Question for former athletes/fitness rats

[Richard7]

@hvac14400

i am struggling to gain mass above 100kg at 4500kkal, stuffing myself with food and constantly feelin hot from processing all this calories.

I have being doing some intermittent fasting, and reading more about it on this site https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/

The guy who keeps it, a canadian nephrologist called Jason Fung, says that in experiments where people were underfed by 10% there bodies reduce their energy expenditure by 15%, and in experiments where people were overfed the reverse happened. Those fed an extra 10% expended 15%.

This effect apparently takes a few weeks to kick in, but in attempted weight loss it can lasts for years after the diet has being abandoned.

He also talks about force feeding experiments done on prisoners, where people could gain wait for a time when they were forced to eat vast amounts of food, 10,000Kcal, but soon came back to normal. I don't know if their requirements for food whent up in the long term.

(Is it a surprise that a disipline that does experiments this unethical treats us so badly?)

I have not got the time or ability to read up on the science of weight gain, but maybe you are working against some homeostatic mechanism.

It is clear from what Fung says that insulin and cortisol will increase someone's weight, but increasing those hormones would presumably be unhealthy. Well unless they were too low. But maybe there is some other part of your regulatory system that is out of order.

Anyway I thought it might be a useful research path for you.

 

[hvac14400]

@hvac14400
I have being doing some intermittent fasting, and reading more about it on this site https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/

The guy

probably brain dead as i see from his posts and ppl's comments on them. or at very least he has no understanding the heck he talking about. so i second this one - https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/how-do-we-gain-weight-calories-part-1/#comment-32655

Maybe you should stick with kidneys

but without any "maybe"

@hvac14400
in experiments where people were underfed by 10% there bodies reduce their energy expenditure by 15%, and in experiments where people were overfed the reverse happened. Those fed an extra 10% expended 15%.

This effect apparently takes a few weeks to kick in, but in attempted weight loss it can lasts for years after the diet has being abandoned.

- there is no such thing as "metabolic damage". i have done many cuts and bulks in my life, as much as 30 kg in both directions and never experienced any prolonged energy expenditure changes, let alone "for years".
i know the answer and it's much simplier than one can think of - just my metabolism is so "swingy" and adaptive, that i need much more to add/substract in terms of calories to gain/lose comparing with "average" human. don't know is it bad or good thing, but here is a bunch of ppl with the same "problem" there, so nothing unusual.

 

[Richard7]

@hvac14400

Yeah, I was just thinking of you madly trying to eat in all that energy while you kept radiating it out like a light bulb.

Sorry it was of no help. Maybe you could get a job proofing bread or warming a greenhouse.

Oddly, at least in the periods I have measured, I am one of those people with CFS/ME who run cold. I gather (wiki) that the normal diurnal range is 36.2C -37.5C. Last year when I measured my temperature for a few months it was usually something like 35 +/- 0.3C in the morning and the very warmest I would get at other points in the day was usually 35 point something. (Occasionally I got to 36 point something low) So my very warmest often did not even touch the bottom of the (according to wikipedia) normal diurnal range.

I have not been keeping as close a record, but with the intermittent fasting my basal temperature seems to be not far from the old range, I think 34.6 - 35.7C. and my top temperature getting to somewhere between 36.0-36.5C on most of the days I have thought to take it. So I am now overlapping that normal diurnal range.

I have no idea what this all means, or if it means anything that would be useful to either of us.

 

[Ben H]

Hey Aerose, and everyone.

I was heavily into powerlifting and bodybuilding, but also sprints aswell. My anaerobic power was great, but aerobically I was pretty good too. My training focused around anaerobic threshold however.


That said, I was dieting HEAVILY, for a natural bodybuilding show (bnbf uk) before I got ill, and I think I messed up my thyroid. The research is there on ketogenic diets and lower hormone activity. I believe for me, that may have been the start of a slippery slope.

Now, I am housebound, and climbing stairs make me feel as if I have done a huge workset in the gym, lactic acid wise. I believe many of us are anaerobic at the drop of a hat, and our aerobic metabolism is royally screwed. My mitochondrial function was not good at all, and that was 3 years ago when I was maybe 30%. Now I am a 10-15%.

That said, I am +ve for Coxsackie, EBV and Elispot for Lyme. I have also done my own darkmicroscopy and have observed spirochetes, confirmed by proper microscopists, though of what genus we can't say. Most likely Lyme, and not syphilis or Leptospirosis.



