Day 7. 261.4

I sit here and stare down at my gut. That storehouse of inflammation producing fat. I’ve lost ten pounds of it this week. My weight actually fluctuated down to 257.8 briefly. Water/urine = 2lbs a liter. This is why I step on the scale when I get up and before I rehydrate. I’m learning to stop hating my belly and love it for the pure energy it’s providing me.

Looking at keto diets for when I come off fast. This evening, it will be a full week. It’s weird that I’d still be pooping but today I popped out a little nugget. Yesterday was like colonoscopy bowel prep. A gush of liquid, then two solid bit, smaller than golf balls had popped out. Six days no solids, where the fuck were these nuggets hiding. When I awake I have my coffee. After coffee traditionally that’s when I do my #2. The urge is still there but it’s only been in the last couple of days that I’ve seen anything “final” come from my colon.

I’m researching keto diets for when I come off the fast. There’s so much, a wealth of content I want to write about. My life of unsuccessful dieting. How I approach eating. The family and cultural aspects of it. How my thinking has changed over the years. I feel in some way that my body is my science project and I’ve finally found the switch I’ve been looking for. It’s very exciting.

I just thought you’d like to know that as of today, I’m down 15.2 pounds from my last recorded weight.

Yesterday it was only 10 lbs and I’ve seen this before, quick loss (mostly water) then a rebound of a couple pounds. I weigh myself at the same time of day when I get up, so knowing that I’ve pissed away a liter or better of water, I can expect to pick up 2.2 lbs just by hydrating. And boy do I hydrate.

Day 8 260.0

I’m on day 8 of my fast. Keeping uber well hydrated with sports drinks, green, black and herbal teas, V8, even a seafood stock I saved from a recent crab/lobster boil. Along with my daily walks, I’ve started to incorporate 3x daily free weight lifts. Modest amounts reps to 15x so that my lower body doesn’t look like Popeye while my upper body shrinks to Olive Oyl dimensions.

Surprisingly, I had a solid bowel movement again today. It reminded me of the zany Anthony Hopkins film The Road to Wellville, where as crackpot Dr. Kellogg he intoned that a healthy poop should be solid, should float and have no more smell than baking bread. Well my piece of sourdough was more in the small cigar shape, tapered at both ends and smelled pretty much as you’d expect it to. It sank.

I have a mental deck of cards I keep flipping through to encourage myself. One is an actual picture of my gut I took (then quickly deleted from my phone. I don’t want to end up on a fatty revenge porn site). Then there are the happy pictures of me holding my oldest son as a baby, a future image I have of myself (stop me if you’ve heard this one) at 90 years old, stepping nimbly into a canoe trip with my grandkids. And thanks to my youngest brother, who has consistently done the most of all of us to maintain control over his weight, I also have a silent movie art card that says “Stop making excuses, just do it. Signed, L Weiss” and “1 pound above = 4 pounds below. Signed, L Weiss” which I’ve taken as mantras.

I am surprisingly free of limbic (mind) hunger and somatic (body) hunger. Fasting is empowering and has put me in an upbeat, spiritual frame of mind. I remind myself that fat is the ultimate source of inflammation. Thanks to “the basketball” my body is a hot mess of inflammatory assaults, from the localized neuropathies in fingers and feet, to the arthritic changes in joints, to the monster swollen prostate, to the diabetes.

My body is a science project. Ketosis is an anti-inflammatory state. My theory is that if I maintain ketosis either by full or intermittent fasting while in PT that it will hurt less. My goal is to keep my body in that state while I heal from my TKR and ultimately achieve my ideal weight of 200. Once I get there, if I gain more than 10 lbs, that will trigger another fast. That’s the “macro view.”

Now that I know how easy it is to do, I will be engaging on week+ fasts as a means to regulate weight gain and loss. I also imagine I’ll come off this bout with a vastly shrunken stomach and the will to create much smaller food portions and more controlled eating and drinking. I don’t have a plan for precisely what that looks like. As they say, the devil is in the details.

Day 9 258.4

The best part about losing weight is getting into clothing, in this case, a nice pair of shorts, that I couldn’t fit into without discomfort. I’d half resigned myself to giving my “small clothes” away. I’m so glad I didn’t.

Day 10 257.4

I feel like I’ve set the clock back on a couple of my chronic maladies. My facial rosacea is better. So is the every other day choking that involved spitting up mucus balls. I don’t know what you call that. I’m just so glad it’s gone. I am less nasally congested upon waking. Shockingly, there are still some stuff coming out of the other end. If you count tomato juice as a fiber, then well, I guess it takes a long while to truly clean out the colon.

It’s stunning the savings of time when you DON’T have to buy food, think of food, cook food, eat food, put leftovers away, wash dishes. Okay I still wash dishes for my wife just because. I also gave up the omeprazole but think, since I still get minor heartburn pains, that I need to restart it.

We still have a fridge full of food, not that she bought, but I bought. What’s more above our cabinets are a storehouse of foods. Mostly uncooked carb, pastas, graham crackers, then there are the shelves full of cans and the downstairs shelf and the downstairs freezer.

I way overbuy on food when I do. It’s time to deplete it one way or another. My goal is to break fast on August 28 which will make this fast a 35 day one. As long as I hydrate, replace minerals etc. I don’t know why I couldn’t. The way I feel right now is the way I want to continue to feel. I know I can’t stay in ketosis forever but I wish I could. It kinda feels like a edibles buzz. And my spirits are as high as can be.

Day 11 256.4

Even though I’m fitting into some of my old clothes again, I’m constantly reminded that when you’re a “big man” like I am, nothing ever fits well. Pants are either too loose about the waist or too tight. They ride down. I’ve been considering suspenders. Belts are stiff and uncomfortable. They cut into flesh. Shirts bulge around bellies. Ride up revealing overhang. If you’ve never been obese, you don’t know these indignities. Your obese friend, me, is just as fashion-aware as you are. Wants to make just as good an impression as you do, when out, when at work. We just have to work harder to feel anything close to normal. Clothes for people my size simply aren’t made with the attention to fit and finish, color, style and variety as clothes for the thin and fit.

Another in a long, long list of the indignities, how the overweight are discriminated against, even though we range from 15% (childhood obese) to 40% (adult obesity) in this country. I’m not saying we’re a voting bloc. I don’t want to join the militant obese who encourage “feeling good about our bodies.” I hate “fat shaming” but I hate feeling uncomfortable and being unhealthy even more. And I sure hate this epidemic of obesity which I’ve struggled with my whole life.

Day 12 255.8

A friend in the know asks, Rich, how is the diet going? On solid food yet?

LOL thanks for reminding me. This is day 12. I am continuing till ideally, the end of the month. I took your advice about unfreezing some choice stocks and am having them in small 8-10 oz. drinks (This will prove to be a game changer. This friend knows I have tons of stocks and probably make more of them than I can consume. But now I realize that the stocks can be a centerpiece of my fasting operation.

My favorite drink is sugar free cranberry juice and other “lite” beverages. I still have no hunger. And oh I’m down 16 lbs. Walking every day and working with free weights. Feeling great.