What a difference 9 months makes

Wow, it's been awhile. Let's get right to it.

That's me to the right there, not the youthful looking fellow (he's a guitar student and friend of mine).
Note how I actually look kinda alright with a guitar (it's actually his squire telecaster- it's in horrible need of a setup, very high action!). Hopefully it's obvious this isn't a 285 pound guy here. Nope.

So in between the last blog post in June 2018 and now, I've lost ~30 pounds. Easily the most weight I've lost since 2007 when I did nutrisystem; I'm the lightest I've been since 2008. I'm even approaching my marriage weight.

I had forgotten that I had waxed poetic in a LONG screed about what I was doing in terms of my diet and exercise. Well, I've had (sustained!) success now, but was it doing the stuff I talked about?

Sorta?

Looking back, I was mostly right in that post. Going to some form of OG Atkins was the key. However if you read that post closely, you can see I had given up on the idea of being very low carb, but not because of efficacy. It was because I was worried about side-effects. I was convinced that being low carb meant heart palpitations and anxiety symptoms. The plan then was to sort of hover in a moderate low carb realm, about 150 or so per day.

So what happened?

Well, I tried doing this in June. Looking at my health app, I averaged 195 carbs per day, so not as succesful as I'd like, but still lower than a SAD diet.

I also upped the ante on exercise. Like May, I run 5ks and just plan ran on the regular. I even had a 15k step day that month. I did bodyweight training also.

I lost no weight at all.

Well darn. Still eating too much. I averaged 2181 calories per day (remember: 6'1" man). Huh.

I'll get em' in July! Still did all that exercise. Averaged 200 carbs per day, and pushed the calories down to a daily average of about 2090 or so.

I gained a couple pounts that much. 282. Just a few pounds away from my high in January, and the year was more than half over.

I was pretty pissed off. But, strangely, I wasn't filled with feelings of hopelessness this time. I think it was due to a few factors.

I was really inspired by Kent Altena, because he was a guy that lost a ton of weight, gained it all back, and proceeded to *lose it all again.* He was also older than me, so I couldn't use the excuse of "well he's young and its easier."

A second inspiration was a coworker who wasn't really fat in my opinion but who was looking to lean out even more than he was. His discipline and slashing carbs and really sticking with it was inspiring. And it worked. He got as lean as he wanted.

ANOTHER coworker's wife had a baby. When he came back from paternity leave, he was noticeably slimmer. Yep, low carb again.

Plus, back in January, it was working. Not fast, but it was working.

Finally, I realized that I was only really doing low carb by "reputation." I went and found a pdf of Atkins and read a good bit of the original book. In my last blog post, I mentioned some things about the original Atkins diet so it seems like I was reading that book back in June. The big revelation was limited, yes, LIMITING fat, not necessarily like you would on a low fat diet, but not going crazy either.

So in August I reapplied myself to low carb in earnest. Some differences from my January attempt: I was very careful about nuts and dairy, especially nuts.

More importantly, I was far stricter with carb consumption. In my first attempt, I landed around 50-70 carbs per day. In this attempt, I tried hard to stick to 20 carbs a day, AS PER THE ACTUAL ATKINS BOOK!

Immediately I dropped five pounds, the lovely "whoosh" effect where you drop water weight fast. Well guess what kids, that DID NOT HAPPEN in all my other diet attempts in 2018. I had resigned myself to never getting that satisfying initial blast of weight loss ever again in my life, so this was the initial success I needed. It pushed me out of the 280's which was a great early goal.

However, I also had a trip to LA with my employer on the calendar. Travel is a destroyer of worlds for a diet, but I stuck with my diet for the most part. Note for the "most" part. I allowed myself alcohol and one amazing dipping ramen meal in Little Tokyo.

But that was it, and I IMMEDIATELY slammed on the brakes on the carbs, and when I weighed myself again a couple of days later, I lost another two pounds. Ok, now we're cooking.

The next big challenge was a trip to visit family in September. I had intended to be a good boy but once faced with hometown favorites I pretty much ATE LIKE A MADMAN POSSESSED. But, once again, I slammed on the brakes the moment the trip was over (a week), and once I weighed myself again (a week later), I only gained .5 pounds. Ok! Great! Totally acceptable!

As the days progressed, the weight loss slowed (as I expected) but I was in the upper 260's by my birthday (October 2). This was a major milestone since the 260's was a weight "zone" I had only occasionally dipped into since 2008. So whenever I get there, it feels good, especially since my dream forever and ever was to get back into at least the 250's. Being in the 260's means you aren't that far off.

The next major goal was to get under 263, because 263 was the lowest weight I had achieved since 2008 (I did this in 2013). Birthday week in October and a visit from a friend in early November were both events that caused me to go off-plan (and eat ALL THE CARBS I love in the bay area), which is understandably going to slow progress. However, on Christmas Eve I got a nice little gift with a couple pound loss to get to 262-ish (can't remember the fraction).

Now I had lost over 20 lbs, gotten to a low weight I hadn't achieved in years. But more important than that, I had:

1. MAINTAINED modest weight losses for months, instead of fasting for days at a time (yes, I've done that) to hit those weights for one precious day, to just viciously rebound.
2. Controlled the symptoms of nervousness by being smarter about mineral intake (more on that later).
3. Yet still cheated (more on that later also!) and even had vacations and multi-day stretches where I ate enormous amounts of carby food. The key, though, is slamming on the brakes hard.

Unfortunately I then really did the dumbest thing since August, I allowed myself way, way too much "off time" from the diet: Christmas Day all the way until January 1st, a full week, most of which was spent on a vacation to Las Vegas. Going from "famine" to "feast" I ate ridiculously, to the point of feeling sick half the time. Still, I slammed on the brakes and thought I did well, but I regained six pounds. Mostly water weight? Sure. But demoralizing. I had low carbed strictly (20 carbs per day) for ten days to get off that vacation weight and was rewarded with a huge gain in weight.

Fortunately, I stuck with it, and that water weight came off, at long last, at the end of the month. So being careless at the end of the year cost me the entire month of January! However, since I had already achieved a small measure of success, I did not give up like I might have in the past. I knew I had something working, and just needed to get back to it.

February and March were about getting into the 250's. This took awhile since in any diet you have to make adjustments.

In late 2018, I would lose weight on about 2000 calories. Well, as you lose weight, that number goes down. I started pushing to be around 1500-1800 calories per day. Boom, just the trick. But I also had some other work stressors and other things going on that made things hard, but I also had no major cheat "zones" (like vacations and multi-day off plan times). Finally, on March 13th I did it. I hit 258, and finally hit that long coveted area of the 250's.

