About the “noticeably better”: it doesn’t mean that it has to end up perfect, but, on the other hand, cleaning a square centimeter of the floor doesn’t count.

A bit of background: I’m really disorganized, and don’t really have a problem with living “amidst chaos”, but, of course, this means that I can’t have visits at home, organize my usual Sunday lunches, and so on. On the other hand, I really have a problem with tidying up and cleaning; much like exercising, these are activities I find utterly, mind-numbingly boring, as they don’t occupy my mind at all, but still need some active attention; even really doing nothing would be better, as without such a demand for attention I could simply let my mind wander.

Still, life isn’t made of only pleasant activities, and I really must do something about my “lair”. Therefore, I came up with this plan. If I spend, say, 10-15 minutes each day improving the condition of one room, in a couple of weeks the house will be good enough to have visitors again — without the insanity, the horror of, say, spending an entire weekend doing nothing but this.

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I’m proud to say, though, that I’ve been sticking to the first change, and feeling much better (details to come) because of that.

More to come in the following days…

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As I said last post, I’ve already started this one, last Monday. This should be mostly easy… for a while.

The problem is not that I “crave” alcohol, as an alcoholic would do; the problem is that I seem to have got it into my head, since years ago, that a great meal needs a great wine (or an average one, if a great one is not affordable), and that I need alcohol in my system to enjoy several types of situations — typically social ones.

Of course, that’s a dependency — even if not a physical one –, which makes it a very, very bad idea. I must be able to both enjoy a good meal and enjoy myself with either friends or strangers without having to drink a couple of glasses first.

Besides, without drinking I sleep much better, and feel much more awake during the day. The days even seem longer — which may actually have been one of my reasons for drinking, since I often feel like time passes too slowly, which obviously causes boredom. But making the days “become” shorter is absolutely the wrong way to solve that; if I need more things to do so that I don’t get bored, that’s what I should search for — or create.

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So, for the past couple of days, I’ve been thinking about a way to not only start developing and improving myself again, but also to “liven up” this blog. The first problem was the hardest: I tend to be very lazy, and it’s hard for me to keep doing something for a very long while without getting bored, so quicker results and variety are a must. Also, tackling a lot of areas at once, coming from a long period of doing nothing about them, doesn’t usually work. “Baby steps” are often a better way.

The plan I came up with is this: each week I will introduce a change (for the better, of course) in my life. Sticking with something for just a week is easy. The trick is that in the following week, when I introduce another change (probably in a completely different area), I will stick to the first change as well — though the new one will be the main focus of that week.

Changes I’ve already thought about, in no particular order:

• Don’t drink alcohol except on social occasions (and no, dining at my family’s doesn’t count as one here)
• Meet at least one new person
• Go vegan for a day or two each week
• Fast for a day or two each week
• Exercise at least 5-10 minutes each day
• Read a book not from my usual genres (a week should be more than enough)
• Look at everyone in the eyes when talking (harder for me than it sounds)
• Make sure my home ends up tidier and cleaner after each day of the week (much saner than spending an entire day or two doing nothing but that)
• Go to some new place and explore it a bit (difficult at the moment due to lack of money, but eventually possible)
• Do something each day to try to increase the money earned from my sites
• Find (and put in practice) a new way of spending less money, either for the week or for the entire month
• Do some kind of “good deed” each day, however minor — not to gain something from it (and certainly not for supernatural reasons, as I’m 100% atheist), but simply to make the world a (slightly) better place
• Seek out friends and family (perhaps a different one each day) without any ulterior reasons (note that I consider “enjoying their company” an ulterior reason, which doesn’t mean it’s a bad one)
• and more…

Again, these are just ideas I’m throwing around; don’t think of the above as some kind of “checklist”. I may use some of them, not use others, and add new ones.

I’m also going to avoid being too “rigid”; I’ll stick to the first week of every change no matter what, but if it proves too difficult afterwards, I may put that particular change on hold after that week, though with the intention of trying again later. Still, this should be the exception, not the rule.

