13 Weeks: Week 10 — In Which We Scheme
My mother, on what turned out to be her last birthday, with my sister-in-law Tawney.
Great news — for me at least, we report you decide — the 13 Weeks series has been renewed for another 13 weeks. (You can follow it day to day on the associated Facebook page.)
It’s actually kind of fitting that I’m announcing this now: today as I type this is the 11th of January, and the one year anniversary of my mother’s death. It will be published on Saturday 12 January, and Sunday 13 January would have been her 78th birthday.
As I said when I started this:
A sense of mortality struck me on my birthday, 57 this year; arithmetic started showing up for me. My father died in 1994, at 69. That’s only 12 years older than I am now. Mom at 77, only 20 years older than I am now.
Now, my Dad weighed in the neighborhood of 450 lbs when he died, and he smoked. My Mom, around 200 lbs and she’d smoked heavily, drunk heavily, and generally been rode hard and put up wet nearly her whole life. I’ve got some advantages, since I don’t drink or smoke; on the other hand, I’ve been struggling with my weight since I was literally 6 years old. You can hear a lot of bad diet advice in 50 years.
The long and short of it is that I want to change this and need to change this, and there’s relatively new science that suggests there are better, faster, more efficient ways to change this. So I’m doing an experiment: for 13 weeks, which I plan to start a week from today, 4 November 2012, I’m going to start an experiment where I’ll be keeping a very low carb, more or less “paleo” diet, and doing “high intensity interval training” and “high intensity strength training” two sessions a week. This scheme has good reasons behind it, biochemically and otherwise.
Then I’m writing about it, and I’m going very public with it, so, frankly, it’ll be too embarrassing to quit.
Well, it appears to have worked. At 271.5 today, I’m down 30 pounds from my October high of 301.5, and down 18 pounds from my official start date of November 4. My A1c is down from 7.5 percent to 6.2 percent, making me officially post-diabetic, and I’ve got hopes that by the time this thirteen weeks is done I’ll actually have my A1c into the normal non-diabetic range. That is to say, remission.
Good news on a sort of yahrzeit, Charlie.
Thanks Charlie! I for one will be tuned in; I can’t wait to see how life unfurls.
What I like most about reading about your success is how mindfully you are living your life. It is easy to fall into a drifting life, you aren’t doing that here. You are taking control and making the best out of you.
It’s very encouraging.
I’m sorry to hear about your mother. But congratulations for taking the weight off!!
Robert, thanks; to cross over to my *other* Lifestyle series, it’s the whole transient nature of conditioned existence thing. But it still sucks.
And thanks for the kind words about the weight.
Great work, Mr. Martin.
One thing to start drilling into your brain now is that you can never ever go back to your old way of eating. Or you’ll certainly return to your starting point of 10 weeks ago.
When I experimented with the Atkins diet about 10 years ago, I read something in his book that convinced me I could never again have a piece of apple pie: too many carbs. I got discouraged immediately and abandoned the plan. (In reality, I can have apple pie now, but the pieces are few and far between.)
Another exercise idea to consider is INTENSE weight training sessions that are not at all fun, but you only do them for 15-20 minutes twice a week. They appeal to me because I don’t like to exercise. (In addition, I do 12-15 minutes of high-intensity interval training on a stationary bicycle twice weekly.) Proponents include Fred Hahn, Dr. Doug McGuff, Chris Highcock, James Steele, Skyler Tanner, and others.
-Steve
Steve, that’s exactly the approach I have been trying, and I agree for exactly the reasons you mention: I don’t *want* to spend a lot of time exercising. David and I are still talking about the CrossFit thing, but the physiology of it seems very closely related to the physiology of high intensity strength and interval training.
If you click on the “Bio” link under my name, you can follow back to some of my previous pieces in which I talk more about this.
Way to go, Charlie!! I’m very happy for you. I hope your success helps those who follow you on Facebook, too.
Dude, great work. Looking forward to following your progress.
Way to go, Charlie. I’ll be interested in your experience with CrossFit. I’m a deskbound nerd of about your same age, but my employer put in a gym at work in 2000 so I’ve dropped 85 lbs and gotten fairly fit with weights and running since then. My last 15 lbs was dropped after reading Taubes and going low carb. Anyway, at 58, I’m intersted in how CrossFit works for you (and how it might work for me) since many of those I see doing CrossFit are whippet-like critters one-third my age.
Yeah. My first discussion with David started with his routine of high intensity rowing, timed session of 100 sit ups, and I forget what third horror. When I lived in Canada, I tried hiring a personal trainer; his sessions with me always seemed to be interrupted by the part where I threw up.