Since then, I have gotten down to 254, despite big work stress and even a cheat day or two in the past 4 weeks. But, I've also been able to push a little harder to get calories AND carbs down, 1500-1800 calories and no more than 20-30 carbs per day.

But again, even more important is the maintenance component. People at my work have frankly lost more weight than me. but I've kept my weight down since August, instead of yo-yo'ing up and down. I've been at weights I haven't sniffed in a decade and spent *months* at those weights.

As far as practical effects, I now wear size 38 jeans, as opposed to size 42. My clothes are now universally comfortable, instead of having a few comfy shirts (they are all now comfy shirts- basically I truly fit in XXL shirts now, instead of "mostly" fitting in them). I do note that I get by on less sleep, probably because the sleep I get is higher quality (wife would always say that I had some kind of sleep apnea based on snoring and so forth. No doubt this is getting better as the weight goes down). Mostly though, it's having this incredible piece of mind that I am actually on the right path, this isn't hopeless, and I can do this. That is GOLD. That is EVERYTHING. The hopelessness and despair that this problem can engender is a yoke I wouldn't wish on anyone.

So why in the world is this working when in early 2018 it failed?

1. READ THE BOOKS. LEARN STUFF. Yeah sure, everyone knows low carb is ditching bread/rice/sugar. But I was ignorant of some stuff.

Salt: Yeah, I wasn't getting anywhere near enough. I used to just pinch some in my fingers, thinking this was a quarter teaspoon. Well, I actually *used* a quarter teaspoon measuring spoon and yep, I was taking in *far* less salt than I needed (5000-7000 mg of salt is what folks recommend). When you have a mineral deficiency (which is common in low carb because your body pees it out as you lose water) you get... yep, nervous. Anxious. Heart palpitations. Getting enough salt didn't entirely take these symptoms away, but it did greatly help, to the point where I could stand doing the diet. I don't supplement salt anymore- frankly, I've adapted (took FOREVER) and I don't feel bad anymore. I do take magnesium and a multi-vitamin in the morning.

2. I WASN'T LOW ENOUGH CARB. Yep, big difference in being 20-30 carbs per day and being ~70. There is a reason why the OG Atkins book says no more than 22 carbs.

3. The cheat days are pretty essential, but I spaced them out more as time went on. Cheat days help in a number of ways: you don't feel locked in a food prison beacuse you know you can eventually have a day in which you eat anything you want. They reset you hormonally so any kind of weird leptin resistance thing can get reset. The symptoms of being low carb are relieved for a bit. However, as I've gone on with this, I realized I had to go ideally 15 days in between cheat days, it not longer (my record is something like 22-23 days low carb with no cheats).

4. Intermittent fasting absolutely plays a role.

While IF alone has not worked for me, IF with low carb has been great. Typically I fast furing the day and eat in the evening. I'll sometimes (but not always) eat breakfast, but even if I do, that's a fasting window from 7am until 7pm, a 12 hour fasting window. On low carb IF is easier than when you are eating SAD. It has been a great tool to suppress calories.

5. Count EVERYTHING.

Yeah, I'm a believer in this. Get the lose it! app and count count count. Carbs and calories. You need to see the data, you shouldn't guess, and the phone app makes it almost comically simple to track things. 

What about exercise?

Yeah, about that. I walk, sometimes, and not as much as I should. I do think my surge in guitar playing gives me a "better than just typing at a computer" level of activity that's helped. But really not much more than that. I do think exercise can help (in fact there have been some days where I haven't been totally on-target with the diet because I was at a work conference or whatever, but I had a high level of activity on those days and they didn't seem to hurt me). But all-in-all, exercise has not been a big part of this. I'm not opposed to it- especially walking which I genuinely enjoy. But look: I have coworkers that do insane bootcamp things and I've lost roughly the same amount of weight as them. Except the boot camp approach is silly and unsustainable.

One last note, and a word of hopefulness for anyone reading this.

It. Takes. A. Long. Time. To. Figure. This. Out. Here I am, finally sustaining and maintaning weight loss, but I've been trying to do this since 2008, and it's 2019 now. There have been a zillion life events I would have loved to have been 254 for, but I failed despite desperately wanting that. Failure is the norm when it comes to this. You can't just "quit food," and your body has mechanisms to maintain equillibrium. But, as I have worked hard to discover, there are ways to kick into gear your body's "slimming" protocols: they do exist.

But, and I can't stress this enough: what works for me may not exactly work for you. I was absolutely the right idea in January 2018. The difference between what I was doing then and what I did in August wasn't huge at all. 30-50 grams less carbs. More salt. Welp, that was all the difference, it turned out, between this thing working and failing. Know that you may need to tweak in all kinds of ways for your circumstance.

One other note. With diets, it is easy to take for granted how extreme your daily life might seem if you've gotten used to it. I've gotten completely used to eating almost no carbs all the time, turning down all special work food, etc. I don't complain or even feel bad about it.

I was chatting with another coworker about this and I remember what she told me: "it is really admirable what you are doing with not eating carbs, but I can't do that." That really struck me. Here is a thing that obviously works (at my employer, there has been probably 150 lbs of weight lost between the low carbers in the office), yet this person can't imagine themselves doing it "cause whatever?" This is not meant to be judgy: Not one tiny bit. It just made me realize how extreme this diet seems to people who haven't gotten used to it. So if that is you, please, PLEASE believe me: it is DOABLE. Not just doable, but ENJOYABLE. Yes, OF COURSE you will miss your favorite carby foods sometimes. Yes you WILL get BORED sometimes. But it is also pretty darn palatable. There is a lot of variety in low carb, and yes, I fully and 100% advocate making yourself low carb treats to get you by. Yes, those can be dangerous (the hyper palatibility factor kicks in, and you can overeat), but if making some kind of low carb imitation of cookies/cake/etc. is what is going to keep you on plan one day, well, great. Better to have a day where you end up eating 300-400 more calories than you should than to just BLOW UP THE WHOLE THING.

Final final final note. My old friend Eric would have just loved to read this, and it fills me with pride that I finally am accomplishing something he pushed me to do for years (with lots of good natured kidding about my fatness). I am essentially doing the very first thing he ever suggested I do: cyclic keto, more or less, just customized to fit me as a person. I miss him so much and if he can look down on me in Heaven (I'm a Christian but I'm not actually sure if people in Heaven know or care about us here on earth. My Catholic friends are more sure about it though!) he might say something like:

"Finally you took my advice. Now get Jason a sandwich."

