Flab is good

If you are exercising daily, eating healthful energizing food, eating in moderation, noticing your clothes getting looser, but seeing rolls of flab appearing on your body — that’s a great sign.

You must reframe “flab.” See it as a tremendous positive. A sign of accomplishment.

Because that’s what it is.

It’s a metric or marker on your way to optimal thinness.

Flab results because you have burned off substantial fat stores. Fat burns more quickly than protein or muscle. When your body goes into burn mode, it seeks fat for fuel first and only later gets around to metabolizing muscle and protein.

When in optimal burn, your body burns a bit of your fat layer, but leaves behind most of the overlying muscle and skin (which is primarily protein). So, suddenly you look flabby.

And that’s cool. It means you’re making progress. Real progress.

In only a little more time, your body will resorb the no-longer-needed excess skin layers.

In my own experience, as I burn off 20 or more extra pounds I’ve carried since my late-30s, I’m noticing six-week cycles of firm to flab to firm as I trim down. And each new ‘firm’ is exciting for the week or 10 days that it lasts. And then it begins heading towards flab as, again, my body burns off more of the underlying fat layer.

I’m doing beautifully. Very happy about it. The mirror tells the tale. As do my strangely too-large clothes. And I’m doing absolutely no dieting. No weight-loss exercise routine. Though I’m definitely eating healthfully and moderately, and definitely working out daily and thoroughly enjoying it. But it’s all happening automatically.

The huge thing that happened was that I changed my mindset. Changed my strategy. Changed my thinking. Changed my belief in who I am and in what is possible for me.

Did so very intentionally. Discovered how to do so totally by accident.

It started when I got on a nurse practitioner’s scales in mid-winter and didn’t like the number that was written down. Haven’t been on any scales since.

If the nurse practitioner’s scales were accurate, I was up 15 pounds since fall when I’d last weighed myself anywhere. Might have happened. I pretty much stayed cramped up in my RV during the cold months. Didn’t get outside and play in the canyons for a couple hours daily when the temperatures were near or below freezing except for a couple hours each day. (But I had never weighed myself before on that nurse’s scales. Is possible they would have weighed me higher in the fall than the ones I was using then. Regardless, I was aware that I had put on weight. I had evidence. My pants were tight, for instance.)

I was disappointed — even depressed — for a few days by the number on her scales, and became determined to somehow regain control and change it.

And then, completely by accident the following week, I came across some photos of me that I had forgotten that I even had. They were packed away in a box I might not have opened in 20 years. Various photos from the 1970s. Photos that showed me thin and vibrant (and, coincidentally, with various beautiful women that I had loved being with). Here’s one. This is from October 1972.

And, as an aside, the photos showed me with a lot more hair than I expect that I’ll ever see sprouting on my head again. And very dark hair at that.

(Maybe I WILL see some filling in of some of the sparser areas on my scalp. Have been taking the herb, fo ti, for six months at a body-weight-adjusted level equivalent to what the Chinese traditionally have taken, and amazingly AM seeing my hair darkening just a bit, starting a little more than three months after I began using the herb. Not noticing lots of new hairs sprouting, but definitely can see more little dark hairs here and there. Regrowth is one of the “magical” traditionally claimed benefits of fo ti. Supposedly takes about a year to happen. We’ll see. But we’re off topic. Fo ti should be a separate post.)

Seeing those 1970s photos, seeing me naturally thin, seeing me confident and happy and attractive had a profound effect. Was an immediate whack on the side of the head. And stuck with me for days and days.

You see, I’d resigned myself to being “a bit overweight.” At least to a certain extent I was resigned. I did, every year, for the last 17 years, spend some time “dieting,” often to no real results. And I exercised daily, or almost daily, during the warmer, dry months, from spring through fall in New Mexico — and year-round, earlier, during the seven years I had a big house on the East Coast. (I’m now living in an RV, on solar power, on semi wilderness land. Expecting to build something roomier soon — with a sunny, indoor exercise room for those winter months. Essential to my well-being. And yours?)

I experimented with every nutritional weight-loss substance cure du jour for years that had convincing science — or especially good copywriting — behind it. I remember buying my first herbal weight-loss compound in 1987 — though I had played with an amino acid complex five years earlier based on what I had read in Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw’s Life Extension. I didn’t need it then. Just wanted to see if it really worked. Started thinking I needed some weight-loss magic in 1987. And I’ve bought literally dozens of ballyhooed ones since. (Calorad for $39 per bottle when it came out? For guaranteed “weight loss while you sleep.”) The only thing I’ve lost is money. And faith.

