Abdominal Fat Is A Phase Folliwing The End Of Calorie Restriction

[mrchibbs]

I honestly don't know why we're arguing over this.

Eating prevents the release of PUFAs stored in the tissues by keeping the blood sugar high. It doesn't stop their accumulation in a stressed individual. A low metabolic state is reflective of a poor environment, and the adaptive response is to store the fats. If you take in the unsaturated kind, they will accumulate in your tissues.

For a child or very young person, I think Ray has said before that good food and a sunny place can be all it takes to restore an oxidative metabolism.

For an adult or older person with a severely impaired metabolism, eating whatever food without limiting the stressors probably won't be enough and will lead to obesity.
Cirion has been tracking his pulse and temperature and food intake. But personally, when I started Peat I ate over 4000 kcal a day for 6+ months and never saw significant increase in my basal pulse/temperature.

Eating sufficient carbs and sugars and easy to digest foods with plenty of calories is a necessary step for recovery, albeit not sufficient the older you get. Lots of food on its own is simply not ''sufficient" to restore thyroid function for many people.

 

[Cirion]

I honestly don't know why we're arguing over this.

Eating prevents the release of PUFAs stored in the tissues by keeping the blood sugar high. It doesn't stop their accumulation in a stressed individual. A low metabolic state is reflective of a poor environment, and the adaptive response is to store the fats. If you take in the unsaturated kind, they will accumulate in your tissues.

For a child or very young person, I think Ray has said before that good food and a sunny place can be all it takes to restore an oxidative metabolism.

For an adult or older person with a severely impaired metabolism, eating whatever food without limiting the stressors probably won't be enough and will lead to obesity.
Cirion has been tracking his pulse and temperature and food intake. But personally, when I started Peat I ate over 4000 kcal a day for 6+ months and never saw significant increase in my basal pulse/temperature.

Eating sufficient carbs and sugars and easy to digest foods with plenty of calories is a necessary step for recovery, albeit not sufficient the older you get. Lots of food on its own is simply not ''sufficient" to restore thyroid function for many people.

Yeah, I don't think anyone is arguing that sufficient calories, and sufficient carbohydrates, are both necessary ingredients for hypothyroid recovery. But they aren't enough, in and of themselves, either. So many other things many also need addressing, including but not limited to sunlight, quitting a stressful job, leaving a stressful relationship, alleviating EMF loads, and more. I have been eating lots of food for some time now and not recovered, 4000-5000 calories a day sometimes even more. It's not enough. But now I realize one of my main problems is my liver. Which needs specific targeted therapy, some of which include caffeine, B-vitamin supplementation/brewers yeast, and enough protein.

 

[Kelj]

I honestly don't know why we're arguing over this.

Eating prevents the release of PUFAs stored in the tissues by keeping the blood sugar high. It doesn't stop their accumulation in a stressed individual. A low metabolic state is reflective of a poor environment, and the adaptive response is to store the fats. If you take in the unsaturated kind, they will accumulate in your tissues.

For a child or very young person, I think Ray has said before that good food and a sunny place can be all it takes to restore an oxidative metabolism.

For an adult or older person with a severely impaired metabolism, eating whatever food without limiting the stressors probably won't be enough and will lead to obesity.
Cirion has been tracking his pulse and temperature and food intake. But personally, when I started Peat I ate over 4000 kcal a day for 6+ months and never saw significant increase in my basal pulse/temperature.

Eating sufficient carbs and sugars and easy to digest foods with plenty of calories is a necessary step for recovery, albeit not sufficient the older you get. Lots of food on its own is simply not ''sufficient" to restore thyroid function for many people.

It definitely takes persistent refeeding @ a high caloric level. Perhaps that's why many do not see the improvement they seek. I have personally experienced this, though, after years of very low metabolism and thyroid. I have seen older people turn it around. Any tweak that we think might move the needle in the right direction is fine. Anything that restricts calories is not. I just cannot bear to see anyone give up on the most basic need...calories. But, it is defining our age to be in fear of them.

Here's another mitigating factor where PUFA is concerned from this article:

http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/fats-functions-malfunctions.shtmlkoi


"Albumin facilitates the uptake of saturated fatty acids by cells of various types (Paris, et al., 1978), and its ability to bind fatty acids can protect cells to some extent from the unsaturated fatty acids (e.g., Rhoads, et al., 1983)"

If we combine enough of these factors, which are improved through having a body with plenty of energy to run itself, we may be more resilient to something so much a part of the natural food supply as PUFA are than we think.