Bye Bye Perfect Health, Hello Many Insights: A Deep Dive

So the reason I keep this journal is to record my insights into my own personal health. So today is a big one. I think I've made some big personal discoveries. But to fully realize what they are, I've had to do a lot of thinking about my life, what has worked, what hasn't, and why. I also put real weight numbers in here for the first time. Frankly, the person I feared giving me shit on this score has passed away (very regrettably - I'd rather he be alive to make fun of me!), so no reason to hide those numbers now.

When I was 17 years old, I saw a reflection of myself on a mirror that was at an angle, shattering that "fat guy looks OK" image I was used to seeing. Sort of like seeing a picture of yourself that wasn't taken by somebody who knew how to make you look "good."

I was inspired, and drove up to my Dad's office to use one of the computers up there (we had internet at home, but felt like being in solitude). This was early 1998, so logging into mayoclinic.com and looking at weight loss information was going to give you the standard low fat dogma of the time.

From this, I devised a formula: anything that had more than ten grams of fat per serving, I wouldn't eat. Also, I would not eat any fast food. I would also exercise aerobically an hour a day. For this purpose, I dragged the unused "airdyne" exercise bike into my bedroom.

This worked, worked well and worked fast. By the end of that school year I had probably lost something like thirty pounds, and I was doing better than I ever had (trust me: if you grow up fat, you try, and try, and try, AND TRY).

This success continued into the summer. By the time the new school year started, folks were genuinely astonished at my appearance. The weight loss slowed but continued, bottoming out sometime that next summer, in 1999. I entered my college career at the lowest weight I've ever been as an adult. This was good timing, since I could start this crucial chapter of my life with maximum confidence. My all time low for my *entire life* was 205ish, achieved sometime in the summer of 1999, I think. I'm 6'1", so this is still a far cry from that "Doctor's Chart" weight, but we all know that is malarkey. Pictures of me from this time show a kid that actually looked, well, lanky. Legit skinny.

It was inevitable that I would regain some. I probably gained about 10-15 lbs of the 80 lbs lost during my freshman year, but this didn't make a huge difference in my physical appearance (as can be seen from photos of my sophomore year). By the time I graduated college, I gained another 5 lbs or so, sometimes fluctuating a bit. I would exercise a ton and try to revert back to the ol' diet, at least I *thought* I did (more on this later), and usually with a lot of effort that weight would come off.  When I was lax, I'd be something like 240. I would diet and exercise (in the summer, my friends and I would go to a local field by our college and play baseball for four hours- but "baseball" meant one person hitting, one fielding, one pitching- this was enormously exhausting but great fun, and the lbs came off fairly easy from this. Like so many of my methods as a youth, this required not having a job to work).

When I was 23, I hit the upper 220s again after a summer of this, and probably in less than a year was back at 240. The next summer, I once again shed some weight with the above method, and attended graduate school in Detroit.

To not make this a super huge novel, I stayed in this "240 sometimes dipping 20 lbs below" stage from about 2002-2006. If you believe in set point theory, that was my set point during this time, clearly.

Getting married was when that set point shot way up and is more or less where I've been at since, 270-280. No, my wife isn't to blame here. It's just a confluence of multiple factors:

1. Activity level became zero - while I couldn't make being a performing musician remunerative, I was as physically active. Carrying amps up and down stairs, standing up and playing guitar for 3-4 hours at a time, even just practicing guitar for 3-4 hours a day all use energy. I'm not sure what it amounted to, but I could imagine this would increase my daily energy use by a minimum of 100-200 calories, with gigging days having the same energy expenditure as an intense one hour workout, spread out over 4-5 hours.

2. My eating discipline eroded throughout my 20s into basically the good ol' SAD. Looking back, it's funny how it starts small: let's start eating Taco Bell, because I can get the chicken soft tacos, they're LOW FAT! Sometime during my 24th year on the planet I made a great, but also disastrous, decision. This is common in dieting. You can be half right with something, but being half right is sometimes worse than ignorance. In this case, it was counting calories. Logging food intake is awesome. I absolutely recommend it. You can gain TREMENDOUS insights, some of which I'll hint at here. But if you do it merely on the thought that you can "eat whatever you want, just budget for it," you are insane. It does not work like that, at least not for me. A calorie is not just a calorie, even though it is, got that? (Sigh).

3. Every technique I had developed to push my weight back when it poked into the 245ish territory (usually my "panic mode diet diet diet" weight) became impractical in the context of adult life. Playing baseball for four hours with your buddies on a random day? Nope. Keeping my fridge mostly empty so I wasn't tempted to overate at home? Not possible when you have to keep a kitchen stocked for a family. Low impact aerobics that you do for two+ hours at night while watching movies/playing video games? No time for that either).

4. Learning the wrong lessons from the highschool diet success and subsequent failures of my 20s. I thought I had eaten a crappy but effective low fat diet, the type made fun of on Atkins/Keto boards, and my body's "insulin resistance" was to blame for failures down the road. I believe now I was wrong to thing this. I was never really going back to what I did in highschool because I kind of forgot what it was that I was really doing (because I didn't know it even then). Ah, now we get to the, um, "meat" of this post.

This year I have lost a measly 5lbs from my new "scary weight," with some inches. The attempts are as follows:

January - February: Keto. This gave me panic attacks and anxiety symptoms similar to fasting for longer than 1.5 days. A non-starter, that had mild success.

March-April - Perfect Health Diet. A great diet! Very smart. Problem is... it isn't a weight loss diet. It's a health restoration diet for malnourished people who have chronic problems. I think the science behind the diet is sound. It just made me eat more. And it's insanely complicated and difficult to follow on a day to day basis. Didn't work. Lost no weight, did feel better, cheated often due to the difficulty of maintaining it.

May - Intermittent  Fasting. Sorta worked. Definitely saw a decrease of calories per month than previous months (this is where tracking is useful- seeing long term trends that inform decisions), but not enough to move the needle much. I did, however, increase my exercise quite a bit, focusing on trading off on time consuming aerobic (walking ) for HIIT (usually sprinting). I started getting much better at making my exercise goal based- a huge help. I try to beat my (pathetic) 5k times. I challenge myself to set personal bests in pushups (25 as of this writing- not terrible for a 37 year old). My relationship to exercise feels as good as it ever has in my life, which is great! But...

You have have your calories be low enough for weight to come off or it won't happen, period. This led me to set a goal is a calorie average of 1900 calories for June (this goal is based on the realistic notion that I'll fall off the wagon sometimes). One of the big huge problems that has caused me to get fatter is how hilariously over estimating some online sources are for daily intake. My loseit! app says I should eat 2300 cals to lose two pounds per week.

No. Just. No.

