Pillar Envy - Part II

I think the two new pillars are going to be Rosedale and Kruse, and I am happy to see them contributing on their own blogs and facebook pages.

The main thing I like about Kruse is that he has an explanation of what is going on with people like me.

Now, according to people like Harris, people like me get fat cause we just can't control eating all that junk.  Apparently before he wrote such comments, he did not check my anecdote first, here.  Seems that right around menopause, I must have started getting lazy and eating tons of junk food that I forgot to include in my food logs because of the early-onset Alzheimer's, I guess.  Lazy, undisciplined slob who somehow managed to grow her own business, make her own office furniture and spin her own yarn to weave her own clothing, actually program in Mark-IV, but once she stops having periods, gosh, she's just never gonna  face the facts and quit drinking all that soda and eating all those fast-food fries. (Oh wait, I wasn't eating that stuff....)

According to people like Guyenet, people like me get fat cause my food is too tasty.  The tastiness of my food pretty much coincided with menopause, so isn't it amazing that as soon as I crossed over to the other side, all the farmers changed to genetically-modified food designed on purpose to make me fat and want more of it.  All the sudden, no matter what I ate, I wanted to eat more of it.  The fruit got sweeter, and the wheat got shorter.  Apparently before he wrote such comments, Guyenet did not check my anecdote, here.  (For those reading this far, but too lazy to click on the second link, the short story is that for the past several years, I ate clean and local, and grew much of my own food, no weight loss!  And don't blame Monsanto's sugar beet fiasco either.  I breed and grow all my own beet seeds so they're probably still "clean" since all that pollen would have to blow pretty far from Oregon to here.)

Now, here's why I can't fully embrace either Rosedale or Kruse yet.  I blogged about what happened to me, and how I lost a ton of weight, I didn't really get into what happened after that.  Last fall/winter I decided to try a low carb diet.  After a few days on the diet, I went off for a weekend camping trip full of "healthy" mostly-vegetarian food.  There was stress, lack of sleep, carby food, etc.  By the end of the weekend I had lost the magic.  My libido crashed, I started getting sore from my daily walk and couldn't recover, then I slipped and slid down a hill and stopped walking until I recovered.  My cravings became more intense.  Every pound lost was a battle.  I eventually lost over 10 more pounds eating both lower and higher carb, but it took several months to do it.  After that, I added back some carbs, immediately gained back a few more pounds, and have been sitting pretty much the same place ever since.  I never got back to that place I was before.  I tried all the low carb plans, then higher carb, then Schwarzbein, Protein power, Rosedale, Primal, Paleo, the leptin reset (16 weeks and counting for the reset, and the plateau is as flat as ever.)  As I switched from plan to plan, I did notice when I was descending into slugsville, and noticed which programs resulted in the gain in lots of flab, despite what the scale said.  It really isn't true that people get fat because they are lazy and eat too much.  I can tell when changes are a-comin', when all I want to do is eat and lie around.  It is surely not due to the type of food that is being overeaten!  Guyenet is dead wrong, dangerously wrong!

When my doctor prescribed trazodone, the weight poured off, my energy and libido soared, exercise was easy.  Then when I made a few changes, all the success evaporated.  Kruse would have an explanation for some of this:  lipoprotein lipase doesn't work the same for post-menopausal women, or it's the hypocretin neurons, to be solved by nipple massage.....or maybe it was the coming of winter and a lack of vitamin D, or pregnenolone steal....  I'm not buying all what he says because I know there must be a way to do this without spending thousands of dollars every quarter on testing and supplements.  I'm not buying all of Rosedale either.  See, I lost all that weight on a higher-carb diet than what he recommends.  I know weight loss works on a higher-carb diet because I did it!  I lost 30 pounds very rapidly eating 100-150 grams carb and now can't lose even a few pounds on 20 grams carb.  I think Kruse needs to address the issues that many women posting on Mark's Daily Apple with the adrenals and depression.  Maybe there is still some tinkering that needs to happen to his plan.

But I applaud both these guys building their plans to include anecdotes such as mine.  I really think they both really honor real people's experiences and know that there is a whole lot more to weight than gluttony and sloth.