Surprise, surprise
According to www.180degreehealth.com, I have the physiology of someone who's starving.
Yes, starving.
Let's tick off some symptoms that I share with Ancel Keys' subjects from his Human Starvation experiment:
1) Low body temperature - my basal (waking) temperature is always lower than what is healthy and normal for the human body. I've known this for years, in fact, I just didn't realize that this happened in starving people, too. When the body isn't getting enough nutrients, it slows its metabolism which means that your temperature goes down. Straightforward relationship.
2) Preoccupation with food - I drive my sister crazy with all of the books I read on diet and nutrition. She gets irritated every time I come back from the library with stacks of cookbooks, fitness guides, and more. She tells me, why don't you stop reading those and start following their advice (in reference to my life-long desire for a fit physique...), and yet I can't put those books down and poring through countless health-related blogs...
3) Hair loss - I've always felt like I lose a disproportionate amount of (head) hair. Every time I brush my hair, I have to pick out and ball up the hair that I combed out. I clean my brush every time I use it because, if I didn't, it would get wadded up with hair before the end of the week. I have to be mindful of the drain in the shower and bathtub because its liable to become clogged with my hair, and I keep finding small clumps of hair on my pillows and sheets. I know that people lose hair every day, but damn - is it this visible?
4) (Mild) anemia - various doctors I've seen throughout my life so far have usually remarked about low iron levels in my blood. When I can donate blood (which I love doing!) I usually only barely pass the minimum requirement for iron.
5) Depression - anyone who knows me and my history knows that between the ages of 10 and 20, I was miserably, brutally depressed. I still find myself leaning towards depressive tendencies occasionally.
6) Constipation - if I'm lucky, I'll take a dump every other day, on average. When I do, its nothing like the epic experiences my one friend loves reporting to me on an almost daily basis. Its been like this as long as I can remember with only a few exceptions.
7) Faintness - Every so often I'll feel dizzy, light-headed, or my vision will get funky when I stand up from a sitting or lying down position.
There are more symptoms and plenty more nuance to Keys' studies, subjects, and research, but those are the characteristics that jumped out at me. I couldn't believe it. I still don't. How can I - someone who binges until her stomach aches - have the same symptoms as someone who's starving? What could possibly have happened that would cause my body to believe that it was in a famine when its B.M.I. is 37? 37! Its almost laughable, actually. My entire life so far I've assumed that I was overweight because I ate too much, which I would've guessed meant that I was over-nourished, if anything. But under-nourished? What kind of joke is this?
Yes, starving.
Let's tick off some symptoms that I share with Ancel Keys' subjects from his Human Starvation experiment:
1) Low body temperature - my basal (waking) temperature is always lower than what is healthy and normal for the human body. I've known this for years, in fact, I just didn't realize that this happened in starving people, too. When the body isn't getting enough nutrients, it slows its metabolism which means that your temperature goes down. Straightforward relationship.
2) Preoccupation with food - I drive my sister crazy with all of the books I read on diet and nutrition. She gets irritated every time I come back from the library with stacks of cookbooks, fitness guides, and more. She tells me, why don't you stop reading those and start following their advice (in reference to my life-long desire for a fit physique...), and yet I can't put those books down and poring through countless health-related blogs...
3) Hair loss - I've always felt like I lose a disproportionate amount of (head) hair. Every time I brush my hair, I have to pick out and ball up the hair that I combed out. I clean my brush every time I use it because, if I didn't, it would get wadded up with hair before the end of the week. I have to be mindful of the drain in the shower and bathtub because its liable to become clogged with my hair, and I keep finding small clumps of hair on my pillows and sheets. I know that people lose hair every day, but damn - is it this visible?
4) (Mild) anemia - various doctors I've seen throughout my life so far have usually remarked about low iron levels in my blood. When I can donate blood (which I love doing!) I usually only barely pass the minimum requirement for iron.
5) Depression - anyone who knows me and my history knows that between the ages of 10 and 20, I was miserably, brutally depressed. I still find myself leaning towards depressive tendencies occasionally.
6) Constipation - if I'm lucky, I'll take a dump every other day, on average. When I do, its nothing like the epic experiences my one friend loves reporting to me on an almost daily basis. Its been like this as long as I can remember with only a few exceptions.
7) Faintness - Every so often I'll feel dizzy, light-headed, or my vision will get funky when I stand up from a sitting or lying down position.
There are more symptoms and plenty more nuance to Keys' studies, subjects, and research, but those are the characteristics that jumped out at me. I couldn't believe it. I still don't. How can I - someone who binges until her stomach aches - have the same symptoms as someone who's starving? What could possibly have happened that would cause my body to believe that it was in a famine when its B.M.I. is 37? 37! Its almost laughable, actually. My entire life so far I've assumed that I was overweight because I ate too much, which I would've guessed meant that I was over-nourished, if anything. But under-nourished? What kind of joke is this?