I’m 54 years old, 5’2″ tall (1.57 m), 197 pounds (89 kg), and I wear a size 20 US (52 EU). I became fat at the age of 46 and after a few years, I decided I wanted to bend easily again. In 2016 I began seeing a Nutrition Response Testing practitioner and one of the the things I wanted to work on was getting rid of my fatness (I’m avoiding the word “weight” since inches and size probably matter more than pounds). The treatment has had stunning effects on my health including improving my digestion, blood iron level, chronic depression, hot flashes, and sugar cravings. It’s taken years to correct some of these problems, but I could always tell we were heading in the right direction. (I also work part-time for this business, but that didn’t start until after I’d been a client for 2.5 years.)
Here are the ways we’ve tackled my fatness.
- Infections, Parasites and Toxins. When the body can’t get rid of things, it manages them in specific ways. Infections often turn into cysts. Toxins often turn into skin tags or fat storage. Clearing all infections, parasites and toxins causes many NRT clients to slim down at least a bit. But not me.
- Inflammation. Three years ago, after decreasing some of my sugar/food cravings, the NRT practitioner got me to stop all the sugary snacks and beverages. After a couple of months of replacing sweetened cereals with eggs and potatoes, replacing baked sweets with nuts, fruit and peanut butter and replacing a lot of the wheat I’d been eating with rice and other grains, guess what? I went down a clothing size, but with no change in weight as measured by a scale. I was stunned. How could I slim down so much without it registering on the scale? My NRT practitioner explained sugar and wheat are inflammatory and my steady diet of processed sugar had maintained a state of inflammation. The kind of inflammation swelling you get in an injured toe had puffed up my whole body and by cutting out all that sugar and wheat I had finally stopped the inflammation and gotten a little smaller.
- Diet. Over the past few years I’ve gradually reduced how much junk I eat so that at this point my meals and snacks are full of home-cooked protein, legumes, nuts and seeds, produce and unsweetened tea. I drink a lot of water. I’ve learned to love black coffee.
- Medication. I had been on an anti-depressant for a few years. My NRT practitioner didn’t identify this as part of the problem, but for other reasons I and my psychologist decided to wean me off it. It’s possible that Effexor (a drug I recommend no one ever take) caused some of my bloating, but if so, the bloating didn’t go down after I stopped taking it.
- Hormonal Balance. When you’re eating well and cutting out junk but not reducing your size, it’s often hormones that are the problem. My NRT practitioner has done a lot of work on my thyroid and endocrine system and my hormones are now in good balance. In fact, we worked so hard for so long, I lost a lot of hope about losing my extra fat. Fortunately, she didn’t give up. She had other middle-aged, women clients who also longed to fit into a smaller size.
- Metabolism. Working hard for her clients who want to slim down, my NRT practitioner figured out how to check someone’s metabolism. On a 1-10 scale with 10 being a normal resting metabolism level, my number was 2. This sent her on a hunt for a way to raise metabolism that could be done with food and she found it with a recipe she tailored for each longing-to-be-smaller client. You can read on my blog about my experience consuming the Belly Fat Burner drink. It wasn’t delicious, but it got my resting metabolism level — and the level of other clients — up to a healthy level 10. Good news: The Belly Fat Burner finally got some clients slimming down! Bad news: it didn’t do the trick for all of us. I resigned myself to being a fat, middle-aged American until I become a fat, old American
- Exercise. In January I joined a gym just to get out of my apartment regularly, but it also increased my exercise level tenfold. Months later this hadn’t trimmed me at all, so my NRT practitioner found a seven-minute workout that activates critical muscle groups and gets the body to burn some calories first thing in the morning. It wasn’t clear to me why this routine was more important than the weight-lifting I was already doing at the gym, but I did it. I’ve always been very, very good at homework. So I did the seven-minute workout three mornings a week and went to the gym three other days a week and…still nothing.
- Hunger Level. One day I mentioned that I’ve always had a strong appetite and tend to say things like, “Is that all you’re going to eat?” And “You never eat breakfast?” This caused my NRT practitioner to identify my hunger as elevated and led to further diet tweaks. It’s not enough to stop the junky stuff. I also need to eat exactly what my body wants. For example, I thought hot oatmeal with nuts and fruit for breakfast was good, but it turns out if I don’t include eggs, my body gets hungry later. This body is goddamn demanding.
- Gut Bacteria. She identified a kind of bacteria that my stomach needed and we added a probiotic.
- Enzymes. Now we’re at June 2021. I eat and exercise well; we’ve gotten rid of poisons and parasites; we’ve balanced my hormones and gut flora; we’ve corrected my metabolism and hunger level. Other NRT clients are now successfully slimming down except for just two of us. I suspect I’m just stuck this way, but my practitioner is a researcher and clinician who doesn’t know how to quit. She has now found that I don’t have enough of an enzyme called HSL, which stands for hormone-sensitive lipease (LY-paze). HSL breaks down fat. HSL is happy to break down fat your body doesn’t need to store, but it can’t do it if there isn’t enough HSL for the job. And I don’t have enough HSL for the (considerable) job. SO! Yesterday I received a new supplement that will increase my HSL level. And we’ll see if this allows me to slim down. Even a little bit.
Americans love the idea that the individual is ultimately in control of their life. In fact, we need that belief so much we hate the possibility that fatness is caused by anything besides diet and exercise. But people, the human body isn’t a car that burns fuel in proportion to activity.
Maybe eat less and move more works when you’re 20 years old, but after a certain age many things can go wrong with hormones, metabolism, toxins, etc. I might be stuck with my fat forever, but until the main practitioner at Gnosis Natural Health gives up, I guess I won’t either.
UPDATE August 2022: She couldn’t do it and I’m no longer being treated at Gnosis Natural Health.
Photo by Judy Rodriguez, 5/6/21
That’s an extensive list. A good example of how “obesity” is not simple math with calories. I find it so weird that usual allopathic medicine labels obesity as a condition instead of a SYMPTOM leading to look elsewhere.
In general, I find a lack of appreciation for fat in a body. There are really good functions that it does = such as safely storing toxins that would otherwise poison us. Rather like the “quarantine” function on a computer dealing with a rogue program. After all, Americans have been exposed to toxin-ladened foods for decades. Maybe we could just be proud of how well our bodies have dealt with a crummy hand?
Andria, that’s very sympathetic of you to want to congratulate our fat bodies for keeping us alive, but we have too much hatred for that. I believe part of fat-phobia is misogyny and since our hatred of women is endless (including women hating ourselves), I don’t think we’ll accept our American fatness until…well, ever.