 

[Kelj]

Yeah, I don't think anyone is arguing that sufficient calories, and sufficient carbohydrates, are both necessary ingredients for hypothyroid recovery. But they aren't enough, in and of themselves, either. So many other things many also need addressing, including but not limited to sunlight, quitting a stressful job, leaving a stressful relationship, alleviating EMF loads, and more. I have been eating lots of food for some time now and not recovered, 4000-5000 calories a day sometimes even more. It's not enough. But now I realize one of my main problems is my liver. Which needs specific targeted therapy, some of which include caffeine, B-vitamin supplementation/brewers yeast, and enough protein.

It takes more time.

 

[Ron J]

So it's about 2g of carbs to equal 1g of fat and there's energy loss in certain/every step of de novo lipogenesis? Does anyone have the percentage of carbs that turns into fat/fatty tissue via de novo lipogenesis?

 

[Cirion]

It takes more time.

Well, I've been eating a lot for almost a year now and all I have to show for it is an increase of 100 lbs of body weight. I'm not convinced. Being more intelligent about it (I wasn't at first) can mitigate this large body weight increase. Others like Haidut for example, managed to mitigate their weight gain by getting a handle on things like liver health earlier on. I want to say he only gained around 20 lbs. He would have kept gaining, like I did, if he didn't realize dietary fat was making him fat quickly, as well as other things like his liver health needed addressing. He was certainly smarter than me. The massive weight gain I am convinced, is completely optional, if you know what you're doing. Haidut is older than me, and probably under more stress than me, so the only reason he only gained 20 lb was because he figured out logically what his body needed rather than throwing food down the hatch without a plan in mind. Your body needs calories yes, absolutely true, but calories without nutrients is not helpful. I do agree nutrients without calories is also not helpful, but you need both, not one or the other.

 

[Kelj]

Well, I've been eating a lot for almost a year now and all I have to show for it is an increase of 100 lbs of body weight. I'm not convinced. Being more intelligent about it (I wasn't at first) can mitigate this large body weight increase. Others like Haidut for example, managed to mitigate their weight gain by getting a handle on things like liver health earlier on. I want to say he only gained around 20 lbs. He would have kept gaining, like I did, if he didn't realize dietary fat was making him fat quickly, as well as other things like his liver health needed addressing. He was certainly smarter than me. The massive weight gain I am convinced, is completely optional, if you know what you're doing. Haidut is older than me, and probably under more stress than me, so the only reason he only gained 20 lb was because he figured out logically what his body needed rather than throwing food down the hatch without a plan in mind. Your body needs calories yes, absolutely true, but calories without nutrients is not helpful. I do agree nutrients without calories is also not helpful, but you need both, not one or the other.

Target Weight: recover but not too much

"Aiming for a target weight includes the unwritten subtext that at some magical point you must restrict intake in order to maintain said target weight. It is one of the most serious problems of unscientific approaches to recovery from an eating disorder: that weight is supposed to be within our conscious control (it's not)."

A body has enough energy when you can eat any amount you want and not gain weight. If you are not a sumo wrestler or inhabitant of an island where they like their women fat, you are not going to force feed yourself. If you are gaining weight, you either need to, or you are not energy restored, no matter how much you are eating. Up the calories and give it more time. Many have done this. This is no fairy tale.

 

[Cirion]

I disagree. Weight is within our conscious control. Well, to a degree at least. Haidut proved this to be true. He is probably the healthiest, and smartest, individual on these forums, giving even ray peat a run for his money.

Again, I like to use him as an example because he only gained 20 lbs. Do you think he would have had this much success if he didn't do incessant research and figured out how to fix himself logically rather than hope that eating food with no supplementation or extra strategies would heal him?

I do agree that most people aren't eating enough though. Again, no one is debating about the importance of calories. What we are debating, is the importance of other things besides just calories. Calories alone don't fix all problems. They help a lot, but it's not enough by itself. Otherwise, this forum wouldn't matter, with all its research on how to fix hormones, vitamin deficiencies etc... and we can just close it down lol =P

 

[sweetpeat]

It takes more time.

From Phases of Recovery From An Eating Disorder Part 3:
"The median time to remission ranges from 14.4 months to 27 months. 2, 3 And in some studies the physical aspects of remission are disengaged from the psychological aspects. Drs. James Lock and Jennifer Couturier identified that the mean time to physical remission was 11.3 months, but the mean time to register remission on eating disordered thoughts and behaviors (using the Eating Disorder Examination score as the measurement tool) was 22.6 months. 4 One longitudinal study spanning 10–15 years noted that time to remission was protracted—ranging 57–79 months, depending on the definition of remission."