Post about the first weekly change (which has already started, this monday) coming next…

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1. Asking for help is OK and normal;
2. Saying “no” to that is also OK and normal.

Unfortunately, in my adult life, I’ve been finding out — often to my own detriment, and sometimes with irrevocable damage to relationships — that a lot of people seem to believe the exact opposite. They never ask for help (except perhaps to their close family, and even then they feel terrible about it), and become shocked — and offended, and/or hurt — when asked.

Apparently, when person A ask person B for help, person B has two choices: either feel terrible for not helping, or feel terrible with him/herself (and resent the other person) for not being strong enough to say “no”. There are no other possibilities, it seems. Helping is something terrible, which harms the helper immensely, but saying “no” also makes the would-be helper feel like a monster; therefore, the asker committed a hideous sin just by asking, as if he or she ignored an unspoken rule or protocol: “thou shalt not ask”.

Am I so weird for believing that there’s nothing wrong with either asking or refusing? That we’re all in this together, that there should be no forbidden subjects between friends or more, that if one can’t or doesn’t feel like he/she should help, it’s perfectly OK?

I’ve seen this phenomenon for more than a decade (hi, ex-wife), and even this week I’ve talked to several people who absolutely and completely disagree with me (asking is infinitely wrong and even abusive, because it “forces” the askee to either sacrifice him/herself or feel like a heartless monster, and so on). Is this widespread? Or just a part of Portuguese culture? Anyone from outside Portugal want to share their thoughts?

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Anyone who’s ever tried a diet or an exercise regimen, unless possessing superhuman willpower, certainly knows what it’s like. Everything is going well, then you skip a day (of dieting, of exercising, of sticking to some other decision). You feel ashamed and guilty, so the next day you’re back in force. But the next time you skip a day, you don’t feel so guilty. It becomes more and more acceptable, more common. And soon your self-improvement is a thing of the past.

A couple of days ago, however, I was thinking about life in general, and after a while I remembered not only what I did during the beginning of this blog, but how I felt then. And the latter is the most important part here: I felt great. Not only was I more active and “awake”, both physically and mentally, but I also, for the first time in a very long time, felt really proud of myself, felt I was doing something about my life, for a change.

It was a great feeling. And I want it back.

I’ve already implemented a few changes today, and tomorrow I’ll write about them here. I’m still at the very beginning, so I don’t really feel “different”… except for one thing. I’m doing something.

And that’s always better than not doing anything.

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I’m going on holidays for the next two weeks, and when I get back I’ll “get serious” again. Both in terms of development, and in terms of writing here.

But now, it’s the mountains for me, for a while.

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The movement was founded by a sixty-six-year-old Virginia-based psychotherapist named Brad Blanton. He says everybody would be happier if we just stopped lying. Tell the truth, all the time. This would be radical enough — a world without fibs — but Blanton goes further. He says we should toss out the filters between our brains and our mouths. If you think it, say it. Confess to your boss your secret plans to start your own company. If you’re having fantasies about your wife’s sister, Blanton says to tell your wife and tell her sister. It’s the only path to authentic relationships. It’s the only way to smash through modernity’s soul-deadening alienation. Oversharing? No such thing.

Now, in one way, this makes a lot of sense, to me. I’ve always valued honesty above almost everything – not just honesty to others, but to oneself –, and I’ve always thought that lying was a kind of cowardice: if you’re not afraid of the truth / reality, you don’t lie. I also enjoyed that the author of the movement, himself, doesn’t turn it into a religion-like absolute “commandment”, and uses a popular example to show what he means:

“I advocate never lying in personal relationships. But if you have Anne Frank in your attic and a Nazi knocks on the door, lie.”

However, the examples used by both Blanton and the article writer are, for the most part… how shall I put it? It seems that, to them, being honest amounts to simply being a jerk, and only lying prevents them from acting like complete assholes all the time.

