A Feedee’s Thoughts On Staying Healthy, While Gaining - Part IV
Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V
I am not a doctor. As a feedee, I’d rather gain fat, than lose it. However, I’d also rather be healthy than sick, and I’m in no hurry to die.
This has lead me to do a fair bit of research on how I might be able to reduce the risks of being fat, and getting fatter. As far as I am aware, none of what I am about to suggest of people deliberately staying fat and getting fatter; over an extended period of time.
They are my best guesses at things that might help reduce the risks of living as a feedee. Given enough time, everyone’s risk of death is 100%, and nothing I say here will change that. The whole purpose of this, is to be able to live as a feedee, while also (hopefully) having a longer life; with less of the suffering and healthcare costs are currently associated with obesity.
That said, it’s still important to live while you’re alive.
In part I, I said, the secret is in the sumo. It’s easy to see why a feedee would be interested in the sumo; even if he wasn’t health conscious. They’re one of the few groups of people who deliberately fatten themselves up to supersized weights, and are open about doing so.
More importantly though, they’re relatively healthy, compared to what modern medicine tells us to expect people weighing 400 lbs or more to be. I strongly suspect that the secret to their good health is in a few key lifestyle factors that help to keep insulin resistance and inflammation in check.
(Cholesterol and triglyceride levels appear to be related to blood sugar levels and insulin resistance in such a way, that I have come to see high cholesterol and triglyceride levels as usually being symptoms of insulin resistance. [link] [link] )
I’m no sumo expert, and I’m not a fan of the sport. The little bit (I think) I know comes from what I’ve read about them.
Based on what I do understand, though, here’s the gist of what a typical day for a sumo wrestler looks like: (For simplicity, I’ll just refer to this sumo as, “he.”)
He does not eat breakfast.
He exercises. His training regiment would be grueling, for even seasoned athletes.
He has his first meal at, around lunch time; eats as much as he can; and drinks a lot of beer.
After his first meal, he takes a nap, and has some free time.
He has his second meal, eats as much as he can, and drinks a lot of beer.
There are some things about this routine that seem like they’d be on a list of things that feedees shouldn’t do. The exercise is the obvious one, but you might also notice that the sumo is in a fasted state for about half the day. It’s less obvious, but you might also notice that he exercises in a fasted state.
One thing about the routine that stands out to me, is how strikingly similar it is to the way a person might use exercise and intermittent fasting to lose weight.
It’s odd that a routine that is effective for weight gain would be so similar to routines that are effective for fat loss. I suspect that insulin sensitivity is piece of the puzzle, that makes the whole thing work.
Yeah, I get it. A feedee’s knee-jerk reaction to the word, “exercise,” might be “yuck,” “eww,” or, “hell no!” Just hear me out, on this, for a minute. Nothing that I post here will make you skinny.
As a feedee, I’d much rather have a small army of feeders; catering to my every need; making sure I don’t have to lift a finger; so that every precious calorie that I can cram into my overstuffed belly works to make me just a little fatter. After all, I wouldn’t want to unnecessarily burn extra calories, by getting up to do things for myself.
Like it or not, exercise can work as medicine and helps to reduce health risks. [link]
Considering the focus I’ve placed on insulin sensitivity so far, it probably won’t surprise you when I say, exercise helps to increase insulin sensitivity. [link] [link]
The good news is, it’s possible to enjoy, at least, some of the health benefits of exercise, without losing weight. [ link ] And the sumo show that it is possible to gain weight, even if you get a lot of exercise.
I don’t know what the right amount of exercise would be. The CDC recommends people get 150 minutes of exercise per week; which works out to be five 30 minute workouts each week.
The feedee in me says no exercise is the perfect amount; zero minutes of exercise is exactly the right number of minutes of exercise.
Despite appearances, I don’t dislike exercise. (Weird, I know.) However, my aim with exercise is to get the greatest amount of health benefit I can, in exchange for the fewest number of calories.
In my searching, I came across the book, The First Twenty Minutes. The book provides a lot of interesting tidbits of information, but the core argument was that you receive the greatest benefit from the first 20 minutes of exercise. the author points out that there are benefits to continuing beyond the 20 minute mark, but with diminishing returns.
If you’re willing to put up with the weight loss talk, this article and audio interview are worth checking out. [ article ] [ interview ]
Here’s a couple of interesting quotes from the linked article:
The first 20 minutes of moving around, if someone has been really sedentary, provide most of the health benefits. You get prolonged life, reduced disease risk — all of those things come in in the first 20 minutes of being active.
Without being evangelical, I wanted people to understand that this is a book about how little exercise you can do in order to get lots and lots of health benefits.
You can always do more. But the science shows that if you just do anything, even stand in place 20 minutes, you will be healthier.
I usually get about 20 minutes of exercise in, 3 days each week, but it works out to be a bit more; because I stretch afterward, and do other physical activities that I don’t count as exercise.