So at least anywhere from one to two years, possibly even up to 6 years (79 months). Jim Graham from the Minnesota starvation experiment says it took him three years to recover normal weight and eating habits after only 6 months of restricted eating. These are long time spans indeed. It's easy to see why most people would give up.

 

[lampofred]

I think recovering from anorexia is a special situation and is different from a ordinary person recovering from hypothyroidism as a result of lifestyle stress and high PUFA, low quality food.

Dr. Peat has said increasing calcium intake is the single most important thing for weight loss.

He has also said he doesn't subscribe to the "it gets worse before it gets better" approach to health.

 

[Cirion]

To expand my thoughts let me maybe give a hypothetical example

Lets say the body wants/needs a very large RDA of B vitamins, maybe 1,000,000% DV or even 10,000,000% DV (maybe slightly exaggerated, to demonstrate a point)

Do we suggest he eat 100 lb of bread, and in the process gain 100 lb of bodyweight (My math is off, but you get the point, large #'s), to get that amount the body wants of lets say B1 or B3? Technically, it might work (and this in fact probably explains WHY people gain so much weight in the process of recovering)

Why not a more *reasonable* approach which is still eat bread, fairly liberally even lets say 4000+ calories a day, BUT also couple it with targeted intelligent supplementation of brewers yeast and B-complex? I agree that the brewers yeast alone, without enough calories, won't do the job, and research verifies this fact, that vitamin supplement is useless in the face of low calories, but has been scientifically proven to be helpful and curative in the context of higher calories. But the yeast and other such targeted strategies, in the context of enough calories, will indeed be helpful, and mitigate the excessive amount of weight gain because it will lessen the amount of bread (in this example) needed overall. It's not a replacement, but an adjunct.

Calories alone do not provide energy. They are half the battle, but not the full battle. Your body can't just take food and use it, if its deficient in certain nutrients. I bring up B vitamins a lot, because they are something I've come to respect. Without B vitamins, your body simply can't utilize carbohydrates properly. So as I've found, I can increase my carbs as much as I want, but I wasn't seeing long term success--due to lack of liver function from insufficient B vitamins, and other things like protein. Does this mean restrict carbs? Not at all. It means use smart, intelligent strategy in conjunction with eating enough and the right foods. An energy deficit is complicated. An energy deficit is not only due to lack of energy intake (calories) BUT ALSO ability to use said energy intake. You can eat 10,000 calories but if your body can't use the calories, they aren't helping. If it were as simple as just eating more, there wouldn't be such an epidemic of hypothyroid. It shouldn't take years to recover, and I don't think it should get worse before it gets better either... generally at least. Further more, an energy deficit can be hormonal, due to a stressful environment. Yes, starvation/deficit of calories is a stressor, but it's not the only stressor we can see. All stressors deplete B-vitamins (Haidut said this in a recent interview) for example, exacerbating the B-vitamin problems. Things like insulin resistance means that no matter how much you eat, your cells will be in a functional energy deficit even in the face of 10,000 calories a day. It's not until insulin resistance is cured, by things like sunlight, thyroid, B vitamins, PUFA depletion, that things finally turn around and cells can get energy.

The liver is one of the most important organs in the body, and its health is paramount to long-term body health success. Not only does it detoxify estrogens and toxins, but it also processes and stores carbohydrates and thus regulates blood sugar levels. Anyone who is serious about their health needs to care about actively protecting/healing the liver.

Why needlessly suffer years to recover when the process can be accelerated with extra help? It's needlessly being a glutton for punishment.

 

[sweetpeat]

To expand my thoughts let me maybe give a hypothetical example

Lets say the body wants/needs a very large RDA of B vitamins, maybe 1,000,000% DV or even 10,000,000% DV (maybe slightly exaggerated, to demonstrate a point)

Do we suggest he eat 100 lb of bread, and in the process gain 100 lb of bodyweight (My math is off, but you get the point, large #'s), to get that amount the body wants of lets say B1 or B3? Technically, it might work (and this in fact probably explains WHY people gain so much weight in the process of recovering)

Why not a more *reasonable* approach which is still eat bread, fairly liberally even lets say 4000+ calories a day, BUT also couple it with targeted intelligent supplementation of brewers yeast and B-complex? I agree that the brewers yeast alone, without enough calories, won't do the job, and research verifies this fact, that vitamin supplement is useless in the face of low calories, but has been scientifically proven to be helpful and curative in the context of higher calories. But the yeast and other such targeted strategies, in the context of enough calories, will indeed be helpful, and mitigate the excessive amount of weight gain because it will lessen the amount of bread (in this example) needed overall. It's not a replacement, but an adjunct.

