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.
It’s pretty safe to say that we’re all impacted by the coronavirus outbreak now. Many of us are either working from home, or not working at the moment. If we are still fortunate enough to have a paycheck coming, we are concerned about how long that can be sustained for. The kids are off school, or being schooled online. Driving parents crazy in the process! We all have someone that we’re worried about. I have immediate family working in healthcare that I worry about. Family members in foreign countries. And I have moments of anxiety about how I might fare, should I contract the virus. Worry is not conducive to losing weight!
I went, alone, to my favourite big box store last Saturday. They had people at the door, wet wiping the carts for us. And yes, they were antiviral wipes too. I checked. Surprisingly, it might have been a little quieter than a typical Saturday. The shelves were well stocked & the pallets of additional inventory were piled ceiling high. The toilet paper was out of stock though! I filled my cart & went home. Only to be asked if I thought I was out shopping for Christmas!
I’m not allowed to go there alone anymore. Oops! 🤪😁
Yeah, I guess I hadn’t made all good choices for a lockdown. Though cookies & chocolate are good for the soul, aren’t they! I hope I’m not just looking for an excuse to break my diet this month. Though I am struggling to resist comfort food at the moment. I really don’t like baked beans all that much. But I found myself giving in to sausage, beans & chips last night. A favourite from my childhood. Funny, eh?
That said, & despite how terrible this whole situation sometimes feels, there are some great things going on too. Our neighbours are braving the outbreak to show up for work in healthcare, transit services, law enforcement, food supply & a host of other services that are essential for us to get through this. There are acts of kindness being committed that warm the heart. Companies paying people that aren’t working. Landlords forgiving rents. These are not just legal entities, there are kind people there. Hordes of people are volunteering to work at shelters, deliver food, help neighbours. A small tire shop in my old home town offered his time & his van to local charities. Opera singers doing their thing on their balconies. A guy dropping roses on people’s porches on the news this morning. There are a million ways to show kindness. To be nice. And to preserve out faith in humankind & in each other. Besides, just being nice makes us feel so much better.
I remember that wonderful feeling of immortality that comes with being young. Hey, it wasn’t that long ago! It would really help if the young crowd could brandish their immortality online. Instead of on the streets, the bars, & the beaches. I get it. And yes, I’d love to be as bulletproof as you. I am truly envious. But please protect the older folk in your family & neighbourhoods by not doing that just yet. Next time around, we’ll hopefully have vaccines & medication that will fight this thing. But this time, we need to slow it down & manage things a little more carefully. Please.
#PleaseProtectGrandma … & all the grandpas out there!
Hey, if you are a bit less emotional about all of this, try doing something practical that helps. I dunno, maybe buy a few shares in your favourite company & help prop up the market!
At month’s end, I’m not sure how the bathroom scale will be influenced by the coronavirus thing. But I might be more forgiving of my results this one time.
A little milk-chocolate-chip banana bread with my butter!
It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good!
Now I’m of an age, a size, & a level of fitness that the coronavirus going viral causes me moments of anxiety. And I’m a smoker, so that’s another strike against me. But I’m generally pretty optimistic. At the moment, I’m looking for any sliver of a silver lining in this whole coronavirus thing. Say what!?!
Yeah, I know how terrible it is. I have older friends & family too. Indeed, I may be part of someone else’s “older friends & family” group! 🤪😁
Yes, I would really like it to just go away. But, sadly, that’s probably not going to happen. Is there anything positive to be taken from the situation?
Well, looking on the bright side, it might be an excuse to ignore my diet temporarily. In one such moment, I succumbed to the temptation of the comfort food in the pic above! However, I recovered my resolve a day later so I haven’t totally washed out the month.
Yet!
It might also be time to hunt through the sofa cushions for any spare change that might be put to work in a beaten down stock market. No!?! Yeah, you’re probably right, that might get a little worse before it gets better. But still, there is some long-term positivity potential there.
Another bright spot is that my day job requires me to travel. Sometimes at pretty short notice. But, & in rapidly increasing numbers, fewer people want me to visit them at the moment. I like visiting people but the bright side of not being able to means that I can now get some stuff done that I usually put off. There’s that minor foot procedure I’ve been putting off, for years, for example. Not having to travel means I don’t have to worry about it taking a few weeks to heal. Of course, I have to go to a medical establishment. Where there are people with potentially communicable diseases, so that’s a factor. Ferreting out those little silver linings can be challenging, eh!
It’s also a positive thing that I can go to my favourite big box store & not feel guilty about us having to go back for 2nd cart! Though I’m doing it now too, I’m not sure why we need so much toilet tissue. I know, I know, I’m such a sheep! What I’m not doing is buying antibacterial products. The coronavirus is a virus so I think good ole soap is probably the best virus killer. And I’m a little dubious about that 20 seconds being enough time for handwashing to work. Would you want your chef just doing the 20 second handwashing thing before continuing to plate your breakfast toast? No, me neither! I’ll stick to my 2 minute ritual, as an absolute minimum, thank you.
We can but pray that we, & all those we hold dear, will make it through this whole mess okay. First from the health perspective, but also from the financial point of view. I wish you all all the best for getting through it.
With my Saturday soccer matches cancelled, I’m going out shopping. Again. I’m kinda hoping I will make some diet-friendly decisions. And I’m committing to try to be patient if the lineups are long today. Might as well get a head start on practicing trying to spread some extra ripples of kindness. I’ll let you know how that goes!
Enjoy your weekend. And if you have any little points of positivity to add, please do pass them along.
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.
The Wry Eye 