’s a short list, of course. Print teeny tiny.

That paper now contains the only people whose opinions are worth jack shit to you. When in doubt, refer to it.

Today, perhaps review your end-of-the-world plan. Who would you call? Who would you want to huddle next to, sharing the last foil blanket on earth as the meteors rained down hellfire?

More importantly, if you lost everything in the apocalypse, how might you end up freer? What would be in the boxes that would be jettisoned? What imaginary authority figure or judge would catch fire and be destroyed?

What bullshit could YOU throw out in 2013 to free up some mental health, and why?

Post below and let us know.

Bodyweight training can develop excellent strength, functional movement, balance, flexibility, stability, and other wonderful physical qualities. As someone once said, “You should be able to train strength and movement to the highest level with bodyweight only.”

Problem is, some movements lend themselves better to bodyweight than others.

Squat, push… pull?

Push-up and squat! That’s where the money is! If doing a two-limbed version is too easy then do a one-limbed version. (If you’re not sure how to bridge the gap, Pavel
Tsatsouline wrote a terrific book on the subject in 2003 called The Naked Warrior.)

As great as squats and push-ups are, though, they don’t cover all movement patterns that you can do without equipment. Notably absent is pulling.

Like squatting and pushing-away, pulling-towards is a pretty fundamental movement pattern. (Some have even argued that the pulling motion, which allowed us to effectively scoop and shovel food into our primate food-holes, helped speed human evolution.)

Any movement — such as a row or pullup — that brings our upper arms down and towards our bodies involves our pulling muscles.

Sure, you could use pullups/chinups as your pulling-related bodyweight exercise. But what if you don’t have a pullup bar? Or what if you aren’t strong enough (yet) to make pullups the cornerstone of your bodyweight routine?

The no-tech pull

How can you perform upper-body pulling movements without equipment? Let’s break it down into a logical progression.

1. Crawl
2. Two-arm drag (short-arm)
3. Staggered drag (long-arm)
4. Two-arm drag (short -arm)
5. Staggered drag (long-arm)

This video covers the full progression. And below: a step-by-step explanation.

1. Crawl

Does crawling involve pulling or pushing muscles? Yes.

Crawling is not only our starting point; it’s also where distinctions between pulling and pushing get blurred. There is no clear dominance of any set of muscles.

As a result, the reductionist mindset that makes people say things like, “Today is chest and tris, Thursday is back and bis,” gets thrown right out the window. I’m cool with
that if you are.

Crawling represents a fundamental stage in our motor development. If you’re not crawling well, it’s fair to guess that you lack the coordination and core stability
to perform movements further down the developmental chain.

In other words, if you struggle with push-ups or suffer from crazy-arm syndrome when skipping or sprinting, you may find a return to crawling to be the most efficient plan of attack.

The crawling progression begins with your weight distributed equally on your hands and knees. It ends with most of your weight shifted onto your hands.

Phase 1a: Baby Style (quadruped)
Phase 1b: Floating knees (as above but with the knees slightly off the ground)
Phase 1c: Bear crawl
Phase 1d: Bear crawl on forearms

1a – Baby-style (quadruped) crawl

1c – Bear crawl

Two-arm drag

Developmentally speaking, the two-arm drag (aka the creep) will typically come before the crawl. However, since you no longer weigh 12 lbs (and if you do, HOW ARE YOU READING THIS ARTICLE!?), this changes things. For adults, the two-arm dragging motion gets harder with more body weight, longer limbs, and an upper body that is now relatively weaker than the lower body.

So here’s how to proceed.

1. Get into prone position. That means face-down with the body in contact with the ground somewhere between the hips and navel, depending on  your individual mobility. Pretend you’re a circus seal.
2. From there, reach overhead (which is to say, along the ground in front of you) and place your forearms down, increasing the pressure from light to hard in order to get traction and stability.
3. Pull yourself toward your arms. Or, think of pulling your arms to you (even though they’ll stay in the same place).

If we forget about what direction we’re facing for a moment, the two-arm drag looks suspiciously like a pull-up. Developing strength in this full-body pull movement pattern will build a foundation for chin-ups and pull-ups down the road.

Since we have a turf floor in our facility, we typically put nylon mats under people’s lower bodies. You could also do this movement on wood or linoleum floors. (Or simply tell your clothing to go to hell as you drag yourself over dirt and grass.)

Phase 2a: Prone (short-arm): Focus on the forearms and keep the elbows bent as you drag yourself forward.
Phase 2b: Prone (long-arm): Fully extend your arms in front of you before pulling. This is the variation that looks like a face-down pull-up.

Staggered or alternating drag

(Also known as the military crawl)

Once you’ve mastered the two-arm drag, you can increase the intensity by performing an alternating drag. This isn’t a strict one-arm pull, as the extended arm will do most of the work while the closer arm contributes what it needs to. Pulling in this staggered manner will also help you move more fluidly.

As above, increase the difficulty by reaching progressively further in front of you Since the closer arm will be sharing a smaller share of the workload, you
can also dial up the challenge by allowing that arm to continue traveling past your shoulders toward your naval.

Phase 3a: Prone (short-arm): Focus on the forearms and keep the elbows bent as you drag yourself forward.
Phase 3b: Prone (long-arm): Fully extend your arms in front of you before pulling.
Phase 3c/d: Add friction by driving your hips or feet into the ground.

Most people are surprised by how challenging these creeping and crawling variations are, especially if we work on stabilizing the core and preventing the hips from swinging around.

Our own ability to add resistance (by increasing friction or dragging something behind us) mean that even very strong people can be sufficiently challenged by these simple exercises.

Geoff Girvitz runs Bang Fitness in Toronto. He puts HGH in his smoothies and once punched Flex Wheeler in the soleus.

• Sweet Potato Power: Smart Carbs — Paleo and Personalized. Victory Belt, 2012.
• Sweet Potato Power on Facebook
• Ashley Tudor’s ode to the sweet potato encompasses self-experimentation, lessons in hormones, and delicious recipes.
• I interview Ashley about her book and her sweet potato project. Skip to the podcast >>

One of the most common fears that the average person has when learning about a Paleo-type diet is that they will have to give up anything remotely sweet or starchy.