This isn't because some magical metabolic issue. It's just that the formula they use is bad. There are several formulas that estimate metabolism. I've found others that put my *maintenance* calorie levels at 2380 or so, which based on my results, makes perfect sense.

So for me, 1700 cals is the number to be at, day in, day out- which also for me, means that I should really set the goal at 1500 (because you WILL go over a little bit). This is a very low amount of calories, and I'm a 6'1" man. Imagine if you are a woman or a lot shorter. Yikes.

So I've been thinking a lot on how to do this, and squaring it with my success as a teen. Here is my current thinking, with the caveat that I'm a fat piece of lard-ass, so obviously you should not take my advice.

I believe that each popular diet has a key bit of wisdom that is correct, but can lead to ruin in isolation. I've suddenly realized that for myself, the most optimal way to eat for weight loss is a combination of all of these things, and when those things are combined... it looks an awful lot like what I was doing as a kid, with just a few key insights I did not have then. Let's look at the popular diets:

1. Keto - What they get right (WTGR) - Carbs, particularly processed carbs, are non-satiating empty calories  that are going to get in the way of weight loss. Fat is not the enemy and shouldn't be feared... per se. What they get wrong (WTGW) - In versions of Keto in which fat is emphasized like a fetish, you are just going to eat too dang much. Fat is not satiating at all, and fat combined with any sort of sweetener, even pixie dust versions like Stevia et al is going to trigger overeating. Also, I don't believe all carbs are bad- potatoes seem like a healthy food. The Japanese eat rice as a daily staple and manage to outlive us while smoking like chimneys and having vending machines that dispense whiskey (Japan is so great, y'all).

2. Traditional Low Fat - WTGR - Fat is super energy dense and eating less of it probably means you eat less. It also biases you, POTENTIALLY, for higher protein which I think is good for most people. WTGW - Unfortunately, if you have a sweet tooth, this diet is ruinous because you'll just replace the fat calories with sugar ones. I have never had a huge sweet tooth, which explains in part why this worked will for me when I was 17.

3. Food Reward Theory - WTGR - Oh yes, it is so true that processed foods are designed to be SUPER TASTY and this makes you eat MUCH more. This is a no-brainer to me. This is why foods that you have to use the stove to make are harder to overeat on, especially if it isn't one of those "meal in a bag" things. WTGW - You can't just drink plain sugar water all the time, or only potatoes, for a long term solution. Those are hacks that work for a few weeks, but the fact is we were designed to eat a variety of tasty food because in nature that is how you get a variety of nutrients. To me, FRT is more of a reminder or "trick" to be aware of than a WOE.

4. Atkins - OG Low Carb, and its variants - You know, good ol' Bob had a lot right from the git, as it turns out. Did you know he prohibited you to four slices of cheese, no nuts, and only a few spoonfuls of cream per day? Yep. The OG Atkins diet was not awash in fat as many think. Turns out lean protein and veggies were pretty preferential. WTGR - Like Keto, lowering carbs is a great idea for most. Is super smart about fat, contrary to reputation. WTGW - I think the OG diet is very sound- I also think for some people, possibly myself, going very low in carbs causes some side effects that aren't so hot.

5. Fasting - All variations. WTGR - It is totally helpful to go long stretches of the day without eating. For me, like most I'd wager, the simple problem is- "I get hungry when I'm not supposed to, so I eat when I'm past my calorie goals." I mean, that's the name of game, isn't it? So if you are able to, um, swallow a bunch of hours per day without eating at all, you have less window to overeat. WTGW - I think it's a horrible non-starter when you start getting into long term fasting. 14 hours? Sure. A day? Yep, good. Beyond two days, I'm not sure this is going to work for most people. The fact is, one of the leading advocates of long term fasting has supposedly done multiple 20-30 day fasts in the past few years, and this person is very obese and has only gotten worse.

Alright, I'm sure there are other diets, but that covers the bases for me. So for myself, and I emphasize, FOR ME, what seems to be the key takeaways from all of these?

A. Control the fat. You'll end up eating less AS LONG AS YOU DO NOT OVEREAT ON CARBS.

B. Control the carbs. You can eat more carbs than fat I think, since carbs aren't as dense, but carbs, especially sweet carbs, are going to be your ruin. For myself, however, this doesn't mean no rice or no carbs anything. I know I'm doing well if I'm under 200, especially under 150 grams on a given day.

C. Eat some protein. This runs counter to some forms of Keto that seems to think protein is bad. This is nuts. Look at the diets bariatric doctors prescribe to patients to get them lean enough to operate on. These are high lean protein diets. Hmmm. Let's call Columbo!

D. Fast some. Trying to eat a little throughout the day doesn't seem to work for me, although I suppose it has been so long since I've tried the old school "eat 5 times through the day" advice, I could try it as an experiment. I have my doubts though. So for now, fasting is going to be a cardinal strategy in my efforts, except maybe on weekends when it is harder for all kinds of reasons.

Ok, so now we have what makes sense to me, now. Let's compare it to my 17 year old diet, as best as I can remember.

BREAKFAST: I don't really remember eating breakfast much as a kid. I think I had some coffee with creamer in it. 100 calories.

LUNCH: I skipped lunch at school once I started my diet because there was no way back then to know if it was less than 10 grams of fat. INTERMITTENT FASTING!

DINNER: I would usually eat shortly before getting home, and since I lived in the boonies, it was at least 3:30 by then.

I had a staple meal that I ate ALL THE TIME. It was something like 4-5 chicken breasts, a can of fat free cream of chicken soup, placed on a bed of minute rice, and then in the oven. Hmm. The chicken would be 500 calories (for a ton of chicken!!!) and a whopping ONE HUNDRED GRAMS OF PROTEIN IN ONE SHOT. A mere 11 grams of fat for all of that chicken. The soup is just 150 calories, maybe 5 grams of fat and a 22 carbs, which isn't that much.

The rice of course - this is the biggest source of "Wasted" calories in my highschool meal - it was enough rice to fill the bottom of the tupperware I baked it in- maybe 2 cups or so, that's like 300 calories, and about 80 carbs and 12 grams of protein.

This was a large meal indeed, but in total it was 950 calories. Try eating any restaurant meal that isn't in the "diet" section and I think you'll be challenged to land under a grand. And better yet, the lion share of calories here are protein- you are getting pretty much exactly what you need in one shot- and protein is satiating, so you are going to be very full on this meal.

As for carbs, yep, the rice has em', but you are still at 100 for the day so far. This would still be by any standard a low carb diet, just not keto.

