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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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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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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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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So far, I’ve reached all my goals and upheld all my decisions, except one: last dinner (just about an hour ago), I “got distracted” and ate too much – what would have been “normal” for me before I started all this. My habits, when I don’t think about it consciously, still lead me to fill the plate too much, and to eat everything on it, even if I’m already satisfied before I finish. I’ll have to pay more attention to that.

Tomorrow is housekeeper day, so I won’t have time to exercise in the morning; I’ll have to do it when I get home. I could get up earlier, but exercise makes noise, and I’d be waking up the neighbors, which is not nice (it’s for exactly that reason that I only open the windows in the room(s) where the birds are, as they have “morning calls” at first light, so I have to ensure that “first light” doesn’t come too early for them).

Even though I’m not noticing a big physical difference (I’ve lost some weight, but, as Mário said, it’s normal for that to happen in the beginning), I feel great, simply because I’ve made a decision – to improve my life –, and I’m sticking with it. This has been affecting other areas of my life as well, such as shyness and self-confidence; if I can do this, I can do anything. Starting this blog, so far, has been one of the best ideas I’ve had in my life, and I feel dumb for not doing it decades sooner (even before there was such a thing as a “blog”, in fact). But better late than never…

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Exercise: the usual; that is, sit-ups, Wii Fit jogging, and I also tried one yoga exercise there. I really think I should do more of them when I have the time, as I don’t have the agility and “stretchability” I should have.

Breakfast: one scrambled egg with cheese. Tasted great, and I’m not feeling too “bloated” anymore.

Incidentally, 2 days ago, in the evening, I thought about an interesting post I wanted to write here (to prevent the blog from being just “I did this; I ate that”), about relationships, I believe, but I completely forgot what it was going to be about, specifically… even though I spent a lot of time yesterday, in the afternoon, trying to remember. Oh, well, I expect it’ll come back to me eventually.

One other thing: unlike, say, the rest of the week, today I expect to socialize, which may mean a setback in my diet (I may even drink alcohol, since I won’t be doing it alone), but, of course, it’s worth it (in fact, it’s one of the other problems I wanted to solve with this blog). That may also mean no “daily progress” post this evening. We’ll see.

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So far, after 3 days, the main difference that I notice is that I feel wide awake during the entire day, which comes mostly from 1) sleeping well, and 2) not going to bed with a lot of alcohol in my system every evening (which also affects number 1). However, there’s also the psychological part, which is even more important: I feel that I have a purpose, and goals. That hasn’t been true for most of my life.

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Nope. Been there, done that. In the early 2000s, while I wouldn’t call myself an addict, I averaged about 4-5 cups of coffee a day. The fact that there was a (free) coffee machine at the offices where I worked make “going for a coffee” a frequently desirable rest; besides, I enjoyed the taste (and still do).

It had its price, though. If I spent about 24 hours without any caffeine, I would have the mother of all headaches. Dizziness and nausea, too. I was addicted – not “dangerously”, like one can become to alcohol or drugs, but, still, my body was dependent on caffeine to work properly.

What changed? Honestly, I didn’t even notice when it happened, but for the last couple of jobs I’ve had, there has been no coffee machine in the office. Also, I didn’t really make any friends in either of those jobs, removing the “hey, wanna go for a coffee?” hard-to-refuse frequent invitations I used to have. So, these days I only drink coffee 1) in the morning, with soy milk, and 2) after a meal in a restaurant (not at home). My daily average, then, is currently one cup, since due to lack of money (among other things) I don’t go to restaurants as often as I did in the past. And I really don’t miss any more; unlike many, I’m not one of those “don’t talk to me now; I need a cup of coffee before my brain wakes up” people.

So, no, coffee isn’t a problem, though it’s still a small part of my life.

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Breakfast: instant chicken-flavored noodles. Go on, call me crazy. Still feeling a bit full, but much less than yesterday, even though the actual quantity of matter eaten was mostly the same.