The mourning prompted by the prospective loss of carbs is akin to the wails of a five-year-old burying their beloved hamster, perhaps stuffed into a toilet paper tube (to be clear, dear reader, I mean the hamster, not the five-year-old, though who hasn’t occasionally wanted to stuff a screeching child into a toilet paper tube?).

We cling to our carbohydrates — and rightly so, for their ingestion produces happy chemicals that bathe us, Calgon-take-me-away style, in painkilling endorphins, “slot-machine-payoff” dopamine, and soothing serotonin. It’s the cheapest high around.

However, it’s a myth that Paleo-style eating means forsaking all carbs. Our ancestors and current-day foragers chowed down plenty of starchy tubers, for instance, especially during times when, say, walrus burgers or turtle nuggets were hard to come by. Sweet potatoes are one of the virtuous starchy tubers that undoubtedly sustained many an early human between trips to Mammoth Mart.

Sweet potatoes: Nutritional workhorses

In fact, argues Sweet Potato Power author Ashley Tudor, sweet potatoes are one of nature’s most perfect foods — surpassing even (yes!) — spinach and broccoli in their nutrient content, according to the Centre for Science in the Public Interest. They’re high in bioavailable beta-carotene, fibre, vitamin E, and anti-inflammatory chemicals.

The key to understanding sweet potatoes is twofold:

• They aren’t yams, even though we often call them that. Yams are rarely available in North America except at specialty stores.
• They aren’t regular potatoes. Though both originated somewhere in Central or South America, and though both belong to the order Solanales, regular potatoes are from the Solanacea family, aka the nightshade family that includes eggplants, tomatoes, peppers, and tobacco. Sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batata) are from the Convolvulaceae family, which also includes morning glories.

Sweet potatoes are a starchy carb source, yes, but they are slowly digested, well-used by the body, and full of beneficial nutrients.

Self-experimentation

Satsumaimo sweet potatoes

The book is not simply a monograph on the subject of sweet potatoes. It’s a testament to the power of self-experimentation.

As Ashley explains, sweet potatoes are simply a lens that focuses the larger picture — the importance of gathering data on and drawing conclusions about oneself.

In order to know what diet works for us, we have to learn about our bodies. Our responses. Our triggers.

This isn’t one of those “magic foods” books, where authors write like gushing teenagers about how an incredibly cute boy — sorry, single foodstuff (say, coconut oil, goji berries, or hummingbird milk) — will cure everything that ails anyone.

She’s careful to point out that not everyone can tolerate starchy carbohydrates in their diets. If, say, you’re pre-diabetic or diabetic, you may not do well with those foods. Or, in fact, you just might find that sweet potatoes treat your body better than fruit.

How to know? Why, be your own lab rat, of course.

In several chapters devoted to the science of self, she explores things like her blood glucose changes, even going as far to get a DexCom glucose meter implanted.

All carbs are not created equal

Along the way, Ashley experimented with other types of carbohydrates — the fructose in fruit, the sucrose in table sugar, etc.

She found that choosing the right type of carbohydrate — i.e. complex. starchy carbohydrate that broke down into glucose, not fructose — actually suppressed her appetite and kept her feeling satisfied, happy, and full.

Sweet potatoes produced the proverbial stick-to-your-ribs satisfaction. Conversely, fruit made her hungrier and processed sugar sent her on an all-out binge.

This is a key point: All carbs are not created equal. Our hormonal response to each type of carbohydrate is distinct and complex.

You’re not a “bad” or “weak” person if you can’t control your appetite after consuming, say, a can of soda. Your hunger is simply a pawn in your larger game of biochemistry.

Choose carbs carefully and you’ll feel fuller longer. Feeling fuller longer means you’ll eat less overall, and when you do eat, it won’t be a frantic Cookie-Monster-esque freakout.

Sweet potatoes: Also kitchen workhorses

Photo credit: Shok, Flickr

As Ashley demonstrates in her wide-ranging selection of delicious recipes, sweet potatoes can become darn near anything — salads, side dishes, pasta substitutes, truffles, popsicles, and even sports drinks.

She discusses the culinary properties of each variety of sweet potato, and which one to choose for which dish.

Gentle reader, if you can find a satsumaimo sweet potato, grab it and roast it — it sweetens with toasted-caramel notes, and with the right recipe, tastes just like cake. You’ll likely find these in Asian markets. Look for the long, purple-skinned sweet potatoes with white flesh.

However, look around for other types too, such as the purple-fleshed sweet potato, which is also high in beneficial anthocyanins.

My interview with Ashley

I had the pleasure of interviewing Ashley about her book and the nutritional benefits of sweet potatoes.

Listen now!

>>Download MP3

(Or right-click the link and then select “Save As” to download.)

Stefani believes that health is holistic, and her writing spans a broad spectrum between technical articles on hormonal, neural, and reproductive physiology, and inspiring manifestos on the powers of forgiveness and self-love. She’s an important voice for women’s health in the world of Paleo eating.

The early scientific writings on Paleo-style eating and ancestral diets typically presumed an “everyperson” eater — often an implied male body that did not menstruate, get pregnant, hit menopause, deal with child care, have other women’s health issues, etc. Luckily, Stefani is part of a small but growing group of women’s voices in the ancestral diet community who are now attending to women’s specific health issues.

In a Stumptuous Files podcast, I talk to Stefani about the value of ancestral-style diets, women and body image, her experience with disordered eating, her work on PCOS, and the F-work — feminism — in the “Paleosphere”.

Listen now!

>>Download MP3

(Or right-click the link and then select “Save As” to download.)

PCOS Unlocked: The Manual

Stefani Ruper

At the time of her diagnosis with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) in 2009, writes Stefani, “I knew nothing about ovaries. None of it made any sense to me. All I knew was that I was covered in acne, incapable of conceiving children, and doomed to an absent sex drive for the rest of my life.”