Calories alone do not provide energy. They are half the battle, but not the full battle. Your body can't just take food and use it, if its deficient in certain nutrients. I bring up B vitamins a lot, because they are something I've come to respect. Without B vitamins, your body simply can't utilize carbohydrates properly. So as I've found, I can increase my carbs as much as I want, but I wasn't seeing long term success--due to lack of liver function from insufficient B vitamins, and other things like protein. Does this mean restrict carbs? Not at all. It means use smart, intelligent strategy in conjunction with eating enough and the right foods. An energy deficit is complicated. An energy deficit is not only due to lack of energy intake (calories) BUT ALSO ability to use said energy intake. You can eat 10,000 calories but if your body can't use the calories, they aren't helping. If it were as simple as just eating more, there wouldn't be such an epidemic of hypothyroid. It shouldn't take years to recover, and I don't think it should get worse before it gets better either... generally at least. Further more, an energy deficit can be hormonal, due to a stressful environment. Yes, starvation/deficit of calories is a stressor, but it's not the only stressor we can see. All stressors deplete B-vitamins (Haidut said this in a recent interview) for example, exacerbating the B-vitamin problems. Things like insulin resistance means that no matter how much you eat, your cells will be in a functional energy deficit even in the face of 10,000 calories a day. It's not until insulin resistance is cured, by things like sunlight, thyroid, B vitamins, PUFA depletion, that things finally turn around and cells can get energy.

Why needlessly suffer years to recover when the process can be accelerated with extra help? It's needlessly being a glutton for punishment.

I don't see anything wrong with that approach. What I notice though from being a member of this forum for a while is that many people coming here for help are under-eating/over-training and reluctant to increase calories due to fear of weight gain. Even if increasing calories will help the healing process. Many seem to generally want advice on supplements or hormones, and are even willing to change the types of foods they eat to more "Peat-ish" but not generally willing to increase calories.

 

[redsun]

To expand my thoughts let me maybe give a hypothetical example

Lets say the body wants/needs a very large RDA of B vitamins, maybe 1,000,000% DV or even 10,000,000% DV (maybe slightly exaggerated, to demonstrate a point)

Do we suggest he eat 100 lb of bread, and in the process gain 100 lb of bodyweight (My math is off, but you get the point, large #'s), to get that amount the body wants of lets say B1 or B3? Technically, it might work (and this in fact probably explains WHY people gain so much weight in the process of recovering)

Why not a more *reasonable* approach which is still eat bread, fairly liberally even lets say 4000+ calories a day, BUT also couple it with targeted intelligent supplementation of brewers yeast and B-complex? I agree that the brewers yeast alone, without enough calories, won't do the job, and research verifies this fact, that vitamin supplement is useless in the face of low calories, but has been scientifically proven to be helpful and curative in the context of higher calories. But the yeast and other such targeted strategies, in the context of enough calories, will indeed be helpful, and mitigate the excessive amount of weight gain because it will lessen the amount of bread (in this example) needed overall. It's not a replacement, but an adjunct.

Calories alone do not provide energy. They are half the battle, but not the full battle. Your body can't just take food and use it, if its deficient in certain nutrients. I bring up B vitamins a lot, because they are something I've come to respect. Without B vitamins, your body simply can't utilize carbohydrates properly. So as I've found, I can increase my carbs as much as I want, but I wasn't seeing long term success--due to lack of liver function from insufficient B vitamins, and other things like protein. Does this mean restrict carbs? Not at all. It means use smart, intelligent strategy in conjunction with eating enough and the right foods. An energy deficit is complicated. An energy deficit is not only due to lack of energy intake (calories) BUT ALSO ability to use said energy intake. You can eat 10,000 calories but if your body can't use the calories, they aren't helping. If it were as simple as just eating more, there wouldn't be such an epidemic of hypothyroid. It shouldn't take years to recover, and I don't think it should get worse before it gets better either... generally at least. Further more, an energy deficit can be hormonal, due to a stressful environment. Yes, starvation/deficit of calories is a stressor, but it's not the only stressor we can see. All stressors deplete B-vitamins (Haidut said this in a recent interview) for example, exacerbating the B-vitamin problems. Things like insulin resistance means that no matter how much you eat, your cells will be in a functional energy deficit even in the face of 10,000 calories a day. It's not until insulin resistance is cured, by things like sunlight, thyroid, B vitamins, PUFA depletion, that things finally turn around and cells can get energy.