Tangent: this reminds me of a common claim by religious believers: that non-believers are inherently immoral because, without belief in a god, there’s no reason for one to be moral. I find this both offensive and revealing: what they mean is that they see no reason to be moral, except for the desire of heaven or fear of hell. To them, without fear of God, we’d all be lying, cheating, raping, pillaging and killing each other. Maybe that’s what they’d do. The fact that other people are not like that is unthinkable to them. (Note: I’m not claiming that all believers are like this; in fact, many of them – probably the majority — find this argument as offensive and stupid as I do).

This is similar; both the author and Blanton seem to be implying, at least from their examples, that we’re all self-centered, self-absorbed, thoroughly unpleasant jerks, and only by lying can we act “nice” from time to time.

Can I be the only one to think that, you know, maybe, somehow, we can once in a while be genuinely nice?

One example the author gives is when an older man who had just lost his wife sent him some poems and asked him for his opinion. The author found the poems boring and below average, but didn’t have the heart to tell the old man so, and lied (“they’re very good, you should think about getting them published”). Yes, that was dishonest, though understandable. But are there really no alternatives other than to tell him “your poems suck, don’t quit your day job”?

What about telling him – honestly – what was wrong (and right) with the poems? How he should try to improve his writing? Suggest some classic examples for him to read? Tell him which part you thought was more promising? You know, actually be helpful without being either rude or patronizing? Maybe I’m weird, but that’s what I’d do (unless I really didn’t care about that person, but it’s obvious that the author did).

Or maybe I’m being naïve. Maybe brutal and complete honesty would turn most people into unbearable jerks. Maybe it’s only the constant white lies that allow people to live and function in society without either isolating themselves or getting at others’ throats all the time. But I still don’t think that’s the case, at least with most people.

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As of right now, I’m recovering from a flu I got from my father, when I visited his place last Tuesday. Apparently, they’re all recovering from it over there, too, so it wasn’t just me. Yesterday I slept about 3 hours in the afternoon (I had to leave work at about lunchtime), and 9 more hours at night, which is a lot for me; even before I got visibly sick (which was yesterday), I had been suffering from drowsiness for the last few days. Now I feel better, but I think it’s the medicine doing it; after all, a flu isn’t cured in a day.

I’ve been mostly fasting for two days each week (the trial is until the end of the month, after all), and it isn’t that hard. My weight seems to have stabilized at around 80 kg, but, then again, I haven’t exercised for the last two weeks. I’ll begin again next Monday, as long as the flu is really cured that day.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about writing a different kind of articles on this blog (in addition to the normal ones, not as a replacement), because I love to think and to write about what I think. The themes will, of course, be related to this blog’s usual ones (self-improvement, personality, human relationships, and so on). I hope to write the first one later today.

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Anyway, this is my fourth day of fasting, after having just coffee and soy milk this morning. Next meal: tomorrow’s breakfast (or perhaps even lunch).

The only good part of this weekend was that I bought some new toys for my Senegal parrot, Kang, which he seems to be enjoying, and was able to spend more time with him; he seems to be getting used to me and doesn’t panic as much as he did. Sometimes I don’t know how people devoid of pets at home can handle the inevitable disappointments with other people…

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Intermittent fasting (IF), so far, works. And the best part is that, for the rest of the week, I can eat normally.

Like the previous two times, after 24 hours of fasting I wake up not feeling hungry; in fact, it’s 11 AM and I haven’t eaten anything solid yet (I will do so at lunch, of course).

I’m beginning to agree with the IF advocates when they say that the food and diet industry has convinced most of the Western world that “you need 6 meals a day”, that “being hungry is unbearable and bad for you”, that “if you go more than a couple of hours without eating you’ll feel weak and light-headed”, that “no way I could go an entire day without food; I’d faint”, and so on. I’m no expert (far from it – I’m a computer guy, not a nutritionist or a doctor), but, like I’ve said before, I have the “soul of a scientist”, and a scientist doesn’t take things on faith, or on “everybody knows”; I wanted to test things out for myself, and, so far, the results have been exactly the opposite of what “popular wisdom” tells me. In fact, they almost sound too good to be true.

