Help curing myself of "healthy eating"

Nutrition Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hi guys, first off all I want to thank Dr. Austin and Dr. Jordan, and all the barbell medicine crew for all the wonderful content you guys put on the website, blogs, youtube, etc;
Second, english is not my native language, so please forgive my bad english;

So, I’m gonna try to make this as short as possible, but give some details; I’m 31 years old male,I’m 164 cm(5,38 feet) tall, currently 60 kg (132 lbs), been doing barbell training for about 3 years now; my objective was to add strength and weight (currently my objective is to keep my strength and recover from chronic back pain); the problem is, I add weight pretty hard, I can’t really eat much food(I mostly eat 2-3 meals a day, not much calories in the food), so to add weight I have to eat a lot of “junk-food”, and no that healthy foods(hamburgers, pizza, sweets, etc); my problem is that before weight training, I was into the “fitness stuff”, read a lot about “healthy eating”, and I think I nocebo’ed myself big time; I always feared that the way I was eating to gain weight was not healthy and it was contributing to my symptoms like: joint pain, poor concentration, fatigue, poor sleep, bad memory, etc; So after reaching 69 kg(152lbs), the most I’ve had in my life; one morning(the evening before that, I had my usual milk, whey, coconut oil and peanut butter shake before bed, I also ate a lot of calories that day), I got this pain in my upper right abdomen, and I think it was my gallblader, cuz I got that before(lazy gallblader, I guess); so after that, a few days later went out and ate some pizza, and it got worse; I went to the doctor, got an ultrasound, and the doc told me I have gallblader stones, gave me some meds to “melt” the stones, after about a month of the treatment went to another doctor, and he told me to that I have no gallblader stones, and to relax, I never had them in the first place; but the pain was still there, I was having other symptoms like muscle spasms, and digestive issues, so I was convinced that it was from the bad diet I was having(parasites/bad bacteria from to much milk); so, about 3 months later, I went on the GAPS diet(again, I tried it before), its like a specific carbohydrate diet, to “heal” my “leaky gut syndrome”, and to basically cure myself of everything I was attributing to poor diet(joint pain, fatigue, brain fog, etc;); after some time on gaps, I found out about this young woman on youtube, Mikhaila Peterson, and seen here struggles with depression, joint pain, allergies, from the time she was a little girl, and she sayd that she went carnivore, and after about one year on carnivore(no plants), all here symptoms improved greatly, she no longer took meds for depression, no longer had joint pain, her allergies were much better, etc(her father, Jordan Peterson, is a famous psychologist, so my thinking is, the diet can’t be just placebo here), and after seeing it(and Dr. Shawn Baker’s interview with Joe Rogan) I gave carnivore a try; sadly I only lasted about 2 weeks, the lack of any carbs was absolutely terrible for me; I added some specific carbs like root vegetables, and some fruit; but still I was in caloric deficit, and I finally reached the weight of 57 kg(125 lbs) and had to drop it; I did observe some benefits on GAPS, and carnivore, my digestion was better (no more bloating, weird sounds from my gut, etc), my blood pressure got lower, from 140/80 to 115/65, and my fasting bood glucose went down from 103-105 to 85-95;

So fast forward to today, I gave up the diet, I’m tring to “cure” myself of “clean eating”, but I still have some concerns, so I would like to hear what you guys think about my fears regarding nutrition:

  1. Is there such a thing as leaky gut, and is there a medical test for it?; because I think I have it (joint pain, brain fog, fatigue, poor sleep, poop digestion)

  2. why do I add weight so hard, and lose weight so fast; is it possible that I have some sort of malabsorbtion, or bad gut bacteria or parasites?; is there a medical test for malabsorbtion?; I don’t buy that fast metabolism thing

  3. I’ve had my appendix removed when I was about 12; I’ve read that if you have your appendix removed it is good to take probiotics, as the appendix has the function of repopulating the gut with bacteria, after a purge like diarrhea or some gut infection; is there a medical test to see if I have the right balance of gut bacteria?;

  4. I’ve had a lactose intolerance test done (blood work), and, as I’ve suspected, I do have the the genotype(13910 C/C - 22018 G/G) associated with lactose intolerance; could drinking a lot of milk and whey messed up my gut, and gut bacteria?; is there a test?;