But was this the only food I ate? This is tricky because of course I wasn't logging food like I do now. Memory is tricky and I could be totally wrong. But I remember what I would typically eat at night for a snack, which was airpopped popcorn. Yep, carbs, totally wasted with no nutrition, but also very energy poor. I would spray it with that craptastic fake butter spray, which while probably bad for you has little caloric value. This would allow salt to stick, which of course is what makes popcorn tasty. So let's say, three cups of popcorn, that's 100 calories. Just 13 carbs too. So now I'm at barely 1100 calories, and I was exercising for an hour. I drank skim milk then, so add on a few hundred calories a day for that. I'm sure I ate other stuff I can't remember. But since I was so slavishly low fat AND I was not pounding sugary things,* it is easy to see that on many days I was at or even under 1500 calories. No wonder the weight came off (yes, I recognize that it is always easier when you are young, and that had something to do with it also).**


*This might come as a surprise to my parents who probably remember me always drinking a bottle of orange soda as a kid. But in reality, I didn't drink that much pop, because my parents never bought it- I had to get my own money and drive 10 minutes to a store. So this was, at most, a once a day treat I got myself, and not every day. So maybe 200 calories a day at most was wasted in this manner. I was lucky they were smart about this.

**Another footnote here - what did I eat at restaurants? Yes, I just said "no" to fast food. To my parents credit, they noticed this, thought it was great, and pretty much instantly stopped bringing home things like KFC and other common "takeaway" things. In fact, my dad in particular still eats exactly like I did when I was 17, complete with fasting during the day (effectively- he eats a can of low fat soup, barely 200 calories, for lunch). My dad never regained the weight, unlike me. But anyway, when we would go to sit-down places, I developed go-to's that.... rather resembled my home meals in composition. Bob Evans meant the grilled chicken and rice meal with barbecue sauce on the side. Mexican places meant fajitas with no cheese or sour cream. Hmm... some carbs, but also a good helping of protein..... Chinese food was mostly a non-starter and remains to this day a DESTROYER OF WORLDS.

As you can see, the way I ate and exercised and lived resembles all of the key insights I've made from years and years of diet failure. But wait, you say, if you had it all figured out then, why didn't you keep doing it? Ah, great question.

I didn't know what I was doing, actually.

Doing strict low fat via the mayo clinic's advice unfortunately made me half right (or whatever percentage right). This was always going to lead to ruin. The truth is, cheeseburgers are pretty tasty. And frankly, you can totally make them work in the paradigm I state above, even with bread. Case in point, last week I ate a burger that would be a total sin when I was 17- the mighty Double Quarter Pounder With Cheese. When I was 17, I feared this because of the fat content of the burger. I now realize it wasn't the fat, necessarily, but the combination of nutrients that make foods dangerous for weight control and loss. The cheeseburger is not at all the worst thing- it has a good amount of protein- which means you'll fill up- but this is partially offset by the fat - in the cheese and burger meat- and the bread. But all in all, if you are going to spend 800 calories,  you could do it far worse.

Last week when I had the double quarter pounder, I managed an 1800 calorie day. A pretty good day! I did this because:

1. I intermittently fasted through the day, so the burger was the last thing I ate.
2. I DID NOT GET FRIES. FRIES ARE THE ABSOLUTE DESTROYER OF WORLDS. EMPTY CARBS COOKED IN FAT.
3. I ate tuna and other good protein sources for the rest of the day.

This example with the cheeseburger is vital because any diet is going to live or die on variety. It is hard to eat a super restricted diet in the long haul. Yet, you cannot just assume "eat less move more," because that leads you to the foolish thinking that you can have many days in which you engorge on a hot fudge sundae that lands at 1200 calories and be done for the day. Nope, your body full well understands that you need nutrients and it is going to make you SUPER HUNGRY to get them. So you can splurge here and there on tastier (read: fattier and sugary-er) things so as long as it fits NOT IN THE CALORIE BUDGET, but in the overall schema of brief fasting and prioritizing protein. The calorie budget is important but it should be the end of result of the above.

So a calorie isn't a calorie. But calories matter. That's the trick I'm starting to learn.

Fortunately I'm putting these ideas into practice. I had a pretty good week last week. I mostly kept to about 1500-1800 calories each day. I'm exercising regularly in sane ways that are enjoyable (mostly) and sustainable on an adult's schedule. When I'm on target, I'm getting at *least* 90 grams of protein, but more like 120 (technically I should shoot for 150, so I have some work to do here). It is still going to be hard- I already fell off the wagon a bit as the week closed. But, I am seeing some progress that I hope becomes real results. I'm writing this to show intention and accountability as I forge ahead here, as always.

PERFECT HEALTH GOOD THINGS (quick follow up)

Ok, so that last post was negative, so I thought I'd write a short one about positive things about the PHD, so far-

1. Mental health. I kinda already said this in a couple posts but one weird symptom I got after about 6 weeks of low carb (net carbs < 60 daily) is a very noticeable increase in anxiety symptoms. This has vanished now. Great. No matter how I'm doing with being fat fat fatty, it's kinda hard to function when simple things like going to the theater freak you out. I'm even hopeful that the better nutritional profile will help in even the "non-weird" situations that I get nervous in, like flying.

2. HAIR. Lol wut? Yes- I have suddenly noticed an increase in the thickness and density of the hair on my super male pattern baldness head. No, I don't think I have discovered a magical cure for baldness. However, it appears that SOME of the thinning of my hair was shit nutrition. My huge bald spot is less huge and the hair on the center top of my head- getting dangerously close to comb over territory- has suddenly rebounded, and while not thick by any means, no longer looks embarrassing.

NICE.

So yeah, those are good things.

Perfect Health Diet Challenges

Alright, so I'm a little over two weeks into a three week spring, so here's a progress report.

Meh.

So basically I'm running a slight energy deficit, so I haven't gained in any weight or size. But I haven't had the kind of large caloric deficits required to cut into my fat mass. So that's a problem.

The simplest and best reason is I'm cheating a lot on this diet. Ugh. Probably in the past 15 days, I've had at least 5 in which I ate significant amounts of non-PHD food (anything wheat/cereal grain except rice, sugar beyond really small amounts, etc). And I've had a handful of other days where I have eaten PHD foods to proportions that have pushed my calorie limits up.

But, the main issue is the cheating.

Following the PHD diet perfectly, but not optimizing it to weight loss, I land at around 2300 calories or so. My maintenance level is something like 2500, so obviously this tiny deficit isn't going to produce much loss. This is similar to eating low carb, actually.

Except low carb was easier to optimize.

Except low carb was causing a large, very noticeable uptick in anxiety symptoms. Symptoms that have vanished since adopting the PHD!!!!!! ARGH!