As I said, I test things out; this is just my second week of IF, and my plan was to try this out for a month (until the end of April); if, in the end, I don’t feel as good as I do now, or I develop some health problem, I’ll stop, of course. But if I hadn’t done this, I’d never know, so, even if the test went badly, it would still have increased my knowledge, which is always a good thing. But, so far, so good.

Just for fun: have you thought about what would happen to the world’s economy if everyone in the world started eating just 5 days a week? Now that would be a crisis… so, naturally, there are vested interests in perpetuating the “need 6 meals a day, can’t ever feel hungry” belief.

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Since I have no plans for next Sunday except staying at home, I’m considering a third day of fasting this week, as an exception; the added free time should allow me to both exercise and play more video games (a side of my life I’ve been ignoring far too much, recently).

By the way, an interesting fact that I’ve discovered by fasting is that, completely separate from food, hunger and all those aspects, I also enjoy the meal time; that is, the sitting down, with a good book (I usually eat alone, because, well, I live alone), and nothing to worry about, with no feeling of “wasted time”. During the two times I fasted, I often felt like I wanted to go to the kitchen and sit down to read, not because I was hungry, but because that’s a “ritual” I enjoy so much.

Of course, nothing prevents me from picking up a book and reading for an hour or so (though it’s better not to do it in the kitchen, as it can give me ideas), but, somehow, that’s not something that my mind naturally comes up with.

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Didn’t have much time for exercise today, so just a few sit-ups. Breakfast was a cream cheese, as usual, and my next meal will be tomorrow’s breakfast. I don’t anticipate any problems, since I’ve done it successfully and with little difficulty last week. Next day of fasting will probably be Friday (it was supposed to be Thursday, but I have a birthday dinner that day).

I need to focus on other parts of my “personal development”, other than exercise, health and weight loss, though. More about that later.

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I had to leave for work earlier than usual, so I didn’t have time for exercise, and since I use the Wii Fit balance board to weigh myself as well, I don’t know how much weight I’ve put on since last Friday. It’s something to find out tomorrow morning, I guess.

Tomorrow, by the way, will be my second day of fasting. I still haven’t decided whether I’ll eat breakfast tomorrow and then nothing else until Wednesday’s breakfast (like I did last time), or whether I will do it from today’s dinner to tomorrow’s.

1. not really; I’ve just been wanting to use that expression ever since I saw it in the intro to Princess Maker 2

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I’m pleased to report full success after my first 24 hours of fasting (from one breakfast to another). I slept a good night’s sleep, and wasn’t even hungry at all when I woke up; in fact, much like during the rest of my breakfast trial, I ate because I had decided to, not because I felt like it or wanted any of it. I believe I could have easily fasted for another 24 hours, if I wanted to.

Breakfast was a scrambled egg with cheese. As always, it tasted good, but it was as if my body was asking me: “why are you eating so early? I’m not hungry!”.

Exercise was, again, the usual, light stuff: Wii Fit jogging and hula hoops.

Weight: 80.1 kg, which means I lost 1.1 kg since yesterday. Not bad, not bad at all. This gives me a BMI of exactly 25.0, which is the threshold for being “overweight”; 24.9 already means “normal”. Of course (as I see some angry girls coming at me with knives), weight loss is not my goal, it’s just an easy measure of part of it; I’m still far from “athletic”. I need to find a way to exercise more, too.

I’ll be eating normally today and during the weekend, but I plan to fast again next Tuesday and Thursday. As I said last post, after hearing so many horror stories, I was surprised by how easy it was. Maybe the fact that I’ve skipped breakfast and afternoon tea for years has made my body not “panic” by the slightest sensation of hunger, like many of the “6 meals a day” people seem to do. Plus, having the equivalent of 27-hour days twice a week is nice.