Few health care providers had useful answers for her. For one thing, why did a relatively fit, lean woman have PCOS? The standard narrative was that PCOS was simply a disease related to metabolic syndrome — the collection of symptoms that include insulin resistance, obesity, and disrupted reproductive hormones.

Yet Stefani had done the opposite. She’d lost a lot of weight, going from a size 9 to a size 0. How was this possible? For Stefani, something wasn’t adding up.

Her journey towards understanding her health situation — as well as that of the other women she met along the path — produced PCOS Unlocked: The Manual.

Biology ain’t destiny, but it sure carries a big stick

“We need to think deeply about what our bodies demand of us,” Stefani writes. “Nothing in the world is better at knowing how to be fertile than the natural world.”

And, one might add, never have we been more out of sync with our physiological and environmental cues. Most of us regard our bodies as an inconvenience, an embarrassment, or mostly just transit for our brains. (Which, by the way, are part of our bodies. In case you hadn’t noticed.) But those bodies are still working away, doing whatever it is that they do. When things get out of whack, our bodies let us know.

This argument forms the basis for Stefani’s recommendations. Fundamentally, PCOS is a disorder of imbalance. Androgen levels too high relative to other sex hormones. Stress and anxiety too high for too long. Dietary intake out of balance with physiological needs — whether too much or too little.

Although the general concept of imbalance cuts across all manifestations of PCOS, Stefani has developed and distinguishes three categories of PCOS sufferers:

• Type 1 PCOS: insulin resistant, usually overweight/obese women (i.e. the “classic” PCOS presentation)
• Type 2 PCOS: metabolically and/or psychologically stressed women (e.g. women training hard, restricting food intake, dealing with life stresses)
• Type 3 PCOS: women with low-functioning thyroid

This is pretty innovative thinking, based on a careful observation of patient populations.Type 1s usually show the “classic” symptoms of PCOS, such as:

• trouble losing weight (and weight collecting around the midsection);
• acne
• facial hair and thicker/darker hair on body
• male pattern hair loss on the head
• irregular periods
• high testosterone levels
• poor insulin sensitivity, glucose tolerance, and fasting glucose

Type 2s and 3s are the women who are likely to fly under the radar. Often, their lab values aren’t extreme. Or (especially in the case of Type 2s) they may “look” healthy. Indeed, Type 2s are often found lurking in the local gyms or health food stores. They’re typically educated, have high expectations of themselves, and face significant stresses that are physical, mental, emotional, and environmental. They too may have elevated androgens, but often only because their estrogen and progesterone are relatively lower.

As such, their symptoms are hard to puzzle out. Is the insomnia they experience due to that impending deadline, the low-carb diet they’re doing, or a tough training session that afternoon?

Drawing on the medical literature as well as the experiences of women she’s met, Stefani carefully develops her argument and recommendations. She provides in-depth exploration of each of the PCOS types, giving specific recommendations for diagnosis and treatment.

Complex problems, simple solutions

Luckily, while the underlying hormonal mechanisms of PCOS may be complex, the solution is relatively simple. (Not easy. But at least simple.)

“Food is medicine,” says Stefani. “Women surveyed in today’s surviving traditional hunter-gatherer cultures do not have PCOS. PCOS has emerged in Western society in response to changes in diet and lifestyle… The simplest and most healthy way to overcome PCOS is to re-align the foods that we currently eat with the foods that we are meant to eat.”

There is hope. “PCOS is best overcome by stopping the behaviour that causes hormonal disruption and by healing damage that has been done over time,” she writes. PCOS Unlocked, and the associated video material, lays out a clear step-by-step plan for fixing your busted hormones.

If you’re a woman with unexplained hormonal symptoms that include some signs of elevated androgens (e.g. acne, hair changes, changes in your body shape), menstrual irregularities, painful periods, etc. I strongly recommend you check out PCOS Unlocked: The Manual as well as Stefani’s writings and the community on Paleo for Women. It just might be what you and your doctor have been searching for.

Check out Izaac’s transformation on the reader mail page. He reminded me that guys deal with a lot of body-image bullshit and bad fitness advice too. And he adds:

People are motivated, and often times desperate to make changes in their lives and end their suffering, so they put all this power into the hands of one person or product which becomes their only hope, and when it fails, hopelessness sets in and it becomes a vicious cycle.  Because sooner or later they start chasing some other fad bullshit person who’s trying to sell them something.

Many of these people start to take action and matters into their own hands only after being severely disappointed time and time again, and I think it’s people like you and a handful of others out there who make a huge difference for so many motivated people who have reached a breaking point.

A 56-year old male Master’s track and field athlete who is rehabbing an injury using some of my tips said: “Thanks so much for encouraging us old farts, male or female.”

And finally, I’m hearing from lots of male trainers who are also using Fuck Calories with their clients.

Way to go guys! Spread the good word! And you are all welcome in the House that Stumptuous Built.

Vigorous exercise may prevent Parkinson’s disease and help treat it

No shit, right? Shaky Man’s been saying that for years! Way to be a pioneer, SM!

I’m particularly stoked about this one because the female winner was 56-year old Laurie — a woman with apparently everything against her: age, thyroid, a family tragedy, injuries, and life in general. And yet she persevered. This is truly what Lean Eating is all about: finding and nurturing the strength inside ourselves so that we can change. Bravo to all!

Check it out here.

Please stand back. I am about to bust this shit out. (Notice camera crew in the back preparing for Operation Freak A Sista Out With A Giant Novelty Cheque.)

The second rule of fast club is that skinny guys no longer get to tell me what to do. (Although I love you guys. You look so cute with your pants falling down!)

I come not to bury young male ectomorphs, but to praise them. In fact, I married one. They are a fascinating species. I have observed my own specimen for years, like Jane Goodall amongst the chimps.

Here are some interesting facts about these wonderful creatures.

1. Many of them can live on fumes. Craving neither food nor drink, these hominid hummingbirds apparently draw nourishment from the air. They sup on dew and dine on dust.

2. When they are stressed out, they don’t eat. Actually, when they aren’t starving, they don’t eat. Which is to say, most of the time. Can you believe not eating when you’re stressed? I know! Ha ha! Crazy! I keep trying to explain to my specimen that giving a loaf of bread a butter enema then dipping the whole thing in chocolate and rubbing it all over your esophagus will always make you feel better. Thus far I have failed to convince him.

