Health: Friends With Your Body
DRAFT Edited 20 2 24
Healthy Patterns, Fasting, Losing Weight, Gaining Health
The medical approach to maintaining the correct amount of body fat is very simple: fat is created by excess calories- if we take in more calories than we use in exercise or metabolic activity then we will get fat. This idea of ‘calories in must equal calories out if we are to maintain our weight’ has some obvious problems. Where does hunger come into this equation? Where does quality, freshness and taste of food come in? Where does social eating and drinking fit in with this idea?
The excellent book The Obesity Code, by Dr Jason Fung demonstrates with many detailed scientific experiments the fallacy of the calorie counting myth. My approach is slightly different from Dr Fung, as I am looking at patterns that the body works within. By working with patterns we remove the complexity of the issues and work with the foundational structure that our body works with.
The problem with the ‘calories in and out’ concept is that it is far too simple and relegates all the difficult problems of hunger, quality and freshness and social interactions to the need for ‘self-control’. What is self-control? It’s something healthy people have and weaklings don’t! Well at least that is the logical determination of the ‘calories in and out’ concept. This approach means that if you can’t understand and obey the ‘calories in and out’ rules then you are simply weak and stupid and pathetic, and well you really should be fat and unhealthy as it’s your own stupid fault!
But what if the ‘calories in and out’ idea were actually wrong? Perhaps this assessment of your inadequate character would also be wrong? The good news is that it is wrong, as the human body and mind is far more complex than a simple equation of what goes in must go out.
The human body has an estimated 7 trillion cells that all need nourishment, and that is obviously no simple task. These cells relate to each other in complex and detailed ways that we can never understand, but we can work with them to tell them what we want to do. We do this every day when we eat food, and have a shower, and drive to work, and play sport.
The medical approach to the body is to try to understand how all the bits work together, and then try and provide those bits with what they need. But the body doesn’t work like that. Nothing in fact works like that. The only time we need to relate to the “bits of the body” is when they are broken, like a fractured bone or a cut on the skin. We put the bone straight and keep it relatively still till it heals. We clean the cut and bandage it up till it heals. We then get on with eating and having showers and driving our cars, and we do all this not by dealing with the bits of the body but with the patterns that that body works within.
The pattern of hunger determines what and when we eat. The pattern of toxic release of metabolic waste (in the form of smells and defecation) determines when we clean ourselves. And the pattern of when we start and finish work and the driving, is what rules us as to when and how we drive. Patterns of behaviour determine how we work in our body, and they are also how our bodies relate to the work they need to do.
THE PATTERN OF BODY WEIGHT GAIN AND LOSS
If we go on a ‘weight loss diet’ where we restrict some part of our food intake for a period of time, then we may lose some overall fat and weight. However, what also happens is that our body gets a new benchmark set by this restricted food supply, for by restricting our food what our body is being told is that this new low level of food is what it needs to prepare itself for in the future.
The body then makes adjustments to store fat the required amount of fat to cope with this new benchmark, as it logically sees this deprivation of nutrient as what could possibly happen in the future. It therefore increases the hunger for food such that we break the diet, and it also creates cravings for fat and sugar to supply the extra fat supplies ready for the next low nutrient period.
What the body is doing by creating cravings is very logical, yet we also know that the extra fat impacts our health by us being overweight. Logically however the body uses hunger to ensure it has adequate fat reserves for a low nutrient period, which is what the body was told by the ‘restrictive died’. The extra weight that the body puts on by cravings is seen by the body as essential to cope with future deprivation. While we may see it as ugly, or a real health concern, we need to love our body, and realize that it is doing the right thing according to how we have treated it in telling it that in the future we could have a time of deprivation, and so it better get ready for it by storing fat to cope.
When we ‘break the diet’ due to the hunger caused by our body, the result is that after not too short a period of time we have regained the weight lost on the diet, and often some more. Logically we also get depressed because not only did we ‘get fat again’ but we proved how weak we are mentally as we did not have the self-control to stay on the diet. We assume that there was nothing wrong with the diet, as it was actually working to lower our weight, it therefore “must be our fault for not having sufficient self-control”. However we need to look at the logic of what is going on in the patterns of behaviour in our body not just in the simplistic approach of ‘calories in and calories out’.
How therefore do we lose weight and logically have the body on side to help us, without making us so hungry that we need super amounts of self-control to not eat? We work every day with the patterns of eating and not eating that he body has already set up. You know what they are, but you have ignored these patterns due to the simplistic approach of ‘calories in and calories out’.
The first thing we need to realize is that the body needs a certain amount of fat to provide nutrients during times of low or no food intake. Every night we don’t eat, and during this time we live off our reserves of energy, although we are not doing much physical work so the demand is very low.
When we went on a diet the body took it as an indication that this low nutrient situation was something that could potentially be repeated in the future. It therefore changed its fat reserve benchmark, and built up the reserves to cope with such a contingency.
