Day 21–249.2

I’m causing a slight stir in my social set by counting up the days. I think I’m going to let it slide until toward the beginning of next week. I’ve pretty much made up my mind to take it out till Aug 28, a full 35 days, 5 days less than Jesus.

Day 22–247.6

I stepped on the scale and I’m 25 lbs lighter than when I started my fast. Looking back, I wasn’t sure I’d go this long, but like a guy in a Youtube video, I’ve become very acclimated to not eating and will miss it when I break fast. I told myself 30 days or 30 lbs but I might reach that well before 35 days, my original intention. I’m at Day 22.

Let me describe some of my physical sensations to you. My skin feels cool and pleasant to the touch, tingly, as if you were very dirty, took a hot shower and were scrubbed clean.

My mind is clear and focussed. I haven’t had a depressive thought during the whole time. This morning, I had a very tiny baby poo, as if my alimentary canal was saying, I’m still on the job baby, if you need me. I still piddle like a baby girl and my neuropathic symptoms have diminished slightly, but not gone away. Neuropathies are a big thing with diabetics. One of the longterm demons that don’t resolve in days or weeks. I understand that now.

And for now, this is not to neglect the utter joy of walking 15% faster, climbing stairs 20% easier, lifting out of a low chair 20% easier. Taking 120 pounds of pressure off my knees, not to forget the clothes I can wear now that I couldn’t earlier.

I’ve had some gusts of hunger that pass so quickly that I don’t even take them seriously. I even watched an episode of “Somebody Feed Phil” (in Chicago and Montreal).

My resolve did not waver when a smiling gal brought out a castiron skillet deep dish pizza with perfectly caramelized cheesy-crusted edges. I sat with Kara and friends when they were eating in NYC and it didn’t bother me, so I knew I was not taxing my willpower. Willpower has had very little to do with my journey at this point.

Were I not going to Montreal, I might extend this journey out 40 days, but nobody goes to Montreal while fasting. Now that WOULD be crazy. How has my relationship with food changed. I don’t know right now. I assume that since my stomach has shrunken that I’ll start to eat smaller portions. I hope to have better control. After all I’m sitting in a house full of food and I’m not tearing into it anymore. I know where there’s a half a bag of Oreos.

Day 23 247.6

As I was saying, there’s this half-eaten bag of Oreos in the wine cabinet. I might have two or three the day I break my fast. I will probably eat an 800 calorie high protein, low carb diet for a couple of days into the transition. I am going to slash carbs, but not eliminate them altogether. The one thing that fasting has taught me is the unbelievable quantity of carbs I used to inhale. Well that most certainly is going to change. What I’m looking at is the “Mediterranean” model with good fats, proteins and healthful complex carbs. I’ve been thinking about breakfast muffins made from Grape Nuts (barley), with reduced sugar and sweetness from raisins, figs, apricots and chocolate chips. I’m going to make these muffins very small, so as to not bust my carb bank when I have one.

Today, my new target is 30 days. That will give me a good 10 days to bring Air Keto in for a landing and transition hopefully to a metabolism that still likes to burn fat as well as sugar.

If you are 60-something and come from the average household, you were raised by parents who were raised by parents who had just lived through the depression. They bought, they stored. Yes they hoarded. And so compelling a model it is for acquiring food that you don’t realize how unnecessary it is until you go without food for 20 days, a month or more.

Day 24 247.4

I was watching TV last night. Food 42 on Pluto TV. Food channels. America’s Test Kitchen. Love those shows. Still do. Watched how to make cauliflower crust pizza. Not one of my favorites but it would taste pretty good right now. Did the food shows make me “hungry”? Yes, but once I looked away or switched the channel (while they were actually plating the end product) the desire was gone.

Food scientists call this limbic hunger. It’s your mind telling you you’re hungry based on your conditioning, your stimuli and past associations with food, Food TV, 50% of TV commercials, your dysfunctional family, job stressors, and all the emotional triggers and comfort mechanisms we’ve acquired through millennia of adaptation.

It’s not real, as in somatic hunger, the hunger that comes from an empty stomach. If my hunger watching the food shows was real, it wouldn’t fade when I switch channels or look away from the food. Even watching the food prep, I feel a real but disengaged interest. Much as a woodworker would watch a show of another woodworker creating a special joint. I have learned to abstract food.

Had I known I could do this, I’d have done it a long time ago. It makes me feel good and every day I feel a little bit smaller, tighter, more energetic. My loss rate has been 8 pounds per week. I thought I’d never be able to do it. I’d almost given up.

Oh, today is our 42^nd Wedding Anniversary. I feel like a bit of a schmuck not taking my best girl out to eat, but shortly before lunch she got a call from the security desk and these were waiting for her to carry back to her infusion suite.

She not only got roses, she got bragging rights. You can’t eat either, but I bet they still taste good.

Day 25 Almost-24.4

I had a little poop, about 4 inches long, about the gauge of a corona cigar. But the real news is I stepped on the scale today and the first value it gave me was my original goal of 30 lbs lost. Not believing such good fortune, I weighed myself again and this time it only showed a 28 lb. loss. I recorded the more modest loss. If you look at the average and the curve of my loss, it reflects an average 1.1 pounds a day. Impressive, but if you zoom in on daily values, I dropped 3 lbs over yesterday. There are bumps and spikes on the curve, even as it trends down. Sometimes there are apparent gains which are odd, considering I’ve not given myself enough caloric content to gain anything. Scale weighing is sooo quantum.

Day 26 243.6 My body <3 burning fat.

But the bottom line is that I thought my body doesn’t like burning fat when in fact it loves it. I categorically believed that the fat was just there to torture me, to shorten my life, to be the culprit of a thousand and one inflammatory burns, stings and destructions that overtake a sixty-five year old body and hound it into the grave. I was so wrong. Your body doesn’t hate burning fat. IT LOVES IT.  It just needs the one cue that most people can’t give it.

You have to stop eating and let your metabolism flick the switch so that the reserves you’ve lovingly built up (for me around my midsection) be used by the mitochondrial fat burners.

They love fat. Your body loves burning it and will tell you so in many ways large and small that it loves it. Reduced depression, sharper mentation, pleasant physical sensations. Like a bee storing up honey, your body has stored up this prime fuel. And it wants to use it. There’s only one small thing you have to do. And you think it’s hard, but it isn’t. I’ve proved it.

Day 27 243.4

I spent the better part of last night organizing food. I took the hard crusty sourdough rye artisanal bread crusts out of the fridge and tried to grind them into breadcrumbs. They were hard as bricks. But with some diligent and patient scraping, I managed to turn these bricks into finest kind rye sourdough breadcrumbs.

Thank you Claire at Ursa Bakery. I know bread is a no-no on a keto diet and I am trying to balance my love of fine bread with my love of even finer weight loss. Once the breadcrumbs were stored away, I did an audit of our side cabinet and was, as always these days, shocked and a little appalled to discover how much food is there. Cans and jars of items, many in multiples of 4, 5 …

The bottom line is that the Chinese COVID squad could weld our front door shut and we’d survive for a year on all the food we have stored away. More than we know. Or knew.

As I was roasting the breadcrumbs (with cumin seeds and seasalt) the smell was sublime. It did not trigger me. Nor did going through the cabinets, combining and organizing spices (some of my favorites which I’ve ordered more of). I’ve organized our container stores too. Again shockingly overkill. Instead of Just What We Need, we MORE THAN WE CAN EVER USE in food storage devices.