Why needlessly suffer years to recover when the process can be accelerated with extra help? It's needlessly being a glutton for punishment.

Depending on what the food source, it may not even help replete B-vitamins. I was almost about to follow refeeding syndrome theories myself quite a few months back but in reality depending on what you eat you will likely never fully "recover". Bread probably does not contain the sufficient amount of B-vitamins needed to digest it. Even if we were to assume white bread was fortified with enough Bs to digest itself, I can 100% guarantee it does not have beyond that, meaning it does not contain enough Bs to both digest itself and provide B-vitamins(or minerals necessary for carb metabolism) to contribute to other bodily processes besides the immediate functions necessary to digest it. Likely you have people following this refeeding protocol and gaining tons of weight back for literally nothing because the refeeding protocol is pretty generous on allowed foods which often include many empty foods.

A meal say steak and potatoes for example likely provides enough micros for digestion and has a little bit left over to build up in the body over time. But even with nutritious foods the increase in Bs in the body is probably still slow as hell, thats where B-complex supplementation comes in. B-complex expedites the process, it provides a surplus of what the body wants right now, not in a years time from eating whole foods.

I don't see anything wrong with that approach. What I notice though from being a member of this forum for a while is that many people coming here for help are under-eating/over-training and reluctant to increase calories due to fear of weight gain. Even if increasing calories will help the healing process. Many seem to generally want advice on supplements or hormones, and are even willing to change the types of foods they eat to more "Peat-ish" but not generally willing to increase calories.

Vanity is not necessarily a bad thing. I think the reluctance to increase food intake come from a misunderstanding. When carbs make up the bulk of the diet, it is much harder to pile on weight assuming one is supplementing Bs so the body can better handle the large change in carb intake. Chomping on saturated fats and tons of carbs is usually the main reason many gain a lot on Peat and all this weight gaining talk spreads to the newbies and makes them hesitant.

Funnily enough, generally speaking, it is the history of high fat diets, not high carb, that deplete Bs much more. Low carb somewhat prevents weight gain but things like B2, and B5 are depleted on high fat as well not too mention many like to exercise a lot on high fat which exacerbates the problem. You can definitely get B deficiency on high carb, but usually thats because of crappy food and insane amounts of exercise and stress.

 

[Cirion]

I don't see anything wrong with that approach. What I notice though from being a member of this forum for a while is that many people coming here for help are under-eating/over-training and reluctant to increase calories due to fear of weight gain. Even if increasing calories will help the healing process. Many seem to generally want advice on supplements or hormones, and are even willing to change the types of foods they eat to more "Peat-ish" but not generally willing to increase calories.

On this, I agree 100%. I've been reading a lot of posts lately, even of veteran forum posters, who are struggling to get their metabolism on track, and when you read how many calories they're eating, it's not enough.

Hormones and vitamins are NOT a replacement for sufficient calories. I am certainly on board with that. I generally eat 4000+ a day myself.

 

[Cirion]

Depending on what the food source, it may not even help replete B-vitamins. I was almost about to follow refeeding syndrome theories myself quite a few months back but in reality depending on what you eat you will likely never fully "recover". Bread probably does not contain the sufficient amount of B-vitamins needed to digest it. Even if we were to assume white bread was fortified with enough Bs to digest itself, I can 100% guarantee it does not have beyond that, meaning it does not contain enough Bs to both digest itself and provide B-vitamins(or minerals necessary for carb metabolism) to contribute to other bodily processes besides the immediate functions necessary to digest it. Likely you have people following this refeeding protocol and gaining tons of weight back for literally nothing because the refeeding protocol is pretty generous on allowed foods which often include many empty foods.

A meal say steak and potatoes for example likely provides enough micros for digestion and has a little bit left over to build up in the body over time. But even with nutritious foods the increase in Bs in the body is probably still slow as hell, thats where B-complex supplementation comes in. B-complex expedites the process, it provides a surplus of what the body wants right now, not in a years time from eating whole foods.