I think there must be some kind of Middle Way.
Good for you, sir. I’m glad you’re purusing the mind-body link. That is often overlooked, or avoided, by people trying to get their body back in order.
It’s not like your kidneys were eating the cupcakes, or your legs chose not go exercise.
Our mental state, and choices, direct everything from food choice to stress levels. Stress, chronic stress in particular, has a long-term adverse effect on our metabolism and even our mind.
I hope you find peace with your mind and you integrate that into a new diet and activity habit that lasts you many happy years.
Congrads on your progress. If I may offer some advice on your next phase-exercise.
It has been my experience that exercise will not make you loose weight but it will make you healthier. Healthiest should be our goal
but that is not enough motivation for most people at first. If athletic effort is not something you grew up with, it will come as a shock to you at first. Find something-anything-that is a joy to do. I cycled in college until I had children and rediscovered it 17 years later. I loved it then and love it now. But now I have added weight lifting. I don’t love weights the way I love cycling but I now see tangible benefits from it and that is my motivation. Had weights been my first choice, I would have given up on it like I did running. Find something that brings you joy and follow that path where ever it goes.
Cliff, if you look back to last week, my real underlying goal here is to be really really old someday. I agree completely, health is the goal. That’s on reason I’m sort of emphasizing the A1c.
(My real goal is to get to be so old that really effective treatments for oldness become available.)
Charlie, I too considered all the exercise alternatives as well. Do yourself a favor and your joints a favor and take up swimming. Low impact or no impact, cardio, strength and whole body work. I am well over sixty and went no carb a year and a half ago. Down 85 pounds, A1c from 12.2 to in the 5′s routinely. Athlete all my life but weight issues too. Recommendation: SWIM.
Did you talk to Crowder about power lifting? It involves multi functional weighted movement. The lifting movements from CrossFit were inspired by Strength Training with weights. Good luck. But more importantly, enjoy!
I haven’t talked to Crowder; I’ve never actually met him. But I was fairly serious about body building for a while, 25-30 years ago, I don’t need to be sold on the effectiveness of weights. The scientific advance since I was doing that is just what you describe, the movement to large-motion exercises, what CrossFit calls “functional movements”. I’ll be talking more about this in upcoming pieces.
my first-ever gout attack
I – and others, probably – would be interested in the low-carb-gout relation.
Wait, wait, wait.
You talk about what science has learned about Nutrition over the last 20 years.
You talk about what science has learned about Exercise over the last 20 years.
Then you talk about Acupuncture and “Chinese Medicine”?
RLY?
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org
Yes. The mechanisms by which acupuncture work are not well understood, and may well be closely related to hypnosis and placebo effect; its effectiveness has been shown on a number of occasions.
Furthermore, anecdotally, acupuncture treatment resulted in complete cure of my repeated severe migraines, more than 20 years ago.
Sorry, but the mechanisms of acupuncture are understood. It is a prime example of how the placebo effect works. Sham acupuncture works as well as the real thing. You anecdote is meaningless because your headaches may have gone away all on their own.
Good job, Charlie! You’ve inspired a lot of us. I followed your lead and have also lost 30 lbs. I started incorporating high intesity Tabata workouts a few weeks ago (after I lost enough weight to actually move around). Those would be must easier if they weren’t so much effort! Ugh. My wife approves of the results, which is enough motivation to keep me going for another 12 weeks, too.
Keep it going Charlie; you’re an exemplar for America which desperately needs to re-learn how self reliance, diligence and hard work can cure many ills and make the country healthy again. It won’t be fun or easy in the beginning but it will get easier as you progress and it will absolutely restore your self confidence, energy and health. Good luck!
Hi
I went on the paleo diet at age 57 with a fasting glucose of 128 and total weigh@ 216. I lost 30 lbs, lowered my a1c to 5.7 and GLU to 104-114. I’ve since gained 15 lbs back (five years later) and my GLU is now closer to 123. It is so obvious that the only way to beat diabetes is with a low carb diet that the ADA ought to be shut down!
Meanwhile, the holidays are past and I’m back on my diet. Should be back to 185 and a fasting GLU of 104 by the end of March.
Keep up the good work.
How is it possible to say you have had success with hypnotherapy in the past when you are 3 months since your maximum weight?? you are self contradicting. At best Hypnotherapy gave you a transient placebo effect and I suspect you regained all the weight and more shortly thereafter.
