Category: Health

The Many Faces of Time and Post-Surgery Healing

Have you ever grieved the death of a beloved family member or friend? It shatters your heart, implodes your world , sucks the air out of life, and disorders your brain. You get inhaled into that swirling vacuum of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance—the classic 5 stages of grief. (Some psychologists even make it 7 stages, with the addition of shock at the onset and then testing after depression.)

Cancer patients and others who receive devastating chronic illness diagnoses become familiar with them.

Even people suffering through a relationship break-up can experience these stages.

And the loss of a beloved pet can break your heart and unbalance your life.

 

Another type of grief—

But there’s another type of loss that’s hitting home for me right now, one that’s triggering all of these stages too.

The loss of probably the most precious commodity any of us have.

Time.

Time lost, although I’m not sure how you can actually lose time since it’s not something you can gather up and store. But I understand why people say they’ve lost time. It just feels as though something you thought you controlled sifted right through your fingers like water.

Then there’s time wasted.

Time stolen.

Time we’ve let others steal from us, because we couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say no to their time-wasting plans or demands.

Time you try to manage. (Now there’s an elusive idea.)

Time you need.

Like time to grow and time to heal.

 

Have you ever wondered why you had to put up with so much during a season of your life and fervently prayed to get out of it, only to discover later that God was working behind the scenes, preparing you for something grander. Something you wouldn’t have been able to do if you hadn’t slogged through that difficult time?

I’ve experienced plenty of those. I’ve watched my beloved go through that type of thing several times in his career. Once the good, productive fruit starts to emerge, it’s easy to look back with hindsight and point to the preparation.

Post-injury and post-surgery healing can feel like that—a big waste of time that only carved an empty, fruitless hole in your life.

 

How much better it would be if we’d just slog along joyfully and expectantly, knowing God has His hand in everything in our lives and always knows best. Why can’t we be more willing participants?

 

Experience—

When I was pregnant with my younger son, I was confined to bed. Completely. Tilted 15 degrees head down. Every. Single. Day was critical to my unborn baby’s development. Every. Single. Day was a practice of supreme patience and personal surrender in the face of abject fear.

“Four months is a small period of life,” my gentle doctor said. To me it seemed like eternity.

To Cory—my developing son—it meant life or death.

Thankfully, I made it three months, and we were rewarded with life. Only because God gave us a miracle.

Two entirely different views of time, with one result.

 

And now, 24 years later, I’m puttering around thinking about time and realizing I’m a slave to it. A slave to the time it takes to heal from yet another surgery, even though I wasn’t fully healed from the last one in November. Some people keep telling me “healing takes time,” which I know because I have a degree in helping people heal; and weary of others who think I should be healing faster, either because they did following their similar surgery, or because they think I’m protecting myself too much.

Actually, both admonitions are right: healing does take time; and you have to stress yourself to heal. It’s a fine balance of both.

Are you old enough to remember when doctors sent back-injury patients to bed rest for weeks? That advice didn’t work very well. They need to be up and moving, as long as they aren’t doing any further harm to their injury. Even open heart surgery patients are extracted from their beds and made to shuffle around the hospital corridors within 3 days of surgery. Controlled, appropriate stress makes the system rebuild and heal.

A bedridden patient experiences severe and rapid muscle atrophy. Strength and balance are lost and compromised. Often, it’s impossible to correct that kind of damage.

And that’s the key. A delicate balance between stress and rest.

 

The danger of time—

But the biggest problem I’m having is that I have way too much time on my hands and fritter it away by allowing my brain to backtrack down memory lane and assail me for all the time I wasted, the time I didn’t choose to do the best thing, the time I missed out because I was too lazy or fearful or paralyzed into inaction.

I spend too much time dwelling on those memories, romancing what wasn’t and maybe could have been, and turning them into idols. All that memory work is making my heart sick. And that’s affecting my healing.

 

Scripture to the rescue!

The passage from the epistle that St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians is repeating itself in my mind. Two different versions put it this way:

 

“…making the most of your time, because the days are evil” (NASB; italics mine).

“…making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil” (NIV; italics mine).