Yeah this was exactly what I was trying to convey. When the deficit of nutrients is extremely large in the body, supplementation probably will be required. I hate to say this, since for a while I was on the train of no supplements, but now I'm admitting that I was partially wrong. I still am not a fan of willy-nilly supplementation, but rather specific, logical, intelligent supplementation. Also, a balanced b-vitamin (like Energin) is very safe and hard to screw yourself up with, because Haidut specifically made sure all the B-vitamins were dosed appropriately, to avoid problems that you MIGHT run into if, say, you supplemented B-1 all by itself. So I still think isolated supplements are generally best avoided unless you know what you're doing (hint - no one here does except maybe Haidut and Ray Peat, possibly other really intelligent posters like Amazoniac... no offense, and I lump myself in with "too dumb" people also =P), but things Energin, maybe Estroban, are all relatively safe due to them having all the associate nutrients in balanced, correct proportions. Similarily, I'd avoid just supplementing an isolated mineral like zinc. Because just taking zinc can jack up copper, iron, etc levels up and unless you really are religious with testing/measurements to be sure things are on track, can really mess yourself up worse than you were before.

 

[sweetpeat]

I think the reluctance to increase food intake come from a misunderstanding.

Agreed. It doesn't help that 2000 calories is considered adequate average intake for adults. Yeah, maybe if you're 12, but not for a full grown man or woman.

 

[Inspired]

This may be really unpopular, but metformin does help with NOT gaining fat. It may even help someone lose fat.

If you've gained 100lbs, you should really give metformin a try.

Metformin is something to take if you are being sedentary and have a huge carb loaded meal. Take some metformin and it won't get stored as fat. You don't have to take it all the time. But every time you can shut down fat storage, it adds up to less weight gain.

My opinion is that we can be flexible. Why can't we incorporate other things? I've experimented with intermittent fasting, low carb, fasted cardio, metformin etc, and they all have their usefulness.

The key is not to be an extremist with any one of these ideas.

 

[Cirion]

Agreed. It doesn't help that 2000 calories is considered adequate average intake for adults. Yeah, maybe if you're 12, but not for a full grown man or woman.

When I used to eat 2000 a day or sometimes even less, I was in the absolute worst health of my life... Brain fog (I'm not just talking a little foggy, no, the level of brain fog I'm talking here is OMG my brain has zero visibility level of brain fog), zero libido/zero interest in women, insane cortisol/adrenaline levels/absolute inability to get more than a few hrs of sleep, constant intense hunger, no confidence, chronic depression, all sorts of fun stuff. But hey, I was very lean! So there is that... lol.

I think 2000 is too low even for 12 yr old. When I was about that age I used to pound 2000-3000 calories in a single meal at an all you can eat buffet at CiCI's pizza or something. The good old days... I remember getting into food eating contests with my brother and friends. We'd have a contest to see who could eat the most slices. Lol. I think my record was like 14 slices.

 

[Kelj]

If you are:

Without health issues
Without excess fat
Without weight gain no matter what you eat
Don't have to take supplements ( Ray says the safest is vitamin E, the others being riskier)
Have plenty of energy
Are generally relaxed, not stressed
Are resilient when stressors come your way
Have healthy skin, hair, nails, etc.
Can go to work

I think you are healthy and what you are doing is working.
Have it your way.

 

[Cirion]

If you are:

Without health issues
Without excess fat
Without weight gain no matter what you eat
Don't have to take supplements ( Ray says the safest is vitamin E, the others being riskier)
Have plenty of energy
Are generally relaxed, not stressed
Are resilient when stressors come your way
Have healthy skin, hair, nails, etc.
Can go to work

I think you are healthy and what you are doing is working.
Have it your way.

I pretty much agree with that list, that's definitely a good list of healthfulness. But even by their own admission on the eating disorder website, it can take up to 6 yrs to check all those boxes that you listed. I'm not interested in waiting 6 yrs of suffering from brain fog, low morning energy, weight gain, and other hypothyroid/health issues when some things can accelerate the process. There's a big difference from building up health, than maintaining it. It's a lot easier to maintain health than it is to build it, with that in mind, it's a lot more plausible to maintain health without supplements than it is to build without them. Or at least it's gonna take a lot longer. I strongly believe that if you know what you are doing, you can turn health around in a major way in months or even weeks. Certainly not a full recovery, to be sure, but definitely improvements. Yeah I'm not healthy yet but I'd be arrogant if I claimed I know what I'm doing lol. This stuff is complex, and takes a lot to figure out.