If I may be so bold to make a few suggestions, I agree wholeheartedly with your low carb approach, and I do HIIT two times per week, but you are looking for significant weight loss and are a fitness noob. HIIT is a better choice for people with a good basis in cardio.
You are seeking easy solutions that have a minimum impact on lifestyle. Eat as much fatty food as you want without carbs, brief and occasional “high intensity” exercise, hypnosis, accupuncture, chinese medicine. Surely you want to also check your blood type and astrological sign to see if you can safely consume fish or something else??
None of these things teaches discipline or long term health benefits. Keep up the low carb diet but start 4 or 5 1 hour cardio sessions per week – walking or recumbent cycling or something easy to start with. Add in what you consider to be HIIT for 2 sessions a week as well, but don’t consider these a panacea. You need to stop jumping at every fad you hear about. There is still plenty of value in steady state cardio for many reasons.
Bast I can tell, you either think hypnotherapy can only be applied to weight loss, or that the only problem I’ve ever had in my entire life is overweight.
Or you’re just trolling.
Why don’t you clear that up before we go further?
Not trolling, just pointing out a few issues I think are important. Unless you call anything other than uncritical praise trolling. In which case, yes. Your ultimate goal is weight loss, so I am assuming most of what you put into your columns here is weight loss oiented.
I think your quest here is a great idea, and I have read all the posts, linked weekly by instapundit. And at first I saw a great concept, but I was and remain sceptical that anyone in poor physical condition and over 300 lbs can effectively do HIIT. And I am even more sceptical about someone over 270 doing crossfit, starting in their 50s. I think you will have much better success pushing away from the computer and going for a big long walk every day than trying to kill yourself on crossfit. When you are in better shape, you will have a better idea of your body’s limitations and would be better able to choose a long term fitness regimen. What often happens is that people bite off more than they can chew and end up frustrated or injured, with a huge setback lasting months or years.
My only point is that rather than desperately seeking short cuts, you make some sustainable lifestyle changes that you can continue long term. 13 week experiments are interesting, but useless or even harmful if they lead to yo yo weight changes.
Okay, then. I still can’t help but think that you’ve sort of missed the point in a couple of places. The original 13 week experiment wasn’t to lose my weight and be done with it in 13 weeks; it was that 13 weeks seemed long enough to have a solid idea of the results of the experiment. That doesn’t preclude continuing with a change if I like it — as I do with excluding wheat and keeping carbs low. And while I certainly do a certain amount of obsessing about the weight, the A1c is more important and I say so.
Similarly, I’m not saying that I’m immediately going to launch into a CrossFit routine. I’m reading up on it and I have the advice of a certified CrossFit trainer — but I’ev also got an MD involved, I’ll have the advice of a couple of the best Pilates teachers in the world and I’m reading the primary literature.
Too many of the things about CrossFit I’ve read involve throwing up at some point in the routine. I’ve dealt with kind of training before, and I don’t think throwing up is enough fun that I want to add it to my life on a regular basis, But as I was saying to Sally on Facebook, high intensity as “as hard as you can go”, not “as hard as someone else can go.” The trick is to be self-aware enough to know the difference.
I really agree with Beefy on how to approach exercise. Get out an walk. You don’t like exercise? Find something active that doesn’t feel like exercise to you. For me, it was biking. I cut my calories and rode my bike to thin and fit. But I wouldn’t have stuck with it if I didn’t love to bike. I have a hard time believing you will stick to something that does not give you pleasure.
I was with you right up until “neurolinguistic programming… hypnotherapy, and perhaps Chinese medicine, and acupuncture.”
That stuff is sketchy at best. Stick to the stuff with evidence behind it.
See above. I’ve had extensive experience with hypnosis as a subject; I’ve also had very successful acupuncture treatment for a condition, migraine, that isn’t very tractable with conventional medicine.
NLP is a sort of brand name for hypnotic techniques that have been known for nearly a hundred years; as annoying as the NLP scams can be, those techniques are widely used and quite effective.
Being a skeptic is good. Denying experience is foolish.
Trusting your own impressions is foolish. Just because something “feels” right doesn’t mean it is right. Especially if it is against the weight of the evidence. Being skeptical means also being skeptical about your own intuitions. Otherwise, it is your ego getting in your way.
My experience, from when I was much younger and more fit, is that if you exercise heavily on an essentially no-carbs diet, you will experience more injuries (especially if much of your exercise risk sprains, and tears. Weight lifting to failure and contact sports like rugby and judo are examples of such exercises)
than if you allow yourself one “free” day per week. A free day being one when you may indulge in unsweetened carbs. My conjecture was that without sufficient carbs I ran out of the carbohydrate/glucose portion of my energy reserves sooner and more easily resulting in insufficient muscle power available to protect ligaments and muscles from over extension.