I DO believe as ex fitness peeps we were at an increased risk, due to the amount of stress and specifically oxidative stress we may put ourselves under, ESPECIALLY if we do not have the correct recovery protocols and supplementation. Our work load will be so much higher than other people, and we are physically breaking our bodies down, or at least that was my aim

That's just my 2cents. It's probably not a hugely increased risk, but I believe it is there. Just as if someone doesn't take care of themselves, their immune system may suffer. Genetics matter too.

But, there are many who train hard and don't get ill, so it is individual. Perhaps a 'perfect storm', if you will.

B

 

[u&iraok]

@hvac14400

I have being doing some intermittent fasting, and reading more about it on this site https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/
.

What have been your results?

From what I understand intermittant fasting involves going 16 hours without food. I realized I was intermittently fasting because I quit eating at 6:00 pm and don't eat the next day until 10:00 a.m.!

But this way of eating works for me so I don't know if going that long without food is good for everyone with ME/CFS. I know regular fasting (going without food for several days) is not recommended for people who are not healthy.

I also eat nutrient dense meals and I eat a good amount of food between 5:30 and 6:00 pm. You do need to get sufficient calories and nutrients if you're going to try it.

 

[hvac14400]

@hvac14400
Yeah, I was just thinking of you madly trying to eat in all that energy while you kept radiating it out like a light bulb. Maybe you could get a job proofing bread or warming a greenhouse.

yea
that's not very practical at summer i must admit, but summer here is not that long or hot, so for more than a 3/4 of a year i have a very noticeable "advantage" over other ppl : )

Oddly, at least in the periods I have measured, I am one of those people with CFS/ME who run cold. Last year when I measured my temperature for a few months it was usually something like 35 +/- 0.3C in the morning and the very warmest I would get at other points in the day was usually 35 point something.

i think you may be living like 150+ years with such a low temps, lol. if it's appropriate to call such state as a "living" of coz. i feel cold too, sometimes, when eatin like 2000 kcal or less at a bw of 90 kg or more.
tho i don't quite understand, why you wanna fast being ill with cfs - are you having an excess of energy, or stored energy, or maybe doing contest prep? don't think so
fasting is for healthy ppl, for most part.

 

[Grigor]

Professional ballet dancer. Not sure if I was very good at long distance running stuff. Hated it haha. So maybe.

 

[Mel9]

Hey Aerose, and everyone.

I was heavily into powerlifting and bodybuilding, but also sprints aswell. My anaerobic power was great, but aerobically I was pretty good too. My training focused around anaerobic threshold however.


That said, I was dieting HEAVILY, for a natural bodybuilding show (bnbf uk) before I got ill, and I think I messed up my thyroid. The research is there on ketogenic diets and lower hormone activity. I believe for me, that may have been the start of a slippery slope.

Now, I am housebound, and climbing stairs make me feel as if I have done a huge workset in the gym, lactic acid wise. I believe many of us are anaerobic at the drop of a hat, and our aerobic metabolism is royally screwed. My mitochondrial function was not good at all, and that was 3 years ago when I was maybe 30%. Now I am a 10-15%.

That said, I am +ve for Coxsackie, EBV and Elispot for Lyme. I have also done my own darkmicroscopy and have observed spirochetes, confirmed by proper microscopists, though of what genus we can't say. Most likely Lyme, and not syphilis or Leptospirosis.



I DO believe as ex fitness peeps we were at an increased risk, due to the amount of stress and specifically oxidative stress we may put ourselves under, ESPECIALLY if we do not have the correct recovery protocols and supplementation. Our work load will be so much higher than other people, and we are physically breaking our bodies down, or at least that was my aim

That's just my 2cents. It's probably not a hugely increased risk, but I believe it is there. Just as if someone doesn't take care of themselves, their immune system may suffer. Genetics matter too.

But, there are many who train hard and don't get ill, so it is individual. Perhaps a 'perfect storm', if you will.

B

Hopefully you are on antibiotics?

 

[Seven7]

had a bitch of a time increasing my aerobic threshold

How did you do it??? I have been trying for 10 years w no much luck. I have like a roof top. I go down and can go back up but I never can get much better than 115bpm.

 

[Grigor]

@Ben Howell, I agree. I really broke my body down to some extend. On the other hand my working colleagues were fine.
We'll know more once they find out what's causing this lovely illness

 

[Aerose91]

How did you do it??? I have been trying for 10 years w no much luck. I have like a roof top. I go down and can go back up but I never can get much better than 115bpm.