 

And then there’s the passage Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians:

“…we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

 

Letting my mind wander backward down memory lane, and allowing myself to let others’ opinions (or my own warped ones) about how slowly or quickly I should be recovering are unproductive. They only promote dangerous self-guessing, depression, frustration and grief. Depression, frustration and grief that get added to the depression, frustration and grief one normally experiences post-injury or surgery.

Depression, frustration and grief heaped on depression, frustration and grief.

Now there’s a real waste of time and life resources.

 

Change of direction, and thinking—

While I may need to formally grieve those lost opportunities and failed moments at some point in the future, right now I need to resist allowing them to suck the energy out of what I need to be doing at this moment: taking the limited energy I do have and focusing it on healing and whatever else God lays on my heart to do.

On a daily basis, that might not be much and end up appearing pretty measly—between the physical therapy, re-conditioning workouts, and obligatory naps with elevated and iced knee. And that’s okay. I need to be satisfied with it, thank God for it, and be grateful.

Right now it’s all about focus. I’m having to put on blinders and double down on mine.

At some time in the future, I know the good fruit will emerge. And when it does, I’ll be jubilant!

 

How about you?

Are you experiencing a time of recovery, where frustration and depression threaten the outcome of your healing?

While it can be a day-to-day emotional and physical struggle, it can also be one of the sweetest times in your life. Time you saturate yourself in God-time. (Can you tell I’m preaching to myself too?) Pruning time. Nurturing time. A time when God is never so close, because it’s a time we are more acutely aware of His presence.

Don’t overlook it. Don’t grieve it. Don’t waste it. Make no apologies for taking it.

As my friends tell me, healing takes time.

However long that is for you.

But it also takes energy and work.

Thank God for the process!

 

Until next week,

Shalom!

Andrea

“Certainly there was an Eden….We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

Arthroscopy and a Miracle

A funny thing happened on the way to my knee surgery. Something wonderful and rather miraculous.

But I still don’t know when it happened.

Let me explain.

 

A little history—

As a competitive gymnast, I put my knees—and body—through the contortion and compression ringer. Way back in high school I was slapped in a thigh-high to ankle leg immobilizer because of excruciating knee pain and unceremoniously diagnosed with “chondromalacia,” a condition that develops when the smooth, lubricating underneath surfaces of the kneecap get damaged or wear down from…well…wear and tear. At fifteen, I was already experiencing severe wear and tear.

The pain kept me from sleeping. I couldn’t find a comfortable position for it. Keep it bent too long, and I’d have to straighten it out to get it to calm down, at least a little. I needed to sit on the aisles for theater and movie attending because keeping it bent, with the kneecap surface grinding into my femur, was intolerable. Changes in air pressure exacerbated the pain, as did lying out in the sun too long. Adding any excess poundage to my medium frame also worsened the problem.

The condition was still giving me fits in college, and my team physician prescribed 7 aspirin 3 to 4 times a day. It certainly reduced the inflammation, but I was too exhausted from anemia to stay awake or experience discomfort. That was a rough college semester.

 

Athletic Training to the rescue—

Once I completed my athletic training degrees (B.S. and M.S.), I understood what my “mechanism of injury” (cause) was and how to deal with it and became a specialist in the biomechanics of the lower extremity and learned how to treat my own knees as well as my patients’. I developed a knee treatment and exercise protocol to keep my legs strong and avoid further injury.

But I couldn’t reverse the damage done. And while hiking the sometimes-brutal landscape of the Camino de Santiago last fall, my kneecaps (and femur) once again fell victim to the ravages of bone-to-bone grinding. I ended up hobbling (yes, HOBBLING!), into Logrono, our last town on our first journey.

 

Seeing a doctor—

After our return from the Camino, I made an appointment to see a local orthopedic doctor that specializes in regenerative medicine of the joints. Maybe he could help me?

After examining my x-rays, and pointing out the frayed surfaces of my kneecaps, he said he could probably help me regenerate some of that surface cartilage through stem cell injections. Cells extracted from my own tummy fat. (How wonderful that they’ve found something useful for it!)

Because the cost is exorbitant, and insurance companies won’t pay for it, I’d need to save to have the procedure, which I hoped to do last month, after I’d made enough recovery from my November toe bone spur-removal surgery.