I did naturopathic fasts that, when I was younger, always quickly melted off a few extra pounds whenever I would put them on. As would adding one mile to my daily jog for a week — when I was young. But these things no longer worked. My body had gotten stubborn about this. And I had begun to think it was inevitable that I would be a bit fat and that I needed to learn to “accept” it. But I didn’t, really. The weight has always chipped away at my self-image, my self-confidence, my belief in me. How can a natural health researcher and teacher be “fat” — or fat-ish? It seems incongruous to me. Either I get my own act together or I have no business advising anyone else about theirs.

I worked with hypno tapes — from the late ’80s on. Many different people’s. Made my own. And by the end of the ’90s, I weighed a bit more — maybe 10 pounds more — than I had at the beginning of the ’90s. And, even worse, my body had changed shape. It had gotten used to being stretched out, having a slightly inflated balloon tire around the middle. I no longer looked like a V-shaped, trim guy who appeared to be strangely swollen all over. By the end of the ’90s I had a dumpy roll around the middle. I could jiggle it with my hands. Ughh. Hate saying that. I had the typical “middle-age spread.” Not AS spread as some, but no denying it. It was there.

I worked with free weights, not body-builder seriously, but intentionally, for practical strength, all through the ’90s, as I had in my 20s. Did curls and situps. And built muscle but didn’t lose fat — at least not visibly.

And then I caught a UTI at the very end of the ’90s that turned into Reactive Arthritis, starting in my knee and then setting up residence in an SI joint and working its way up my spine — causing possibly permanent damage. Found myself on high doses of caustic drugs like methotrexate and prednisone and indomethicin and injectibles and painkillers and others — comprising a caustic cocktail which messed with my water and fat metabolism. While on the best conventional medicine had to offer, found myself ballooning, adding 25 pounds in six months and becoming borderline diabetic. All bad news. All discouraging. All new wardrobe. All a matter of shame.

Got that 25 pounds off two years later when I finally found treatment for the infection behind the arthritis and got off the conventional meds, started a long series of prolotherapy injections in facet joints along the spine and in the sacroiliac and knees and ankles … and began in earnest practicing my own Spirit of Wellness teachings consistently. Or somewhat consistently. Picking myself back up when I found I had slipped. But still, I was a bit overweight. Not obese. Not grossly obese. Just thick. Very average for an American male at age 50. And unhappy about it. And relatively resigned to it.

And then I saw the photos of me thin. Much thinner than I had been for 17 years. Truly thin. Kate Moss type of thin. I’m tight and trim at 165 pounds. I can carry 180 respectfully, but clearly have a bit of padding at 180, but no bulges. Until finding the photos, I had forgotten that I’d EVER weighed less than 160 or so. But in the early ’70s I’d been in the low 140s. (Boney.) And at least 40 pounds lighter than I had been at any time in the ’90s before the arthritis blow-up.

I’d allowed myself to forget that I’d ever actually been that thin — and no longer had any belief that thin was even possible for me. It was no longer stored in accessible parts of my brain’s random access memory. It was buried, buried, buried. And was a startling shock to see the pictures.

I started convincing myself in the ’80s that somewhere around age 28 my metabolism had changed. And convinced myself that this was a reality that was beyond my control and that I would have to spend the rest of my life fighting weight and depriving myself of enjoying food the way I would like to and…. Basically declared myself a victim of biology. And once you declare yourself a victim — of anything — you essentially relieve yourself of responsibility and rob yourself of hope.

I had forgotten that I had been a thin man. A thin young man. But I was. I was trim until my late 30s, when I started systematically packing on a few pounds a year. Actually, that had started happening in the late ’70s, particularly each time I wrestled with giving up tobacco, which I had tackled at least once annually (and which I finally managed to do, with the help of electro-acupuncture administered by a Santa Fe doctor of Oriental medicine in 1991). I’d usually add 5 to 7 pounds in six weeks of abstaining from tobacco and then, as I resumed smoking or sucking on wads of the stuff, would take off two to four pounds over the next two or three months. Always ending the process about three pounds heavier than before.

I had bounced up to what was still a very respectable slim/trim 165 in 1974 while part-time working the night shift in a Greyhound station / liquor store / porn shop / mini-grocery in the busy, seamy, untamed, sailor-haven-paradise, all-night, neon-lit “Little Times Square” (as Noel Kelly used to call it on the radio) red-light district of National City, Calif., just blocks from the San Diego 32nd St. Pier where the Navy ships docked during “shore leave.” Had my meals delivered from the late-night Italian restaurants — Mario’s was one, can’t recall the other’s name, Antonio’s? They brought me great, huge, fattening hot subs and pizzas. Quite different from the Diet for a Small Planet that I followed periodically and on before and after my “Little Times Square” stint.

(Writer Jake Lazarus will remember the winter we holed up in trailers on his family’s wlderness homestead high in the Antelope Valley and he suffered my awful vegetarian rice-and-bean burgers with barbecue seasoning.)