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As I write this, I haven’t eaten anything for about 14 hours (since breakfast; it’s now half past midnight), and have only drank water and a little Diet Coke. How do I feel?

In terms of hunger, I’m hungry (as in “I could eat something”), but not starving in any way. I haven’t been thinking about food during the day, except an hour or so after lunchtime, when my body was clearly expecting something; after it “understood” that food wasn’t forthcoming, my sensation of hunger actually diminished, and, as I said, I’m not “craving” food. Indeed, if it doesn’t get worse than this (I still have a night – about 8 hours – to go before next breakfast, when I’ll eat again, but I’ll be asleep during that time), then fasting is easy, at least for me. After hearing so many horror stories about people feeling starved, slow-minded, and unable to think about anything except food, I’m discovering that those are just that – horror stories. At least until now.

One weakness, though: if I smell food, I really get a craving for it. It goes away quickly after I leave the smell’s range, though.

Incidentally, I haven’t felt myself “slowing down” or anything like that. On the contrary, I think I’ve actually felt more awake and active than I do most of the time. Being full often makes you sleepy, and I guess that digestion also takes some energy from you, which I haven’t spent today.

One interesting fact not related to nutrition at all: this day felt much longer. At least 3 hours longer than usual. I felt that I spent much more time both at work and at home, and, indeed, had to come up with things to do; I’m used to much shorter days, with two interruptions of 60-90 minutes each; by removing those interruptions, it felt as if I had a “27-hour day”, so to speak. Having so much more time to do things can be a big difference in one’s life; our daily routine tends to grow up to fill the “vacuum” of the day, and suddenly it’s as if some days become much longer, with more free time than you know what to do with.

It remains to be seen how I’ll be feeling tomorrow just before breakfast. But, so far, so good – and I intend to try this out for the entire month of April; hopefully two days each week. If this is as “bad” as it gets, I know I can do it. As for my health, we’ll see. I’m not worried, as many religions have, for centuries, included fasting as part of their rituals, and people in general don’t die from it. Not to mention that, compared to how long humans have existed, agriculture (and, therefore, regular meals) is a very recent invention; the human race has existed for most of its “life” without it.

By the way, with one exception, everyone I told about what I’ve been doing today was alarmed: “are you crazy? you mustn’t do that! you’ll ruin your health!”. While I appreciate that my friends care for me, it’s interesting to note how they almost panic, as if I was endangering my health or even my life merely by not eating for about 24 hours. Are people taught to be so terrified of ever feeling hunger? Or are we all so brainwashed by the media that we think it’s a “sin” against our bodies to ever go more than 2 hours (sometimes even less than that) without eating? Really, people, I’m OK. I feel fine. Don’t worry.

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It always reminds me of this conversation in the first Lord of the Rings movie:

Aragorn: Gentlemen, we do not stop till nightfall.
Pippin: What about breakfast?
Aragorn: You’ve already had it.
Pippin: We’ve had one, yes. What about second breakfast?
[Aragorn turns and walks off in disgust]
Merry: I don’t think he knows about second breakfast, Pip.
Pippin: What about elevenses? Luncheon? Afternoon tea? Dinner? Supper? He knows about them, doesn’t he?
Merry: I wouldn’t count on it.

Nope, that’s really just not me. To me, that’s spending most of your waking hours either eating, deciding what to eat, or preparing meals. Really, eating isn’t “fun”. I love a good, long meal (lunch or dinner) of at least one hour if I’m either having a fascinating conversation with someone, or reading a book; but just eating and doing nothing more? Even just for 5 minutes? To me, that’s like spending 5 minutes staring at a brick wall. (Note the “to me” qualifier; I’m not criticizing those who enjoy 6 or 8 meals a day; I’m just explaining my own problem with that.)

My challenge, then, is to find a way to become healthier, lose weight and look better, without surrendering to the “it’s been 30 minutes since your next meal, go eat something” life imprisonment. And I’ll exhaust all the possibilities before I ever give up.

But if you really enjoy eating a small amount of food every hour or so, never ever knowing the sensation of “hunger”, no matter how mild… well, good for you.

