Intermittent Fasting Update - July 2020

Long time no chat! It's been over year since my last update and a lot has changed, and yet, some things continue to persist. As a fun aside, I think this is the first long form post I've written in the new WordPress block editor? I saw a popup welcoming me so I'm assuming...

Since my post in April, I've continued to make at least some progress on the personal health front. 2019 actually went pretty well, all things considered. I started a new job in September which brought it's own challenges and new stresses, but I persevered and stuck to my fasting guns. The real challenge came at the tail end of the year when the holiday shenanigans started to roll in.

I had been doing really well, all things considered. I went from somewhere around 310 pounds down to 228 according to my weight tracker. 80 pounds in 9 months is no small feat! I used this new found confidence to convince myself I deserved some sort of reward. In this case, a guilt free holiday of indulgence with friends and family. My last weigh in was November 17, 2019 and I was feeling pretty good.

If we follow the trend line though, something happened. Retrospectives are always harder to perform without solid data and this is no exception. My next weigh in was February 2020. For 3 months, I neglected any sort of accountability to myself and fell off the wagon. I was still roughly watching the timing in which I ate, but my diet went back to a lot of the same shit it was before. I had changed some habits, sure, but even with healthier food options, it's not hard to imagine gaining weight if you eat massive quantities of food.

When I dared step on the scale again in February, my weight had creeped back up to 240! Ten pounds in about 3 months. Now, taking into account that my lowest weight was done coming off of a 48 hour fast and when my diet featured few carbs, it's not hard to attribute a lot of that to extra water that was hanging around with an increased carb intake. I remember at the time feeling bummed though.

The next weigh in was 2 weeks later. March 3, 2020. I was back down to 231.7! Success, I convinced myself it was all water weight and I was still on track. Typing this out I'm feeling elated and proud! I didn't actually fuck up! I think you all know what happens next though...

Covid-19

The world fell into a bit of a tailspin. I'm sure you all have your own stories, so I won't spend a lot of time here, but suffice to say, the introduction of a global pandemic was jarring.

My favorite coffee spot was closed, and coincidentally a lot of my weekly social life was reduced to uninspiring trips down the hall to the self serve coffee machine in my apartment building clubhouse. While I didn't talk about my weight loss in those interactions, looking back I think there was a part of me that enjoyed the challenge of being noticed; of someone else seeing a marked change and making a comment. I knew from my trips to see family that I enjoyed the compliments I received and it felt good to have someone else acknowledge the hard work I put into bettering my future self.

The numbers don't lie and at this point, my memory doesn't either. I was stuck at home, but totally now, since I worked from home already before the pandemic. My wife's schedule was weird as her job made changes. I was following a lot of the day to day politics of it all and getting depressed.

I turned back to my old friend food to cope. I don't want to go back into my bank history and count the midnight trips to Whataburger, but there were a lot of them. My habits were somewhat better sure; unsweet tea is my new go to, and I was usually only getting one sandwich... but when you're already eating dinner courtesy of a cheap meal box option that heavily features potatoes to reduce the cost of the service, it's not surprising that my weight continued to rise.

I'd like to point out that that during all of this, my eating window largely remained in the popular fasting schedules. 16+ hours between meals was totally normal. Some days I was tired and went to bed early after dinner. Other days I ate lunch and dinner and a midnight snack, though those were more rarely seen.

Present Day

My most recent weigh in was July 3. 253 pounds. That's 4~ pounds a month or roughly 14,000 calories, or a bit under 8 trips to Whataburger per month with my usual order. Not counting my indulgences at other fine dining establishments during the same time period! It's not hard to imagine 8 extra meals per month sneaking in. Twice a week! What's the harm? 20 pounds in the harm. Reversal of my hard earned progress is the harm. My confidence in myself is the harm.

Today is July 29, 2020. I'm writing this at the start of the day before starting work. I just got out of the shower and I'm listening to some quiet chill-hop to prevent my own brain from echoing to itself in the hollow box that is my head.

Yesterday, I did okay. I have a new meal service that is much healthier, at around the same cost per meal. It also requires much less time to prepare, making it easier to put off eating until I'm absolutely ravaging, thus prolonging my fasting times. I ate around 6pm. I did also finish off about a half a bag of tortilla chips with some leftover salsa from a restaurant trip last week that I didn't want to just throw away for whatever reason. The chips ended up only making my hungrier so I made a couple of plain burger patties with a little cheese and some frozen peas.

I then waited a couple of hours and occupied myself with a video game until making a bag of popcorn around 9pm. By 9:20 I hit the button to start timing my next fast, feeling really full. I obviously ate too much. I could feel it, but at that point it was too late to do anything about it.

My current streak is sitting strong at a full week of my ideal fasting schedule. Eating only dinner, in a less than 4 hour window, 5 days a week, skipping food entirely on Monday and Thursday. Today is Wednesday, so I'll be eating dinner again tonight, but I think I'm going to commit here in this post to only eating my pre-prepared meal somewhere between 8 and 10pm.

My next weigh in is Friday. Not sure if I'll post that here, but I will be logging it of course! I'm hopeful to see the scale move in the "right" direction but you never know. It could go up even more, and that's something I'll have to live with and overcome. I sure hope it doesn't though. 😅

If you enjoy reading these, send me a tweet @daronspence and let me know. Accountability is important to my own progression I'm finding and unfortunately it is hard to get that anywhere but online in our current world.

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