But something happened during the rehabilitation from that bone spur. Either I put too much pressure on the right leg, and damaged my meniscus; or an already-damaged meniscus was further eroded during my rehab. One Friday back in January, I saw my stem cell doctor again, told him my right knee felt as though it was hanging by a thread, and wondered what he suggested. He said he wanted to get a look inside the knee to see what was going on. That meant an MRI, which he ordered. (That’s what I hoped he would do.)

 

But the following Monday afternoon changed all my plans.

On the way out my front door to get into the car and drive to Phoenix for a three-day Crisis Management seminar, I finished off what I’d started.

It didn’t take much. It often doesn’t, especially when you get to a “certain age.” I stepped backward off the landing, planted my right foot, turned the key in the lock and pivoted on my planted foot.

Bad move. And a ripping sound toward the back of my knee confirmed it.

After crawling back into the house, (wailing in pain and frustration to my two attentive and sympathetic dogs), icing, and awaiting my husband’s return so he could take me to the after-hours clinic, I got my MRI moved to “stat,” and slid through the magnetic tube that Friday. The following Tuesday I was back in my doctor’s office.

“Good news,” he started, “is that you don’t have arthritis in the knee joint.” I was thrilled, especially after a grizzled Physician’s Assistant with no bedside manner assured me in the after-hours clinic that I had arthritis and my meniscus had to be “mush” due to my age. It meant no knee replacement necessary, for the time being, at least. Then he continued. “But you do have a meniscus tear. They’d normally just let it go, but you have a flap on yours. They’ll need to cut that out, so the knee won’t lock up on you during activity.”

Since he doesn’t do surgery, he recommended another doctor, a believer in stem cell therapy. My doctor hunted him down and brought him back to the room. (Impressive service!) The surgeon told me it was an odd tear (of course; I don’t do anything “normally”) and there wasn’t much to be done but snip that flap off. “And clean up anything else I find in there.”

I knew what that meant: clean up any of the chondromalacia debris. I wasn’t in hurry. Wanting to build some strength in my legs before undergoing the knife, I scheduled surgery for six weeks later.

 

The surgery—

That morning, Chris said he’d never seen anyone more ready and excited to have knee surgery in their life. True. I was excited to find out what was going on there, myself. I sort of felt as though I had this morbid desire to use myself as a guinea pig. I chatted up a storm with everyone. Even the anesthesiologist and I got into a discussion about walking the Camino de Santiago. Fifteen minutes later the procedure was over. They’d blocked out an hour.

Chris had just settled himself into doing work on his computer in the waiting room when my surgeon bounced down the hall toward him, a jubilant smile spread across his face. “Come in here,” he said, as he waved Chris toward a private consultation room.

The surgeon tossed the glossy pictures of my internal knee anatomy toward Chris. “Look at this!” he gushed. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Chris pretended to know what he was looking at as the surgeon pointed out the structures. “See her ACL (anterior cruciate ligament)? That glossy area indicates it was damaged, and then healed. That’s remarkable. And see the color of the ligament itself? It’s shape?” Chris nodded as he stared at the picture. “That’s what a ligament of a twenty-year-old athlete looks like!”

Chris’s gaped at the surgeon, who continued. “And, aside from the tear, her meniscus are also in near-perfect condition—healthy, good density. All I had to do was snip off that flap. And see the fibers branching out from the tear edges? It’s healing itself!”

Chris threw out a couple of “Wow” comments as the doctor continued. “And see the smooth cartilage on the bones? She has NO arthritis. Absolutely amazing!”

Then the doctor flipped to the second sheet of pictures. “Now there’s the war zone!” He pointed to the pitted kneecap surface, with the fragments of sheared and scraped-off cartilage hanging off the kneecap and floating in the joint fluid. “Typical gymnast knee. Lots of brutal shear force. I just cleaned off the mess. The good news is that she actually has about 1/3 of the surface cartilage left for stem cells to bond to. She’s a prime candidate for the treatment!

“I don’t know what you guys are doing, eating or exercising or good living. But whatever it is, keep doing it!”

 

Recovery—

Chris couldn’t wait to share the good news. I was thrilled. At my post-op appointment, the surgeon confirmed what he told Chris and said he didn’t think I’d ever need a need replacement.

