After my 30th diet that I have been on, once again, I lost 40 lbs and gained it back. But this time I was monitoring my health with blood tests and I noticed something disturbing. Every time I would be burning fat my cholesterol was just massively elevated (400+) and my HS-CRP (10+) was also massively elevated. I noticed as well that if I kept at it, all my inflammation markers would be elevated.

Looking into it, I found studies that suggested cholesterol was elevated because your body is releasing lipids from your stored fat and inflammation can be elevated because your body calls in the immune system to help get rid of the fat. Inflammation is something that is not good for me. I have a bone marrow condition that is known to get worse with inflammation.

I concluded that dieting and "diet culture" wasn't good for me. And I probably have never had an entire year where I didn't diet in someway. In fact I was dieting in the womb. My mom was put on Weight Watchers when she was pregnant with me because she gained a lot of weight with my sister. In fact I was born at a low weight and my sister was a butterball. But as we grew my sister was super thin and I was pudgy.

I suspect that dieting could be simply a way of training your body to get buy with less food and be more efficient with the food it gets. This could explain why people who diet end up fat. I have had my BMR tested 3 times and they were all low.

So I have decided to make my peace with my body as it is. My set point is about 210. And has pretty much always been. I am mostly pretty healthy with normal blood pressure, a zero coronary calcium score, and a low A1c.

In fact one reason I came to this conclusion is that while researching health when I was losing weight, I kept stumbling on evidence that obesity was not, in fact, as bad for you (particularly women) as one might think. For instance longevity studies have shown that women do so much better with excess weight than men. So good that it almost doesn't make a difference.

One problem I have though is that the HAES and Anti Diet movements are very much all or nothing. They want you to not restrict at all and you are very censored in what you are allowed to say. Makes me wonder about them. I have tried for a few weeks to do that and it just leads to binging.

As for going to the doctor.. I have decided to refuse all weight measures going forward. I don't want them on my record. It is just a needless distraction. I have a physical coming up in a few weeks I may request a referral to a nutritionist but I worry that these movements are not helpful either. I have looked into intuitive eating but honestly, I have spent 50 years not listening to my body. I fear my body doesn't have an intuitive bit left in it.

I am also looking for exercise that is fun. When I was a kid I spent hours in sports but I looked at it as fun. Now, I hate even the thought of exercise because of so many years doing it to lose weight.