Regarding gout, I was warned after my first attack (high uric acid for 40-50 years but my docs didn’t treat it without attack) not to lose more than a pound per week and to stay well hydrated. I struggled with near attacks for a while, but I learned to take a pint of water to bed with me and to drink throughout the night. Fruit pretty much takes care of carbs. Have lost about 65 pounds over a couple of years and am still losing. Am female – I think men can handle very low carb better than women – don’t know why.
Charlie, your writing is riveting and an enormous source of joy and inspiration. Great that your migraines were helped with acupuncture. It might be helpful to the skeptics to consider the growing body of knowledge about myofascial trigger points (starting with Dr. Travell and Simon), referred pain, and the efficacy of dry-needling. This would seem to suggest that acupuncture using tiny solid needles is very similar. Just exactly how this works to un-”latch” the tightly-contracted saromeres isn’t known yet, but it isn’t voodoo.
In terms of exercise, I heard one technique which could be a great motivator was to do a standard walking loop or a stair climber session, but “carrying” in a backpack the weight you had lost. As you lose more, the backpack gets heavier.
This is easy to do and lets you get some fresh air etc while reinforcing your progress
If you take the weight as water you can always let it go if you get tired or have to walk down something steep to save your joints.
Anyway – good luck
Living longer by eating a very low carb diet or by being low/standard BMI is not assured, according to “the” latest science.
When the heart ventricle has hypertrophy (common in diabetics & advanced age) the
heart benefits from using more glucose fuel(glycolysis)than a normal heart would
ideally need to. So the heart itself normally up-regulates it programming genes to increase glycolysis in the heart. Any cardiac hypertrophy is still a long term factor, but a fatal event can be temporarily stalled.
Repair of heart is with the stem cell like Endothelial Progenitor Cells. Diabetic
high blood sugar interferes with endothelial progenitor cells. Essentially know there are less of them to help a Type 2 diabetic aging heart.
The low carb diet is also associated with a decrease in endothelial progenitor cells, yet cardiologists are uncertain why. I surmise that the inferior empirical association of low carb diets to longevity of the elderly is linked to the low carb diets depressing endothelial progenitor cell levels.
Until reaching advanced age low carb diets are likely fine for most individuals & medically preferable for some. Once the heart is getting on in years, & pending no Type 2 diabetes, it may be less fatal to have moderate carb intake. I know old people eating many carbs daily who test with low HbAc1 yet have high fasting glucose, high post-prandial blood sugar & above normal BMI – but they are without left ventricle hyper-trophy (according to sophisticated technological equipment).
Interval training ends up raising human growth hormone (HGH). Boosting HGH causes more free fatty acids liberated into circulation from adipose (fat cell ) triglycerides.
The freed fatty acids let loose afford more AcetylCoA, which can go into several pathways. In the liver the acetylCoA “reduces” a cell’s mitochondria’s NAD (nicotinamide adenosine dinucleotide) to NADH.
Changing the ratio to a higher percent of NADH to NAD causes the liver to decrease gluco-neo-genesis. Less liver gluco-neo-genesis means body is taking less of the internal molecules of lactate, glycerol &/or amino acids to make into blood sugar (glucose).
In addition when raise NADH ratio higher than usual to NAD this puts the molecules of pyruvate into a process whereby it’s (pyruvate) carbons go to forming molecules of lactate. It turns out lactate, in significant volume, also inhibits gluco-neo-genesis. So your fasting blood sugar level decreases.
As for all that lactate, lots then goes out of the liver. Body cells outside of the liver tend to have lower levels of NADH than the liver. Thus in peripheral tissue cells the incoming lactate is made back into pyruvate & in peripheral cells that pyruvate gets burned for energy. Which is mainly why, when one has minimal fasting glucose (from bare minimum gluco-neo-genesis), and doesn’t eat until late in day they can be sustain physical activity.
Lab analysis shows low carb dieters daily ketone levels do rise, but by ~6 months ketone levels are essentially back to the person’s starting level. The return to base line ketone levels does not lead to insufficient ATP energy out in the body.
The liver adaptation to the caloric substitution with high fat (replacing carb calories)is having the effect of keeping liver cell’s NADH high (relative to liver mitochondrial NAD). Which, as said, leads to peripheral (non-liver) cells burning a lot of pyruvate (& surprisingly in parts of the brain lactate).
