EngelFish.Net

For a while there I was a fan of *crossover* country music, and Mary Chapin Carpenter was one of my favorites. A standard on my iPod rotation had the line, “sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.” Yesterday, I was the bug. I was fasting, which is normal for my Mondays, but it didn’t go well. I spent most of the day obsessing over food, which is unusual for me. By the time Samara and I were both home, I was tired, cranky, and had no energy. My “meh” attitude didn’t help perk her up either (she’d had a good, but long day herself), and contributed to a “quiet time please” mood in the house. I finished adding a couple of new treads to the staircase to Mom’s apartment, with only two minor power-tool related injuries, but it took everything I had to do so. Afterward, I was too worn out to enjoy even doggie-play-time.

I realized that the fast was not improving the quality of my day, so I bagged it and ate. That was a good decision. What I ended up eating was not. I am following the Dukan Diet, and I’m down twenty pounds so far. Similar to Atkins, it focuses on lean protein and considers carbs to be off limits. In addition to foods that were Dukan-friendly, I also ate two slices of thin crust pizza, an apple granola bar, and an entire box of sugar-free/fat-free pudding. With a belly full of food, and now feeling both sluggish *and* guilty, I opted to go to bed early.

Those decisions were both bad for my diet. I could beat myself up over the slip, or I can roll with it. I’m choosing the latter. I know that I’ll get more accomplished, and make more progress toward my goals, by remaining positive and focusing on what I can do right now. Worrying about the past just isn’t worth it. Going to sleep on a carb-filled tummy has an upside… I’m plenty peppy today! I have a three mile run, a yoga class, and a massage scheduled today, so I can put that pep to good use.

As Winston Churchill said, “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.” Yesterday I was the bug, but today I am the windshield.

Like many skills, having a “creative eye” for photography requires practice. There are many different ways to stretch your brain and sharpen your skills, and one of my favorites is to very consciously and very deliberately look around you and see things. Notice the shadow from your glass of ice tea, how the light comes through the trees in your back yard, the graininess of the bench outside your office, or the composition of people sitting in the room around you. I have a reminder programmed into my phone to randomly prompt me to take an interesting picture of something in the next two minutes. The combination of a very short deadline and a random environment can make for some interesting photos. This was today’s. It is a section of board on the enclosure for a garbage dumpster behind a grocery store I pass on my way to work. I only had two minutes, so I pulled over and started looking. Have you ever tried something like this? What do you do to develop your “eye”?

For the last two years or so, I have semi-consistently done a liquid fast one day a week, consuming at least 3 quarts of liquid during the fast (diet soda, seltzer, water, coffee, and tea, but nothing with sugar). I started this habit as part of a weight-loss plan. My thinking was, and still is, that if I burn 2,000 to 3,000 calories a day (which I believe is reasonable if you exercise for 45 minutes daily) then by not eating one day a week I am positioning myself to either not gain (or to lose) almost a pound a week.

This assumes that I am eating a well balanced healthy diet the rest of the week, and that I don’t binge when I come off the fast. Some weeks I eat what I believe is a very healthy diet. Realistically, I eat too well on the weekends occasionally and I’m only breaking even for the week. Regardless, I have found that fasting is relatively easy for me. I don’t seem to get particularly hungry, and I only infrequently notice that my energy level drops at the very end of my fast day (which makes it that much easier for me to get to sleep, which is a nice side benefit).

I can’t speak to “clearer thinking” or “detoxification” that some folks claim to experience, but I can say that I do feel better when I follow this approach. It could be all in my mind (is psychosomatic the correct word here?), but it is nevertheless how I feel.

After doing some reading recently, I’ve found that our bodies take roughly 24 hours to use up the available glucose supply. After that period, our body begins pulling glycerol from our fat stores and breaking down muscle tissue to provide the necessary glucose for our brain and red blood cells. By the third day of a fast our body chemistry changes and we go into ketosis, which allows our body to burn/convert fat to provide the glucose for our brains. This process is, I believe, a cornerstone to the effectiveness of protein heavy diets like Atkins. This makes me wonder if I should try either extending my fast from one to two days weekly, or doing a three day fast once a month.

While I enjoy the weight-loss benefits of fasting, my primary interest is in how it affects my general energy level. My goal is to have the vim-and-vigor to work toward my goals every day, and I’m wondering if tweaking my current approach would be an improvement. I would be interested in hearing what you think, especially if you’ve tried anything like this yourself.

I have resumed working on my overall fitness, after a few months of being lazy. I’m using a combination of diet and exercise to meet my goals. There is running 4 days a week (T,T,S,S) and lifting in my gym 3 days a week (M,W,F). I am also using the Dukan Diet for my mealplan. My highest weight was 260 pounds, but I started this cycle at 230 pounds. Thus far, I’ve seen pretty good results in just two weeks (with a setback from a trip to my high school reunion). My goal is to get to 173 pounds, which is average for my height (5’10″) according to the BMI scale (I know it’s not perfect, but it gives me a goal to shoot for). In addition to tracking my weight, I’m also going to track my stomach, chest, thigh, and bicep/tricep measurements to gauge progress. I haven’t set fitness goals yet, so if you have any suggestions I would like to hear them. If I knew a way to consistently (and affordably) track my body-fat, I would. Until I find a solution to that, I’m using the jiggle test. If you stand naked in front of a mirror and bounce up and down, all the jiggly-bits should be things without muscle in them. Since peer pressure and public accountability help, if you know me and see me, ask how I’m doing. I promise not to mention my jiggly-bits.

Early last year I lost almost 60 pounds, which was a great thing. The catch, and there always is one, is that late last year I “found” 40 of those pounds. I realized lately how much of a psychological burden those pounds have, and decided that the extra weight is going away. I’ve signed up for a half marathon in April (as added incentive to train) and set a goal of going from 240# last Monday to 170# by June 20th. I’m using a prudent combination of diet (lean protein and lots of veggies… but nothing “white”), planned “splurge days”, daily running/walking, and 25 minute work-outs every other day. This will be the 2nd most important goal I have during this period, right after getting work and keeping the bills paid.