My BMI is too high. 25.1 the last time I checked. I’m pre-diabetic. My triglycerides are too high. Welcome to modern American living.
In spite of trying to lose weight via various methods for the past decade, my weight is stubbornly in the same spot. I’ve had to unlearn a ton of bad habits, and I feel as though I’ve made significant progress…even though the scale doesn’t budge. Ultimately weight loss comes down to calories out being greater than calories in. I know this.
However, your body wants to stay the same weight. Anytime you get into a situation where you’re at a deficit (or an excess), your body has various mechanisms to get you back to your core weight. In my case, those mechanisms outsmart my logic every time. Overall, though, I do feel as though I’m slowly unlearning bad habits and figuring out new strategies.
One such strategy is intermittent fasting. I find it really difficult to eat a balanced diet, but it’s significantly easier just to not eat. I’ve tried the 16:8 protocol (don’t eat for 16 hours), but over time I found myself making more and more excuses to eat outside of my 8-hour window. I’ve been experimenting lately with 24-hour periods of fasting. Actually it’s more like 32 hours, but I don’t think it makes much difference.
If I can fast for one day per week and keep my food intake reasonable the rest of the week (while also exercising as much as possible) I should lose weight. Today was a fasting day, and overall it went well. I started out on the treadmill for an hour and went about my day as I normally would. Instead of normal meals, I just had (Starbucks Cold Brew) coffee. This wasn’t technically a straight fast since my coffee had cream and sugar in it, but according to my calculations I’ve had around 300 calories for the entire day.
My typical BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is 2400 calories a day. With the exercise from this morning combined with the afterburn effect, I’m at 3,500 calories with an hour to go. My deficit should be around 3,200 – 3,300 calories, which is nearly a pound of fat. If I can do this every week, I should start seeing that scale start to move.
At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
Work went well today. I feel as though things are starting to fall into place. Because of all the caffeine I was flitting from one thing to another, but I felt really productive. I was having trouble focusing on individual tasks, so I wrote down items in order to avoid forgetting. I followed up on most of the things I wrote down.
I scheduled three Lunch ‘N Learns (how ironic I’m now responsible for them when I avoided them like the plague at SharpSpring), merged a huge PR to production, made progress on our new deployment strategy, and generally was a productive person.
Jodi and I had a nice night when I came home. We got the rest of our week organized and spent an hour or so talking. I went to the store and got some (healthy) groceries to eat tomorrow.
Will Richardson posted on Facebook that he and Suzanne are planning to do a Tough Mudder in December. I’m going to discuss a training plan with my trainer tomorrow morning and try to focus for the next couple of months on that event. It’s somewhat intimidating, but not as much as the first time I did it back in 2017. I know I can finish the course, even if I don’t do all the obstacles.
Jodi surprised me by saying that she was interested in doing it, too. I think that the entire 10 mile course might be a little too difficult for her, but I encouraged her to sign up for the 5k version. I think it will be fun to have her there doing obstacles with us.
I’ve been trying to get around to writing journal entries for a long time, and today is the first time I’ve actually done it. I want to develop the habit of writing about my day every day, even if it’s only a few sentences. Not every entry will be public, but hopefully I will develop this habit the way I envision. I don’t want to look back in 40 years and wonder what the hell I did with my life.
Now it’s time for bed, where hopefully my excessive amounts of caffeine won’t keep me awake.