I lay on the couch post-surgery and bragged to anyone who called to check on me that I had the knees of a 20-year-old. But it didn’t take me long to think a little deeper about what had transpired.

I’d turned 61 just four days prior to surgery. Twenty years old was four long decades ago. Even if I took into account:

  • my pension to eat well and consume a lot of anti-inflammatory foods;
  • my liberal use of anti-inflammatory meds during my twenties;
  • the likelihood that I’m blessed with good genes, (my mom is 97 ½ and without any skeletal problems);
  • and my athletic escapades and genetic bent toward strong, powerful muscles that hold joints together;

 

I can in no way account for all of those factors subtracting 40 years from the age of my knee.

 

Somewhere along the line, some heaven-sent miracle arrested the aging of my knee; or I received a healing miracle sometime during the last 40 years.

I won’t know this side of heaven what the answer is, but I’m SOOOOO grateful. I probably won’t need my knee sawed out and replaced with a bionic, titanium alloy model. Something that’s so often done these days that it reminds me of assembly-line surgery.

 

Healing process—

So now I’m working on rehabilitating my knee. Recovery is creeping along much more slowly than I predicted, but I’m guessing that’s all in God’s plan too. Another lesson in slowing down, trusting. Practicing peace in the face of incapacity and pain.

Surgery recovery has a way of putting life into perspective. It whittles life down to what’s important and really urgent.

Turns out not much is really urgent, although we elevate a lot of things in our lives to urgent. Sometimes I think we do that to make our lives seem more relevant.

And we get brainwashed into believing that unless our lives seem relevant, then we aren’t relevant.

I’m also amazed once again at how God has created the body to heal itself. Sometimes that’s a slow process that needs cooperation. Otherwise, healing can go haywire. I confess I’m not always a patient person, so the healing process is also a lesson in patience, another product of the Spirit’s fruit.

 

Any way you look at it, it constitutes a miracle.

There’s a lot to be learned from an injury.

Youthful knees or not!

Photo:

By the way, the above picture is not a photo of the moon. It’s the inside of my knee. The damaged part of it. The grayish area is where the surface cartilage has been worn down, “like sandpaper,” the surgeon said. Gymnastics. All of the surface should be pearly white.

Hopefully it will become that way if and when I have those stem cell injections!

I’ll be praying for another miracle!

 

Until next week,

Shalom,

Andrea

“Certainly there was an Eden….We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

How to Escape the Calorie Counting Drudgery

Ever been a food calorie counter? Frustrating, isn’t it, recording all of those eaten calories?

For years we were taught that a calorie was a calorie—that they were all the same. So if a relatively active, 30-year old, woman needed to eat 1,800 calories a day to sustain herself, then it didn’t matter what food source they came from.

And then 40 years ago, when preventing heart disease launched into full tilt, we were taught that we needed to avoid fat because fat was the culprit causing heart disease and making our middles balloon.

So what’s the story now?

 

Calorie counting and recent research—

Through research, scientists are starting to figure out that all calories are not alike, and that some fats are good for you and your heart. And it may not be the number of calories eaten but the type of foods.

What type of foods are the biggest culprits? You probably know.

  • Chips
  • Pastries
  • Cookies
  • Soda
  • Crackers
  • White rice
  • Pasta
  • Processed foods, especially heavily-processed types, like the kind you find in your pre-made meal section of your grocery store

All of these foods cause a chemical reaction in our bodies that raises the insulin levels and causes the body to store the calories as fat. Dr. David Ludwig, an endocrinologist and researcher at Harvard Medical School, calls insulin the “Miracle-Gro for your fat cells.” Insulin causes the cells to snag the calories and immediately store them as fat cells.

And that quick process leaves you feeling hungry and unsatisfied. And if your body is subjected to this insulin-hiking cycle too often, your metabolism will change gears and start hanging onto the calories it’s stored. That’s not a scenario you want to encounter if you’re trying to lose weight or maintain a healthful diet.

The bottom line? It’s the quality of the calories and not the quantity that matters.

 

Calorie counting solution?

To break or snap this fat-storing cycle, you’ll need to replace processed carbs (pastas, ice cream, cookies, chips, crackers and snacks) with healthful fats (olive oil, fish, nuts). Yes, fats! And why fats?