3. When they do eat, it doesn’t seem to matter. Have you seen the food these guys can put down? It’s like they encode for some MAKE_ABS1 gene. In their bodies, somehow cookies turn into tummy bumps.

4. To lose weight, they do crazy shit like give up drinking so much beer. I hear women from all over the globe gnashing their teeth at their partners’ superhuman abilities to get riptshizzled with no effort. I’ve been busting my ass and I lost 1 lb in a month! That jerk’s doing my nutrition plan along with me and he’s lost 40 lb in the same time, just by eating one less strand of spaghetti a day! I hate him!

I hear ya. My home dinner table conversation sometimes goes like this.

Me: Ugh, I feel the estrogen demons again. I feel like an inflated wet sponge. The only thing that fits me is the Snuggie my grandma gave me last Christmas.

Him: I don’t feel so good myself. I had a whiff of anxiety today and dropped 5 lbs. Then my shirt tore itself on my abs.

Eeyup.

There there ladies. Cry it out.

And here is point #5, which may be the most obvious:

5. They are not us.

Not most of us reading, anyway. (If you are, welcome! I know you probably have your own struggles. Go eat some steak and do some squats. And may I recommend the work of my esteemed colleagues over at Scrawny to Brawny?)

Here’s what this means.

If you are non-ectomorphic (i.e. not naturally lanky and lean), non-young, non-male, your experience will probably not be the same as theirs.

(By the way, for most of this article, I am going to address the “you” of my site that is not a naturally lean young guy. If you are a young male ectomorph, please don’t be offended. Feel free to keep reading. This may be helpful if you are in the position of giving advice to others who are not like you.)

This doesn’t mean that lean young guys don’t have great things to say. There are many awesome young lean dudes working in the field of fitness and nutrition. Many are my colleagues and friends. (See S2B, above.)

But it does mean that you (again, I mean the “you” that is not those guys) should take their advice with caution.

Here’s why.

Most lean young guys giving fitness and nutrition advice are basing that advice — in part — on their own bodily experience. Which won’t match yours. (See above.)

Most lean young guys giving fitness and nutrition advice have not seen a sufficiently diverse client base. Hey, that’s what happens when you’re young. It’s not bad. It’s just the math of reality. In a few decades, then they’ll be Dave Draper and have some awesome yarns to spin. And then maybe I’ll take their advice.

Many people — male or female — giving fitness and nutrition advice don’t have clients at all. Maybe they’ve trained a few friends. But many of them are researchers or enjoy reading in the field. Which is awesome. And admirable. But it doesn’t make you equipped to cope with the weirdness and messiness of real human bodies. Especially when there are lots of them.

“Lab significant” is not “real world significant”. Minute details of experimental results, while intriguing, do not necessarily translate into expected results in diverse human bodies. And all the fructose knowledge in the world won’t help you deal with a 47-year-old client who is literally sobbing for her mother because she can’t pull herself out of a binge cycle and feels insane. (Yes, this has happened to me, way more often than you’d think.)

Context is everything. A fasted mouse without much else to do except hang out and not-eat is a lot different than a fasted human with a job, kids, sleep deprivation, and a killer commute. A fasted young guy whose biggest life stress is 10 hours a week of university coursework is a lot different than a fasted woman in her 30s who might be juggling a full-time job, a family, and a complex and shifting hormonal environment.

Aging has a sense of humour. And it’s like that practical joker roommate who thinks it’s hi-larious to prop a bucket of water above a half-open door. Hee hee hee! I made your knees fall apart! Enjoy the hemorrhoids! And now you pee when you run! Hee! Whether male or female, when you’re young you sorta fail to appreciate this laff riot. (Don’t worry. It’s coming to visit you too.)

Young lean males are not everyone else. Especially females. Now, we’re going to get into human variation in a minute. But for now, I’m going to put “men” in one bucket and “women” in another (along with respective buckets for “young”, “older”, “leaner”, etc.), so bear with me.

In my role as Big Coach over at Precision Nutrition I see literally thousands of clients who go through our coaching programs.

I see people at their most vulnerable. I read the words they write. I speak to them. I connect with them in intense, one-on-one sessions where we do a kind of chest-bump of the soul.  I see and carry their pain with them. It is immense. This pain is diverse, yet oddly familiar. (As therapist Carl Rogers once wrote, “The most personal is the most universal.”)

People come to our Lean Eating coaching program at Precision Nutrition when they are struggling. Many feel that they are at the end of their rope. Like there is nothing else for them. They’ve tried this program or that program, and none have lasted.

We take them in, hundreds at a time, and care for them. We tinker with their machinery, polish them up, and send them on their way, renewed.

Our Lean Eating program is currently 12 months long. Years ago, we offered a 6-month program. Now, let me give you some context for this. Imagine: Daily lessons. Daily check-ins. Daily assigned habits. Daily workouts. Every day, as one of our coaching clients, you do some small meaningful task that works towards a goal that is salient and resonant to you — whether that’s better athletic performance, losing fat, or improving your general health. You get coaching and a support group. Major accountability and support. We are in your face helping you bigtime. (We’re like nutritional weirdos lurking outside in your bushes. In a good way.)

The program itself offers solid nutritional habits. I mean solid. Like bulletproof solid. You couldn’t contest these habits in any court of nutritional law. They’re nutritional Kevlar. We have a team of PhDs and MScs cranking these bad boys out, and constantly testing and revising them as new research or client experience emerges.

So. Previous incarnation of Lean Eating. 6 months instead of a year. Again — 6 months of hands-on coaching, support, daily lessons, simple yet awesome habits.

And guess what.

Many people who finished the 6-month program went off into their new lives renewed and rejuvenated. They were launched from the nest, and they flew. But many rebounded. Off the wagon with a splat. Not because they were bad, stupid, or lazy. Simply because life happens. Because aging happens. Because reality happens. Most importantly:

Because even 6 months of doing everything “right” is often not enough to be sustainable.

