Listen To Your Body!
When people begin a zero-carb diet, they are advised to listen to their own bodies for the most guidance. Indeed, we start with a set of foods listed in the Bear’s article, 7 Rules of a Carnivore, but then we evaluate those foods and their effect on our bodies. As the saying goes, “It’s not, You are what you eat; rather, you are what your body does with what you eat.” That’s really the key. Despite this rather straightforward advice, many people have trouble with the concept of listening to their body because unfortunately, the body sometimes seems to steer the wrong course.
In the New York Times, Gina Kolata wrote about “The Little Voice Inside Your Twinge.” A triathlete friend of hers says that one should listen to their body, however, they are confused regarding what exactly they should be listening to. Turns out it’s not so obvious. Deena Kastor, the American record holder for the marathon, interprets the advice selectively:
“Running isn’t always comfortable,” she said. “I remember running through a lot of discomfort and pain.”
And, Ms. Kastor added, she also runs when she does not feel like it.
“So many times the alarm goes off in the morning and you tell yourself you are too tired,” she said. “There are times when you are unmotivated, you don’t feel your best and most accomplished.”
So does listening to your body mean learning to understand the difference between a pain that signals a serious injury and one that can be ignored? And if it does, why do athletes like Ms. Kastor become seriously injured, anyway?
Last year she broke her foot three miles into the marathon at the Beijing Olympics. In that same race, Paula Radcliffe, who holds the world record in the women’s marathon, ran less than her best because her training was interrupted by a stress fracture that had set her back for months. MAYBE the problem is that it is hard to understand what your body is saying.
Gordon Pirie, on the other hand, was an Olympian who was able to stay on top for three consecutive Olympiads and this is almost unheard of for today’s athlete. He did it without any major injuries. How was he able to do it?
The prevailing attitude amongst runners and those who coach or advise them, is that a failure to attain specific goals is the result of either bad luck, lack of talent, or some form of psychological shortcoming on the part of the athlete. Usually, none of these reasons is true. Athletes fail so often because they are not trained to succeed. Most athletes employ training methods or have lifestyles which make it impossible for them to perform up to their expectations and aspirations. The most common difficulty in the United States (and almost everywhere else in the world) is the obsession people have with measuring everything they do. The object of serious training is to improve racing performance, but to listen to many athletes and coaches one would think that the object is simply to produce impressive numbers for the training diary!
Too many athletes get stuck in the notion that the end of training is training; if an athlete cannot string together a certain number of 100-mile weeks or run so many times 400 meters in such and such a time, then he or she becomes discouraged and begins to wonder whether any kind of performance is possible.
Remember, the reason an athlete trains is to race. Set aside right now the idea that impressive training results will automatically translate into successful racing. Progress is not measured on the training track, or by the number of miles logged each week. Progress is determined by what happens when an athlete races.
Training must be adjusted to the athlete’s needs on a daily basis. There is no set formula for how often a fit athlete should do his or her hardest training. The athlete and coach must learn to adjust training expectations according to factors in the athlete’s life.
These principles can be applied to a healthy and proper diet as well. There is no set formula for how often a person should eat. On a zero-carb diet, our advice is to eat when hungry and do not eat when one is not hungry, regardless of how often that time actually is. Many people eat once or twice a day but the difference is, they eat only when they are hungry.
People have totally vilified hunger to their detriment. Hunger is a communication between the body and mind telling us what the body’s energy needs are. Unfortunately, many of us try to outsmart our bodies by eating insubstantial foods such as cereals and grains because they have been seduced by an interpretation of the law of energy conservation. This sets off blood sugar spikes and high insulin levels which deteriorates health, decreases endurance, and scrambles communications within the body. All of a sudden people cannot tell the difference between cravings and hunger and they are driven to overeat to balance blood sugar.
Eating is not supposed to be entertainment. The purpose of eating is to satisfy hunger. The purpose of eating is to fuel up. When one eats a proper diet they have control over hunger and cravings. There is no craving for sweets. It’s just not on the menu. It does not require will power. Any diet that does not control these two aspects is simply an improper diet.
Now, you may be sitting there reading this and thinking, but I tried restricting carbohydrates before and I did indeed lose weight; however, I didn’t have any energy.
One of the earliest documented demonstrations of physical stamina during a ketogenic diet was the Schwatka 1878–80 expedition in search of the lost Royal Navy Franklin expedition. The Schwatka expedition, sponsored by the New York Herald and the American Geographical Society, departed from the west coast of Hudson’s Bay in April of 1879 with 4 Caucasians, 3 families of Inuit, and 3 heavily laden dog sleds. Totaling 18 people, they started out with a month’s supply of food (mostly walrus blubber) and a prodigious supply of ammunition for their hunting rifles. After covering over 3000 miles on foot over ice, snow and tundra, all 18 members of the original party plus their 44 dogs returned to Hudson’s Bay in March of 1880. Once their initial provisions were depleted, the expedition’s only source of additional food was hunting and fishing, as there were no other sources of supply along their route.
The leader of this expedition, Lt. Frederick Schwatka, was a graduate of both West Point and Bellevue Hospital Medical College. His summary of the expedition was published as a news article in the New York Herald in the Fall of 1880, but his written diary was lost for 85 years until its discovery and publication by the Marine Historical Association of Mystic CT in 1965. This fascinating 117-page saga describes how Schwatka, a frontiersman and U.S. Army surgeon, collaborated with his Inuit guides to accomplish a remarkable feat of physical endurance. In one notation, Schwatka provides an interesting insight into his weaning from their initial supply of carbohydrate-containing food:
“When first thrown wholly upon a diet of reindeer meat, it seems inadequate to properly nourish the system, and there is an apparent weakness and inability to perform severe exertive fatiguing journeys. But this soon passes away in the course of two or three weeks.”
This observation (the need to allow time for adaptation) is well known to the members of my forum and documented in many places. The U.S. Army did not take this into account when they tested pemmican for use by soldiers as war rations. They prematurely concluded that pemmican made from beef and fat was unsuitable as it made the soldiers weak and not combat ready. If only they would have allowed time for adaptation, they might have found otherwise. That Schwatka was not impaired by his prolonged experience eating meat and fat is evidenced by his diary entry for the period 12–14 March 1880, during which he and an Inuit companion walked the last 65 miles in less than 48 hours to make a scheduled rendezvous with a whaling ship and complete his journey home.
My point is that health is much more than just mere athletics. To be healthy and to have fun at exercise (which it should be, by the way) one must begin with a proper diet. If one eats properly, exercise will be something that they will be motivated to do and something that’s fun and enjoyable. If training is only something that masks an improper diet, then injuries are all there is to look forward to.
Maybe you didn’t get this point the first time, so I’ll say it again: If you have to workout like a fiend in order to be fit, then your diet is simply wrong. One cannot outrun or out-lift the diseases of civilization. These activities can affect some of the risk factors for disease, but they, in and of themselves will not prevent or cure these diseases.
After you eat properly for a while, you will develop the ability to listen to your body and the communication between your brain and body will only improve as your insulin levels fall. Obesity and overweight are only symptoms of the metabolic disorder of high insulin. Cancer, diabetes, heart disease and dementia are several others that all have their root in chronically-high insulin. This is the simplest explanation as to why those populations that do not eat carbohydrates do not suffer from chronic disease. To learn more, visit our Discussion Forum and see examples of people who are able to harmonically balance fitness and diet.
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on July 10, 2009 at 9:57 am
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