Tag Fasting

Instead of Lunch … Do What!?!

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Fasting on COVID-19 Lockdown!

I’m in the middle of a fast. Instead of spending lunchtime wondering what I wouldn’t have for lunch, I thought I’d write this. I guess I’m hoping the fast will compensate for the overeating I did last week. Worrying about this whole COVID-19 outbreak didn’t encourage healthy eating! 🤪

I’ll start with the disclaimer that I’m not qualified to promote fasting to anyone & you shouldn’t do it without learning more about it. If you’re sick, skinny, pregnant, nursing, or in any one of a host of other circumstances do not do it. And always, always, only do it in consultation with your doctor. I spoke to my doctor about it before I gave it a try. Besides, I’m not very good at it. I usually give up way too soon. The great thing about fasting is that you can re-frame the failure. When you give up early & eat, you can still say you managed to successfully completed a fast. Albeit one that was shorter than originally intended!

This one, however, has already passed the 40 hour mark. So I though I’d brag about it!

No, that’s not true. But I did think you might be interested to hear that I’ve had two of the best nights’ sleep that I’ve enjoyed in a long time since I started it. My stomach feels pretty good too. Though it’s occasionally behaving as if I was on one of those high-fiber cleanses! I started this fast while suffering from some kind of cold or flu bug (I hope!) & that doesn’t appear to be bothering me as much today as it did yesterday. I’m not quite fasting perfectly either. It was supposed to be just water, with occasional pinches of Himalayan pink salt for the electrolytes. For better or worse, I’m still having my coffee, with cream. I am trying to limit that to 2 or 3 cups in the morning. Okay, it’s 4 & they are mugs, not cups! I’m trying out tea too. To see if I can get away from the cream.

The Himalayan salt has some trace potassium & other stuff that’s good for us but maybe not enough of an electrolyte load for fasting. I should probably be taking a potassium supplement too. But this really wasn’t planned, I was just overcome with the desire to fast on Sunday & I went with it. Could that be because I’d been eating garbage all day!?! 😁

So long as I continue to feel well, I’ve got another 32 hours to go. And just in case my resolve weakens, I’m hoping that putting this out there will help keep me on track. If I screw it up, I’ll share.

The pic at the top is a screen capture of my Life fasting app. Along with the live fasting cycle above, you get other neat stuff & some useful information. You can engage with other fasters (is that even a word?) & you can sign up for one on one coaching with them. This isn’t the only app for fasting but I like this one because it has those little badges. It’s like how the kids get stars & stickers at preschool. Okay, I’m still a kid, so what, you’re not the boss of me! The cool thing about the icons is that they tell you what your body is doing when you reach that point. You get some idea of when you are in ketosis & burning fat. You know when autophagy cuts in. This makes fasting just a little more meaningful. And that helps with hanging in there.

Actually, I think there’s another icon that appears when I pass the muscle flexing arm, for the 54 hour point. And another one at the 72 hour mark. I wonder if I can last long enough to have them all show up? 😁

I’m almost enjoying this fast. But I’m looking forward to getting back to eating too.

Just not yet!

Hope everyone is doing okay with all the challenges these days. Stay safe out there.

Results … Month #20

Paul - The Wry Eye Guy
Results … Month #20

I’m not setting any diet speed records here but down is down. And for a chocoholic, doing that in the shortest month of the year, one that includes Valentine’s day, is not too shabby. Though I’m glad it was a leap year!

I am still bemused by my lack of desire for a more carnivorous diet at the moment & I ate a lot of starch-heavy, vaguely-vegetarian meals during February. I did not avoid fat, not even animal fat, but I found myself adding far less meat than I consider “normal”. A beef stew, for example, was more a veggie stew, with a little beef added for flavour. To be honest, that would probably equate to a normal serving of meat for a skinny person, but still. I also used a lot of rice & potato to thicken my culinary concoctions. Sometimes, I used rice and potatoes in the same dish.

For dieters who like to measure & monitor such things, my blood sugar was showing green all the way. Though I wasn’t checking very frequently. My levels were higher than when I’m eating low carb or keto, & I do prefer those lower numbers, but still pretty good. And it might have been better if there hadn’t been so much chocolate floating around during the month. I also ate a lot of fruit, even bananas, & most often in my homemade ice-cream. I ate out & brought take-out home, without any thought of pandering to a particular dietary strategy. To be honest, if I were at my goal weight, I wouldn’t mind living this way.