Sustainable. That’s the million-dollar-word here. Sustainable.

And that’s why our coaching program is now one full year of simple, sustainable habits that nourish body, mind, and soul. Because that’s what really works. That’s what people will stick with for the rest of their lives. (We have the thousands of client data points to prove it.)

As Saint Dan John is frequently heard to opine, up there in his heavenly squat rack, “Everything works, for a short time.”

He should know. As should I. One reason I think I like Dan so much is that he, like me, is up for just about any ridiculous gym challenge. Although his seem to involve more drinking than mine. But maybe that’s his secret to being so cool.

So no matter what dumbshit idea you try (500-rep deadlifts! The cabbage soup diet! Doing 1-rep maxes every day! Doing leg presses from the handstand position!), it’ll probably work.

Until it doesn’t.

In some cases, “doesn’t work” is no big deal. It just… doesn’t work.

In other cases, “doesn’t work” is a car crash. It fucks your shit up like a two-bit hockey goon.

Which brings me to one of the current nutritional trends: Intermittent fasting (IF).

Of course, just like calling Paleo eating a “fad” (I can hear Robb Wolf grinding his teeth from here), calling IF a “trend” is not the right word.

Not-eating is as old as eating. It’s not like prokaryotic bacteria had Pizza Hut on every corner, 3.5 billion years ago. Anorexics and ascetics alike have repped the purposely-not-eating camp for thousands of years. And the nutrition and fitness world is kinda like the weather in Scotland: If you don’t like what you’ve got, just wait five minutes for it to change. It’ll seem like a novelty when the sun comes out after the storm, even though it was out 27 minutes ago, and 53 minutes before that.

Thus I call IF a “trend” only in the sense that not-eating has (once again) hit the mainstream consciousness as a “new” thing to do to improve one’s health.

“Trends” are funny like that, especially in this biz.

Gather round, children, and I will tell you of another time, when this land was green and new, and bodybuilders wore silly pants and said silly things. When a great dynasty of Weider ruled the land, and we waited breathlessly for new issues of Muscle and Fiction to arrive in our mailboxes, to be pawed through by fingers sticky with steak juice.

For years, we had no way to argue with one another, except one-on-one, in corners of gyms, over leather-clad benches that were ripped and worn, and smelled like sweaty dogs. We had to speak face-to-face, using our eye orbs to look at other people’s eye orbs, and listen to their voices. I mean to say that we were in the same room with these people, looking directly at them rather than down at a glowing tablet in our hands.

During these ancient times, there was no way to know our body fat unless we wanted some gym teacher of questionable sexuality to pinch our belly rolls. No way to log our food except to use a writing stick on paper and then consult a small booklet of “calorie counts”. And no way to share the contents of our breakfast with thousands of mildly interested strangers.

We carried large gray brick-like objects in awkward purse-like carriers, plugged into our cars’ cigarette lighters, and called “cellular phones”. Sadly, there was no texting. Or sexting. Or taking pictures of ur weenur and sending them to your prospective girlfriend and ending your political career.

Then one day a brilliant wizard named Al Gore invented a magical network of tubes. And on this network of tubes, we nerds did “log in” with our “modems” through the phone lines (I know, right?) to “newsgroups”.

On this network of tubes, we did curse and flame one another over matters of great import, such as whether Jesus would squat using a Smith machine. We impugned the modesty and grooming habits of each others’ mothers.

We had flamewars so magnificent I still recall a stinging rebuke, delivered somewhere around post #163 in a thread worthy of Beowulf: “Well, I can tell you’ve never baled hay before, you piece of shit.” Yes, we started out talking about biceps curl hand position and somewhere along the way launched invective regarding proper agricultural technique. That’s just how we rolled, bitches.

Dan Duchaine was still living large. Pat Arnold wasn’t even a gleam in the feds’ eyes. Lyle McDonald was a skinny kid who read too much. Dan John was still fucking awesome.

And lo, it was good.

We tried everything back then, too. ECA stacks. German Volume Training. Timing our rep tempos with stopwatches. Making tuna shakes. We thought we were original. Except the guys and gals who’d been in gyms in the 70s and 80s knew we were just stealing their stuff. Which was a ripoff of the 1950s and 60s bodybuilder stuff. Which was a ripoff of the 19th century physical culture movement.

And so it goes. We all love to think we’ve found the Next Big Thing. (Meanwhile someone who died in 10,000 BCE is rolling in their peat-bog-mummified grave because we’re ripping off their schtick.)

Of course, most things fell by the wayside. The interwebs changed into the LOLCAT celebration and meme generation machine it is today. The MFW crew drifted away. Many quit training. A handful died, some spectacularly. A handful imploded, also spectacularly. (See Arnold, Pat.)

If you asked those of us who still train what we’re doing these days, you’ll find one clear trend: We almost never stuck with any of the stuff we tried.

Because it wasn’t sustainable. Because it was almost always produced by people who used a garden hose as their steroid needle. Or by people trying to make shit up to fill editorial space in a “magazine” whose actual purpose was to make us buy pills, powders, and the fantasy that we could look like Dorian Yates if we just tried hard enough.

It was fun, sure. It generated terabytes of spreadsheets as we meticulously tracked our calf girths and skinfolds and daily calories and mileage and sleep hours and basal temperature and RPE and BPM and WTF. It gave us stuff to talk (and argue) about. It gave us an excuse to bust out front-double-biceps poses in our bathroom mirrors yeah buddy!!

It didn’t last.

It did, however, leave many of us with some serious crazy brain, whether that’s feeling a twinge of guilt about not eating “small meals every 5-6 hours” or not “getting 1 g protein per lb of bodyweight” or not “doing 63% 1RM on Week 2 Day 5″, or “the net carb intake is X g of carbs minus Y g of fibre” or something else — whatever “missing the forest for the trees” BS lodged in our neocortex and is presently making the rounds like a dog chasing its tail.

It didn’t last.

It “worked” only for a while. And then, all rivers flowed to the sea again.