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Being still in love with someone who has long left us and moved on with their life is something most of us have been through, or are still going through. I can’t claim any special “wisdom” here, but I’d like to talk about what worked for me. Your own solution surely was or will be different from mine; still, I hope you may be able to use something from here, even if in some way I can’t anticipate.

As I said in the post, my solution wasn’t easy; I had to erase — as much as possible, and in a brutal, merciless way — something that had long been a part of me, and which is a part of everyone, to different degrees: wishful thinking. The books I mentioned helped a lot, in different ways: Ayn Rand’s "The Fountainhead" and, especially, "Atlas Shrugged" made me realize that wishing doesn’t make it so, that I had to develop, above all things, and with the utmost urgency, a "worship" of reality. The more your thoughts and beliefs are in accordance with reality, the less you are a victim of yourself due to your own self-deceit.

This is harder than it sounds. After all, you may ask, isn’t “make-believe” for children? Don’t we, as adults, live in the real world? But we grow up with a tendency to easily believe in what we wish was true, no matter the facts. We adopt that belief as a part of us, something to be cherished and protected, even in the face of contradictory facts. And the more we resist reality, the more we tend to resist it in the future, because we’ve invested more and more in our comfortable fantasy, whether it’s “deep down, she really loves me and will one day realize that and come back” or “there is a good, all-powerful being who loves me and watches over me”. Both are exactly the same: wishful thinking. You want it to be true, therefore you believe it.

I’ve been there. Admitting that my ex-wife really didn’t love me anymore, never would again, and, not only that, she had changed for the (far) worse and was no longer the amazing, wonderful, brilliant, loving person she had been five years ago, was one of the most difficult, most painful times of my life. It was also what saved that life, in the long run.

Incidentally, Douglas Adams’ “The Salmon of Doubt”, or, more precisely, this interview with him, included in the book, similarly forced me to painfully abandon another cherished belief, because it contradicted reality, and, rationally, one must never put anything above reality, no matter how comfortable; that way lies only self-deception and powerlessness. So, after more than two decades of Christianity, I was suddenly an atheist – and, since then, I’ve never felt more free, because I wasn’t deceiving myself anymore. But, at the time, it was hard.

I realize that this will probably not help most people in this situation who may read it; I am suggesting fighting the wrong emotions and wishful thinking with reason and love of truth, while I guess most people would fight emotions with other emotions, or alternatively would just surrender to them (“I’ll always love her, no matter what, and I won’t ever love anyone else”). As I said, this is what worked for me. If I had simply tried to “drown” my lost love by trying to replace it with someone else, I’d probably still be, almost 10 years later, waiting for my “true love” to “come to her senses” ("any day now", I’d tell myself), while being alone and miserable all the time, and with absolutely no self-respect or self-esteem. Sorry, but I’ll take reality – no matter how harsh — above comfortable, apparently pleasant wishful thinking any day. I really hope this post, while not solving anyone’s problem, at least leads someone to look at things from a different angle; sometimes, it’s just the little push we need.

And for any religious readers, I’m sorry if this post offends you — it shouldn’t, because we shouldn’t confuse ourselves with our ideas or beliefs, but I know it happens a lot –, but that wasn’t my intention; I simply wanted to give an example of defeating harmful wishful thinking through "reality worshipping" in my life that wasn’t related to love and relationships (to show how it applies to other areas of life), and that was the best one available.

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Breakfast was cream cheese (again), and exercise was brief: a bit of Wii Sports boxing, and some sit-ups. Weight: 81.2 kg (0.2 kg lower than 2 days ago).

