My interest in health goes back to 7th grade to a nutrition class where I learned how lipids and nutrients get into cells. I’d spend hours drawing cell schematics to fully grasp the amphipathic lipid bilayer and the mechanisms by which nutrients were passed through the cell wall. Since then, metabolism has been one of my keen interests and I’ve been fascinated ever since.
My life as an artist often means sitting for hours at a time to focus for a sustained period. It’s an unavoidable component of my art-making art and is certainly detrimental to my physical health.
Here, I’m writing about my lifelong experience trying to dial in the right way to keep myself healthy and lean while still having enough time to get my work done and meet my deadlines. Maybe, you’ll see your own story in mine. It’s a longer entry, but worth it if you can stick to the end for resources which may be useful to you.
Me, at IlluXCon in 2023 and feeling fit.
You can’t outrun a bad diet.
By the time I was 10, I noticed that I was a bit fluffier than my peers at school. Being overweight wasn’t the only thing that would attract mean girls, but it was certainly one of the first. So I started doing sit-ups and running. In the late 70s and early 80s, I was among the first girls to benefit from Title IX so I started playing youth soccer. I did it to stay fit but was never truly a competitive athlete.
In high school I ran track in the spring and played soccer in the fall, riding my bicycle to all practices and games. I managed to stay lean during the seasons, but during the off season my weight would creep up. Little did I know then that my diet was entirely to blame.
On my own as a young adult, I kept up the running, bicycling, and played soccer for a local community league. I joined a gym and did aerobics classes in friggin leotards. (Then, I had no idea that you couldn’t “spot reduce”. LOL)
Sweating to the Oldies with Richard Simmons. Susan Powter’s “Stop the insanity!” Covert Bailey’s Fit or Fat. As long as I was moving, using my Nordic Track, my little mechanical stair-stepper, daily biking, hiking, and or running 4 miles per day rain or shine, freezing or sweltering weather, I was good. As soon as I’d get sedentary again because of freelancing demands, I’d gain it right back. So frustrating.
How did I miss The Atkins Diet? With the current interest in Keto, it doesn’t seem like a crazy fad now. But back then, flipping the Food Pyramid on its head seemed too c-r-a-z-y.
Later, Tony Horton’s P90X still didn’t hold the key to permanent metabolic change. I did the grueling series twice, back-to-back, and looked swole. I maintained muscle for a while but the fluffy layers came back. So disappointing.
An elliptical machine parked in my living room for 15 years. A calorie restriction app and a limited caloric intake to 1000 calories a day still wasn’t enough. We artists can be strict disciplinarians with ourselves. It would work for about a month or two —and I would lose some weight— but it wasn’t a sustainable method once I got busy and had to stop. One just can’t spend hours working out. Maddening.
Hitting my 50s, I almost just gave up…thinking perhaps it was just fat genes. But then in 2022, I read an article in Tiny Buddha that asked “what is your relationship with food?” Huh? And then the puzzle started to break open. The article pointed out that we sometimes use food (for me, it was sugar) to manage our emotions, to squash the negative stuff, and to numb out what we don’t want to think about or deal with. You just can’t stay upset or angry when you’re stuffing chocolate or extra food into your mouth.
Wait, wut? Did I actually have a full-blown sugar addiction? Well, um…erm…yes.
I googled some more about emotions and food and found Dr. Katrina Ubell’s excellent podcast, “Weight Loss for Busy Physicians” which helped me to learn that if I eliminated sugar and starch from my diet, the weight would just fall off. And it did.
Her podcast gave me permission to temporarily stop exercising to lose weight. That year, I lost about 25 lbs and proved to myself that working out is not the complete answer.
My doctor had been on my ass for a few years to drop a few pounds and when I went to see her in 2023, she was surprised and pleased. She said that whatever I was doing I should keep it up.
It’s counterintuitive to eat more fat to lose weight; and calorie restriction doesn’t work because that just makes you hungrier. In the past 3 years, I’ve read over 100 papers in PubMed and NIH.gov on the latest research about the hormones and enzymatic biology of the metabolome.
So what works? For me, it’s this:
Intermittent Fasting & Fewer Carbs
In 2020 a friend was using intermittent fasting and the idea intrigued me. (and when did I start grazing all the time, eating between meals?) So I researched it a bit and found the excellent work of Dr. Jason Fung who wrote The Obesity Code. He’s a nephrologist who heads a diabetes research institute and clinic in Toronto, Canada, and he’s the expert on diet and fasting. If you look for his channel on YouTube, you’ll find his many video lectures on how metabolism works, how sugar and carbs are processed in the body and how the liver and the kidneys make ketones. Metabolism can seem like a black box but he and others like Nicholas Norwitz PhD., MD., and Nic Verhoeven, PhD., MD., (and several others) do a great job of teaching the science behind insulin resistance, cholesterol, and fasting.
Walking
I began walking 4 miles/ day since June 2024. That’s already 5 months as of this writing (it’s December) and it’s had a significant impact on my physical and mental health. The low grade anxiety that I’d had ever since I was a kid was like a constant background static noise; it completely disappeared within a few weeks. This nervous system “reset” encouraged me to make additional improvements, such as better sleep protocol. And I added a weighted pack to my daily walk to further increase my lean body mass. The feeling of being fitter and more mentally clear has improved all aspects of living my life. I cannot stress enough how significant it’s been to lose the anxiety.
Here are more resources which have helped me tremendously with the emotional and mental health aspects:
Victoria Albina— Feminist Wellness (podcast)
Anna Runkle—The Crappy Childhood Fairy (YouTube)
And if you’re interested in having a sort of protocol to get started, here’s mine. I encourage you to explore the topics of ketogenesis and intermittent fasting and to do a bit of your own research in PubMed. Whether you’re carnivore or vegan, or somewhere in between, this can work for you. It’s never too late to start!
Please feel free to add your own story and struggle!