Unorthodox dieting/exercise success
My last weigh-in on the bathroom scale gave me 158 lbs; Wii Fit pegged me at 156.5. This is the lowest my weight has been in about 3 years. I was in the upper 150s when I left for Seattle, and after tearing my ACL and ending my lacrosse season, I came home weighing in the low 160s. Post-recovery, it went to the mid 160s, which I had attributed to correcting muscle atrophy. Since then, I'd just had a hard time getting it back off.
So, what's been working for me? A big part of it has been intermittent fasting(IF), a notion first introduced to me through radven and then heavily re-introduced from faustin. To put the regimen in short-- I alternate days of having breakfast and lunch but no food after lunch and then days of no food before lunch and then being available to eat, when hungry, in the afternoon and evening. In practice, since I am never hungry in the morning, I am alternating days of having lunch only with days of having a tiny afternoon snack, dinner, and a drink or two.
I want to state for the record that I am actually still very skeptical of any additional health benefits derived from calorie restriction, especially the claims of life extension. Yes, I'm aware of the commonly available research. No, I don't think it's sufficient. There's a commonly available mass of research showing the efficacy of any number of contradictory eating patterns. I think it's likely that, if you drill through all of them, there are probably a couple of first principles they're working off of. I think that these first principles aren't well enumerated. Thus, I'm skeptical of virtually any diet or nutrition plan.
I also want to go on the record as saying that, while I'm finding IF to work for me, I do not advocate it to others. The important thing to understand about all of this is that I've been using IF for the past few weeks because I've been considering my eating patterns and my hunger patterns and considering what has worked for me in the past. What worked for me in the past? A simple rule-- "Eat when hungry, but only when really hungry." This means not eating just because it's time for a meal. It also means understanding when I'm actually hungry and when I'm merely seeking food for psychological reasons. I basically have two hunger sensations-- "Yes, food would be good now" (not real hunger) "I'm going to go outside and forage if I don't eat soon" (actual hunger). Choosing to eat only on the second impulse, and not on the first, is what works for me, and it's also what IF is helping me do through putting that in a structured regimen. I have a tendency to eat larger meals and to feel more psychologically satisfied with larger meals, and personal experience tells me that I can cease eating for 48 hours before it negatively impacts me. My body is good at running long on its food.
Another huge advantage is that this rations our my alcohol consumption. Drinking beer whenever I want to is a bad idea, because I love beer almost more than I love food. Having nights where there's no snacks, no beer, and basically just tea to drink means I have nights that are essentially free of food and drink distractions. This actually has improved my desire to get extra exercise and left me more room in an evening to handle extra work. It's a Good Thing.
So, with all the caveats I've put on it, I also really don't want to hear from people about how I should be eating 5 small meals a day, a regimen that throws me out of balance with respect to my body's natural ability to express need for fuel (i.e. hunger) and which leaves me food-obsessed all day long. I also don't want to hear platitudes about the importance of breakfast or phrases like "jump start your metabolism" or "starvation mode". I especially don't want to hear the latter. I'm a cyclist and I've hit the wall a half dozen times. I know what "starvation mode" feels like and is. I'm not experiencing it.
I've also changed the way that I attack my commute, and I think it's helping. Essentially, I have been treating it like interval training, since the stoplights ensure there are built-in break periods. I've been working to hold my cadence in higher gears and to try and keep heavier-gear spins longer, though not to a point I actually hurt the overall speed of the trip. I'm finding myself spending most of my commutes cruising a gear higher than usual and shifting into it fairly rapidly. My average speed is up by 1-2 mph, which is no mean feat when you consider that every stoplight effectively crushes my average speed. These results are likely a mix of factors, including a lighter body, recent maintenance (adjusting the front brake and correcting my tire pressure), training, and slightly more cooperative winds. Still, it's a Good Thing. It's making me kinda pine for taking a much longer ride, though the summer heat makes long rides less enjoyable than you might think. Oh, and I seriously need more music on my iPod's cycling playlist. It's getting really, really redundant at this point.
On top of this, I'm adding a small amount of adjunct exercise. Basically, I've been learning to inline skate. I wouldn't say that I'm getting any serious exercise this way, since my trips to the rink are short and are focused more on developing turning techniques, but every little bit helps. Learning to turn has been interesting, since getting on the skates has been easy and a number of skills are natural to me. Long story short-- they really do work like short skis in many ways, so I have a good turn where I simply pivot the skates in parallel like skis. Turns that require focusing on the edges of the wheels, though, are still very confusing. I need to spend more time learning about my edges and letting myself take a few falls.