Eventually, we all returned to something approximating the basics — whatever “the basics” look like for our 21st century, highly flawed human selves who are just trying to stave off mortality and not scare the horses when nude.

Nearly 25 years later, one fact is pretty clear: Everything changes… and everything stays the same.

The internet has given us more and better ways to flame the pants off each other. More — if not actually better — information. More opinions ranging from enlightened and informed to “Did your mother snort Drano while she was pregnant with you, by any chance?” stupid.

Among these opinions, the tone of insistent I’m right and you’re an ignorant motherhumper has persisted in many domains of the nutrition and fitness communities. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Same shit, different day. Same lack of meaningful connection with actual humans and what they truly need to be healthy in a sustainable and sane way.

Which brings me back round to the discussions around intermittent fasting.

I’ll cover the research more extensively in another article, but I wanted to break the first rule of fast club and actually talk about fast club.

Fasting is not-eating. That’s all. (In this, I admire Brad Pilon’s elegant simplicity. His Eat Stop Eat kinda just sums it up right there. Sometimes you eat, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.)

Fasting does some interesting and cool things, which I’ll discuss in an upcoming article.

Indeed, it was the research that turned me on to fasting in the first place — the worms and mice being starved by sadistic researchers, and religious or nutritional devotees choosing to starve themselves for some particular worldview or ritual, were nevertheless doing quite well for themselves.

Among fasted animals and humans, for example, markers of inflammation seemed to go down. Insulin sensitivity seemed to go up. Occasionally fasted critters seemed to live longer.

So: Better health. Longer life. Improved athletic performance.

All seems pretty awesome, right?

Fitness devotees found the research and started trying it on themselves. The rave reviews continued to roll in. Fasting cured cancer! Fasting balanced your chequebook! Fasting fixed ingrown toenails! (I may have made the last bit up.)

We were thrumming with the thrill of self-experimentation. Despite the asceticism, it all seemed luxuriously naughty, too. We were breaking the rules of “5-6 small meals a day”! How delicious! How rebellious we were! How free! We were like braless hippies flipping the bird to girdles and garter belts as we danced, muddy and hairy, in the fields of Woodstock.

We trained fasted! We fasted longer! Fuck 14 hour fasts, I’m doing 24. Fuck 24, I’m doing 36. A friend of mine did 70+ hours before she kind of just got bored.

Adrenaline flowed like cheap beer at a frat party. We were buzzed as shit, long-haul truckers whacked and frenzied, hooked on our own amphetamines. We were fucking invincible!

Until we weren’t.

The first clues were easy to miss.

A bad night’s sleep here. An extra cup of coffee to stave off the hunger pangs there. Maybe we thought about food a little more. (But let’s be honest… food is fucking rad.) Maybe a little more food in our post-fast meal, but hey — a girl needs her energy, right? Gotta fuel that fire now that it’s a fat-blasting, disease-crushing inferno!

We talked about our eating and not-eating a lot. A lot. To the point where we started to sound like the Jehovah’s Witnesses of not-eating. Excuse me sir, may I take three hours of your time to tell you about whether I think Jesus did an 18- or 24-hour fast?

But we were talking to each other, so that was OK. We didn’t notice that our conversation was mostly an angst sandwich, garnished with covert self-comparison, between two slices of flagellant egocentrism.

We weighed ourselves compulsively, or discreetly poked our tummy rolls, pretending that it was about “getting into fighting shape”.

I loved the way my face looked as my bodyfat dwindled. Leonine, I said to myself, looking at my chiseled jaw. Androfemme. I enjoyed the feel of both of these words in my mouth. My father had other words for it. You look like you just got out of a prison camp, he said. (Actually he said Auschwitz. But he has a flair for inappropriate hyperbole. Please excuse him. As you can see, the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree. Love you dad!)

Your face! So skinny! said the coffee shop barista. (Yes, the barista.) Drink more milk.

You have your thin wrinkles, said my quasi-Aspie friend with no internal editor. You know, the wrinkles you get when you’re too thin. Right there, around your mouth.

Whatever. What the fuck did they know? Hatas gonna hate.

Eventually, us fast club members kinda ran out of other interests to discuss. Philately, ships in bottles, learning the banjo, having non-codependent relationships, saving the world, and actually doing something fucking useful with ourselves fell by the wayside.

The later clues were hard to ignore.

Periods MIA. Binges on weird foods, often single nutrient groups. I craved fat in any form. Straight-up, greasy, oily lipid. I mean like grab a stick of butter and start chomping. Nom! At the time, nobody could explain it. Now I’ve come to learn that lipophilia (aka wanting to face-fuck a jar of almond butter) is quite common among fasters.

I noticed that about 18 hours into a fast, I got some cool double vision and a sense of being mildly high. I had to watch the sidewalk carefully lest I lurch drunkenly into the neighbours’ rosebushes on my way home. My skull felt like it was too small for my brain.

Of course, we ignored the clues anyway. My body is special, we thought, perhaps. Just a small hiccup. We hid our post-binge bellies beneath strategic knitwear. Surely the abs would emerge after another 36-hour marathon of self-distraction.

What’s most interesting about this is how tightly we clung to our beliefs and assumptions despite powerful evidence that this was maybe not a great fit for us. It felt like it should work.

After all, research studies and anecdotes alike — indeed, apparently the entire universe of the interwebs — all seemed to confirm that we were on the right track. Dude, look at Martin Berkhan‘s abs! This hoopy fasting frood clearly knows where his towel is!

So we kept on ignoring our real bodies. Our real lives. Our real relationships. We built relationships instead with internet gurus and Facebook warriors.

Some time later, I stumbled across some writing on anorexia/bulimia (a/b). It sounded oddly familiar.

“A/b can offer a person a supreme sense of control over her body and a sense of order to her life through the imposition of mindless and exacting rituals… [A/b] has at least two means of inducing a kind of emotional anesthesia.

First, it divorces a person from her embodied experience by encouraging her to disregard or overrule physical sensations while submitting to an extreme regimen of physical exertion, self-deprivation, and restriction. It turns people into dissociated automatons who have been separated from themselves and their feelings.

