Lean Vitality: How I Lost the Pandemic 15 ... er 40lb

Slow and steady: baby steps will eventually snowball into a healthier you

Like a lot of people I started gaining fat midway through the pandemic - by the end of it I was 50 pounds over my pre pandemic weight - and none of that was extra muscle. I thought it was unusual and unexplained, but in retrospect I was working a lot more, under a lot more stress, sleeping poorly and far less physically active. I was probably also eating more or just more junk food. 

It’s hard to know for sure without tracking these things, which is one reason many weight loss coaches tell people to track their intake and activities. The other benefit to doing that is that the act itself encourages people to improve the metrics. 

The other thing that may have contributed to the weight gain was a pretty severe case of long COVID, though in my clinical experience patients usually didn’t have a significant weight change, or if they did it was usually weight loss. I only saw a handful of patients with the disorder complain of weight gain.

The issue worsened gradually and then suddenly, because at some point during the last 10-20 pound gain I really started feeling uncomfortably large. When I realized I couldn't do the wonderful halaasana yoga pose anymore I knew I had to lose the weight. 

I began with a visualization exercise I learned from a 2 minute Tik Tok video by coach Tara Garrison (who also gave a talk at last year's longcovidreset.com summit). She described a manifestation technique where you visualize the outcome you want and feel gratitude for it during the visualization. 

I found doing that felt very powerful. I had incorporated a daily gratitude practice years before, but had never considered feeling grateful for something that I didn’t yet have. It seems a bit strange, right? Gratitude is for things that you already have, yet it’s actually easier to feel strongly grateful for something you want while visualizing having it. It makes the visualization seem much more real because it involves not just your mind but your heart and it seems to pull you from your present state into that future state. 

So initially that’s basically all I did and it was an enjoyable experience. Certainly not difficult like eating differently or exercising more. 

Then after a few days I wanted to do something else so I started intermittent fasting. This was always easy for me to do by just skipping breakfast. It can cut down your calories, though not necessarily since people can make up the missed calories in the other meals. I didn’t make an effort to track how much I ate and probably ate a bit less. The fasting also triggers autophagy which is helpful and decreases the number of insulin spikes during the day, which can have a big effect over time. 

Next I saw a very informative video on cold plunging by Andrew Huberman. I already knew most of the science, particularly that it could increase levels of healthy brown fat which raises metabolism and probably boosts weight loss:

“...total BAT activity is inversely associated with adiposity and indexes of the metabolic syndrome suggesting that increasing BAT mass and/or activity may be a target for pharmacologic and nutritional interventions that modulate energy expenditure to treat obesity [32].”

But I hadn’t realized the strong effect cold plunging had on motivation and baseline dopamine levels. I also learned that some evidence suggested it raised testosterone levels, which is also very helpful for reversing weight gain and countering the elevated estrogen levels that come as a result of excess white fat. 

So I decided to try it out figuring if my motivation went up I would be more inclined to start exercising and changing what I ate rather than just when I ate, and even if I didn’t change anything the hormonal and thermogenic effects would be helpful. 

I was astounded to find that within a week or so of starting the cold plunge my residual long haul symptoms completely vanished, so at that point I knew I was on to something and decided to upgrade from 7 Eleven ice runs to a more permanent cold plunge set up. Instead of shelling out $6000 for a purpose built cold plunge unit. I found a reasonably priced chest freezer and made some very minor modifications and additions suggested by other online DIYers. 

At this point I had probably been doing intermittent fasting for a few weeks, but I hadn’t noticed any weight change. 

This mirrors my own prior experience with both weight gain and weight loss as well as the experience of many patients with weight changes as well as with chronic disease recovery in general: it is often a step function rather than a gradual continuous change. There is a certain amount of inertia that has to be overcome before you can finally push your body into a different state. 

With overweight and other chronic illnesses there may be a number of steps rather than just one. After some effort the ball gets rolling and then it pauses again after some improvement and it takes a bit more effort, or just persisting in the previous efforts, to get things going again. 

In some cases once change starts happening it can go quite fast between stages. 

Once I started the cold plunge I did notice my motivation gradually improved over the course of months. 

A few weeks after starting I decided it was time to focus on fixing my sleeping habits. I knew that poor sleep and stress were linked to weight gain and general health and it was another thing that seemed relatively easy to change, unlike exercise and eating differently. 

I decided to get sun before 10am for 30 minutes and wear blue blockers after dark to increase melatonin production. This began helping me sleep better within days, but it took about a month to really solidify the improvements in my sleep. After 4 weeks I was falling asleep much faster than I had in years and sleeping deeper and waking up refreshed. 

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During that month I also decided to get a lot more sun and during the middle of the day and supplement vitamin D if I did not get enough. I knew from prior testing many years before that my vitamin D levels were very low, but I had never put forth a concerted effort to correct that. 

I know now there is research showing a link between vitamin D levels and being overweight, as well as a study suggesting that supplementation to normal levels can increase weight loss success. 

