Who Is Stephanie Buttermore & Everything To Know About Her All-In Weight Gain Journey
Weight-loss does not warrant wellness.
youtube In a society that unfortunately values stick-thinness over a healthy lifestyle, influencer Stephanie Buttermore has taken to social media to showcase that you can live your best life without extreme dieting.
Who is Stephanie Buttermore?
Stephanie Buttermore is a cancer research scientist, body positivity advocate, and fitness extraordinaire. She uses her YouTube channel to educate people about the scientific principles of nutrition and exercise.
You might have come across one of her cheat day vlogs where she consumes an entire box of donuts in one sitting. She even put herself on the All-In diet to gain weight and improve — yes, improve — her mental and physical health.
What exactly is the All-In diet?
Going “all-in” means eating to the point of satiety, which is the opposite of a restrictive diet. It’s a temporary diet, not a permanent lifestyle change.
For Buttermore, it meant consuming a minimum of 5,000 calories a day — that’s minimum. With the All-In diet, there's no intermittent fasting, no dietary restrictions, and no macro-monitoring or calorie-counting. The goal is to gain fat, not burn it.
Why did Buttermore go All-In?
The more you try to control your food intake, the more food controls you.
Years of bodybuilding and excessive dieting put Buttermore’s body in a state of extreme hunger. In extreme hunger, your reproductive system and other biological processes are at risk of shutting down, your hair falls out, bones become brittle and you're also at a high risk of developing osteoporosis.
In hopes to restore her hunger signals and find a natural set weight, she embarked on her All-In journey. It was time for her to stop obsessing over how much she was putting in and just eat for the sake of satiating herself.
Fans were thrilled and supportive of Stephanie’s All-In Journey. She endured some backlash for gaining weight, however. People can be cruel as they can be kind, especially when hiding behind the glow of a computer screen.
Her boyfriend, Jeff Nippard, said he liked the “All-In Stephanie” better.
It’s no secret that taking care of ourselves can make us more fun to be around.
According to Nippard, her newfound dietary freedom was great for their relationship. Without restrictions and intermittent fasting, food became something that the two could enjoy with one another. He even tried going on the all-in diet too.
Now, that’s the definition of a great boyfriend.
The more weight she gained the better she felt.
Over time her appetite decreased and her hunger cues restored. She felt stronger and energized and became less food-focused.
Still, her All-In journey was an emotional roller coaster. So often media condemns calories and shames anyone that doesn’t look like a walking talking walking stick. Even with a huge support system and science on her side, the process was overwhelming.
Taking breaks from working out sped up her journey.
Buttermore took breaks from going to the gym, and her home work-outs lessened in physical intensity. Initially, she tracked her caloric intake and weighed herself daily. Eventually, she stopped because it was starting to take a toll on her mental health.
Buttermore emphasizes the importance of creating non-aesthetic fitness goals.
Being in the fitness industry is no picnic in the park; it is impossible to live up to its harsh, ugly, no-good, awful beauty standards.
When Buttermore was at her fittest, she did not feel her best, and her journey proves that our health should be determined by how we function, not how we look.
Izzy Casey’s work is published in or forthcoming from Corriere della Sera, The Iowa Review, Bennington Review, Gulf Coast, Black Warrior Review, BOAAT, NY Tyrant, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.