Second, as the person becomes increasingly malnourished, she either will be too fatigued to feel much of anything or will experience the effects of endorphins, chemicals the body releases when it is experiencing stress and trauma, that produce a false feeling of well-being and euphoria.”

Luckily I knew better. I painstakingly explained to people during my interminable conversations about eating and not-eating that I didn’t have disordered eating. I didn’t want to be thin, for one thing. I wanted to be lean. I wanted to be a ninja. I wanted to live forever and cheat death. I was an expert. I was totally in control.

“A/b attempts to define what is morally virtuous in people it has ensnared, and it promises happiness only if they realize this particular moral vision… You feel under the ever-watchful eye of a/b, which is constantly evaluating and ‘sizing you up’. These evaluations inevitably result in confirmation of failures and deficiencies.

Such evaluations proceed through normative measures such as grades, scores, marks, weights, and other objectifications, and by the quantification of goals through numbers such as percentiles, grams, calories, minutes, miles, and so on.”

Secretly, I kept a spreadsheet of eating, not-eating, and over-eating days. I even colour coded it. Pink for binge days, like a scarlet letter of shame. Green for not-eating days — my award ribbon for self-control and commitment to good health. I also tracked my body fat. And body weight. And cycling mileage. And minutes per day of training. On the day I weighed 112 lb, I drew a sad face next to it. 112. Chunky monkey. Sad.

But FYI I was Not. Crazy. I was health-conscious!

“A/b generally worms its way into a person’s life by disguising its rules as prudent suggestions… Once a person has been caught up in a/b’s web of promises, it is not long before her life begins to revolve around the performance of these prescriptions and the enduring of these restrictions… As with any prison (or military service, or gang, or cult) getting in is far easier than getting out.”

Meanwhile, I ran tests with naturopaths and endocrinologists. I discovered I was making almost no hormones of any kind. No cortisol. No DHEA. No estrogen, progesterone, or testosterone. Lazy buggers.

My weight crept up. My shape changed. I felt alienated from myself. Like my body was possessed. (In reality it was shoving my crazy brain aside and grabbing the wheel before the bus totally hit the ditch.)

I was getting fatter, weaker, sicker, and nuttier. Emotional lability, I believe they call that last bit. I kept fasting. And bingeing. Starve, compensate. Stuff, compensate. Starve, stuff. Starve, stuff. In between, hurl myself at exercise, frantically.

Surely this must be a bump in the road. Surely if I just practiced, if I just learned more, if I just tried harder, I could be better at this.

I read more studies. I read more blogs. I read more stories by the aforementioned young lean males who dined on the manna of mealtime masochism and — praise FSM! — grew ever more riptshizzled.

Strangers probed my innards, looking for ovarian cysts. (Ladies, you have not lived until you’ve had a transvaginal ultrasound! The Republicans are right — that shit is the bomb! Imagine getting violated by a stranger wielding a cold plastic phallus while you desperately have to pee, and all you can hear are the sad moans of pregnant women waiting in the hallway.)

I had a pituitary MRI, late one night, scared and alone — my only companion a grandmotherly Bangladeshi woman who was the MRI technician.  Smelling my fear, she patted my hand sweetly as I got stuffed into the tube — the proverbial pig in a blanket. (Thank you for your kindness, madam.)

I knew I shouldn’t have been frightened of the MRI, but c’mon: They shove you headfirst into a foxhole to scan your brain, it’s loud and freaky, they’re looking for a brain tumour, and all you can think of is horrible episodes of House, like the one where someone’s blood got sucked out through their skin because there was too much metal in it.

“If a/b is to succeed in working and starving a person to death, it must do so through the imposition of a morality that promotes an adversarial relationship between the person and her body. The ‘morality’ of discipline, willpower, and self-control functions in exactly that manner.

Protest and outrage against a/b will almost certainly arise from the body as a result of its mistreatment… These symptoms serve as alarm bells that have the potential to expose a/b’s fraudulent goodwill. That capacity of the body to cry out against its own destruction is an obstacle that a/b tries to overcome. The body’s voice must be gagged as the body itself is subdued, controlled, and shaped.

The elevation and glorification of the associated ‘virtues’ of self-control, discipline, and willpower provide a ‘moral’ foundation for the assault on the body.”

Eventually, I had to admit defeat. I had “failed” intermittent fasting. (It hadn’t yet dawned on me that IF failed me.) I was a bad faster. The world’s worst. Look at all these other people kicking ass! I was a fraud and a charlatan. Even the mice and worms and yeast were better than me at this IF thing.

My colleague Dr. John Berardi’s adventures with IF, which had their ups and downs but were generally positive, furthered my sense of defeat. He got so lean you could practically see his gallbladder squirting. I think he had vascularity on his eyeballs. I consoled myself by remembering that JB truly is a nutrition ninja and one of the most disciplined eaters I’ve ever met. That’s why I’m working for him, and not the other way around, eheheh.

I later realized that JB is also male, and originally an ectomorph who’d managed to transform his body through years of careful and dedicated nutritional habits. Huh. Manperson + ectomorph = fasting success. One more data point, added to the pile.

Which brings me to this article by Lauren Brooks, who’s written for this site before. The article inspired, shall we say, spirited debate.

Were men and women so different? Did women need “special treatment”? Of course, it’s clear that men and women are not “opposites” or strictly defined groups. Sexual dimorphism is more of a catchall category or a continuum with no clear cutoff. (For more on this, check out Joan Roughgarden’s delightful tome, Evolution’s Rainbow.) There is plenty of variation among women. This is an important point. We still do not know all the factors involved. Age, reproductive status, other life or training stresses, genetic/epigenetic factors, etc. etc. could all be relevant. The data collection is ongoing.

Yet there are some features — whether physiological, psychological, social-environmental, whatever — that seem to make IF work differently in women (on average) than men (on average). At least in the messy data we have. And at least in the long-term. (Key point. Remember: Sustainability is the goal.)

