This is not a blog about a perfect body (even though the story begins and ends with one) and how to punish or starve yourself to get one. It’s a story about how I broke my metabolism by being too extreme and too healthy after recovering my son from autism and healing myself in 2008.
And if you’re an autism mom, you are either ruining your metabolism or (unknowingly) struggling because of a broken metabolism.
(Do cravings, anger, irritability, weight gain, exhaustion, sleep issues, weight-loss resistance, over-eating, and NOTHING WORKS sound familiar? yep. Told you so.) That’s why it’s relevant to you how I fixed mine.
Back to my body now…
It all began with me waking up in a pool of sweat. I also suddenly had to get up three times at night to pee. Little did I know that this was my body showing me that my metabolism was broken.
I couldn’t believe what was happening. I was healthy, and I was gluten-free. I was exercising. I was fasting several times every week. Sometimes for two days. Grounding. Walking. No processed foods.
But I was also in denial about the consequences and the occasional bursts of hunger that led me to overeat healthy foods after fasting in one setting because of hunger pangs (chocolate, peanut butter, raising, oat crackers with loads of goats cheese, dried fruit, etc.) and then coffee for breakfast and a full day of fasting to “balance things out”.
We’ll get to how skipping carbs and breakfast, relationship stress/trauma, a short period of veganism, fasting, skipping breakfast, and fearing carbs had been detrimental to my metabolism in a sec.
But first….this is how I felt when I fixed this issue a few weeks ago.
Two weeks ago, I could finally say that I’d fixed the issue. I also had to weigh myself and looked at myself in the mirror and saw abs, muscles, and a body composition that I’ve not had since I was 24.
170 cm.
57 kilos
Abs.
Biceps.
Lean arms.
Smooth legs with definition.
What’s changed?
What have I done?
How can you experience the same ( unless you’re too much of a control freak to do this)?
How is this linked to autism parenting and autism recovery?
To tell you all the details, I have to take you back to the beginning, middle, and current moment in my autism turnaround /self-healing journey.
Forced into veganism
I have a scary video to show you. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I am warning autism moms and autism families against veganism. In 2022 I had an unexpected challenge that ended up proving the point (and it led to me finding a piece to the autism healing puzzle that I wouldn’t have found otherwise.)
This is me, after I was diagnosed with breast cancer, had a mastectomy. Because I didn’t want chemo or radiation, I went for repurposed drugs and a diet. Cancer cells live on sugar, protein, and fats, and because I was following Care Oncology’s cancer program, I went on a hardcore no meat, low fat, plant-based diet to starve metastatic cells, tumor cells, and cancer stem cells.
Those months on a vegan diet were the straw that broke the camel’s back.
After removing my implants having left an unhealthy relationship and New Age spirituality, mastectomy, and the stress of moving and having to start from scratch with my boys…MY BODY WAS DONE. Just like your body is broken (like mine was in 2004 – 2008) because of autism symptoms, screaming, sleepless nights, eloping, nonverbal autism, etc.
What breaks autism moms’ metabolism?
THE LAST THING WE WANT TO DO IS ADD MORE STRESS TO A BODY THAT IS ALREADY IN A CORTISOL OVERDRIVE. And long-term fasting, skipping breakfast, fasted cardio, cardio (in general), 30 – 60 minute workouts, skipping carbs, and only drinking coffee in the morning are doing just that:
Adding to the problem.
Causing the metabolism to break down.
Causing insulin resistance and malnutrition because no nutrition gets into the cells, no matter how much you eat (that’s why we have cravings and hunger pangs).
Causing night sweats, and weight loss resistance (or inability to gain muscle).
Causing us to age faster.
Breaking down muscle, bones, and collagen.
Causing stress, anxiety, and depression.
Stop fasting – eat breakfast – eat more carbs.
When I started peeing at night and having night sweats, I knew I had to change something RADICALLY. I invested in tools to monitor my metabolism, giving me a daily plan for my macros. It showed that I needed MORE CARBS and more protein and more fats. I implemented those in my diet. I was shown exactly what I needed and what I’d had too much of the day before. It was so fascinating.
From that information, I developed my recovery program based on the metrics. I monitored my sleep, heart rate variability, fat burn versus carb burn (aka cortisol levels and nervous system. That’s how I learned that my body was getting into stress mode/cortisol overload and metabolic dysfunction when I skipped breakfast when I had coffee when I didn’t eat enough carbs in the morning when I fasted. I was SO SURPRISED but I reluctantly changed my eating/lifestyle. And it worked.
All my metrics shifted very quickly. I started to put on muscle, gain abs, and maintain a super lean but strong constitution, and I was eating more and exercising less than I had done for years.
Want to learn exactly how I did it? Want to get access to the tools and gadgets I used?
Send me a voice message here
and I will send you a replay from a 1/2 day workshop I did recently about this strategy and we can voice message each other if you have questions after that (PS I ONLY HELP AUTISM OR ADHD MOMS AT THE MOMENT SO ONLY USE THIS SERVICE IF YOU ARE ONE OF THOSE)