Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson, and welcome to the Weekly Vlog. All right, I'm doing a follow-up vlog on a vlog that I released just a few weeks ago called Maintenance Weight Creep. In that vlog, I talked about how my weight had crept up over a couple years and I'd shaved out food, shaved out food, and my weight was still up. I just talked about how I was feeling about it. A couple things. One is I need to apologize that in that vlog, I was not mindful about addressing how what I was saying might land for someone with an eating disorder background from a history of extreme food restriction. That's not my personal background. I often do forget, unfortunately, how my words might land for someone from that perspective. I talked with Dr. Joy Jacobs after the vlog came out, and she was very helpful in letting me know how she guides what we call the Fifth Bright Line community and Bright Line Eating?. These are people who need a fifth Bright Line in addition to no sugar, no flour, meals, quantities. Those are the four Bright Lines. They have a fifth Bright Line of no binging, no purging, no restricting. That's the fifth Bright line. She said she's always mindful to talk to the Fifth Bright Line community about how everybody's different, and it's very nuanced coaching someone around their food. In my case, I don't come from a food restriction background, an anorexic or a food restriction background. I've been very solid in my recovery for years. And so, it did work for me to shave out food that was a fine thing for me to do based on my metabolism. My metabolism was going down legitimately, but I didn't mention that, that if you come from a food restriction background, this is not an approach for you. If you have been in a binge, purge, restrict cycle, or anything of the sort recently, this is not an approach for you. I should have mentioned that, and I was not thoughtful, so I apologize for that.
I think for a lot of people in Bright Line Eating who have experienced Maintenance weight creep, they found my vlog really helpful just to hear how another journey or on the path, another person arm in arm with them in Maintenance for years and years and years, thinks about these issues around their weight and that it's not always exactly what we would like it to be. That's kind of the way it goes sometimes. So anyway, right after that vlog came out, a lot of things changed very rapidly, and it was interesting to me how quickly everything I said in that vlog became obsolete really, really fast. I just need to tell you the first thing that happened right after I released that vlog, I mean really, I think within a week or two is I got an InBody scan. Now, generally, electrical impedance scans are not very accurate, but the InBody is the one I trust in terms of electrical impedance. It has shown very high reliability ratings with DEXA and other more accurate forms of body composition measurement. It's constructed such that it avoids a lot of the big issues that other electrical impedance measurement techniques have. The one thing is you do have to be very careful about your hydration levels, how much you've had to eat or drink, because it can really affect the measurements. I'm very careful to always get an InBody scan after I've had a good night's sleep and then one 12-ounce cup of fluid, and then I get the scan. I keep that very consistent. What that means is that I can usually compare readings year over year, month over month, year over year, because I keep it pretty consistent. It may not be an absolute accurate number, but it's a consistent number in terms of comparing to the last measurement.
What I found from that InBody scan shocked me. It shocked me. I was very surprised to note that my lean body mass is so up that it's almost the highest it's ever been in my whole life. Now, I shouldn't be that surprised about that because I've been lifting weights a lot, but my lean mass is up to the tune of many, many, many, many, many pounds of lean mass. Now, that's not all muscle. Lean mass includes muscle and intracellular and extracellular water, but we're talking up like nine pounds all in lean mass, all in muscle and water, which means that my number being up on the scale is not that surprising. My fat mass is down. Historically, it's not the lowest it's ever been, but it's on the low end for me, in terms of the last 20 years, that was interesting to see. I didn't think that was going to be the case because my waist measurement is on the high end for me, and now I'm realizing that that is something that's apparently happening with age with me. I'm 50 now and my waist is an inch or two bigger than it was at this same body composition level 10 or 20 years ago. That's not what I would prefer, but it is what it is. My waist is bigger than it was when I was a younger woman, but my body fat mass is down. And that's interesting. So, the fact that my weight is up a little bit is a good thing. It means that I'm adding lean mass, which is one of the best predictors of longevity. It's a predictor of health. It's a predictor of health span, literally the length of your years that are active, healthy, mobile, vibrant, vigorous, adding muscle to your body is one of the best things you can do to maintain a healthy lifespan. So, I feel great about that.
That's the first thing I did is I got an InBody test, and I realized, oh my gosh, my fat mass isn't up. My weight's up because I'm adding muscle. This is amazing. Okay. So, that was the first thing. The next thing that happened was I realized, haven't I been decreasing my thyroid medicine for a couple years? I have been. I've gone down and down and down. There were some reasons that we were going down. We were running an experiment, and basically it didn't work in terms of we were trying to get other blood levels to come into alignment and it didn't work. But in the meantime, my need for less and less and less fuel tracked linearly with how my thyroid medicine, which shockingly governs the metabolism, was going down and down and down and down. Now, if you don't know, I have a very extreme case of, I have Hashimoto's. So, I just went to my, I have two doctors that track my thyroid, I have a world-renowned thyroid specialist, and I have an amazing functional medicine doctor, and they both work with me on my thyroid. I just brought this up at an appointment with my functional medicine doctor. She said, yeah, we should probably just go back up on your thyroid. So, we did. And suddenly, I feel way less cold, and my metabolism has come roaring back. Meanwhile, I'm working with my personal trainer, and the way those sessions usually work is that I do mobility exercises like stretches and working into it like warmup stuff for about 35, 40 minutes. In an hour session, that means I've got 20 minutes at the end for actual pumping iron. And so, what I started doing is I started coming half an hour earlier to the sessions. So, I get most of my mobility work done before I start working with him. And that gives us, instead of 20 minutes to pump iron, it gives us 50 or 55 minutes to pump iron. So, I've dramatically increased how much weight training I'm doing just by coming earlier and getting my warmup out of the way early.
I've increased food. I've added two protein servings and a grain serving, a three ounce, not a full four ounce, a three-ounce grain serving to my food plan, and my body's loving it, and my metabolism is way better. So, it's just interesting. I thought that I had thought through all the factors in my Maintenance Weight Creep vlog, and it's just interesting how the body is such a complex system. The mind is such a complex system. I know that the number on the scale doesn't represent adipose tissue. That the number on the scale represents all sorts of factors, including silly things like whether you've gone poop. Yet today, the number on the scale is so unreliable, and yet my weight was consistently up and I was thinking it was a thing. It wasn't a thing. My weight's up because I'm strong like bull. That's why my weight is up.
God bless. Sometimes I think the bathroom scale, I should just not even use it. Just use my clothes. I've got a pair of pants that I can use to tell where I'm at. Anyway, yeah, maybe someday I'll do that. Maybe someday I'll just stop. I know many of you have just stopped with the bathroom scale. It doesn't reflect much. If my clothes fit, I'm fine. So anyway, I'm steadily in Maintenance, very, very happy, very thriving. Definitely not in a place of wanting to take back the food or the weight problem and think that it's an issue. All is right in my world. And yeah, there were just a few variables that I hadn't quite looked at yet. And so, I thought I would catch you up on the metabolism situation, and I'm glad I'm adding some food, and I'm glad I'm adding some protein because I need it for my weight workouts. I am making sure that I'm getting over a hundred grams of protein every day, and I need it. I'm lifting weights. All right, that's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