The other thing I learned recently is that melatonin may help with weight loss, and after 40 levels tend to plummet in most people. 

During the sleep improvement month I also started changing the way I ate. It finally seemed like a small ask, rather than an overwhelming one - probably because the sun and sleep were dramatically improving my mood and stress levels. 

So I decided to greatly reduce my intake of obesogenic chemicals like sugar and other refined carbs - initially I stopped eating modern wheat bread, for a while we made homemade bread with ancient wheat varieties like spelt and einkorn, but after a few weeks I stopped craving bread (modern wheat is far more addictive) and just dropped it almost entirely, usually only having it on rare occasions like at a party. I also decided to completely eliminate industrial seed oils which meant no more eating out. Finally I decided to get strict about pesticide exposures from non organic food. 

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The seed oils are slowly replaced by healthy fats in your cell membranes over the course of a few months, while the pesticides are released from fat once weight loss begins. 

At this point things started to shift and the weight started to melt off. Around the same time my motivation continued to climb and I decided to start walking every morning. Since I was wearing the blue blockers at night I found myself ready to go to sleep at 8 - 9pm and I would wake up easily by 5am, which gave me plenty of time in the mornings before work started. 

Over the course of a couple months my walks went from an hour a day to over 2 hours a day. Oftentimes I would listen to a podcast or call family members overseas, but I also found it enjoyable to just disconnect for part of the walk or even the entire walk and enter a thoughtful or semi meditative state. 

Next I decided to try out the carnivore diet. I only made it to 5 days, but lost 10 pounds (probably at least half was water). 

Yum. Source.

But what was far more significant was that I noticed in retrospect that my sugar addiction was gone. 

People who don’t have a sugar addiction will probably laugh at the thought of characterizing it that way, but it has been suggested that it is more addictive than cocaine. 

In the past I could cut out sugar and stop craving it, but if I exposed myself to a little bit of sugar I would quickly need more and more to satisfy my sweet tooth and eventually I could find myself eating half a dozen cupcakes in a sitting. If there were sweets in the house they usually wouldn’t last more than a few days. 

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After the carnivore diet not only did I have no sugar cravings, but when I did enjoy sweets I didn’t crave more and more later. I didn’t find myself buying them, I would even forget we had a tub of icecream in the fridge, which made me feel like a different person entirely from who I had been my entire life. 

Once the weight loss started it progressed in steps, I would stay within a range of 3 or so pounds for a week or more and then suddenly I would drop down 3 pounds to a new lower range. Generally speaking I lost at least 3 pounds a week and have lost over 40 pounds of fat in 3 months. 

Hopefully in a few weeks I’ll be back to pre pandemic levels and plan to keep going and lose a bit more to get back to my highschool weight - or maybe I’ll add the muscle on the way down and stay the same weight, which would be even better because it's not about a number, it’s about body composition. 200 pounds of pure muscle looks fantastic, while 200 pounds of fat can look like the New Years blimp. Beyond appearance, the sensation and gift of living in a lean and strong body that is far less prone to illness and other chronic diseases is the real reward. 

So that’s what worked for me. As with any recovery from a chronic condition there’s more than one path. 

For example building muscle with resistance training can be very helpful and I look forward to adding that, but it’s important to find the path of least resistance that you will follow and that will get you to your destination. There are no hard and fast rules, just start slow, stick to it and don’t give up. 

Other things that can help are targeted supplements like berberine, alpha yohimbine, EGCG, etc, hormone optimization (especially thyroid), continuous glucose monitoring, carb metabolism optimization strategies (macro sequence, pre meal vinegar, etc), and of course medications like metformin, which has been used for pre diabetes as well as life extension and can help people lose weight. Also appetite suppressants like the latest GLP-1 inhibitors, Saxenda / Ozempic, which have only been on the market for a few years and though they can trigger rapid sustained weight loss can also cause a rebound surge in appetite if coming off too quickly, reportedly increase the number though not the size of fat cells in the body, and delay gastric emptying, which may have unknown long term effects on digestive health. Ultimately I don’t think anyone really needs medication, but some people are unwilling or unable to make the long term lifestyle changes required to optimize their body composition. So despite the drawbacks and risks the benefit may be in favor for some patients - my plan is to consider these for patients who have tried other approaches without success.

Group coaching can also be very helpful for making any lasting lifestyle change, which is why at mygotodoc.com we’ve been working on an online course and group coaching program specifically for weight loss, which also includes the option of adding medically assisted weight loss strategies like continuous glucose monitoring, metformin, hormone testing and thyroid optimization, other lab testing for micronutrient optimization which can help with appetite control and all that should be launching later this month - I took what I learned from losing weight, and added a whole lot more in the way of education and additional tools that can be used to tailor a program to you.

But the greatest tool is probably the group and the coach. If you make something social it becomes far easier to do. 

Let me know what worked for you to lose weight or if you’re struggling what’s holding you back.