I am, however, probably able to recreationally skate now, so I think we'll be doing more of the local skating events now.
So, what's been working for me? A big part of it has been intermittent fasting(IF), a notion first introduced to me through radven and then heavily re-introduced from faustin. To put the regimen in short-- I alternate days of having breakfast and lunch but no food after lunch and then days of no food before lunch and then being available to eat, when hungry, in the afternoon and evening. In practice, since I am never hungry in the morning, I am alternating days of having lunch only with days of having a tiny afternoon snack, dinner, and a drink or two.
I want to state for the record that I am actually still very skeptical of any additional health benefits derived from calorie restriction, especially the claims of life extension. Yes, I'm aware of the commonly available research. No, I don't think it's sufficient. There's a commonly available mass of research showing the efficacy of any number of contradictory eating patterns. I think it's likely that, if you drill through all of them, there are probably a couple of first principles they're working off of. I think that these first principles aren't well enumerated. Thus, I'm skeptical of virtually any diet or nutrition plan.
I also want to go on the record as saying that, while I'm finding IF to work for me, I do not advocate it to others. The important thing to understand about all of this is that I've been using IF for the past few weeks because I've been considering my eating patterns and my hunger patterns and considering what has worked for me in the past. What worked for me in the past? A simple rule-- "Eat when hungry, but only when really hungry." This means not eating just because it's time for a meal. It also means understanding when I'm actually hungry and when I'm merely seeking food for psychological reasons. I basically have two hunger sensations-- "Yes, food would be good now" (not real hunger) "I'm going to go outside and forage if I don't eat soon" (actual hunger). Choosing to eat only on the second impulse, and not on the first, is what works for me, and it's also what IF is helping me do through putting that in a structured regimen. I have a tendency to eat larger meals and to feel more psychologically satisfied with larger meals, and personal experience tells me that I can cease eating for 48 hours before it negatively impacts me. My body is good at running long on its food.
Another huge advantage is that this rations our my alcohol consumption. Drinking beer whenever I want to is a bad idea, because I love beer almost more than I love food. Having nights where there's no snacks, no beer, and basically just tea to drink means I have nights that are essentially free of food and drink distractions. This actually has improved my desire to get extra exercise and left me more room in an evening to handle extra work. It's a Good Thing.
So, with all the caveats I've put on it, I also really don't want to hear from people about how I should be eating 5 small meals a day, a regimen that throws me out of balance with respect to my body's natural ability to express need for fuel (i.e. hunger) and which leaves me food-obsessed all day long. I also don't want to hear platitudes about the importance of breakfast or phrases like "jump start your metabolism" or "starvation mode". I especially don't want to hear the latter. I'm a cyclist and I've hit the wall a half dozen times. I know what "starvation mode" feels like and is. I'm not experiencing it.
I've also changed the way that I attack my commute, and I think it's helping. Essentially, I have been treating it like interval training, since the stoplights ensure there are built-in break periods. I've been working to hold my cadence in higher gears and to try and keep heavier-gear spins longer, though not to a point I actually hurt the overall speed of the trip. I'm finding myself spending most of my commutes cruising a gear higher than usual and shifting into it fairly rapidly. My average speed is up by 1-2 mph, which is no mean feat when you consider that every stoplight effectively crushes my average speed. These results are likely a mix of factors, including a lighter body, recent maintenance (adjusting the front brake and correcting my tire pressure), training, and slightly more cooperative winds. Still, it's a Good Thing. It's making me kinda pine for taking a much longer ride, though the summer heat makes long rides less enjoyable than you might think. Oh, and I seriously need more music on my iPod's cycling playlist. It's getting really, really redundant at this point.
On top of this, I'm adding a small amount of adjunct exercise. Basically, I've been learning to inline skate. I wouldn't say that I'm getting any serious exercise this way, since my trips to the rink are short and are focused more on developing turning techniques, but every little bit helps. Learning to turn has been interesting, since getting on the skates has been easy and a number of skills are natural to me. Long story short-- they really do work like short skis in many ways, so I have a good turn where I simply pivot the skates in parallel like skis. Turns that require focusing on the edges of the wheels, though, are still very confusing. I need to spend more time learning about my edges and letting myself take a few falls.
I am, however, probably able to recreationally skate now, so I think we'll be doing more of the local skating events now.