Are you fully healthy and working out again?

 

[snowathlete]

I was pretty fit, did more exercise than most, swimming, football, running, cycling, weights, squash, walking...loved all that stuff. But I always felt I had to work a lot harder than others to achieve what I achieved in terms of fitness. I always struggled with oxygen, not feeling I had enough and my body having to work harder as a result. Never figured out what was going on with that, but I do wonder if it had some relationship to the disease.

 

[Richard7]

tho i don't quite understand, why you wanna fast being ill with cfs - are you having an excess of energy, or stored energy, or maybe doing contest prep? don't think so
fasting is for healthy ppl, for most part.

This is a bit OT, but if people will bear with me.

There were a couple of progressions, over the summer I noticed a connection between lightheadedness and certain meals but could not work out the connection.

I cannot remember the details but in late summer I was reading about AMPK and mTOR, trying to puzzle out some of my symptoms, and a short remission I had had in 2013. But then had a period where I completely forgot that train of thought. I am not sure why, my recent autobiographic memory is bad at the moment.

In late summer and early autumn I was taking cream(mostly coconut) in my coffee or cocoa so that I could absorb my coq10 mid morning and then not eating till lunch. Then around about Easter I stopped adding cream to the coffee and started taking my coq10 in the afternoon without ill effect. I had read warnings that coq10 could interfere with sleep if taken to late in the day, that does not seem to be the case with me.

Then maybe 5 weeks ago, I was listening to a podcast about intermittent fasting and realised that that was what I was doing. I had done it before in 2013 kind of by accident too, so I knew a little about it but had in my brain fog lost that train of thought.

Anyway I read up on it a bit, and I looked at some of the pathology that I had done in 2013 which showed that I was probably insulin resistant. In one of the small text paragraphs under the results there was a recommendation that I be retested in a few months because my fasting insulin was just over the top edge of the normal range. My doctor had never mentioned it, but when I saw her a month ago she glanced at the pathology and agreed with me matter-of-factly when I mentioned it. No sense at all that she had had a responsibility to inform me or do something.

And in my reading I found that some of the things that I had found pushed me towards lightheadedness had high insulin indexes. Anything with cocoa in it for example. I had never even read about insulin indexes. I had read of glycaemic indexes of course, but why would you measure blood glucose when you can measure insulin, well unless you are diabetic I guess. Yeah that is a good reason, I'm being myopic.

Anyway, the point is that it I am less often lightheaded when I do intermittent fasts. And it seems to have reduced the severity of my POTS. There are still occasions where my heart rate goes up to 120 when standing, but now there are also occasions where it is only up to 70 or thereabouts. (My resting heart rate is normally mid 40s to mid 50s, mostly high 40s). I have not tried standing still for 10 minutes mind, I expect if I did I would still go up to 120 plus, but my heart and blood vessels can keep it together for long enough for POTS to not always be my limiting factor when doing dishes or cooking. Which is kinda cool.

I even managed to walk down town last week, it was difficult at points, and I had to catch a taxi back, but that is the first time I have walked more than about two blocks in maybe five or six months. And I have seldom managed the two blocks.

Oh, and I am eating almost as soon as I feel like it, sometimes I push it a little bit, but I am not going through some ordeal. (Well aside from the ME/CFS, of course. Actually moving my bottleneck away from POTS means my muscles hurt more but I have fewer POTS headaches.)

 

[hvac14400]

some of the pathology that I had done in 2013 which showed that I was probably insulin resistant.

my fasting insulin was just over the top edge of the normal range.

okay. i just think you can get the same results in terms of boosting your insulin sensitivity by doing an ordinary healthy diet, or low carb diet, or even keto. so you can have plenty of energy throughout the day and don't starve yourself. unless you like it, for some other reason : )

 

[Richard7]

Well the week before that pathology was taken in 2013 I consumed 550g carbs about 133 of which were fibre. And that would I guess have been pretty standard, I had been on a Terry Wahls influenced diet for about 5 months I guess.

Whenever I have been well enough to do so I have endeavoured to eat a reasonably healthy whole food diet. There were I guess a couple of years, maybe 3, where things were really dire, but even then I think, well ... hmm I don't have enough knowledge to argue this, my autobiographic memory is pretty bad at the moment.