If you’re just getting started, don’t start with 20 minutes. Start with 2 minutes, and then add a minute to each workout; until you build up to 20 minutes. If you’ve been inactive for a while, you’re body will need a bit of time to adapt to new physical activity.
Most articles and blog posts recommend talking to a doctor before starting an exercise routine. Since exercise stresses the body, that new stress can sometimes make an already existing problem worse; so it is a good idea to check with a doctor; before getting started.
If you’re especially heavy (supersized), and sometimes even if you are not, a lot of walking can cause unpleasantness, like plantar fasciitis; which makes standing and walking hurt like hell.
My usual exercise of choice is the stationary bike, but I’ll also do other things as well. Yoga, qi gong, and tai chi are all good options that are worth exploring.
If you’re heavy enough that it limits your mobility, there are sill things you can do. To start, there’s chair aerobics, chair tai chi, and chair qi gong. I’ll post a few links here, in case you need some more ideas. [link] [link] [link] [link] [link] [link]
Whether or not you’re interested in adopting a formal exercise program, you might want to consider making it a practice to simply stand up, or walk around for a couple of minutes; periodically, throughout the day.
Even if you just do that, it’ll provide you with some of the health benefits of exercise.
The short answer to the question, “What should a feedee eat,” is everything. You should eat the kinds of foods that motivate you eat a lot.
However, if you’ve taken a look into how the sumo fatten up, you might notice they don’t eat a lot of junk food.
The sumo staple food is a food called chanko nabi. It’s such a core part of their diet, that it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call it sumo chow.
It doesn’t have a set-in-stone recipe, but it’s mostly made up of meat and vegetables. When they eat meals though, they don’t just eat chanko nabe, they also fill up with lots of rice, and (as I understand it) they drink plenty of beer; along with their meals.
What the sumo diet shows us, is that you can put on a lot of weight by eating large quantities of foods that are considered to be healthy.
The sumo are athletes. They’re fat, but the also carry a lot of muscle under that fat. With their grueling training regiment, they’re going to need a lot more protein in their diet than a typical feedee would.
The body uses protein to repair itself and build muscle, but excess protein can also be turned to fat. Gaining fat from protein is less efficient, because the body has to convert the protein to glucose, and then turn the glucose as fat; before it can be stored as fat. Too much protein in the diet can also place an unnecessary strain on the kidneys.
Carbs and fats are much more efficient at driving fat gain. An ideal fat gain diet would be a high carb, high fat, low protein diet. If you’re not looking to carry unnecessary, calorie burning muscle, a mostly low protein diet might be worth considering.
On a low protein diet, you’d be likely to be gaining fat and losing muscle at the same time; which means you could be getting fatter; even if your weight stays the same for a while. [link]
An interesting nugget of info from the linked article:
Throughout the course of the study, researchers also measured changes in the participants’ energy expenditure, or how many calories they used in a day, and found that those on normal- and high-protein diets were not only burning more calories than they did before the start of the study, but they were also using more significantly more energy than the low-protein group.
Meanwhile, resting metabolism in the low-protein eaters declined: in other words, as they gained weight, they required fewer calories to maintain that weight — a handy recipe for obesity.
In part, the difference can be attributed to the fact that the normal- and high-protein groups had gained more weight overall and needed more energy to move their bigger bodies around. Also, protein takes a lot more energy for the body to process — whether it’s being excreted or put toward building muscle or other lean body mass, which itself requires more energy to maintain — than fat. Fat, on the other hand, is much more easily stored as fat.
I’m not saying you should lay off the protein entirely. This isn’t going to stop me from eating ribs or buffalo wings. (I love buffalo wings.) It’s just something to keep in mind, and you choose what to eat.
I will, however, say that if you’d rather gain fat than muscle, it might be better to get most of your calories from carbs and fats than from protein; most of the time.
It’s probably also a good idea to be sure to include some fruits and vegetables in your diet. I don’t know how much is the right amount, but the standard recommendation is 5 servings of vegetables and 4 servings of fruit. [link]
I understand the desire to cut out the fruits and vegetables so that you have extra room in your stomach; that you can fill with high calorie goodness, but fruits and vegetables have important nutrients that you’ll probably miss out on; if you don’t make it a point to include them in your diet.
Maybe there’s a way to make a super-fattening, high calorie vegetable smoothie; that is digestible, and actually tastes good. If there is, I’d like to hear about it.
Combing fasting with feedism is a bit counterintuitive, but you can use fasting to help you gain weight. I know; I’ve done it. I’ll tell you more about what I did, and what the results were in a moment, but first, I’d like to talk a bit about fasting and health.
Using fasting as a tool to minimize the risk of weight gain is even more counter intuitive. I believe that you can. I’m not aware of any research that supports or refutes this idea, but there are some things we can be reasonably sure about.