I had intended to stick in a few fast days too. I really don’t feel like I’ve done it right if I don’t fast for one full waking cycle & that didn’t happen in February. The best I managed was an occasional one meal a day fast. The one meal starting with dinner & ending when I went to bed!

It all sounds like a series of dismal failures, doesn’t it? On the other hand, I’m down. And I’m pretty happy with that. I think I should feel like I ought to be grabbing this thing by the scruff of the neck & getting on with it. But then I imagine that I’m being overtaken by some eastern mystic force that is allowing me to move Mount Fuji, one pebble at a time!

It can all be a little confusing, this dieting thing, can’t it? 🤪😜

I am wandering aimlessly into March, without a firm plan in mind. Seems like there are a few choices of dietary regimens that allow for weight loss. The mix & match strategy doesn’t work quite so well when I change from one day to the next. Or from one meal to the next! But there are choices. It’s usually not too difficult to stick with one of those choices for a couple or three days. Maybe mix & match will be my method for the month of March. Mmmm!?!

There is a new Indian restaurant that I’m planning to test drive today. With abandon! Tomorrow, I’ll see if I can come up with a strategy for the next month.

Or at least for the next few days!😁

Namaste 🙏

Results … Month #4

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Results … Month #4

This is big. No … it’s huge. Results Month 4

And I’m now a little less huge after 4 months of this DIY hybrid diet!

Only avid students of diet might understand how big this is but let me see if I can explain.

This past month, the 4th month of my weight loss attempt, probably qualifies as one of my top 10 more stressful months. The physiological response to stress inhibits weight loss. And as most overweight people can attest, one of our typical responses to stress is to seek comfort in food. And I did that. I lost weight while under a burden of stress, and I was stress-eating. But I still lost some weight. If I wasn’t so stressed, this would be cause for great jubilation and celebration. Instead, this morning, I am simply grateful.

The other big thing about this is that I lost weight in the 4th month of a diet. Many of my previous weight loss efforts resulted in a plateau far earlier in the attempt. More often than not, the first plateau hits after about two months. Many times, this is justification for bailing on the diet. On those fewer occasions where I successfully made it past the 2 month mark, there is less doubt that a stall would have occurred in the 3rd month. And it was pretty much guaranteed to have happened by the 4th month. But not this time. And I’m not being cocky here, quite the contrary, I’m now stressed about when that stall will finally happen!

My regular reader might attribute this month’s loss to that 4 day fast I did during the 2nd week of the month, but that’s not the case. Whether it was stress, or a reaction to the extended fast, I pretty much binged ’til I regained almost all the losses resulting from that fast. And I then spent the rest of the month getting to this morning’s weight. Which is still slightly above my post-fast weight. I’m not discounting the value of an extended fast for weight loss. But I think I’ll wait for a more serene month before attempting another!

I should also disclose that I didn’t eat particularly well this month. There were more French fry days than I would have liked. I was adding more chocolate, much of it not the dark stuff, to my home made ice cream. And there were more ice cream days than a better planned month might have had. My body was screaming out for something green and I think I had my first salad of the month yesterday! Looking for the positives in all this chaos, the program seems pretty robust. If I can lose weight during times like this, while eating that poorly, this might be a good diet for me. Real life carries on, regardless of our weight loss goals. And we need a diet that can handle real life.

I’m not taking it to the bank yet though, who knows what pitfalls lie ahead. I’m expecting November to match the past month for having to worry about things. Hopefully, some solutions will fall into to place and all will turn out well. But if not, I hope the diet continues to do its thing for the next month regardless.

Wish me luck!

Speaking of luck & diet … I don’t think I’ll go Trick-or-Treating tonight! 🙂

And a Happy Halloween to all!

WHEN Should We Eat?

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WHEN Should We Eat?

Time to Eat

Time to Eat!

There is a growing body of research that supports the old saw about doing breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper. Along with its impact on sleep, circadian rhythms, and so on, the mounting evidence suggests that we handle food better when we eat early too. A meal eaten in the morning doesn’t cause as big an insulin release as that very same meal eaten in the evening. Having lower insulin levels present at bed time allows our body to get into recovery mode more rapidly. And likely with greater potential for weight loss.