Wasn’t this article anecdotal? Yes, absolutely. It was simply a collection of stories, one of which (in abbreviated form) was mine. Stories that were eerily familiar to the ones I was hearing from dozens of our female coaching clients. And the ones beginning to emerge from other women like Stefani Ruper, Melissa McEwan, and the Paleo Angel.

Was Lauren hatin’ on fasting? Hey! Hatas gonna hate! Circle the wagons! Defend the fort! She must be an eejit! And those women must be liars! Or stupid!

Boy, that sounds familiar. Too familiar. Because 5 years ago, that could have been me. 15 years ago, I could have been furiously typing yo momma insults into the electronic ether.

I could have been the one turning up my nose at these stories. I could have been the one protesting that the plural of anecdote isn’t data. (And it isn’t. But it’s often the canary in the data coal mine.)

Today, I’m not that person.

Experience sobers us. Humbles us. Grabs our eyelids and cranks them open. Forces us to see. Really see.

A woman’s life can really be a succession of lives, each revolving around some emotionally compelling situation or challenge, and each marked off by some intense experience.
–Wallis Simpson

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
–Douglas Adams

Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.
–Oscar Wilde

So what have we learned?

Well, first, that criticism and flamewarring are worth exactly jack shit. We never learned anything from each other’s momma-baiting, and we never will. (OK, I did say “Fuck IF”, but you have to understand this is at the tail end of my own insanity and seeing many other women’s madness as well. Plus I was inspired by Margaret Cho’s Fuck It diet.)

Nobody in the real world gives a crap about your minutiae. In fact, consider having a timer handy. Start it every time you start thinking about eating and not-eating. Every time you start writing a blog post or Facebook entry about eating and not-eating. Every time you talk about eating and not-eating to other people who, like you, are interested in eating and not-eating. Throw in the hours you also spend thinking, talking, writing, and reading about body stuff, your WOD time, new ways to eat and not-eat, recipes related to your way of eating or not-eating, etc.

See how much time, energy, resources, and mental real estate you actually devote to this eating and not-eating thing. Ask yourself if this is truly healthy. Ask yourself what is happening in the rest of your life. (Do you remember? When was the last time you checked? These are not flippant questions.)

Be curious and compassionate about the experiences of others. Allow room for their stories. A lovely comment on my Facebook page came from a nice woman who posted:

All of this is in direct contrast to my own experience with IF. My first reaction is to be even more grateful that I’ve found something which works for me. Whenever anyone has asked me about my experiment, I’ve made sure to point out it won’t work as well for everyone as it has for me… but I had no idea it could be THIS painful for anyone. I’m truly impressed that these women would endure pain for the sake of experiment (and bummed that they suffered). **hugs**

This warmed my  heart like you cannot believe. Nice lady, thank you. Thank you for gently making space for yourself while also embracing others. You are an inspiration to us all.

If you find yourself leaping to defend your way of eating or not-eating, and/or to dismiss the lived experiences of others, ask yourself: Why do I feel so strongly about this? Why can I not allow this story to be present in my world? What uncomfortable truth might be revealed to me if I allow this story to sit here, unchallenged?

Our experiences are diverse. I can allow room for the stories of people who have succeeded with IF. I can allow room for the young male ectomorphs. (Half my house, in fact. Although technically he ain’t so young any more. Ha ha, just kidding, sweetie.) I can allow room for these wide-ranging human experiences because we are large; we contain multitudes. There is so much we don’t yet know about our amazing bodies.

Some things work for some people, some of the time. Assume nothing. Take nothing on faith. Human biology is a wonderful carnival. If something doesn’t work for you the same way it seems to work for “everyone else” (whoever that is), you’re not a failure, bad, stupid, lazy, etc. You’re probably just YOU.

Draw conclusions based on evidence. Nutritional theories can be seductive in their elegance. But until they’re proven in the court of your body, they’re just that: theories. Gather research, stories, personal data — anything you can get your hands on. Ask yourself, “How’s this working for me?”

Be aware that most things in the fitness world are “old truths made new”. Treat magical cures with caution. Trust me; I thought Dean Ornish was going to absolve me of all worldly evils in 1992.

You are only accountable to YOU. YOUR body. Don’t be a mental case — an over-intellectualized, eyebrows-up-living, Cartesian thinky brain floating head. Your body keeps the score. Like an elephant, it never forgets. There is deep wisdom in our bodies, and we must sense into and trust their signals. That may sound like woo-woo, but I assure you it is good neuroscience.

(On that note: Thank you, body. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for your intelligence and taking control when I could not care properly for myself.)

You are your body. Read the signals. These include:

• your mojo and energy levels
• your sleep quality and duration
• your moods and emotional wellbeing
• your sense of freedom and self-determination
• your athletic performance
• your recovery and immunity
• your hormonal profile and other bloodwork
• your menstrual cycles, fertility, and libido
• your ability to calm the fuck down and relax

Get real honest about what these things are telling you. If your not-eating feels great and all signs look good, keep on keepin’ on. If any of these (or any other signals) cause you concern, pay attention.

If you find yourself plunged into a deep desire to “fix” everything wrong with yourself, your body, your life through eating and not-eating, consider that a red flag. Ask yourself what else is going on in your life. In my case, I was attempting to cope with uncertainty, a major life transition, perceived lack of control, anxiety, insecurity about being a bookworm in a jock’s world, competing in a weight-classed sport, and fear of dying prematurely from my family’s genetic FAILs. All at once.

Your body is not an opponent to be submitted. It is the only loving companion and true friend that you will have for your entire life. It will never lie to you. Trust it. Listen to it. Learn its signals and its voices.

Experiment with your body, sure. Science is fun! Crazy shit is fun! Quasi-irresponsible self-experiments are the bedrock of scientific discovery.

But be careful, compassionate, and honest as well. If the data are pointing at Knock it off, dumbass and you’re yelling No problem — it’s fine! Hey y’all, watch this…

Well, y’know. It’s not going to end pretty.

Care for this container of yours. You only get one, after all.

Talk about fast club. Share your stories. There is room for all of them.

Cited: Richard Linn Maisel, David Epston, Ali Borden. Biting the Hand That Starves You: Inspiring Resistance to Anorexia/Bulimia. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004.