Because fats don’t raise insulin so they aid weight loss.

Studies show that people on low-fat diets tend to lose less weight than those on low-carb programs.

And eating good fats, like omega-3s (salmon) and monounsaturated fats (avocados) doesn’t appear to cause weight gain.

 

The healthful diet Gold Standard—

For years scientists have known that people who follow what is known as the Mediterranean diet—a diet rich in vegetables, good fat and some fish—lose more fat and maintain healthier hearts.

One study showed a 30% reduction of heart disease in the group that were low-carb dieters when compared to low-fat dieters.

 

What’s the goal?

Your overall goal should be to go for the healthful fat and proteins and slash your sugar.

When designing or planning your meals, aim for real, natural foods that contain fiber, protein and fat. These are satisfying foods that fill you up and curb your hunger. They also result in a slower insulin level rise in your body. Foods like:

  • Veggies or whole grains
  • Protein like fish and eggs
  • Healthy fats—going for the olive oil to sprinkle on your salad rather than a processed, creamy one. Also avocado and egg in this category.

 

Some of the top food choices would be:

  • Fish
  • Avocados
  • Artichokes
  • Broccoli
  • Eggs
  • Quinoa or Millet
  • Almonds and Walnuts
  • Lentils
  • Yogurt, especially Greek
  • Bananas
  • Apples
  • Oatmeal
  • Lentils and White Beans and Black-eyed Peas

 

But BEWARE the peanut butter and almond butter scoops! Portion control is important, and this is where keeping an eye on some calorie counts may be helpful for you.

Think well-rounded meals. And when selecting proteins, like fish or chicken, it’s best to aim for no more than 3 – 6 ounces, the amount that would fit in your hand. (The number varies depending upon your age, activity-level, and sex. Athletes need more protein for muscle development, protein aids in healing, and, surprisingly, recent research indicates older adults don’t get enough protein.)

 

Slow down when you eat!
  • Think chopsticks. That’s what a dietary specialist told me during an article interview I did with her. You’ll eat more slowly and focus more on your meal.
  • And eat like kids tend to eat, minus the cookie binges, of course. They tend to graze and stop eating when they’re full. Don’t force yourself to eat everything on your plate.
  • It takes 20 minutes for the brain to register satisfaction and fullness, so scarfing down your meal can override the benefits of this trigger. You’ll end up eating too much before you feel stuffed.
  • Converse when eating, not with your mouth full, of course.
  • Chew thoroughly so the enzymes released in your mouth can start breaking down the food for digestion. It’s easier on your digestive system.
  • Put your fork down between bites, instead of taking a bite and then promptly re-loading your fork. You’ll end up forking in what you’ve packed on it, rather than waiting until you’ve thoroughly chewed what you already have in your mouth. You’ll end up looking like a squirrel when you’re eating.

 

Learning to be a mindful eater—

Finally, be more conscious of how your body feels and what it’s telling you about eating.

Don’t just eat because the schedule indicates it’s time to eat. Eat when you’re really hungry, when your body is telling you that it needs nourishment. You’ll feel more satisfied and more in control, which is usually what everyone strives for anyway.

So discard your calorie counting cards!

One a side note: I want to give a Happy Birthday shout-out to my baby boy, who turns 24 today! What a miracle and blessing he is to me!

Beginning next Wednesday, Workout Wednesdays will be going on hiatus until April 3, when I’ll be back with healthful body tips, a way for you to sign up to receive my posts on a regular basis, and a freebie for your generosity in wanting to stay connected!

 

I’m undergoing knee surgery this Friday, March 1, (as long as I can rid myself of this nasty cold), and I will be spending March recuperating.

Please mark your calendars for April 3 to re-join me!

 

Until then, have fun trying new foods and meals with your rediscovered fats and proteins. I know you’ll be happy you did!

Blessings,

Andrea

“Certainly there was an Eden….We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

4 Steps to Changing Your Defects: Renewing Your Mind and Retraining Your Brain

How are you doing with tackling the process of ridding yourself of pesky defects?

How did you do with last week’s first three steps of demolishing strongholds and deficiencies?