Since I’m an impatient fellow, I decided to anticipate playing with fasting (not eating for about 24 hors) today. The term “fasting” suggests not eating for a whole day, which of course I’ve already done today, but my challenge is now to eat nothing and drink only non-caloric liquids until tomorrow’s breakfast. I believe I can do it, but it won’t be easy, since our bodies are used to having regular meals and never being really hungry. Supposedly, however, our species spent millennia as hunter-gatherers, who would eat just when they had a successful hunt or found berries or other fruit – much like, in fact, wild animals still do. Regular meals are a social construct, not a biological need. At least, that’s the theory. I’m not believing or disbelieving in it; I’m simply going to try it out. The real trial begins next week, though; today is just a preliminary test, simply because I feel like it.

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Yesterday evening was my sister’s 20th birthday (and I will have to, shamefully, admit that I had forgotten, and just went there to have dinner and exchange cars with my father, as I had left my own there for repairs and was using his to go to work), so dinner was more “special” than usual, both in terms of food and in terms of being with my family.

Not good for my diet, but one should have a decent sense of priorities; I’ve always thought that being fanatically faithful to a diet in an important social occasion with the people you love makes you a self-centered, fun-spoiling jerk.

I don’t mean that, of course, if you, really, strictly can’t eat or drink something due to being under doctor’s orders, or, say, if you’re a vegetarian; however, in all other cases, if you don’t feel a loved one’s birthday is reason enough for you to go a bit “crazy”, it’s almost as if that person doesn’t mean anything to you at all. Quoting Ayn Rand (quick, run!), “love is the exception-making”.

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I’ll have to keep paying special attention to what I eat; whenever I get distracted, my two bad habits come to the fore: too much food in the plate, and eating everything on it, even if I feel satisfied before. What I leave in the plate doesn’t help any starving children whether I eat it or not, and there’s no point in eating more than I really need.

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Weight: 81.4 kg. I hadn’t weighed myself for three days (since last Friday), and I slacked a bit during the weekend, even drinking wine at meals (not going against my goals, as I was not doing it alone), so having my weight rise by 0.5 kg doesn’t come as a surprise; in fact, I expected worse. I’ll have to try harder this week; I’d love to reach 80 kg before the weekend, but it won’t be easy.

Breakfast today (and yesterday): cream cheese. Just a small one. Followed by the usual coffee and soy milk, of course. I’ll keep having those for breakfast until I go through them all; I have 6 more in the fridge.

Exercise: the usual sit-ups, and a little Wii Fit jogging. I also tried the boxing event from Wii Sports, but my wiimote began to complain about batteries, so I had to stop in the middle, and put the batteries in the charger. More of it tomorrow, hopefully.

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So far, I haven’t noticed any positive difference, although at least I don’t feel bloated and indisposed during the morning, like in the beginning of the trial. I’d guess that my body really doesn’t need breakfast, at least with the life I lead.

Trial #2 will start in the beginning of April, and will be based on fasting one or two days every week. Now that should be a big change… we’ll see if it works or not.

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So, naturally, I find these ideas appealing. Wikipedia mentions two authors: Martin Berkhan, whose suggestion is basically what I already have done for the past years (except probably for the booze ): big meals at lunch and dinner, and spend most of the day (from dinner to next day’s lunch) without eating. I’m sure that some details are different (I just found out about the site, and there’s a lot I have yet to read), but it’s good to know that what I’ve done for years – even if I did it due to laziness, not health – was not completely absurd. Martin’s approach seems to be more oriented towards muscle gain than weight loss, but both are, of course, a good thing.

A different approach is Brad Pilon’s “Eat Stop Eat”. Brad sells a book, so there aren’t any big details on his web page, naturally, but according to Wikipedia it involves fasting (as in just drinking non-caloric liquids) for one or two 24-hour periods every week. According to Brad, that’s not as hard as it sounds, once you get used to it; most people, supposedly, eat more because they’re “addicted” to eating, than because they’re actually feeling hungry, or are in need of food. He claims that this approach doesn’t make you feel hungry or “slowing down”, and doesn’t interfere with any exercise you do on those days.

This, of course, makes me curious, and it will be my next trial, beginning early April. Until then, I still want to extend my “eat breakfast even though I’m not hungry in the morning” trial, until at least the end of March.

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