Diary of a Fasting Man

So, summer is almost here, and I have a little more jiggle around my waistline than I'd like. However, I'm also training to enter an weightlifting competition. In my experience, I cannot get stronger, at least to any significant degree, while going on an effective diet to lose weight. A caloric deficit just seems to ruin my workouts.

My solution: intermittent fasting. It's a way of eating that has become really popular with fitness professionals recently. I didn't say "diet", because you're eating normal, healthy foods, but only eat them certain times and fast the rest.

Despite it being simple, I don't feel like explaining it because shut up. Here's an infographic that does a better job than I ever could.

To stick my toe in the water, I'm going the one-day approach: Don't eat for 24 hours. From 10 pm on Saturday, May 18, to 10 pm on Sunday, May 19, I can drink water and coffee and green tea to my heart's content, but no food. Indeed, nothing with any calories whatsoever.

This is the log of my experience.


Saturday, 10 pm- Okay, just finished up my last meal for 24 hours.

Liver and Onions.

Liver is supposed to be like..the best food ever for you. It's also, however, a liver. I kind of tastes like squishy pennies, and the whole time I was eating it I couldn't not  think about punching into a cow and ripping out its liver (one of its livers? I don't know cow anatomy) and throwing it in a skillet.

Anyway, fasting isn't looking as bad now.

Sunday, 11: 30 am- This is when I for real sat down to write this blog entry. I have a cup of coffee in hand, and so far no appetite to speak of. Googling "liver and onions" helped. 

However, I've tried not eating a whole day before, back when I was a teenager. I vowed not to eat during the weekends so I could lose weight (because shut up, you weren't a rocket scientist either). I made it 6 hours. 

Today, I'm going to remind myself of why I'm doing this by sitting without a shirt on and looking down at how my fat rolls bunch up and grabbing them while calling myself names before seriously considering whether or not I have medically significant body issues. Huh. 

2:12 pm - Okay, so the first hunger pangs are finally starting to hit. I'm used to eating right as I wake up, so four hours later... yeah, I can feel it. So far, it's manageable. I'll just drink some water and play Xbox to keep myself occupied.


3:51 pm - Starting to feel it now. That sort of weak feeling you get when you're really hungry. Coffee should help. Yeah. gonna drink some more coffee. That'll clear up the jitters. I'm I skinny yet?

Darren kind of looks like a turkey leg.


4:41 pm- coffee has not made me less jittery. Water now.


5:39 pm - Feeling great, actually. Hunger is gonOH GOD NOW THAT I'M WRITING ABOUT IT THE HUNGER IS BACK WHAT HAVE I DONE

So yeah, I don't know if its actually hunger, or appetite. I've found that I'm pretty much surrounded by food, all day, all the time. It makes me wonder how much I would crave food if it wasn't always immediately available.

Something to think about; brain food, if you wTHAT WAS STUPID I DID IT AGAIN


6:27 pm - This is where it starts getting tough. All I can think about is that I know in 3.5 hours I can eat again, and it's going to be a protein shake and a big pizza and breadsticks and a PB&J because shut up, I'll do what I want, no it's not negating any benefits I got from fasting, shut up. Oh my....pizza... it's going to be amazing.


6:50 pm - I'm going to watch how i met your mother and hope they don't talk about food they wouldnt do that would they why would they be mean like that


7:28 pm - Friends are over. They want to play Magic. They don't know my pain. They don't know what I'm going through. So I'm making a point to bring it up every 9 seconds. My pain will be their pain.


8:12 pm -  That pizza is going to be amazing. I'm going to eat it so hard. I'm going to savor it and let it swim in my mouth and whisper sweet nothings to my taste buds before gracefully sliding to its rightful place in my gullet.


8:13 pm - Food is better than sex. I know that now. I know that because I've decided that I'm not actually all that hungry. But the thought of eating something delicious after not eating anything at all for .... 22 hours and 13 minutes is at the forefront of my mind and it isn't leaving.


8: 19 pm - Still there. Yup.


8: 27 pm - There's only an hour and a half left to go. I can't tell if that makes it easier or harder. But I'm going to make it , and I'm not even going to pretend it was all that hard. There are starving kids in the world who have been three days without food and they're thankful when they get a bowl of under cooked white rice for their one meal before the next three days without food.

On a side note, I don't know if I feel good about myself forcing a fast to look better when so many people do it because there is no food to eat.


8:59 pm - Game of Thrones time.


9: 10 pm - Also Game of Thrones time.


9:31 pm - Ordering that pizza online while still trying to watch Game of Thrones. OH HELL YEAH YOU TELL HIM TYRION.


10:00 pm - 

10:20 pm - Ughl....stomach may have shrank a bit during the past 24 hours....normal pizza load not well received...no touch me now.....Am I pretty yet?



The Next Day: 

So, it's done. And you know what? I'm going to do it again. I don't feel weak today, and I don't feel like I need to eat two days worth of food to make up for yesterday. FYI, I normally overeat pizza when it's available to me, so last night wasn't out of the ordinary....except for the fact I got full quicker than normal.

One of the primary benefits cited by intermittent fasting is appetite control, and I can definitely see it. One bowl of oatmeal this morning, and I feel like I could go hours without eating, which is normal for normal people, not normal for me.

