Phases and Setbacks

 I’ve gone into details before about my struggles with becoming healthier. Over the past six months, I binged on exercise and dieted on healthy foods, carefully tracked. I lost 12 pounds in the first two months, then nothing. I bounced between 208 and 212 for four or five months. There was no way that more exercise or less food was healthier and it wasn’t a sustainable lifestyle change to do either so I was stuck. I never had luck with intermittent fasting or macros specific dieting either so I’ve looked into… scarier alternatives.

Fasting, which is essentially controlled starvation, is one of those alternatives. It’s always sounded like a one way trip to an eating disorder and it’s territory full of unhealthy assumptions and ‘clean’ elitists/purists. I’d tried an extended water fast in the past and it was torture. Headaches, hunger, no energy, it was like voluntarily giving myself a bad cold. However, I’ve looked into what sort of fasting is medically supervised and the key difference is that they push for the balance of electrolytes.

To my understanding, this involves four key elements; sodium, magnesium, potassium and calcium. Having hard tap water (filtered with carbon but still hard), calcium deficiency is never a problem and also why I never supplement it, fasting or not. Sodium was a trickier exploration. If you overdo it, take too much too fast… there will be diarrhea. Drinking salt water is torture for me, no matter how little you add, it’s never diluted enough. I’m this case, I opted for the suggestion of bouillon. Purists might balk at it since ANY calories ‘break a fast’ but then again so does anything but water. They argue about discipline but for a great deal of people interesting in positive fasting benefits, bro-ing it out over raw-dogging the water is pointless. Only spiritual fasting seems to impose the self-torture of starvation. You can achieve accelerated autophagy approaching it more reasonably. Bouillon will not spike you out of a fast and will contribute to maintaining energy and well-being throughout. I’ve read countless medical articles on this (and not the ones trying to sell their fasting formulas; you can never trust a site trying to sell anything, as they will embellish on the truth).

Which leaves magnesium and potassium, which boost each other and regulate sodium intake better. Again, you have to look at the kinds of sodium and magnesium that might work best for you since the ways they are bound seem to alter their benefits and absorption. I opted for magnesium malate and potassium citrate.

Insofar, I did a three day fast, and two 24 hour ones. I set out to do 36 hours but I’ve been more wary about looking for symptoms that they aren’t beneficial to continue. I did the 3 day fast to know what I was getting into and it made me certain those will be rarer. I’m going to aim for two 24 or 36 hour fasts a week. It’s lumped with intermittent fasting as an option but I feel like it takes the guesswork out of calorie counting for that period of time, which is a relief. At first, I was ravenous coming off of a fast, but over the past two weeks, it’s become more manageable. I am welcoming healthier foods into my diet naturally rather than trashing the pantry and inserting nothing but rabbit food. The fasts give me more wiggle room to indulge, not right away but the day after at least.

I wasn’t sure it would work, but it’s motivated me to keep up with daily workouts and has helped with my physical progress and pain levels. I’m not getting huge results with weight loss but I was 209 pounds at my doctor's visit a week ago and 205 this morning. I haven’t seen 205 yet so this is a promising low.

I was miserable all the time on a restrictive diet and I think that stress was only gripping onto my weight. This sort of fasting is giving me both careful discipline and a break from the tracking and restricting. I have more freedom to eat and it becomes easier to make better choices with that freedom. I can essentially fast to reset my digestive system and cell regeneration.

It may or may not help with losing weight. I’m not going to go to more drastic or miserable measures to do it. I just want to be healthier, to have better control of my mind and body. It is always a balance though. It is too easy for these desires to become obsessions, to become controlled by the need for discipline and lose sight of the goals for health. I carefully track my fasts. I’m not going to keep extending them to see how far I can push when it becomes easier. I will not exceed 2 36 hour fasts a week, with maybe a 3 day fast every few months (and not doing the shorter fasts at all that week). 

It’s the benefits of fat burning states and autophagy I am most interested in. I’m not interested in super low-carb diets to upkeep ketosis. I’ve seen too many studies where ketosis heightens the chance of diabetes and other chronic conditions. If you’re not getting your blood tested frequently with these things, you’re pulling some big risks. Which is why I opted for short fasts that I give myself room to bail on. In six months, I’ll be getting a check up with my doctor to have bloodwork so I don’t want to see any startling negative changes from overdoing it unsupervised.

I just wanted to make a change that might reduce stress and achieve better results. What worked before doesn’t work now. I exercised intensely daily and ate very little. I dropped weight fast and gained muscle but it was too miserable to maintain and I completely abandoned it altogether. Trying to do it that way again because it ‘worked’ hit me with the cold reality that I’m older, my hormones are different and it won’t work like that anymore. 

So I’m going to give this reset concept a go for a few months. I do yoga stretches daily as well as some cardio boxing or weight exercises. I still exercise but more intuitively than habitually. I see and feel improvements that don’t push me to injury and setbacks. I’m regaining energy, mobility and better moods. As long as these positives remain, I know I’m on the right track.

I know this isn’t the most interesting news, but I’m very certain that my creativity will stay blocked until I learn to balance it with good health practices. I won’t be able to focus on that aspect of myself when I’m physically miserable. Mentally, I check out too. I keep hoping there will be a triumphant return to my creative productivity but that will require looking after my physical health. You need energy, stamina and motivation to be creative and I’ve been sorely depleted by these two challenging years. It will take some time to get that back and I can’t force that. Stress hormones don’t reward you when you get too pushy. They’ll just shut you down.

So here’s to finding that balance again. Small doses of all the right things. We’ll see.