 

Are you able to:

  • Focus on ONE defect at a time, or do you get bogged down with every issue?
  • Focus on obtaining victory over one defect issue?
  • Focus on God’s power and not your own willpower to overcome and make those critical-to-a-successful and full life corrections?

I hope we’re all making headway with the process of acknowledging, confronting and dealing a punishing blow to our defects and hang-ups. It can be a lifelong process to conquer some of them. Yet every step forward counts toward healing and growing, so this week we’re going to cover four additional steps we can take to get the healing process moving forward.

 

  1. Focus on what you want and not what you don’t want.

One of the first things beginning writers are taught is to try to write in a positive rather than negative way. The same is true of effectively retraining your brain to master healthful habits. It has to do with reframing, or adopting a new perspective.

It’s easy to come up with a list of why you don’t want to do something, or why it’s hard to change. But try coming up with a list of all of the benefits you’ll receive out of making the change.

For example, some of your reasons, or excuses, for not going to the gym might be:

  • I don’t like getting sweaty.
  • It takes so long to drive there.
  • I have to take the time to get ready to go.
  • I have so many other things I need to do.
  • I don’t particularly like to exercise.
  • Other people at the gym are going to stare at me and judge me because I’m not in shape.

 

Try reframing your thoughts with comments like:
  • The sweat will help rid my body of toxins and I’ll feel better.
  • I can listen to uplifting music in the car during my drive.
  • I can enjoy the preparation process and maybe purchase a special gym bag and workout clothes to use.
  • Working out is important for me to have good health, and I am important—to myself, my family, and God.
  • Getting into an exercise routine may be hard, but I could exercise with a friend or in a class, where I can meet new friends and enjoy the camaraderie and encouragement of working out together.
  • I won’t be the only out-of-shape person at the gym, and others there started at the beginning like me. A personal trainer from the gym can help me get started and be the encourager I need to keep at it.

 

When you focus on the negatives, your thought life becomes a problem. When you catch yourself thinking negatively, stop and turn your resistance into a proactive, positive comment. Believe it or not, your brain will take notice and start thinking in a more positive manner.

 

  1. Memorize uplifting Scripture verses.

Having notecards in your bag, car, or purse and scattered around the house can remind you of good things the Lord has said and promised. Memorizing these passages or verses is even better because you renew your mind with them and affect your heart and spirit.

In fact, Scripture memorization is like good food for the soul! Feed yourself with as much of it as you possibly can throughout the day. And meditate on it at night before going to sleep. God’s word will permeate your thought processes and affect your actions.

 

  1. Focus on doing good things and acting in good ways not on feeling good.

I know, this is a tough one. But believe it when psychologists say that actions can drive feelings, just as feelings can drive actions.

It’s dangerous to wait until we feel like doing something to do it. When we live that way, we get stuck and often miss out on life. I can’t count how many times doing something I didn’t feel like doing ended up turning my feelings and emotions around to the positive.

 

  1. Focus on the people who help and support you in your recovery work and not on the ones who undermine or hinder you.

This step can be very difficult when it’s family members doing the stifling or resisting. But you must surround yourself with like-minded encouragers. Even more so if you live with people who tend to drag you down or feed your weaknesses.

Scripture is very clear about wisely choosing friends and NOT being unequally yoked (as in marriage or business) to an unbeliever. Unfortunately, so many people brush that wise admonition aside and end up living in pain and frustration for rebelling against it.

You are a precious being. Your time is a precious commodity. Pray about and choose wisely! You may find yourself having to pray about leaving a friend and drawing boundaries in order to protect yourself and heal.

 

Finally, wholeheartedly trust God to lead and change you. In our weakness He is made strong. Recognize and accept your current circumstances as they are and trust that God is working right now to help you overcome your frailties and faults; that He is working in you to finish your faith and help you run the race to a successful completion.

Don’t give up, because God doesn’t give up on you!

 

Until next week, list your steps, work your steps, take one step, one day at a time, and rejoice over even the smallest victories!

On a side note: I’m celebrating another complete revolution around the sun today and meditating on the year the Lord has given me. It has been anything but “normal.”

It has been full, it has been revealing, it has sometimes been fraught with snags and obstacles, and it has been life changing. I am spending the day reflecting on it and praying for insight into the next 12 months.

