Quote:
Originally Posted by Ishbel
I was booting around other places on this forum and found an excellent post from Kapolds (spelling right?) anyway, I know she pays attention and posts in here too...
She actually had a great post about her body being a FULL degree lower while she low carbed it...maybe she'll see this post, maybe I'll go find her and send her a pm, she's always has such great posts. I have NO idea where I found the post but I remember reading it a while back.
Also I think carbs are fuel, I'm naturally colder now....not as cold as when I was in Phase 1 but I am colder then I was when I was heavy...and really I just don't have the insulation anymore  |
Thanks for the PM, and I'm glad to weigh in, so to speak.
I've posted in LOTS of thread with my body temperature experience.
For almost as long as I can remember, my body temperature has been significantly lower than normal. I don't remember when it began, except that I do remember as a small child, it being normal (or at least much closer to normal). By the time I was a teenager (and very obese) my normal temperature has been lower than normal, and gradually getting lower and lower.
I learned in middle-school biology classes (and learned more in high school, college and graduate school) that low-body temperature could indicate a sluggish metabolism (and at the end of 8th grade I was prescribed a stimulant diet pill and did experience some increase in body temp, though it was still lower than normal).
Once in high school my body temp at a doctor's appointment (I went to the doctor because I was sick with a sinus infection) and the temp registered under 96 degrees. I remember it being 95.something, and I asked about it. At the time, the Doctor explained it by saying "just as a virus can cause a fever, it can also cause a temperature drop."
My doctors over the years would check for thyroid problems (because that's one cause of low-body temp) but the results always came back lowish normal (just above the levels doctors are usually comfortable medicating).
I was just told that my "normal" was lower than average. Pretty much forgot about it at that point, and then about 9 to 10 years ago, I experienced what can only discribed as a cascading failure of my health. EVERYTHING started going haywire, and the chronic health problems I'd been managing for years, suddenly spiraled out of control. I was newly married, and my hubby a very active and healthy-for-his size, fat man, had met a reasonably active and healthy-for-her size fat woman (we went to the gym together three to four times a week. He would walk, bike, swim and lift weights for 3 hours, and I'd walk/bike/swim for about 45 minutes to an hour), and we'd do things together on the weekends that involved a lot of walking (visiting museums, going to ren fairs...)
And by our second anniversary, I was sleeping up to 20 hours on the weekend, and had to have drive me to work because I couldn't stay awake for the ten minute drive to work. And my job performance was practically nil. At the start of the day, sorting through and responding to my work emails (which usually took 15 minutes), would take me two hours, I'd fall asleep in staff meetings, and every job took more than 5 times normal AND I still would make mistakes dispite triple and quadruple checking my work.
And my body temp was lower than ever. Anyway to speed up this story, I had to quit my job and apply for disability. Part of the diagnosis process (and I was told it would also help support my disability claim) a doctor recommended a symptom journal called MemoryMinder (the newer editions are called HealthMinder). So I ordered the book on amazon.com and filled out the daily worksheet every day, documenting my pain and symptoms. The questionaire had spots for describing the weather and for a daily body temperature measurement.
I'd never taken my temperature daily before, but I went with it. The symptom log helped tremendously, not just in taking it and showing my doctors so they could help get me the correct diagnoses, but also in finding patterns that helped me gain symptom control. It helped so much that I've continued the practice (giving it up occasionally, but always going back to symptom logging).
When I started experimenting with low-carb, I started noticing that not only did I FEEL BETTER on low-carb, but my body temperature was closer to normal, and I had started to lose weight. Before trying the low-carb, I was having trouble losing weight consistently on even a 1200 calorie diet. Now I would lose on 1200 calories and even 1500 calories ... but not nearly as much as I had in the past at this weight and I'd be miserably hungry... but I usually wouldn't lose much if anything on 1800 calories (and I was even hungrier). By examining my notes carefully I determined that I lost about as well on 1800 calories of low-carb as on 1500 calories of high-carb (though in low-carb the weight came off more regularly and gradually and on high-carb I would lose in whooshes: losing nothing for 3, 4, even 6 weeks and then dropping two or three pounds). Still the average weight loss was about the same (though it was much less frustrating to see the gradual smaller losses than the bigger but rarer whooshes).
I thought I was a bit of a freak in this regard, but there was recently a study of low-, moderate-, and high-carb diets (comparing Atkins, the Mediteranean Diet, and the carb-heavy food pyramid) and the study found an average of a 300 calorie advantage to the very-low carb as compared to the very-high carb diet, and the moderate diet fell somewhere in between. So it seems, that my experience isn't all that rare. (The study researchers didn't conclude that Atkins was necessarily the superior diet, just that there was a metabolic advantage that some might find helpful).
Because I not only can eat more AND feel less hungry on a high-protein, low-carb diet I also feel best physically on such a diet, for me there's no question that it's the diet I need to be on. Sadly, it's extrenely difficult to give up carb-addiction (especially since carb-pushing is more the national pasttime than baseball), but the better I get at avoiding the carbs, the better I feel and the easier it becomes to stick to a carb level that I function well on.
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Now as to feeling colder with weight loss, I think that's an entirely different process... at least partially. On one hand burning hotter (a raised body temp) probably does make the air temp seem cooler (just as when you have a fever you can get the chills), but insulation is probably another factor. Subcutaneous fat acts partially as insulation, so without it, it can be more difficult to keep body temp constant (this is said to be the reason anorexics and starvation victims develop lanugo, a downy "fur").
At my highest weight, I was often "too warm" but never had a problem with being "too cold.". I couldn't wear a sweater except outside. However, I was comfortable in a wider range of temperatures than I am now. Now I get too warm AND too cold much more easily. It's as if my comfort range is shrinking. And I suspect it's the "insulation factor." I now have to layer so I have clothing to remove if I get too hot, and clothing to add if I get too warm.
Often I have to get out of bed in the middle of the night because I've gotten too warm and I have to let the sheets cool. That's actually been much more frustrating than the getting too cold (you can always ADD layers, there's only so much you can take off).
Wow, I don't seem to ever be able to write a short post, but for what it's worth, this has been my experience and I hope you find it at least half as interesting as I do. The human body is absolutely fascinating, and I never realized that even at my highest weight what a miraculous machine the body is. Too bad it doesn't come with a maintenance manual.
What Happens to Fat When You Lose Weight
If I don't pass out, maybe I'll successfully lose another pound before WI 
