I finished Leigh Peele's books The Fat Loss Troubleshoot and The Metabolic Repair Manual. I bought them both because they go together like peas and carrots. The Fat Loss Troubleshoot is the basic guide for anybody struggling to lose weight or hoping to avoid a plateau. If you're lucky, it will send you sailing through any slow-downs. If you're not so lucky, or if you've been training your guts out every day, hours at a time, with no breaks, on barely enough food to keep a cricket alive (you know who you are!), then The Metabolic Repair Manual is the answer to your prayers. It's a step-by-step guide to restoring your metabolism to a normal, active, 2,000+ calories per day without weight gain. If I could send the REPAIR program back in time to my 20 year-old stupid self, I would totally do so. It would have saved me literally decades of struggle.
You may recall that at the height of my starving destructiveness, I would gain weight on anything over 800 calories per day. After reading Leigh's books, I understand that not only had I blown up my metabolism, I'd thrown my electrolytes all out of whack. That's why I could eat 5 extra crackers and gain 3 pounds. My fluid balance had gone crazy, so any extra sodium or carbs would cause me to balloon. Who knew?
These books cover not only calories and nutrients, but also hormones, electrolytes, fluid balance, and food allergies. She addresses the thyroid thing, helps you sort out your numbers, and explains what's up with your seemingly-clueless doctor. She has some really eye-opening examples of food measuring gone astray and accidental deficit wrecking. She helps you understand that you WANT it to be your fault and not a medical issue. (Hint: If it's your fault, you can fix it.) She's able to convey a wealth of information without putting you to sleep. Although she is very knowledgeable and very research-oriented, she has a complete goofball sense of humor. She explains hormones and metabolism using bees and pirates. She compares your endocrine system to a pizza factory. Would I have carefully read the entire endocrine chapter had she not been talking about pizza? No I would not. She's brilliant in that regard.
The Metabolic Repair Manual has a series of questions and tests to help you determine just how messed up you are. From there, she gives a specific week-by-week prescription for repairing your metabolism. I was duly impressed. I was also relieved that what I've been telling people all of these years is mostly correct. What I hadn't been able to do was give people personalized numbers and ratios for every single week of their recovery. Leigh does that really well. She tells you exactly what to do, what to expect, and includes plenty of detailed examples and case studies. She also includes workouts, because deranged workout habits and too little rest can be major factors.
The purpose of her REPAIR program is to:
- Raise your resting metabolic rate
- Decrease muscle catabolism
- Increase stamina
- Increase thyroid function
- Reset Leptin levels back to normal
- Regulate some cases of PCOS
- Reverse "adrenal fatigue"
- Improve digestion function
- Increase fat metabolism
- Decrease excess water weight
At her website, you can click on the book covers to download sample .pdf files and check out the intros and tables of contents. Advance warning to grammar fanatics, these books have some grammatical mischief. The information itself is a lifesaver for struggling dieters and disordered eaters. Her message FAR outweighs any typos, but I know some of you will end up with a keyboard imprint on your forehead if you see effects/affects mixed up, so fair warning. :-D