And I humbly request your prayers as I prepare for knee surgery this Friday, fallout from extreme athletics and my Camino journey. I’m hoping this is the last time I have to be cut open for a while!

Blessings,

Andrea

“Certainly there was an Eden….We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

The Potential Dangers of Intermittent Fasting and Rapid Weight Loss

As we covered in last Wednesday’s blog, Intermittent Fasting has its benefits, to be sure.

Reducing the number of carb calories ingested and forcing the brain and muscles to run on ketone bodies can reduce brain sluggishness and joint-stressing excess weight. Some medical professionals believe the protein foods eaten on a Keto diet can support thyroid health. And Intermittent Fasting is linked to keeping the body tone and supple when losing weight, rather than ending up with saggy excess skin.

 

But like anything, good things can be taken too far to end up being bad things. Intermittent fasting is no exception.

What happens when you decide to reduce your calorie consumption to 500 calories every day rather than follow the 5:2 plan?

 

Problems with excessive fasting—

Athletes can be prone to living in extremes—extreme workouts and extreme diets. For years this kind of problem has manifested itself in sports and activities like gymnastics, ice skating, and dance, where low weight is highly sought after. After all, it takes a lot to throw body weight around, and the lower the body weight the easier it is to move.

One huge problem is that low body fat often accompanies low body weight, and young girls and dancers who work to stay thin and in possession of a low body fat percentages often wreak havoc with their hormones. Amenorrhea, (cessation of menstruation; or not menstruating by the age of 15), is a condition that accompanies low body fat in girls or women. Long-distance runners can also suffer from this malady.

It takes a certain body fat percentage to become pregnant and support a pregnancy. And amenorrhea can lead to an early onset of osteoporosis, or a higher likelihood of having osteoporosis when you age.

Not having enough body fat to support hormone function messes up other body functions too.

 

And what about the risks of rapid weight loss?

It may seem wonderful that you’ve dropped double-digit poundage in one week rather than the recommended 1-2 pounds, but rapid weight loss can be harder on the heart than rapid weight gain.

Rapid weight loss has been shown to:

  • Slow your metabolism and lead to future weight gain later.
  • Weaken your immune system and make you more susceptible to illness and disease.
  • Increase your dehydration risk.
  • Increase cardiac stress and heart palpitations.

 

When thin or athletic puts a mask on body fat reality—

I used to do a lot of body fat measuring as part of my work, both in the clinic and out in the field. I’d often take my skinfold caliper to sporting events, like recreational cycling races, to measure participants’ body fat after their race. I’d always offer foot massages too, which was a godsend for some peddlers.

What I often found was that many of these people weren’t as conditioned, or as toned, as they believed they were.

Thin people were appalled to learn that their body fast percentage parked them in the unhealthy, over-fat or obese category. Big, athletic people found the same discrepancy between their perceived fitness and their actual health. When my husband took the caliper to work one day to measure his friends, they all lined up for a pinch. The skinniest member of the group—a rail-thin administrative assistance—came in at a whopping obese level. She was depressed at the revelation, to say the least.

 

The point is: appearance does not always equal reality—in either a highly-competitive athlete that pushes the boundaries on her body’s capabilities or a thin, sedentary person who sits in a chair in front of a computer all day to work. Or a recreational athlete who believes he can ride his bike 50 miles on a Saturday and then eat as he pleases every day of the week, and even more after the ride.

You need to know your body, select carefully, and avoid the extremes. Be as consistent as possible; don’t starve yourself for days to make up for some over-indulgent ones.

You don’t want to run the risk of making an idol out of your diet or dieting. Too often food obsession morphs into disorders like anorexia, binging, bulimia (binging and then throwing up what you’ve eaten), and extreme obsession with healthful foods and “watching” what you eat.

 

Take it from someone who suffered for years with an eating disorder and all the mental and physical side effects that come with it.

Intermittent Fasting is just that—intermittent fasting. Not fasting every day.

Don’t get carried away. Have a plan and work it.

And enjoy the good food God has given us for our enjoyment and health!

Until next week, when we’ll address calorie counting, and maybe worry more about your actual body fat percentage than those scale numbers and that dress or pants size.

Blessings,

Andrea

“Certainly there was an Eden….We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it.” —J.R.R. Tolkien