If we use this same logic by not eating for one day per week then our body will again reset its fat reserve benchmark to determine that this 24 hour lack of food is all that it needs to hold in reserve in the form of fat, so as to be able to cope with the demands of the body for that one day. The body can’t have two fat reserve benchmarks. It now changes from supplying lots of fat to cope with the long diet of low nutrients and determines that all it needs is much less fat to cope with the short 24 hour period of no nutrients. The upshot is that you lose weight as the fat reserves you need for 24 hours is not as much as for a long period of time as experienced by the restrictive diet. Yet fasting even for 24 hours is not much fun and upsets the normal pattern of life such that it’s not particularly easy to do on a regular basis.
The same system of teaching the body to keep minimal supplies of nutrients in reserve works even if you don’t eat for a 16 hour period each day. If all you do is reduce your food intake to an 8 hour period of time each day, by not eating for the other 16, then your body will reduce its fat reserve benchmark to only have a small amount of fat.
You can eat your normal food during the 8 hours as there is no requirement to reduce your overall calorie intake. Your body will reduce your hunger to accommodate the need for less fat. It is actually important to not reduce your food intake, but to rather respond to your hunger by eating as much as you like, which is generally done by eating something every 3 hours. By doing this you ensure that your body maintains a high metabolic rate. However by not eating for 16 hours your body also triggers the use of fat reserves, and this tells the body how much fat is needed.
It takes about 6 weeks of constant 16 hour fasting each night for your body to get the message that this way of eating is permanent. After this time the body will seriously start to reduce the fat reserves. At the same time it will also greatly reduce your hunger so they body only is stimulated to take in the smaller amount of fat. If you keep this regime up for 3 months then the benchmark will be permanently set, so that even if you don’t fast for 16 hours then the body still won’t go back to stocking up on extra fat as it has its fat reserve benchmark clearly set, and there is no need to change it.
Ok so we have now communicated with the body as to what fat reserves are needed, we are down to a ‘healthy weight’ and looking good too! However a lot of the time we eat for social reasons or other non-physical requirements. Such eating, if done often, will result in reestablishing unhealthy habits, that were set up when we were hungry due to our bodies fat reserve benchmark being much higher. We therefore need to change these other elements of our life to come in line with the new fat reserve benchmark that our body has set, if we are to maintain a healthy weight.
If after doing the no eating for 16 hours over a 3-month period you find that you are gaining weight from over eating, or lack of exercise, then you may need to remind your body of its fat reserve benchmark- by again fasting for 16 hours for a few weeks. The good news is that to do this is not now going to take a huge amount of self-control as the body is now on side, it’s just all the other bits of your life that have always been on the other pattern that you need to change!
What we need to do to change these patterns is to recognize them as patterns of behaviour, not bits and things to do. Life is complex not simple. We can’t change bits of our life- we need to change the patterns that support our life. Once we approach life from a pattern perspective then we can work with the complexity of life.
Health is not about self-indulgence of eating what you want, and not doing anything physical. Junk food is junk. Being lazy is not productive- it’s fun to walk and exercise, and it feels good to do so. Attitudes such as this are what we used as self-justification when our bodies fat reserve benchmark was much higher, and we needed to store fat. Such attitudes most probably helped us gain lots of fat. They were therefore healthy attitudes to achieve the goal of storing fat. The mind therefore was very logical in developing such attitudes.
When we don’t eat for 16 hours a day, then the body changes its fat reserve benchmark, and we lose weight. Our mind therefore will also change. However our social and cultural settings are not so dynamic and we may find that we will be out of step with all our friends and family. Indeed it would be amazing if we were not out of step with them, as they were your support mechanism to ensure that you maintained your previous fat reserve benchmark, which required that you eat a lot and not exercise. We now need to change our support mechanism in order to support the new fat reserve benchmark.
The good news is that as you get healthier you will positively affect others and they will want to know what you are doing. You will then be able to tell them how to relate to their body patterns and in doing so they will need other social patterns to support their changes also. We therefore create a positive healthy pattern of behaviour in not just ourselves but also in others. If however they don’t want to support your patterns of health then you may need to leave and find other new social structures that will support health rather than disease.
By changing your patterns of behaviour through working with your bodies patterns rather than a simplistic approach of ‘calories in calories out and self-control is all it takes’ you will be developing not only a healthy body but a logical relationship with your body that is based on respect of the complexity of the relationship that its seven trillion cells have with each other.
It is also entirely logical, as is the wonderful body you live in. You just need to know how to talk with your body, and to listen when it talks with you, through hunger, tiredness, activity etc. The language the body understands is how its complex patterns of behaviour work. Anything simpler than a pattern is not going to be understood by the body.
There are many health patterns, the above nutrient and hunger pattern is just one example. There are exercise patterns, mental attitude patterns, social patterns, family patterns and lots more. The really good thing is that not only do these patterns all work on similar structures, but they also work together to support each other. Added to this, once you are on one of these ‘healthy patterns’ then to take up the other healthy patterns is not so difficult to do, as they not only work together to support each other but ‘healthy patters’ attract each other, and you will naturally and logically be motived to find them.