I viewed my time on that National City corner mixing with sailors, strippers, hookers, winos, junkies, hopheads, taxi drivers, bartenders and cocktail waitresses, Greyhound travelers, rackjobbers, and more — even then — as “writer’s education.” And it paid this writer’s bills. For the little while that I did it.

I held onto 165, give and take four pounds, (somewhere between 161 and 169 and usually around 165) for the rest of the ’70s. And since then, I’ve always remembered me at 165. I had a good body at 165 and have dreamed and dreamed and dreamed of getting back to 165, but had pretty much decided it was impossible. Wasn’t really going to happen. (Still don’t KNOW that it will. But now I have hope and belief that it CAN happen. And without struggle.)

Seeing the photos changed everything. That was ME with those pretty girls in the pictures. That was me THIN. That was me feeling COOL. That was a me who didn’t consciously WORK at being thin. Who just WAS, naturally.

It was a fascinating shock and wake-up call and beginning of a deep inner exploration.

I decided to study ME. Who I was back then. How I lived, moved, thought, ate, thought about my body, thought about health, what I thought about food and eating, how I viewed physical activity and exercise, my self-image, my higher values. WHAT was so different? What allowed me to have a body that several girls actually told me was “hot” (I’d love to qualify to hear that again) and that I had without any intentional effort and certainly, without any sense of deprivation. How did the guy in those photos do that? How did he do it? How did he maintain it?

Pretty sure I’ve figured it out.

Took weeks of deep, inner-work, recall work, journaling, experimenting, projecting. And I came up with a whole new theory that I call “Paleo Holistics” and will be sharing more of as I can transcribe my hours of dictation about it from February and March.

But for now, let me share ONE little thing that has made a HUGE difference in helping me adopt my “thin” mindset that has put my process of regaining my naturally thin body on autopilot.

(Mind you, no one would mistake me for a male Kate Moss, yet. And, indeed, I am going through cycles of firm to flab to firm to flab as the long-entrenched fat stores melt down. And so, depending upon when you might see me, I either look firm or flabby. And both are good and part of my strategy. Flab means the fat is leaving me — and doing so without any deprivation dieting or forced, bootcamp-like exercise routines. I’m convinced that in six months I will be healthfully, efficiently thin, thin, thin. Somewhere around 16% bodyfat. That’s where I was throughout the ’70s. Actually, I ranged from 12% to 16%. We used to measure it annually in the cross-country running courses I enrolled in at Southwestern College. I’m getting there. I’m heading in that direction. I haven’t been on the scales or used my electronic bodyfat analyzer, and won’t be doing either until I am wearing one size smaller Levis than the size 34s I’ve been wearing since 1987.

I don’t want to know the numbers right now. I want to go by the mirror and by clothing sizes and belt notches. Which have all been encouraging. But since I’m building lean muscle at the same time I am burning fat, and muscle weighs more than fat, the scales may report much slower progress and could be discouraging. (I’m not allowing discouragement.)

I’m simply believing that the guy in the pictures is ME. And that I innately know how to be the guy in the pictures. And that all I have to do is allow it, rather than deny it.

And that is working. I’ve done something to super reinforce that.

And I’ll share that. I’ll share one little secret thing that has made a HUGE difference.

I scanned a couple of those photos. Those photos of me thin, happy, attractive, vibrant. And made a photo collage on a small poster with some large type laid out around the photos. The type says:

Thinspiration

THIN IS GOOD
I am becoming thin. Again.

And thriving

As I allow it.

It’s up to me.

I printed out several of those mini posters and they are taped on walls and cabinet doors around my house. I see them, all day long, as I move from room to room. They engage pleasant memories of a different, pleasant time. They remind me of who I am. Who I have been. Who I can be. They show me that I CAN be thin. Easily. Without effort. They offer proof that I HAVE been. That I WAS. And they subtly remind me that I lived, moved, thought, ate differently then, from how I have in more recent years.

A cool thing about the posters. A couple cool things:

• They bring a smile to my face each time they draw my attention.

• They immediately contradict my long-entrenched, resigned-to, belief that I can’t be thin. That I’ve always been borderline heavy. And reinforce my new mindset that of course I can be thin, that it’s completely up to me, that it’s completely a matter of great attitudes and great beliefs and acting from within and on those attitudes and beliefs.

Do you have thin pictures from happy times?

If so, I’ll bet that studying them, and making yourself look at them every which way you turn, every day, would have a subtle, pleasing effect on your self-image and belief system. Might screw up your marriage, though, if there are a variety of attractive lovers hanging on you in the photos.

Which do you really want? A good marriage or a good body? (Just kidding.)

Post some thin pictures.

And you might find some habitual, weight-inducing behaviors becoming less attractive, becoming less automatic. And the mirror might start telling you that this is a good thing.

Want to play with this?

Please let me know how it goes. Use the “comments” section below.