  5. I’ve also had IgG food intolerance test, and I rated high on everyhing to do with milk, specially cow’s milk, and to my surprise, very high with eggs(yolks and whites), and some veggies, but not to wheat (which I thought I had); does this kind of food intolerance test have any relevance?; I can give up milk and whey, but I do miss my eggs in the morning :expressionless: How can I know which foods trigger me?(is the IgG test any good?); also could it have been because I was eating to many eggs, like 5-7 a day, that I rated egg intolerance high?;

  6. How can I go back to eating “normal”, and stop focusing so much on “healthy eating”, because I’ve been nocibo’ed pretty hard with this sutff (pesticides, microwave, GMOs, polution, radiation, you name it);

  7. I have observed that I don’t do well with high fiber foods (bloating, constipation, etc), so I eat white bread, white rice, white pasta, etc; should I be concerned about this, as I have a fasting blood glucose over 100?;

  8. How can I get the benefits of lower blood pressure, and lower fasted glucose levels that I had with GAPS/carnivore, while eating more calories, from less healthy foods?; Should I even worry about that?; Is a blood pressure of 140/80 (it is over the limits) and 103-105 fasted glucose (pre-diabetic?) that bad?; I do have a history of high blood pressure in my family, my father has high blood pressure, my grandmother has it, and my grandfather had type 2 diabetes;

Thank you!

2

Hey Flavius,

Thanks for the post and welcome. Answers below:

  1. Not outside of serious infection (sepsis) or other acute, potentially life-threatening problems. The test is a blood culture that comes back positive for bacteria that should be inside the gut, but have made their way outside of it due to serious disease. This is not something you have likely.

  2. Hard to say. What’s more likely is that your dietary intake is inconsistent with your stated goals and compliance is an issue, which can be due to a host of factors. It is unlikely to be malabsorption.

  3. Not really good evidence that this is true. I’d skip them.

  4. The genotype doesn’t matter and the gut bacteria cannot be accurately tested (nor would it change what you do). It is more likely that drinking or consuming a lot of dairy causes GI problems due to the volume, not the mere presence of the food. To prove this, have half a glass of milk and see what happens. If you get a lot of gas, diarrhea, and abdominal pain- you might have acquired lactose intolerance. The genotype is not helpful for diagnosing lactose intolerance.

  5. Not terribly meaningful.

  6. I think gradual exposure is a good way to start, but I also think having a professional- a psychiatrist in this case- provide some guidance would be very helpful.

  7. Depends what your fasting blood glucose is, i.e. 105 vs 130. 103-105 doesn’t mean much to me given the error in the tests themselves. Alternatively, I would look at the dose of the “high fiber foods” first before eliminating fiber from the diet.

  8. What do you mean by less healthy food? The Carnivore diet isn’t “healthy” or “health-promoting”. If your blood pressure is 140/80 when measured correctly, I would initiate both dietary and training interventions to fix that. Medication may be needed if that doesn’t work, but someone with high blood pressure that is measured correctly is not someone whom I’d actively gain weight.

3

Thank you Jordan, your answer is much appreciated, as I value your input on nutrition a great deal; on the last one, I didn’t express myself right; I am not implying that carnivore or any other diet(low carb, carb secific. etc) is a health promoting diet; I did, however, get to see some health markers improve like my blood pressure and fasting blood glucose to normal values, that is 115/66 for blood pressure, and 90-95 for blood glucose; I know correlation does not equal causation, and it could be that some other mechanism (like weight loss) could have lowered my blood pressure and blood glucose levels; I was asking, if, in the process of gaining weight in the future, I see my blood pressure and blood glucose levels go up a bit, should that be any concern, I’m talking like blood pressure from 115/66 to lets say 135/85, and for blood glucose from 95 to lets say 105; or, given the fact that I will not gain weight for a long period of time (a couple of months, lets say), after I stop with the weight gain, these will probably go back to normal range anyway?; thank you!

4

Yes, those would both be concerning health wise.

5

Thank you!

6

I am just curious if you counted how many calories and proteins did you consume when you used to eat healthy food. In most of the cases healthy means products with low level of calories. Almost all the fruits and vegetables contain less calories than sweet and meat products. It will be easier if you will start counting how many calories you have eaten per day. In case you want to gain some weight you have to eat more calories than your body burns. Another reason why you aren’t gaining weight it’s because your metabolism is slowed down.