Last week, I had the good fortune to meet up with an old work buddy that I hadn’t seen for a while. He looked pretty trim. While he and I have battled the bulge for as long as we’ve know each other, to my wry eye, he never really put on very much weight! And when he puts his mind to it, I’m guessing he wins far more willpower-dependent dietary battles than I do too.

We didn’t get an opportunity to speak about diet during our get together but we emailed back and forth later. Turns out that he’s been using an “eat early” fasting strategy. Doing a more restrictive version of something our grandmothers might have recommended: eating a large breakfast, a small lunch, but no dinner. And he is quite adamant about eating nothing after 5:00pm. But he also mentions that, while this dietary approach has worked best for him over time, it is beginning to feel like a losing battle. His parting comment was this …

“I know, it’s brutal … and the plan will start cracking over holidays, during birthdays and tradeshows!!!”

I get that!

My friend’s program is essentially an 18:6 fasting regimen, done the right way up. I have gone through periods doing something similar. However, I do my eating in the evening! Mine is more like a 20:4 schedule where I skip breakfast and lunch, then I eat dinner, with seconds, sometimes thirds, and more often than I should, dessert. But all in a four hour block between 6:00pm & bedtime. Did my upside-down version work?

Despite the added insulin it might produce, and even with that shot of the fat storage hormone coming at the worst time of day, it did. I like eating in the evening and that’s what I mostly choose to do. Could I have lost more weight, or at least more rapidly, doing it my friend’s way?

Probably.

But I generally don’t find my way of eating to be brutal!

And that might be a bigger deal than just about any other when it comes to long term adherence to a diet. There are so many ways we can derail ourselves that we should take advantage of all the bright spots. Imperfect though they might be.

As it happens, I have a celebratory work lunch on the menu later today. While I’m happy with my coffee and cigarette for breakfast, maybe I’ll stop eating after lunch today. Just to see how I fare. And to feel, just briefly, how my friend might feel all at time.

There is nothing like variety when it comes to diet and weight loss! 🙂

Stress & Weight Gain

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Stress & Weight Gain

Hunt & Gather

Hunt & Gather!

I seem to need a little stress in my life to overcome procrastination. I loudly proclaim how much I detest deadlines. They are never far enough out to allow me to get things done, perfectly, before the due date pops up on my calendar. But the reality is that I seem to need deadlines to get stuff done. Maybe hard deadlines aren’t the best choice when it comes to diet and weight loss.

A little stress may have some motivational value. But too much stress is not constructive. And it doesn’t look like it helps me much, when it comes to hitting a goal on the scale. Quite the contrary, it can promote weight gain. My recent adventure with fasting illustrates the point well. I’ll save the actual numbers for the month-end review (one of those deadlines I like so much!) but I can tell you that I lost a big chunk of weight during my four-day fast. Yes, of course there was water loss. But I know there was fat loss too. By some twist of fate, I found myself under some heavy-duty stress during the fast. And it increased immediately following the fast. It was nothing to do with the fast, it was just a perfectly timed little stress-storm, coming from both the work and home fronts.

Among other things, stress produces a hormonal cascade of cortisol and adrenaline to help us do what our ancestors had to do in times of stress. Back in our caveman days, some might have grabbed a spear and went out to do battle with the saber-toothed tiger. While others made the choice to run away, hoping they weren’t the slowest runner in the group! It’s the fight or flight response. The hormonal rush gives us a big sugar boost, to meet that high energy demand, in times of stress.

Today, in times of stress, we tend to grab the tub of ice cream and plonk ourselves on the couch for comfort. And no, I didn’t totally lose it after the fast … I only ate my homemade, no-added-sugar ice cream! I actually ate almost-kinda-somewhat reasonably well in those days following the fast. But I tried to handle my stress by stuffing my face, while lying on the couch. This isn’t the best way to handle stress. I got away with it for the first couple of post-fast days, but the scale punished me badly for a few days after that.

I really do know better. But the stress burden somehow prevented me getting out. And I didn’t even have to worry about battling any saber-toothed tigers. Just a leisurely little walk by the water would have done wonders.  That’s not what I did, of course. And as I indulged in my awful, modern, couch-based, stress-handling technique, I restored about 75% of the fasting losses.

I’m just going to make believe that it’s mostly water gain! And that doesn’t count, right!?!?

Do as I say. Not as I do! 🙂