Apart from caloric “starvation”, it is only in very low carb or medical ketogenic diets where the liver excessively take 1 acetylCoA (derived from a free fatty acid) cobbled to another acetylCoA with a hydrogen atom to make aceto-acetate (instead of assembling those aceytlyCoA into just water+CO2 or another internal “fat” molecule; the versatility of acetylCoA is why eating a lot of fat doesn’t automatically mean getting fat).
Additionally, it is the described rising % of NADH (vs. NAD) that keeps spurring reduction of water content outside the cells (see precious paragraph, how this coincides with acetylCoA being diverted from pathway of spinning off internal water+CO2.) This dietary stage of water weight reduction is unlike initial lo carb dieters’ water loss from using up their internal glycogen stores.
Be cautious comparing popular diet concepts to real “paleo” ancestors. They were not re-hydrating at will, rather passed hours in a state of low extra-cellular water. A low extrz-cellular water state activates a sympathetic nervous system response. It makes cortisol & adrenaline; these will raise glucagon hormone, while reducing amount of insulin made.
Glucagon hormone coinciding with a tracking dehydrated hunter’s “starvation” flush of free fatty acids is what raises their fatty acid oxidation. On a long trek to search for game their internal fatty acid oxidation is directed in part for the purpose of cleaving free acetylCoA molecules to make into aceto-acetate ketone molecules.
But unlike modern dieters who are not “starving”, hunters far afield need those ketones for heart & brain energy. They soon have used up their glycogen (stored glucose), yet their gluco-neo-genesis pathway is ratcheted way down. Only once their NADH ratio lowers in relation to mitochondrial NAD in liver can lots of gluco-neo-genesis resume.
Feeling “even worse” with wheat also involves NAD & is possibly due to genetics of modern wheat. The wheat amines & wheat liberates into action internal histamine (H) that then can interact with NAD. The histamine molecule displaces out the nicotianamide (“N”) molecule & inserts itself instead.
This creates an HAD molecule & thus lowers the amount of NAD. That HAD molecule will never lose the H & go back to being an NAD molecule. Body has to await degradation of the HAD molecule for it to cease to exist.
All that HAD is interactive and interferes with normal percentagfe levels of NAD in the brain. The side effects are quite vague; such as feel pain at low level, allergic symptoms that have no antigen immune test response, lots of headaches, males orgasms quickly & one craves sweet/sugar.
There is a long-standing correspondence of low NAD to undesirable behavior, like addiction (craving) drugs & alcoholism. In schizophrenia & violent behavior there is also often low NAD.
Genetics that keep the levels of the enzyme (histadine de-carb-oxy-lase) that turns L-histine into histamine protects many individuals in this NAD vs HAD dynamic because they are not forming much histamine proper. Obese on the contrary, usually have high levels of that enzyme histadine de-carb-oxy-lase.
This is unfortunate for the obese, because usually they suffer from low vitamin C. It is notable that low vitamin C readily increases expression of that enzyme histadine de-carb-oxy-lase. For perspective, schizophrenics also have sparse vitamin C levels, primarily because they can not absorb much vitamin C .
So, the obese have low NAD (in part)due to too much hijacking by own histamine into HAD. Cravings they often try to fight are not from their lack of sense to stop eating or individual weak character – it is their molecular derived default behavior.
With less NAD (excess HAD) there is less mitochondrial NAD to naturally “reduce” into
NADH. The obese therefore can not make enough NADH to trigger the process of cellular signals that normally inhibits gluco-neo-genesis. The result is high fasting glucose levels & part of the syndrome is all that HAD.
Charlie,
Regarding: “..my life-long feeling of being fat and disgusting”…
The brain needs to normally clear the neuro-transmitter dopamine in different parts. This is naturally done by the enzyme mono-amine oxidase (MAO).
Unfortunately, when there is excess histamine that histamine molecule binds to the copper (Cu) sites on MAO molecules. Then any such hybrid MAO molecules will not perform their normal role of clearing dopamine (& other mono-amines in natural dynamics). Instead that MAO molecule goes & oxidizes ascorbate instead.
Brains need to get enough dopamine cleared as appropriate, & also so that seratonin neuro-transmitters can also get a chance to work. The high dopamine is linked to our pattern of reward signaling & even addiction. Slack seratonin action plays out for the obese as depression & has impacts on social functioning.
(Incidently, feel free to cut & paste whatever I write with or without attribution in your writing or facebook musings.)
Good for you Charlie