Are there also other reasons (excuses!) for the cheating? Sure. They aren't important because you know, personal responsibility, but worth considering.

1. Cold - I got one. I rarely get sick so when I get a cold I tend to act like a baby about it. Colds for me either cause me to lose a bunch of weight or gain- mainly because the over the counter cold meds make me apathetic to food. So I either eat a bunch because I don't pay attention, or eat little for the same reason. This has been a push this time I think.
2. Stress - We are pushing towards an important deadline at work and I think the stress was affecting me. This is abating now, fortunately.
3. Daylight savings time shift - This wrecked my circadian rhythm which I had tuned really well in February.

On the exercise front, I was in general doing much better until the cold. I'm still averaging over 1500 steps more per day than the previous month, however.

Alright, so with low carb I barely cheated at all despite the severity of the diet. Whereas on the more permissive PHD I cheat a lot more. WHAT IS GOING ON.

I think the PHD's strength is also its weakness: in giving the dieter so much freedom, you start to allow that little voice in your head to give you liberties: "well, you aren't desperately trying to restrict carbs, so....." Those of you who do not struggle with weight cannot possibly know the insidious internal negotiation that goes on in your head, constantly. It takes great mental focus to tune this out. It goes something like this:

Voice: "Oh wow, there is delicious food that is off plan in your home. Hey, just have a bite. Just a bite won't cause you to fall of the wagon."
Me: "No. I'm not hitting my calorie goals because I constantly have to go off plan."
Voice shuts up for awhile.

Later, usually after kids are in bed

Voice: "You made it through another day! Well done good sir. You know what would feel good? Some dopamine. I can make some for you, real fast, if you eat DAT FOOD."

Me: "I gotta admit, dopamine sounds great. But..... I probably shouldn't."

Voice quiets down.

Later, usually after my wife goes to bed.

Voice: "You know, you got through the WHOLE day. Treat. Yo. Self. You know you HATE going to bed hungry. You HATE that feeling. Because night eating is a thing you've struggled with in your life, so if you go to bed a little hungry now, you know there is a 30% chance that something happens that wakes you up, because you have kids and cats! And if you wake up at 3AM, you'll be so ravenous you'll probably plow through that entire carton of ice cream in one sitting. So why not have that food now? Just a little. I'll even through in dopamine, for good measure."

Me: "well, ok. You know what? I deserve this. Just a little bite...."

*at least 500 calories later*

Shit. *Opens up loseit app, logs the results, gets sad*

So basically my running theory is that low carb probably lowers enough of the feel good chemicals in my brain pan that I find it easier to use my will to resist over eating (or, in the case of many days on the PHD, eating to maintenance). Unfortunately this same brain chemistry seems to hurt me in other ways.

So, going forward, I realize I need to optimize the PHD structure to my situation. This probably requires lowering carbs to something to around 100 a day. My hope is that doing this will allow my brain to not "go nuts" while at the same time assisting my willpower in telling that "voice" to shut the F up.

The PHD allows one pound of safe starches a day. This, for me, needs adjustment. I should probably reduce this. Something that would get me to 100 carbs or so a day. I believe I'll do this via the following:

Rice: reduce this to one serving (cup) a day, maximum. Understand that stuff like rice crackers, tapioca flour based things are DESTROYERS OF WORLDS similar to how peanut butter destroys me on low carb.
Potato: The vastly superior safe starch in every way. If possible I should try to make my entire day's safe starch allotment potatoes. Potatoes are nutritionally awesome and way less energy dense than rice- they have half the calories per pound and almost half the carbs.

I should probably also reduce the amount of fruits/sweet vegetables, although to be honest I don't eat so much of these currently that I think it's a big deal.

Make it a huge priority to get the 1 lb of non-starchy vegetables in. The fiber is great and hunger controlling.

No change in the meat. Do what I do.

For today, though, I'm going to fast, to try to catch up a little. If I do that, I should at least have a chance of actually accomplishing a loss on Wednesday, however meager that is.

Future challenges:

I have guests coming and therefore special meals. It's going to be a very challenging time, but one of my health goals is to have a way of eating that doesn't just stop when anything out of the ordinary happens. My hope is, even with tweaks, the PHD will allow me to take friends to restaurants and still have enough of the "menu" available to enjoy.

I'M BACK! And, I think, better than ever? (March 11th 2018)

It's been almost a year since I've wrote in this blog. So here is a quick recap on what has happened since:

I went on that ten day trip I mentioned and it was awesome!

I also did that stupid thing that you always do; I didn't get "back on the diet horse" immediately upon returning home. So that was bad.

Summer was a yo-yo affair; I had a really hard time recapturing the intermittent fasting mojo that I described in previous posts. Without a trip to motivate me, during a pretty brutal plan like that was just too hard.

In August, I decided to try "the potato hack." It seemed healthy but boring, so what the heck? I did drop a significant amount of weight in a very short time, *and* I felt great too- no weird side effects. Neat.

But, of course, eating only cold potatoes is, er, boring. So nopity nope to that.

Then I had a crazy stressful September-January. THE WORKS. Career stuff, life stuff, another move (this time just in-town move, but still a move).

In December I dug back into the diet book/blog literature, inspired by a work colleague who also did the same. This led me to go back into low carbing with new resolve in January.

In the past, I would do cyclic keto, as opposed to a true low carb diet (so keto Monday-Saturday, then a big refeed day). This worked well but the same boredom problems kicked in, since for cyclic keto, you want the carbs to be as low as possible, even eschewing some of the greens and ground berries you might allow on a typical low carb diet.

For this attempt in January, I did a more standard low carb diet which allowed for all the non-starchy veggies I wanted, and some ground berries. No cycles. Just pure low carb eating each day. For almost two months, I ate *cleaner than I ever have,* in terms of sticking to the diet. I think only two days or so did I fall off the wagon. In almost two months! Wow!

So what were the results of that?

The good:

Lost about 2 inches from the chest, and about 3 inches from the waist. Don't get too excited, I regained across the board since my post last year (I'll update the running totals in a bit, and remind new readers what those are). But it was good to do that!

I lost about 5lbs in two months. Not a great rate, but unlike intermittent fasting, I didn't feel like I was suffering: just eating more or less when hungry, with *some* tweaks made to lower the daily energy intake some. Again I'll update the running totals.

The bad:

The jitters. Anxiety. Uh oh. This was unexpected and pretty bad, to be honest. I've always had fairly mild, episodic problems with anxiety. I'm not on meds or therapy, as it mainly is stress based and goes away if the stressors causing it dissipate (sometimes the anxiety is a delayed reaction to built up/previous stress).