The effects? I couldn't tell you. It's been one day. What I'm going for here is a hormonal change, which could take weeks to take effect, especially if I'm only doing one day a week. The most popular methods involve fasting 16 hours every day, eating good food (which apparently isn't pizza) during the 8 hour window. I might progress to that, because 8 hours sounds like a long time to eat. It means you skip breakfast, but that just means I'm eating eggs, turkey bacon, and wheat toast for lunch instead.

All in all, I can see how this works for people. Everything works. There are tons of success stories of people using intermittent fasting, and tons of success stories from almost every other diet ever written. The key is finding something you can do that won't kill you or compromise your health.

I'll try it again next Sunday, if that's any indication.

A Sensible Approach to Nutrition

We live in an obesogenic environment. Blogger doesn't recognize that as a real word, but it basically means that conditions are ideal for those of us who wish to become obese. Calorie-dense food has never been cheaper nor more widely available, most modern tasks are designed to use as little physical energy as possible, and since being overweight would put you in the majority you would no longer be viewed as a social pariah!

Your dreams can become a reality.

If you need advice on how to gain weight and become obese, I can tell you it has never been easier. However, some of you would like to know how to lose weight, and that's a bit trickier.

The physical activity side of the equation, believe it or not, is pretty easy to deal with. You can hire a particularly handsome personal trainer, and he'll explain, in a sultry but reassuring tone what exactly you should be doing and how to do it.  But if you want to be successful in your pursuit of losing weight, nutrition is what will make or break you. And, unfortunately, it is much harder to deal with.

The problem will always come down to our finite source of willpower. Many of us just have too much on our plate to make good decisions about what's literally on our plate; most commercial diets require such a radical change in the way we eat that we just don't have enough willpower left over after dealing with work, family, and other life problems to follow them with any degree of success. And if you do manage to claw your way through a tough diet and lose a significant amount of weight, you're at a great risk of gaining it all back.

According to this study published in the New England Journal of Medicine and the subsequent article by the New York Times, a significant reduction in calories that results in weight loss (a diet, in other words)  can lead to a physiological and psychological response that promotes weight gain. In the study, the obese participants were fed a very low calorie diet that consisted of low-starch vegetables and a drink best described as "liquid sadness". After ten weeks, the participants lost an average of 30 pounds.

The (fairly predictable) bad news? After a year, almost all of the participants had gained some of the weight back, and reported feeling hungrier and more preoccupied with food than they were before the study.

At Skape Fitness, we're big advocates of a sensible approach to nutrition. Most people wanting to lose weight want to do it quickly, and while that's understandable, it's not exactly practical. Look at it this way: if you are 40 years old, and you want to get back down to the weight you were at 20, you've spent half of your life gaining this weight! You can't expect to lose it in six weeks without some serious consequences.

So what can you do to approach nutrition in a sustainable way that doesn't sap your entire supply of willpower?

Our answer: one step at a time.

Every month, make a small change to your diet. Just one. Something bigger than "pick the pepperonis off my pizza", but maybe smaller than "only eat organic kelp and distilled water." Focusing on one thing at a time is not only more manageable than a complete diet overhaul, but may help you identify the real problem foods that have been slowly moving in over your belt. Here are some suggestions:

-Start taking fish oil. I'm not even going to take the time to tout the benefits of fish oil. Take five seconds to Google it. It's cheap, it helps with heart health and brain function and weight loss, and come on all you have to do is remember to swallow two pills a day. Do it.

-No soda, diet or otherwise, for a month. Soda is the pinnacle of empty calories. Fitness people throw that phrase around a lot, but basically it means that pop will provide calories, but without any other nutrients and without making you ever feel full. Diet soda may -or, hopefully for my sake, may not- be harmful to your health, but I can tell you that I very rarely pair healthy food with my diet cola.

-No alcohol for a month.  Booze is not only empty calories, but it is basically anti-muscle juice when consumed in large quantities. Give it up for a month to see if your lifts go up. Also, if after two days you start shaking, you'll know you have bigger problems to worry about.

-Eat at least 30 grams of fiber per day for a month. If you've never paid attention to fiber in the past.... well, never be more than twenty steps away from the john. I promise it's worth it, and any friends you lose in the process probably weren't all that great anyhow.

-No cold cereal for a month. This once is geared specifically towards me. I love me some Honey Nut Cheerios. Thing is, a human-sized bowl of any cold cereal is about three or four servings; that 120 calories written on the side of the box refers to an amount of cereal that I would consider to be no cereal left. It's also a poor macronutrient profile for either gaining muscle or losing weight, and it never tends to fill me up. If you have a similar weakness, consider giving it up for a while.

By implementing this strategy, you can start to zero in on what your biggest source of weight gain has been. If you look more defined after a month of abstaining only from alcohol, it might be worth avoiding. If soda has been your Achilles heel, you might find that out this month. The point is to make simple, targeted changes that you can implement without completely turning your daily routine on its head.

So there you go. Try focusing on just one thing every thirty days, and keep track of your progress. You might not see the 30 lb transformation you've always dreamed of just by switching to whole-wheat bread, but you might drop a pound or two and make progress toward a healthy lifestyle without devoting all of your extra energy towards it. I hate to say this, but there are more important things in life than being skinny.

Like lifting heavy things, for example.