I enjoyed reading this article at Mark’s Daily Apple: What Does it Mean to Be Fat Adapted? Mark goes into detail answering the question, and then he says to ask yourself a few basic questions:
- Can you go three hours without eating? Is skipping a meal an exercise in futility and misery?
- Do you enjoy steady, even energy throughout the day?
- Are midday naps pleasurable indulgences, rather than necessary staples?
- Can you exercise without carb-loading? Have the headaches and brain fuzziness passed?
I thought it was pretty cool that I seem to be a fat adapted… I can easily go 3 hours without eating. Nowadays I have my big protein breakfast, then bring a tin of sardines with me to have for lunch at work. Then I’m good until I get home, and that might be 7 or 8pm at night before I arrive home.
I can easily skip a meal, which is amazing. I remember it was i.m.p.o.s.s.i.b.l.e. for me to skip a meal. I couldn’t even fathom or consider skipping a meal because I would get cranky, shaky and brain fogged.
I do pretty much have steady energy throughout the day. I was thinking the other day how I don’t even consider getting coffee [affiliate link]. I have never really been able to drink coffee, but I would drink four ounces if I needed an energy boost, or if I didn’t get a good night’s sleep. I would also have times where I would almost fall asleep while driving. That was awful. I’d clap my hands in front of my face to try to wake myself up. I’d slap my cheeks in an effort to wake myself up. It is not safe driving at 70mph while nodding off!
I used to have to take at least one and sometimes two naps on the days I’m at home. I don’t have to any longer.
I never really did anything special before exercising, and I currently am not exercising since I’m trying to heal my adrenals. I don’t have brain fuzziness any longer.
Food used to be a lot more important to me than it is now. I had to bring a food bag with me wherever I went. I used to bring leftovers from dinner, and I had to use the kitchen stove to heat my food, which took 5-10 minutes. Now I just pop my tin of sardines open, or open a package of nuts. It takes so much less time now.
This is how it used to be for me:
- Breakfast: Yogurt or kefir shake, or two scrambled eggs [affiliate link], or broth with vegetables blended into a cream soup with a couple egg yolks.
- Mid-morning snack: Hunk of cheese, or nuts and a piece of fruit, or maybe a cup of yogurt.
- Lunch: Leftovers from last night’s meal
- Mid-afternoon snack for on the way home from work: Piece of fruit, or nuts.
Heaven help me if I got caught in traffic on the way home. Oh dear. I would be so ravenously hungry by the time I got home I would just stand at the stove and shovel food into my mouth. My husband used to cook dinner and it was always a buffet of carbohydrates… homemade baked macaroni and cheese, cornbread, peas, home baked bread, mashed potatoes and gravy, biscuits. I loved those foods, and he loved cooking them for me, because he knows how much I loved them.
So now this is what it looks like for me:
- 50 grams protein for breakfast. This might be 8 ounces of beef with a couple tablespoons butter, or chicken breast, chicken thighs, hamburger, pork chops or bacon. I try to remember to have a cup of broth with breakfast.
- Lunch = 1 tin of sardines most often, sometimes I’ll have 1 ounce of sunflower seeds, cashews or almonds [affiliate link] (this is when I’m in a super hurry and forget to grab my tin of sardines, so have to go to the corner convenience store and buy something – I should just bring those tins of sardines with me and stash in my desk)
- Dinner – whenever I get home, ideally before 7pm. I usually have about 6 ounces of meat with dinner, salad or vegetables on the side, ferments.
Yesterday was a great demonstration of how it’s changed for me. I promised one of my coworkers that I would make to allergy-friendly desserts, which were both GAPS legal, for her birthday party. I don’t usually leave home on the weekends, if I can help it, but I wanted to attend her birthday party so I left home around 11am to head into town for the party.
For breakfast around 6am I had half of a hot pork sausage link (about 4 ounces) and 5 slices of bacon. On the way out the door to the party I took 5 more pieces of bacon with me that were left from breakfast. When I got to the party I helped to set up, and got the desserts I’d brought cut and into the pretty little paper cups.
While at the party, there were vegetables and fruit that I could have eaten, but instead I decided to eat some of the desserts I’d brought – I ate those around 2pm. After the party I did some grocery shopping for my youngest sister, who my mom told me was running short on food. I dropped by and dropped off the food, then headed to my mom’s house. I was only there a few minutes and then headed out to another errand. Then I decided to visit another sister.
By the time we met up it was almost 9pm and she was going to Wet and Wild in north Phoenix. I used to go there every summer with my boys when they were younger and we lived in town. I would save money every month all year long to buy passes because it is actually affordable to visit those water parks when you do it that way. My last “meal” had been the desserts and I wasn’t really hungry. But I had my tin of sardines with me and I decided to eat them before we went into the water park. I did eat my sardines and I was fine with that for the rest of the night. My sister had brought salad with her and she ate salad before we went into the park, an hour later after we got out of the park, and around midnight when I was planning to leave she offered me a piece of grilled chicken breast. I wasn’t a bit hungry though, and I got home around 1:30am and still wasn’t hungry. I went to bed and I was fine.
I was a little bit freaked out about being in the heavily chlorinated water, and the smell of chlorine was overpowering while in the water. I know it causes a toxic load on our bodies to be in swimming pools, but I go swimming about once a year if that, and I wanted to spend time with my sister and niece and grand nephew and it was fun playing and floating in the wave pool. Since I am on adrenal support I gave myself a “stress dose” before we went into the park, and then I felt a little sick to my stomach after we left so I administered another “stress dose”. The stomachache dissipated after about 15 minutes.
I haven’t felt too bad today. I got a good night’s sleep and slept well.
So what about you? Would you say you are fat adapted?
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