When I first started to hear about intermittent fasting as a tool for heath, I thought it was just another silly fad. Even after I saw several doctors writing on the potential health benefits, I didn’t pay much attention to it. Part of that was because I thought it was just a fad, but it was also because it was being sold as a tool for weight loss.
It wasn’t until I caught wind of research that showed that people who fasted once a month had less heart disease. That’s what finally caught my attention, because it showed the potential for some real health benefit; even if it wasn’t used as the latest weight loss fad.
In addition to preventing heart disease, there’s also evidence that occasional fasting can help with the prevention and treatment of cancer. [link] [link] [link]
We’ve already established that sumo wrestlers tend to be healthier than we’d expect them to be; based on what modern medicine tells us about being fat. It’s also reasonably clear that their morning training exercises and the fact that they include plenty of vegetables in their diet play a major role in this.
It’s less obvious from the writings about their training, but we’ve also established that they’re in a fasted state for approximately half the day, or more.
I’m using the phrase, “intermittent fasting,” because it most accurately describes what I’m talking about. It’s usually used as a weight loss tool, but the the sumo lifestyle indicates that it can also be used as a weight gain tool.
There are a number of ways to do intermittent fasting, but most of them involve consuming no food, and only calorie free beverages for twelve hours, or more. For our purposes, this is what I mean when I refer to, “being in a fasted state.”
For most feedees, intermittent fasting can be as simple as skipping breakfast, like the sumo do, but I suspect that you need to be in a fasted state for longer, to really reap the rewards of fasting.
The concept of intermittent fasting includes time restricted eating, alternate day fasting, and the 5:2 diet. There might be other ways of doing it, but those are the ones that come to mind.
Time restricted eating involves restricting your eating to a 12, 8, or 4 hour time window; during the day. Alternate day fasting, involves a full (or nearly full) 24 fast, every other day. The 5:2 diet involves fasting 2 days out of each week.
There are a number of health benefits that nave been attributed to intermittent fasting, but I think the ones that are the most relevant to the needs of feedees are reduced inflammation, improved insulin sensitivity, reduced cancer risk, and improvements in heart health.[ link ] [ link ] [ link ] [ link ]
On top of all that, intermittent fasting has been shown to reduce inflammation.
I suspect that a big part of the reason that intermittent fasting works so well for both weight gain of sumo wrestlers and the weight loss of intermittent fasting enthusiasts has a lot to do with the way it improves insulin sensitivity. I’m not sure of it yet, but I also suspect that there is something about it that works to prepare fat cells to multiply, if you overeat; after the fast.
When I was first getting started with intermittent fasting, I started with one 24 hour fast each week. The reasons for the 24 hour fast, is that it was the one I was familiar with at the time, and it was the one that had already been shown to improve heart health.
My reason for choosing a once a week schedule was somewhat arbitrary. I had a vague recall of seeing a one day fast, once per week, having been recommended in the book, The Fasting Cure. It was a bit of a challenge at first, but got easier after a few weeks.
After I got used to them, the fasts did help me to feel healthier, in general. I had less nasal congestion, my airways were more open, I felt less pain, and my mind was sharper. As an added bonus, I was able to use the fasts to gain over 20 lbs, in a few weeks.
How I gained the weight was not unlike the way sumo wrestlers gain weight. When I broke the fast, I ate well past the point of fullness. On those days, I was able to eat far more than I would normally be able to.
Fasting and feasting in this way, had an interesting side benefit. My appetite on non-fast days was bigger. It started to take far more food on non-fasting days, just for me to feel like I wasn’t hungry, and it took even more food for me to feel somewhat satisfied.
I’m sure if I had pushed myself, even just a little, I could have gained a lot more weight, but economic constraints lead me to choose to hold back. I also have health challenges to deal with, and am concerned that such a rapid and deliberate weight gain would cause doctors not to work with me. It’d be nice to have feedee friendly doctors, but I think that might be too much to hope for.
As easy as it was to put on weight, I’ve also lost weight with intermittent fasting; without meaning to do so.
I suspect it has something to do with the way ketones and the increased insulin sensitivity effect the appetite. The gist is, when you are in a fasted state, your liver turns fat into ketones, because most brain cells can use ketones as an energy source; in place of glucose.
The ketones generated through fasting reduce your appetite; which makes it easy to feel more satisfied with less food. However, I suspect that there is also a mechanism in the body, that is triggered by deliberate overeating, after a fast, that tells your body that you need to eat as much as you can; and store it all as fat.
Maybe it’s a supercharged version of, what fitness and wight loss gurus like to call, “starvation mode.” I don’t know if that’s the case, but if it is, the name is fitting.
Either way, there seems to something about intermittent fasting that makes it a little too easy to lose weight (for a feedee), when you eat normal amounts of food; but also makes rapid weight gain easy, when you combine intermittent fasting with intermittent feasting.
In part V, I’ll wrap things up, and make a few health suggestions; based on my best guesses about how someone might minimize the risks that come with living the feedee life.
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