But a week or so after starting low carb, which is longer than I've ever done it (remember: I had only done cyclic keto before), I started to get increased generalized anxiety. Of particular worry was heart palpitations, sometimes worryingly at night when trying to sleep.

Objectively, it seemed clear that the palpitations weren't because of some new health malady (palpitations are usually harmless). I was noticing one, making myself nervous, the and the adrenaline from getting nervous makes you have more of them, and that's the negative cycle.

My first step in fixing this was upping my supplement game. On low carb, you can get low on electrolytes and minerals, particularly magnesium and potassium, as you pee those out as you lose fluids. I'm always pretty good about fluids/salt in take, so I focused on the minerals.

That seemed to fix the night time jitters, as did getting more diligent with my caffeine intake (cut way back to just a couple espresso shots* in the morning).

*To the ignorant, "a couple shots of espresso" seems like a lot, but in fact one shot of espresso coffee has only half the caffeine of a cup, so a couple shots is something like 1.5-2 cups of drip coffee. All in all I've cut back from the 3-6 cup habit I used to have to 2-3, at most.

But I still had more generalized anxiety. In particular, going to movie theaters was creating an agoraphobic response I've never had before. This was bizarre: in the past few years I've developed mild-to-moderate anxiety on airplanes, and sitting in a movie theater was feeling exactly the same. What was going on?

I figured out that it was likely a drop of serotonin levels in the brain as a result of the diet. So after two months, I decided I needed a change.

More carbs? Back to crappy SAD? What?

Nope, I was able to find a diet that addresses these issues, seems well thought out, and to be honest, is more fun than I thought. Enter Paul Jaminet's "Perfect Health Diet.

Paul Jaminet is a PHd as is his wife. These are ridiculously smart, "NASA level mega smart" people. They've done a lot of wonderful meta-research and their findings seem to align with my own personal experiences. Such as:

1. Low carb does indeed lower appetite levels, which is good.
2. However some carbs are needed, for a variety of reasons, and for many of us, lowering them to keto or near keto levels is not great.
3. Accepting that the paleo movement has uncovered some great truths, but hold the phone, let's not just throw out the baby with the bathwater on modern medicine.

And here is the website for the diet, btw.

They don't update the blog as much anymore because they are involved with an interested anti-Cancer startup company, but it doesn't matter: there is almost 8 years of regular posts to sift through.

So in the broadest possible strokes, the PHD can be summarized as:

1. Meats good! Just not pork so much (great series on the dangers of pork on the blog btw).
2. SAFE starches in moderate amounts, also good! Just no grains, legumes, or beans. Ground tubers and rice, basically. This means I can eat at Mitsuwa Market again!!!
3. Sweet fruits good! Sweet veggies good!
4. Seed oils SUPER BAD. Fish oils good but DO NOT GO CRAZY.
5. Intermittent fasting is good! But they advocate a moderate, 8 hour eating window approach.
6. Circadian rhythm SUPER DUPER IMPORTANT. Getting to bed on time for regular sleep is VITAL.
 7. Supplementing with the right things SUPER IMPORTANT. Now, they have a huge array of things, but for most of us, I would say a good multi-vitamin+vitamin D covers the majority of daily needs.
8. ORGAN MEATS SOMETIMES! This led me to eat chicken livers for the first time in my life on Saturday. It was... surprisingly pretty good?

My friend Steven commented that it was too complex, and I would admit, yes, at first glance this seems that way. But to my surprise, in three days I've actually had a lot of fun tinkering. I think there is part of my brain: the part of my brain that likes video games, incidentally - that actually enjoys going this in-depth with a diet. And I can already tell it is getting simpler. Of HUGE BENEFIT is ALREADY being in the habit of using a tracking app like LoseIt!, which I've been using for years and years. With his, it is a simple matter to see at a glance what I've eaten and what I need to eat less of or more of in a day.

Early results seem to be similar to low carb in terms of energy intake: about 2300 calories if I don't tweak anything for weight loss at all. This is pretty good- I would lose weight if I did exactly this every day. It would just be very slow and inefficient, and of course like any human being I won't do this exactly (though I am hopeful this will be an "every day, permanent change").

On the PHD website, they of course have many suggestions in how to tweak it for weight loss, which I'm doing. It's basically to cut back on some added fats which means you get a fairly even distribution of carb calories, fat calories, and protein calories.

But that's the thing: this is a health diet, not a weight loss plan, which is why I'm excited about it. I think what I've been doing wrong for years and years is sprinting to short term weight loss goals, and not fixing permanent eating and diet issues. I think having this diet as a base, and tweaking to get my desired results, is a great start for me.

Early results?

Well, I don't weigh in and measure on a daily basis anymore because that is just stupid to do. I now do three week intervals, and I just kicked off a new three week stretch. But the anxiety symptoms are getting better! I went to the  theater yesterday and for the first time since before the low carb diet, I felt totally normal. The heart palpitations and other nervous symptoms/panicky feelings are going away as well.

I also don't really feel the bad symptoms of excessive carb intake, like sleepiness, lethargy, etc. Clearly these sort of symptoms are from eating grains, sugars and other refined carbs. For me, the safe starches simply do not have these effects.

Hunger levels are fine, but I do expect to feel more hunger than the average perfect health dieter, since I am tweaking for weight loss.

OK!

CURRENT TOTALS/PROGRESS

To any newcomers, I do not put actual weights and measurements here. I just state what my progress is from the "Start" of the blog. This will remain the same. Alas, the end of 2017 saw some slippage (and to be honest, the progress made last year was short term probably water weight loss crammed in for my vacation anyway).

Weight Loss From Start: -5 lbs (instead of -17, lol).
Inches from chest: -2"
Inches from Waist: -3"

DAILY STEPS (For exercise, I am doing a goal of daily steps. 10k steps is the goal for each day, although I can't promise I'll update the blog each day, but I do plan to update often).

Yesterday: ~6000 steps. Meh. I did get outside for over an hour, but alas, it was with my kids, which meant lots of stopping to referee fights and arguments. This is why "just exercise with your kids!" type advice bugs me. The kids end up sapping my efficiency.

NEW! - Sleep - Since I am now very focused on sleep, I'm going to track this metric
midnight sleep time, awake at 8pm with daylight savings time shift. ~7 hours, which is my normal circadian rhythm, but the cat woke me up at 3pm, so low quality today, as expected.

March Wrap Up, Into April

Ok! March is done, how did I do?

Goal: My goal was to lose 8 lbs. this month.

Result: I lost 9, so that was a success. More on how that happened in a bit.

