Monday, August 11, 2014

all you need is ... metabolic flexibility

Well, at least that's all _I_ need.  ;-)  ...Plus of course a few individualized supplements.

Although the whole blogosphere (the part of it i care to read) seems to be publishing much less these days, the same ol' stuff still seems to be debated constantly in comment-sections.  Is successful weight loss purely a matter of CICO?  Are LCHF'ers trying to insist that calories don't matter at all?

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

[yawn]

Academic twaddle.  What's "broken" in our nutritional world is what most people consider appropriate FOODSTUFFS, and that is a cultural issue -- "we" think that nutritional powerhouses are "weird" or "gross."  What's BROKEN is that people are so brainwashed by television ads, commercial weight-loss programs, and the glorification of party-food, that unnatural products which have been engineered to be moreish are considered NORMAL, and real food is not.  Unfortunately, a broken nutritional landscape contributes to damaged bodies, some of which can be easily repaired and others ... with difficulty if at all.

Despite the skewed nature of the scientific research that reaches the average Westerner, the technology exists which has shown us how damaging many "neolithic" foodstuffs are.  We KNOW what differs, in the way our bodies process various different fats.  We KNOW what sugars do, both physiologically and pathologically.  We KNOW how antinutrients keep us from being able to use the vitamins and minerals which our foods theoretically contain.

There's still a lot we don't understand THOROUGHLY (and probably a lot that "we don't KNOW that we don't know"), but there's certainly plenty to be going on with.  If we don't do anything till we know it all, we never do anything.  ;-)

It's extremely fortunate that the same first step -- eliminating the "neolithic agents of disease" -- serves the double purpose of healing and training the body for metabolic flexibility.  Removing wheat and adding in gut-repairing meat/bone broths help our bodies function more the way nature intended. Those of us who ran on glucose so long that our bodies "forgot" how to function on fat benefit spectacularly when we reverse that process -- we never do seem to entirely lose the ability to burn glucose, no matter how badly we do it.

But it takes TIME.  The longer we put off the effort, the more effort it will take.  The longer we delay teaching our bodies to revert to evolutionarily-appropriate function, the more likely we are to develop the "diseases of civilization."  And what IS evolutionarily-appropriate function?  The ability to take in nutrition that will truly nourish us, to store what is temporarily superfluous, and to be able to pull surplus from storage efficiently and use it well.

We need a healthy digestive system and metabolic flexibility.  We need healthy hormone and neurotransmitter responses.  We need fuel input that is appropriate to our individual bodies (genetic and accrued damage) and their activity level.

These are ALL things we have to do for ourselves.  But throughout the twentieth century, we've seen what happens when we depend on the medical industry to fix our nutritional mistakes....  Can anyone deny that our self-work is a worthwhile alternative?

10 comments:

  1. I can. You can. Millions around us...not so much. :\

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    1. i think more people COULD, if only they were told the truth about what they're eating ... but no, we've got all those soothing voices saying that as long as you take your multivitamin, it doesn't matter what you eat, as long as you don't eat "too much." :-P what i want are headlines in the NYT and the Enquirer saying "eating a high-carbohydrate diet causes cancer, heart disease and diabetes." ...i won't hold my breath, though.

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    2. YES!!! The truth is long, long overdue- IMO

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  2. Well said! Thanx Tess....I m so tired of the whining...my husband, whom I love dearly, was once again complaining about not being able to eat like "everyone else". He's Type 2. I m very patient usually,but kinda lost it this time. I told him that we eat so well compared to so many other people how can we complain and gripe about that!? I guess all these first world problems are just too much for our weary bones....lawd help our lazy asses...

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    1. thank YOU! :-) i believe that one of our biggest "first-world problems" is normalizing the pathological and pathologizing what should be considered normal....

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  3. Amen, Sistagirl.

    "If we don't do anything till we know it all, we never do anything." As a champion procrastinator, I liked that a lot.

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    1. lol! :-D me too -- "procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday."

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  4. I've been blogging less because I've been sleeping more.. :) Still tons of topics running around in my head. You are so right- THIS "We need healthy hormone and neurotransmitter responses. We need fuel input that is appropriate to our individual bodies (genetic and accrued damage) and their activity level."

    I'll probably want to use this quote in an upcoming blog post (all good stuff, :) ) if it's okay- with a link to this post. The neruotransmitter and the genetic side just escaped me for years.

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    1. i'm honored! :-) most of what I write is a reflection of what I understand, when I read others' writings, though -- I can't take credit for the IDEAS. for example, this posting is a mixture of Wooo's and Stanton's concepts. between the two of them and Peter, I've learned what I needed to crack the "tess code."

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