Well yes, I can say that some of the things I was doing with diet were likely triggering insulin resistance. I think the biggest problem may have been that I was taking at least two strong insulin triggers as supplements for over a decade: glutamine and BCAAs. What is worse I took them in three or four divided doses away from meals. So I was triggering insulin at all of the points you would expect it to be going down.

And I am not starving myself, today I fasted for 19 hrs and ate two meals in a 5 hour window, yesterday I fasted for about 26 hours and then ate one meal and one snack (a green smoothie) in a two hour window. Yes these number can add up to more than 24 because the fast starts when you finish your last meal on one day and is broken when you eat your first meal on the following day. Because I am not eating until I want to the hours at which I eat are shifting around a bit, so I am not following a textbook 16:8 or something.

Anyway, as I understand it the aim is just to give my body a long period without insulin being triggered. Which is what I'm doing. The food is probably lowish on the insulin index, but I do not have a good enough handle on how that works to be sure. If plain canned beans are 23 baked beans are 88, what is a bowl of rocket, broadbeans, chickpea natto, tinned tomatoes, onions, diced lamb, chillies, and doenjang?

I hope this allays your concern @hvac14400

 

[Aerose91]

I was pretty fit, did more exercise than most, swimming, football, running, cycling, weights, squash, walking...loved all that stuff. But I always felt I had to work a lot harder than others to achieve what I achieved in terms of fitness. I always struggled with oxygen, not feeling I had enough and my body having to work harder as a result. Never figured out what was going on with that, but I do wonder if it had some relationship to the disease.

I was the same as this. Always had a harder time making gains than others around me and took much longer to recover. Never could really reach my goals as hard as i tried. My brother is similar, always wondered about that

 

[cmt12]

I don't believe ME/CFS is something we always have had, it's a switch that gets turned on and your life goes from active to inactive.

Its hard to know what percentage of people were athletes of some form or another but there definitely seems to be plenty here on PR who were very active prior to onset.

My view is that the reason so many of us were active before has more to do with personality type rather than because we were so healthy. I also struggled with running and endurance, as well as constant injuries.

I see this condition sort of like water seeping through a patched up hole. You may not really notice the water until the patch gets completely torn away and displaced, but water has always been seaping through to some degree.

 

[Seven7]

Are you fully healthy and working out again?

I am not fully healthy I do get PEM and I am unable to do A LOT. I work full time (a lot from home) and lead a kind of normal life (No themes park, marathons, or frequent trips). And I still have to pace my days.

Exercise wise, I walk every day 20 to 30min. I can do one hour stationary recumbent bike on a good day leisurely slow pace and low intensity. I started trying yoga this week, this is very challenging for me due to POTs. So down dog is still rough I have to stop half way let the blood get to my brain then keep going.

I am trying to improve chore/abs strength right now (the bike takes care of the legs) to see if My POTs gets better.
To be honest my CFS is VERY good, the POTs gives me more issues than CFS.

 

[hvac14400]

Well yes, I can say that some of the things I was doing with diet were likely triggering insulin resistance. I think the biggest problem may have been that I was taking at least two strong insulin triggers as supplements for over a decade: glutamine and BCAAs. What is worse I took them in three or four divided doses away from meals. So I was triggering insulin at all of the points you would expect it to be going down.

nah, many ppl doing this and even worse, much worse things, with no consequences at all.
i did the same plus on top of that was injecting 10-15ME of rapid acting insulin 3-4 times a day, nothing happened, except i got fat - 108 kg of lard
and all that was when i already had cfs.

To be honest my CFS is VERY good, the POTs gives me more issues than CFS.

this.
only instead of pots i got pems, hate them like a mf

 

[Aerose91]

I am not fully healthy I do get PEM and I am unable to do A LOT. I work full time (a lot from home) and lead a kind of normal life (No themes park, marathons, or frequent trips). And I still have to pace my days.

Exercise wise, I walk every day 20 to 30min. I can do one hour stationary recumbent bike on a good day leisurely slow pace and low intensity. I started trying yoga this week, this is very challenging for me due to POTs. So down dog is still rough I have to stop half way let the blood get to my brain then keep going.

I am trying to improve chore/abs strength right now (the bike takes care of the legs) to see if My POTs gets better.
To be honest my CFS is VERY good, the POTs gives me more issues than CFS.

Your level of function is a lot higher than mine but you and i are similar.

I can give you help in breaking plateaus but i dont know if that's what you want to be doing. You're still sick so i dont know if pushing harder and trying to maintain higher heart rates and VO2 percentages is recommended?