I Shrunk My Waistline by 2 Inches!

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“Husky” is who I am.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been larger than I’ve wanted to be. The first fashion term I learned was “husky,” which came up often during back-to-school shopping trips to JCPenney with my mom.

“Does that fit you Jonathan?”

“No, not quite mom.”

“Okay, sweetie boy. Looks like we need to find a more husky-sized pant for you.”

I don’t know when or how I first learned to feel self-conscious about my size, but there are no doubt endless sources of how, in USian society, we are socialized to think negatively about body fat. It’s toxic and wrong, and my inability to shake my internalized shame has probably taken years off my life.

All bodies are good bodies. I believe that, and we teach our children that. Yet, I still have to fight the negative feelings that come every time I go to the pool.

The Science of Body Fat

The most critical moments in my life have been characterized by profound “ah-ha” moments, where something that I knew to be true was turned on its head. I remember one of those moments in college when my roommate and I were discussing something, and he asked me, “But is it, though?”

In stunned silence, I sat at my desk for what felt like an hour, as I recalibrated dozens of foundational premises that I knew to be true, but now were suddenly, perhaps not sound. That moment probably saved me from becoming an insufferable arrogant asshole, because, at the time, that’s exactly who I was. I knew things and knew that I was fundamentally better than some people.

Another moment was when I read the book “Sex at Dawn” by Drs. Christopher Ryan (who I now think is an arrogant asshole) and Cacilda Jethá. That book shook and ultimately toppled my views on human sexuality and relationships and led me to Dr. Kim TallBear’s work on what she describes as “Settler Sexualities”.

Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass rewired my ecology brain most wonderfully. Finally, it made sense of the ways the field of ecology couldn’t and wouldn’t answer some of my most pressing questions about how life and relations work.

Yet another of these moments of profound recalibration was when I read the book Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. This book spoke to the frustrations I had been experiencing around trying to shed body fat. I knew that the Jillian Michaels’ (also an asshole), host of the popular show The Biggest Loser, model of insanely intense work outs while eating next to nothing didn’t work for me, but I felt stuck without an alternative.

Taubes's book focused a critical lens on nutrition science and how, first and foremost, popular dietary recommendations are based on the economic gains of the food industry — particularly grain production — and not actual sound research. Moreover, we are socialized to think our bodies do not possess inherent set points for processing calories. Some folks' bodies are more inclined to store the energy they take as fat, and some are more inclined not to, and that has nothing to do with willpower, discipline, morality, or desire to have a particular body composition.

It was a profoundly emotional moment. I could finally let go of a large portion of the blame I had been carrying for being unhappy with my body. But I was still unhappy because try as I might, I couldn’t stick to a diet that I knew would help me shed the body fat I didn’t want.

Then, I found myself in the hospital with tachycardia.

My Body is Eating Itself.

Forty comes at you fast. All of sudden my children are no longer in daycare, my anniversary is in the double digits, we’re on our second mortage, I’m checking my retirement portfolio weekly, two strong drinks is enough to put me out the next day with a hangover, my A1C is at “pre-diabetic” levels, and I’m taking blood pressure medication because I have hypertension.

I’ve always been an “old soul”, but now I feel it in my bones.

When my Apple watch woke me up to tell me that my heart rate was dangerously high, many things went through my mind. In the subsequent days when the effects of not taking my medication (I’m a dumbass sometimes) and being chronically dehydrated (see, told you) gave me the worst muscle spasms of my life, I began to walk myself through the same premise questioning excersize that has shaped profound shifts in how I move through the world.

I had to change things fundamentally, or I was going to die way before I was ready.

Shedding body fat was a part of that change, but I lacked the motivation to test what I believed to be accurate. Then, I watched this podcast, and everything changed.

For whatever reason, the focus on insulin and what it does in the body shook loose the last lingering threads of reluctance to finally do what had been recommended by many other people I had read and listened to talking about body fat loss. I knew I had to cut my carbohydrate intake drastically, and after watching this podcast, I was finally ready to do just that.

I had done it several times before, but I always found a reason to stop and revert to my familiar diet within a week. Every time I went back on my dietary change, it was because of debilitating ravenous hunger, which I knew was related to my diet-induced high insulin levels. I had been reluctant to make the low-carb switch again because I had serious doubts I could withstand the carb cravings that inevitably came.

But after a year of blood pressure medication, increasingly waking up in the middle of the night to pee, feeling sluggish and exhausted for no discernable reason, and the realities of my mortality, I decided that I would endure the carbohydrate cravings.

And they came, but not nearly as powerfully as I feared. I could do this.

So, since the middle of February, when I started what’s commonly called a Ketogenic Diet, the results have blown me away.

First and most importantly, I feel so much better overall. I’m not waking up to pee at night; I’m much more well-rested in the morning, can maintain my focus much better, and generally feel younger.

I’ve lost six pounds, but more noticeably, my clothes are much less tight on my body. Typically, a size 38 wait pant is snug but comfortable. I’m typing this post wearing a pair of slim-fit 38 pants, something I’ve never been able to wear. I’ve got two more inches of belt to pull on when I tighten it, and the new shirts I bought fit much more loosely.

This diet and my resolve to stick to it have induced my body to burn a higher proportion of the calories I’ve already stored as body fat. I can feel that reality every morning as I run my hands over my torso and am surprised by the contrast of how my body used to feel. I’m not as hungry as I thought I’d be because my body is literally eating itself.

Another big thing I’m noticing is how much more comfortable I am in my own skin, and this is where things get, somewhat paradoxically, uncomfortable. How we feel about our bodies should be up to us, but, for me and I think most people, it’s not- not completely. I feel bad that the way we’re socialized to think about body fat has controlled so much of the way I feel about myself. All bodies are good bodies.

Fat Loss and The Wild Kitchen

It was not until I sat down to write this post that I realized my food journey is a part of my body journey. To stick to a low-carb diet, at least for me, you need to have considerable control over the other sources of food you consume. If you’re not going to get most of your calories from starchy carbohydrates, you’ll need to get them from different sources. I’ve increased my veggie intake, but I’m mostly making up the difference with animal fat and protein.

So much USian-produced animal fat and protein is bad for you, but it’s not until my wild food journey that I’ve been able to source relatives that were not putting my health at considerable risk. Moreover, I’m at a socio-economic stage where I can, for example, travel to North Carolina to source a 400lb pasture-raised pig, bring it home, and process it myself.

I know so much better now; thus, I can do better. I understand so much more about where my food comes from and, therefore, take the process of feeding myself so much more seriously.

I don’t know how much more body I’ll lose, if my A1C will go down, or if I’ll ever feel fully confident taking my shirt off at the pool, but I know I’m not returning to how I felt when carbohydrates were such a big part of my diet. How I’ve felt these past few weeks in my own skin and my own head is very similar to how I felt after I started wearing barefoot shoes, except 100 times better.

This week’s post may resonate with you, or it may not. You may be struggling with something similar, or you may not. All bodies are good bodies. I’m trying to love mine better, and I think I’m finally becoming worthy of all my body has done for me over the years.

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New Threads

I mentioned that my clothes fit more comfortably these days, which makes my recent purchases of merino wool clothing that much more satisfying. Check out my review!

Thanks for reading!

-Jonathan