Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Wednesday, 05 December 2012 - 130.2 lbs

Madonna of the Carnation by Leonardo da Vinci, 1478-1480

Down 5.6 lbs from yesterday. Marvelous.

So I stopped eating at about 9pm Monday night, I fasted completely all day Tuesday (except for a cup of strawberry shortcake flavored coffee -- black, no frills), and I didn't eat until about 3pm today. So that 5.6 lbs was lost over the course of a 42 hour fast (excepting the coffee). A surprisingly easy fast, to be honest -- no cravings or uncontrollable hunger or anything. Broke fast with:

2 eggs with full fat cream and chopped onions, mushrooms, green bell peppers, and tomatoes cooked in bacon grease, covered with full fat sour cream

2 slices of bacon

mug of toffee gingerbread flavored coffee with full fat cream and stevia

Later I had:

few hunks of turkey dragged through some full fat sour cream ranch dressing

couple forkfuls of raspberries and strawberries

Doesn't seem like much, but I just wasn't hungry for much else after this. I think this was the case last time I fasted, as well. Weird. I'll have to try to look into the reasons why. Stomach shrinkage, maybe? I'll get back to you.


FIDELIO'S FAST AND FUN FACTS ABOUT FASTING FROM FIDELIO

Since I began this blog a month ago, I've only fasted twice, and both times it was after a cheat day in an attempt to wind back the clock (or the scale, as it were) to my weight before the cheat, as a fast can be a great way to jump start weight loss. However, as I approach a weight with which I'm more or less comfortable, and as we come out the other end of this Holiday season (when unplanned cheat days will be much fewer and farther between), I'll (hopefully) have less need of fasting as a means for weight-loss. But the more I read about the other benefits of intermittent fasting (IF), the more likely I think I will be to continue the practice irregardless (oh my heavens that word irritates me so much when other use it, but I'm pretty sure it's okay for me since I'm being ironical).

So anyway, here's a couple things (all taken verbatim from the wonderfully informative site MarksDailyApple.com) you might keep in mind when considering if you should give IF a go (or, if you're a practicing, observant Mormon, here are some faith promoting facts to throw on top of your testimony of your monthly fast):
  • Numerous animal and human studies done over the past 15 years suggest that periodic fasting can have dramatic results not only in areas of weight (fat) loss, but in overall health and longevity as well. A recent article in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition gives a great overview of these benefits which include decreases in blood pressure, reduction in oxidative damage to lipids, protein and DNA, improvement in insulin sensitivity and glucose uptake, as well as decreases in fat mass.
  • [C]aloric restriction and intermittent fasting may “turn on” certain genes that repair specific tissues that would not otherwise be repaired in times of surplus. One could surmise that this adaptation serves to allow certain cells to live longer (as repaired cells) during famine since it’s energetically less expensive to repair a cell than to divide and create a new one. That might help explain some of the extended longevity seen in animal studies using caloric restriction and/or intermittent fasting (read about here, here, and here). 
  • Intermittent fasting has also been shown to reduce spontaneous cancers in animal studies, which could be due to a decrease in oxidative damage or an increase in immune response.
  • One thing that is most interesting about the intermittent fasting studies is that slightly overeating on the non-fasting days (to make up for the lack of calories on fast days) yielded similar results, so it wasn’t so much about total calories as it was about the episodic deprivation.
  • IF is as or more effective than calorie restriction in improving metabolic syndrome markers in overweight women, and it’s a whole lot easier to stick with.
  • Alternate day fasting improved cardiovascular risk markers, including lowered triglycerides and LDL-C numbers (although it’s unclear whether the improvements were related to the weight loss alone or something unique to fasting).
  • Some researchers are speculating, based on substantial evidence, that fasting before and during cancer treatment should result in reduced morbidity, better tolerance of chemotherapies, and higher cure rates.
I could keep going, but I don't wanna. Go to MarksDailyApple.com and do a search for "intermittent fasting," and a buttload of articles will pop up. Weight-conscious or health-conscious or both: give IF a go.

Here's Roy Orbison performing "Crying." This was filmed toward the end of his life -- about 14 months before his death in 1988 -- and the dude sounded just as amazing then as he ever did. Love this guy. Love this song. Only Chris Isaak even comes close....

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