Inches: My goal was simply "better," since losing actual inches is notoriously hard to predict*

Result: -1" from waist, just about the same on the chest.

TOTALS since starting the blog:

-17lbs. I had to check that a couple of times to make sure that was real. All of a sudden the numbers look not horrible!

-5" waist and chest. Nice. The inches are always so darned difficult to lose as opposed to weight, but it's coming along!

HOW and WHY:

So I started this month, as my previous post stated, attempting a low carb protocol. That did work for a bit as it usually does in the short term, but the same old problems of chronic hunger all the time kicked in (despite what you read, while low carb definitely helps with satiety, it isn't a cure all and you can definitely overeat this way).

As the month wound down, I began, inspired by my wife and my "nutritional advisor" to intermittently fast more. This started as a two day fast a couple of weeks ago, in which I had a big, mostly water weight based (but still exciting) weight loss. Far more important than the fickle short term loss, however, was how I felt: Once I decided I wasn't eating, I was sort of totally good with it. I find it utterly bizarre how much easier it is to eat nothing, while it is hard to just eat a little.

The next week I fasted again, Monday through Wednesday morning. This was the longest fast I've ever done (about 56 hours). I had an issue with "jitters" near the end, which I read can happen: when you enter a fasted state, your body goes through incredible hormonal shifts and you can get out of whack. My multivitamin did not have some minerals in it, plus I was probably consuming too much caffeine in this period. I went ahead and broke the fast, but again, I lose even more weight this time than the last. Nice!

However, after a weekend of pretty standard, non-pig out eating, I gained back virtually all the weight. Every last bit (this was just this past Monday!).

Additionally, I fasted Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday again, and lost... nothing.

Yep. I lost like 7 lbs the week before, gained it ALL BACK, and lost NOTHING AFTER THREE DAYS OF FASTING. WHAT. THE. HECK.

My "nutritional advisor" explained it well: basically what happens is that when you refeed after fasting a few days,  you probably do not completely fill up the glycogen reserves to the point where you are going to have a huge water weight loss after week one (in my case, week two- week one for me was a very brief, 20 hour fast). Ok, that makes sense, but if you haven't even filled your glycogen reserves up (the fuel your body stores for short term energy use during a fasting period- this lasts about a day or so if you aren't eating, then you switch to fats and a little bit of internal protein**), how could I have regained so much weight, and why am I holding on to it?

Well, a little bit of it is "your body hates you," but the full answer is, look: when refeeding, did you eat carbs at all? In my case, heck yes. Carbs are water sponges, you see, and so if you refeed and even eat the slightest amount of carbs, you are going to soak up all that water you are drinking and hold it.

So, again, TRUST THE PROCESS. I was feeling a little jittery on Wednesday night so I did allow myself a moderate meal, but I was back in fast land on Thursday and Friday (so basically I fasted Monday-Tuesday-Thursday-Friday this week), and finally, on Friday, 5lbs of water weight dropped off. And boy, I could tell: I was PISSING SO MUCH that day. It's amazing how long your body can force you to have a bad result on a scale, when you are actually burning fat internally. Then, this morning, another handful of pounds of water weight off. So now all that weight I regained is gone plus several more.

So for anyone attempting fasting I would tell them: beware these sorts of times when your body is a huge jerk and just holds on to a weight. Of course my nutritional advisor would tell me to just not use the scale at all, or at most once a month or something. I'm still checking regularly until my vacation to Japan (when all bets are off and I'm eating like a drunken pac man), but when I'm back, I may actually take this advice.

The most impressive thing to me was how relatively easy it was, most of the time, to just eat nothing. I went out with my family to a mall food court and I could just easily sit there and have an espresso and water while they ate and totally not care!

Also, while I REALLY DO NOT WANT TO BE A FASTING CULTIST (trust me, they are out there, and make silly claims on the regular), some purely anecdotal, unscientific observations from me:

1. I had a cold on Monday. It was totally and completely gone by Thursday. Shortest cold ever. Some theorize that fasting allows better immune response because your body isn't spending so much energy digesting things. That sounds like more "guys on the internet" talk, but hey, I had this result. So there is that!

2. When I was at the mall with my family, I felt unusually sharp mentally. I was able to corral my kids, quickly solve their minor issues with sharing, and in general be a much better dad, because I wasn't in this "hunger cloud" or a post big meal "food coma" state. I felt better driving: less likely to take a stupid wrong turn, more likely to actually plan ahead in terms of which lane to be, etc. Things I'm sure my wife appreciates!

April Goals:

Er, well, not regain all 17 lbs? Obviously I have a ten day vacation coming up, which in all honesty was a huge reason for this blog. I had personally hit an all time high in weight last year after traveling and didn't want to be at *another* all time high after that. Fortunately that is pretty much impossible to "achieve" now.

So I'll say my main goal is to not do what I usually do after a vacation: not take my eating seriously for weeks afterward, making a small temporary weight gain into a permanent "set point," a mistake I always make. So when that plane lands in America, and the jet lag is gone, I'll be excited to return to a fasting protocol of some sort. While some might suggest forty straight days, I think a regiment of 2 on, 1 off, 2 on, then the weekend of off, repeat, should work pretty well. We'll see. But I'm encouraged overall!





*One of the sucky things about losing weight is your body can and will be stupid about where that fat loss happens; it can be that sliver of fat on your forearm, on some bit that doesn't even seem fat, etc. Just gotta TRUST THE PROCESS as it all gets used eventually.

**Nope, I'm not terribly worried about muscle loss. In what studies exist, the proportion of fat to muscle lost is waaaaaaaay biased in favor of fat, and there is even some debate in some circles over what type of muscle you lose- some even postulate that the body prioritizes non-important "junk" protein you have sort of laying about. Even if that is just "dudes on the internet," the point is- getting the fat off is vastly more important for health, and you can build the muscle later.

March update

So halfway through March, how are we doing?

So far I've lost -3 lbs from where I started at the beginning of the month. My goal was -8 lbs, which was aggressive but I think it is still doable.

This puts me, btw, at -12 lbs lost since August. Finally getting some respectable numbers. I'm also finally shed the weight that 2016 put on me, which, hey, it's still just March 2017 ;)

I haven't measured recently so I can't report on that.

TACTICS:

So in general I've been trying to stay at or around 1200 calories. Looking at the log I keep, my pattern is to sort of do OK during the week, and do mediocre during the weekend.

So in order to ramp things up during the week (and inspired by my wife who is also doing this), I did fast for two days this week, which definitely helped boost things. Yes yes water weight blah blah, but it isn't all water. :p

I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do going forward; but I think intermittent fasting is going to help get me to my goals faster.