Anorexia
When someone loses weight this is accompanied by a large rise in
catecholamines – the adrenal hormones that break down both fat and muscle tissue to be used as fuel. Along with the rise in catecholamines comes a rise in neurotransmitters dopamine and beta-endorphin. These are energizing. Pain goes away. A state of subtle euphoria sets in, and we get a little “high” from it. We are talking about opiate substances here, and they are very addictive – as addictive if not more addictive than actual opiate drugs. Very low carbohydrate eating often has the same impact, and while an anorexic can self-medicate by keeping carbs low enough to trigger dopamine and beta endorphin release, it is counterproductive to recovery for reasons explained below.
When levels are naturally low, substances or activities that spike these neurotransmitters are particularly alluring. That’s because a person that naturally has low levels of these neurotransmitters correspondingly has a lot of receptor sites wide open to capture this small amount of dopamine and beta endorphin. Anything that causes a surge of these chemicals causes quite a thrill ride.
At the same time, spiking these neurotransmitters results in what is called “downregulation” in which some of those wide open receptor sites close down. This is precisely what makes anything that spikes feel good brain chemicals habit forming and addictive. With a low production of dopamine and lots of wide open receptor sites, life feels good, balanced, stable, and normal. But with a low dopamine production and closed receptor sites life feels slow, sluggish, depressing, painful, and so on – the opposite of a dopamine high.
Once dopamine has been spiked enough, and enough receptor sites shut down – even if dopamine production is still the exact same as it was to begin with, the person feels nothing but withdrawals and has the experience of insufficient dopamine, beta endorphin, or whatever. They need increasingly larger spikes of these neurotransmitters
just to feel normal, much less good, just like any true long-term drug addict or alcoholic.
To recover, I believe that there is no way around achieving “upregulation” in which the receptor sites for beta endorphin and dopamine open back up again – allowing you to feel normal with your naturally low production of those neurotransmitters instead of experiencing too little and having an unquenchable thirst for anything and everything that spikes it.
1) Eating frequent, starch-based, whole food meals at above-maintenance calorie levels. The food should actually be somewhat bland, in whole food format, with some, but not too much added fat or protein (protein raises adrenal hormones and associated neurotransmitters, and really good food, especially sweets mixed with fat, triggers a big release of opiates that you are looking to avoid). A non-vegetarian macrobiotic-ish diet would actually be decent for recovery. This will also help in fixing reactive hypoglycemia, which I would guess nearly all anorexics suffer from to some degree (although it too will exacerbate hypoglycemic symptoms in the short-term).
2) Sleep a lot, including regular naps.
3) Perform various relaxation techniques, from gentle yoga and breathing exercises to meditation.
4) Avoid stress as much as possible.
5) Avoid strenuous exercise.
6) Avoid stimulants.
7) Avoid drugs – recreational and psychoactive.
8) Avoid sweets.
9) Avoid anything overly pleasurable. The more miserable you are, the faster you are upregulating.
Bulimia shares a similar pathology. Know how miserable you feel right before puking and how euphoric and instantly healed you feel immediately after vomiting? That’s some endorphins for you. Addictive as hell if you do it enough to start shutting down your receptor sites.
It can take a while after VLC to re-establish the kind of gut bacteria needed to properly digest carbohydrate foods without them running right through you. I experienced this recently when I ate almost nothing but fruit for a week. The beginning of the week I hardly left the bathroom, but by the end I was passing about half as much, and without hershey squirts. I think you'll experience some level of the same.
As for fat gain, some is to be expected, and some is desired in your case. That doesn't mean you are destined to become highly overweight as you rebuild. In fact, after an intial "detox" type of period, you may find that eating a starch-based diet with some resistance exercise will make you look more like a fitness model than a frumpy 20 something. This is yet another reason why I am increasingly favoring overfeeding with reduced fat intake, especially for those concerned about gaining fat, and those coming off of low-carb, who always seem so capable of gaining fat on a high-fat and high-carb diet.
I actually find the ratios mentioned here to be pretty solid…
http://veganmaster.blogspot.com/2008/08/mnp-100-muscle-and-34-selected.html
You can also see that protein requirements are not that high, just 10-15% of calories. Many starchy foods are 10% protein or higher, which means that animal protein intake does not need to be very high – just a few ounces per day. Corn tortillas are fine. Just note that they have only about 12 grams of carbs per tortilla, so the usual 2-3 tortillas is pretty scant. 8-10 tortillas per meal – now we're talkin.'
I remain "open" to fruit sugars, but I still can't see how they are preferable other than they tend to contain more vitamin C and potassium than most starchy foods. In terms of raising body temperature, there's no doubt that starches (and lactose) are superior because of their impact on leptin (raise leptin, increase leptin sensitivity) vs. fructose which does not.
Perhaps someone with severe adrenal problems might benefit from snacking on fruit throughout the day, but my gut instinct tells me that the blood sugar instability from fructose might do more harm than good to someone trying to recover.
Example:
When I was coming off Zero Carb a year ago, I used white rice as my starch of choice.
I adapted Matt's
original HED to a low fat high starch diet. I used white rice as a transition carb because it is very easy to digest and assimilate.
I would consume 3-5 meals a day mainly rice with a little vegetable and lean animal protein.
Doing this allowed my to enhance my carb tolerance quickly with no rebound fat gain eating more calories than I was when zero/vlc.
After eating like this for a month or so, you can expand your carb choices and experiment with how different ones treat you.
Any type of overfeeding increases insulin levels. When comparing high-starch overfeeding vs. high-fat overfeeding however, high-fat overfeeding does not raise the metabolism as much, increases the rate of calories stored in fat tissue, and decreases the amount stored in muscle tissue.
ALL forms of overfeeding discussed lowered blood sugar in both lean and obese subjects.
The trick is to get high insulin levels to store excess calories into muscle tissue but not fat cells. The higher the starch to fat ratio, the higher the ratio of muscle to fat gained during calorie surplus.
Too many carbs in relation to protein and you have too much serotonin and you feel sluggish and unproductive. Too little carbs and you feel anxious, jittery, nervous, and quick to anger.
http://180degreehealth.com/serotonin-and-the-carbohydrate-to-protein-ratio/
