Details of Personal History
<middle school years>
My parents were farmers, and my father worked really hard from early in the morning until late at night to put food on the table. Though our family was poor when I was a kid, when I started middle school, we were better off. My father couldn’t eat enough when he was a kid, so he was always telling us to eat more.
In the morning, there were stir-fried dishes, grilled fish, rice, soup, sweet bread, milk, etc. for breakfast.
Maybe other family members were eating in moderation, but I was too greedy and always ate until I thought I was going to explode. Though my older brother had a good physique, he didn’t eat more than what his body needed.
I was always eating over my capacity to digest food, so I’d never felt I was hungry throughout the day. With such habits, I started to have gastrointestinal trouble around the first year in middle school, and for about a year, my hair started falling out, my nails became thin like paper, and my muscles became weaker. What's more, my height shrank about five mm despite my growth phase.
It was some kind of decreased gastrointestinal absorption disorder. I believe, the nutrition I had was the bare minimum to sustain my body and it couldn’t afford to grow.
<High school years>
After graduating from high school, I was hospitalized for gastrointestinal tests. I remember the doctor said: “Your stomach is thin like that of an old man” when I swallowed the gastro camera. Since I was thin, I expected the inside of my body to be thin, too.
<University years>
When I got into college, I lost weight in the thirty-kilogram range because of entrance exams. I wore several layers of clothes to look bigger, however I couldn’t make any friends.
I finally realized that I had to do something to gain weight, so I started training at the gym since I was big fan of fighting sports.
There were many ripped people working on bodybuilding and they mocked me at first like, “Are you eating meat?” “You must be eating only instant noodles.” ”Eat more protein and rice...” But I continued.
If I describe how my body at that time was....
(1) I seldom felt hungry and most of the time, I felt heavy around my lower abdomen.
(2) Six to eight hours after I ate good protein such as eggs or meat, I sensed when my body was producing blood.
(3) Soon after I went to sleep at night, I felt my body regenerating from the day’s activities (I guess there is some growth hormone secreted during the night).
(4) Soon after I drank milk when I was hungry, I felt the calcium being absorbed into my blood circulation from the gastric wall. (My nerves started calming down. The bottom of my teeth where minerals were taken from throbbed with a little pain).
I ate as much as I could every day and went to the gym, but fifteen- kilogram dumbbells were the most I could lift. I actually sensed my small intestine working hard in order to take more nutrition, but it couldn’t. The next morning, my lower belly was heavy with undigested food and my muscles were just a little hardened.
Even after a few months, my muscle mass didn’t increase at all, so I gave up eating a lot of calories—especially fat— to gain weight. I thought："There is no point in eating a lot unless I can digest foods well."
After that, I started eating digestible protein and rice, specifically, half-boiled eggs and chicken breasts over rice, etc.
And then, I tried not to eat fatty foods, oily foods, and fiber from vegetables very often, because it was hard for me to digest all of that.
One day, I got home and lay down with fatigue after working out, and I felt some pain around my lower abdomen that was pulling toward my insides.
I felt like something had been torn from my intestines, and just after that, I sensed my blood flow increasing.
As I said earlier, I was able to experience the very moment my body was producing blood to compensate for the previous loss, but at that time, it was clearly increasing.
The next day when I went to the gym, I was able to lift twenty kilograms of weight, even though fifteen kilograms was the best until then (my muscle mass also increased).
After a few months, I gained more than five kilograms in a few days (not only fat, but also muscle).
Although the weight gain actually took about three days, the cause for this happened in only a half day. Every time I ate meals during these three days, I just felt my blood flow increasing, and the next morning, I got more muscle and fat around my arms or back(spine).
That was why I started this blog. I’d like to explain how people can gain weight by intestinal starvation and why the calorie-based approach to weight loss is, in a way, a failure.