Exercise: after the usual sit-ups (ouch!), I did the “long running” exercise on Wii Fit, and tried out the recently unlocked boxing exercise. It’s actually much more like step aerobics than actual boxing, since the hard part is the patterns you have to do with your feet; the “boxing” part is simple, easy and not tiring. For exercise purposes, I’d guess the boxing event in Wii Sports is much better than Wii Fit’s.

Weight (according to Wii Fit): 81.4 kg, which is 0.3 kg more than yesterday. This is quite normal (and even Wii Fit says so), as weight fluctuates up and down even if you’re losing it in the long run; this is, in fact, why they say you shouldn’t weigh yourself every day. But since I know the reasons and am not emotionally affected by it, it’s OK. Besides, being a computer geek, I like looking at graphs.

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My nausea from the morning and afternoon eventually passed, and I fell good now, though still more sleepy than I should. I’ll try to go to sleep earlier, tonight. Tomorrow is Friday (always good), and I have a new boxing mini-game to try out in Wii Fit. Plus, I’ll try a different kind of breakfast, to see if it makes me feel better than today’s did.

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However, having that breakfast made me feel “bloated” during the entire morning, and I ate very little at lunch. Sadly, the “bloated” sensation hasn’t vanished yet, I’m still sleepy, and simply don’t feel well.

Well, a trial is a trial, so I will keep my promise and have a breakfast every day until Sunday. I’ll try something different tomorrow, perhaps. And, of course, I intend to eat very little at dinner (at my father’s) today.

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Well, the second day has begun. I’ve already exercised, and while my abs were hurting a bit and forced me to go easy on the sit-ups, on the other hand I didn’t lose my breath when doing a bit of Wii Fit jogging, unlike yesterday. I also unlocked a new aerobic boxing exercise, but that one’s for tomorrow. Oh, and Wii Fit said I lost about 0.5 kg since yesterday. I must be doing something right. However, while my target now is a BMI of 25 (the threshold between “normal” and “overweight”), what I have programmed in Wii Fit as a goal is 22, which is in fact what Wii Fit suggests as a target for every new player (male, at least).

As I mentioned in the previous post, I’m experimenting with that weird concept of “breakfast” until next Sunday, to see if it makes me feel better, worse, or the same. I had a scrambled egg and some leftover salad from yesterday’s dinner, and, while everything tasted good, I still felt like I wasn’t “supposed” to be eating so early; I wasn’t hungry at all when I started eating, and right now I feel a bit “bloated” (even though it wasn’t a lot of food). We’ll see if I feel “more energetic” during the morning, or whether I’m less (or more) hungry at lunchtime.

Today is Father’s Day here in Portugal, so I’ll try to have dinner at my family’s place and spend some time with my father and the rest of the family.

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It’s not a very long period of time, but I hope to see some difference. Will I “have more energy” during the morning (when I don’t feel any lack of it already)? Will it help, hinder or not affect my weight loss? Will I feel “better” in general, or notice no difference? Will I be more or less hungry at lunchtime?

See you (about this; the rest of the blog won’t stop) next Monday.

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And yet, since childhood, I’ve been hearing and reading: “breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” My question is: why?

The idea I had, and still have, is that most people here would reply with one or more of the following:

1. because you need energy / nutrients for the morning
2. because otherwise you’ll be starving an hour or two later, and will probably snack on far less healthy food
3. because otherwise you’ll be starving at lunch, and will then eat too much
4. because not eating for so long a time is “bad” for you (why? how?)
5. “I couldn’t do anything in the morning without it”
6. because “the body needs it” (without any justification)
7. “just because”
8. “duh, everyone knows it”

Number 6 is circular logic, numbers 7 and 8 are childish, and 5 is a personal experience which doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone. 4 is unexplained, so it doesn’t really say anything. So what about the first three? Well, I can say that 2 and 3 really don’t apply to me; I never eat snacks in mid-morning, nor do I spend the entire morning craving food, nor am I starving at lunchtime. In fact, I think that the few times I did eat breakfast, I was actually more hungry at midday.

Energy… well, my current job is not very demanding, so maybe things would be different if it were, but I’m really not like many people I know, the “I can’t think or do anything until I’ve had breakfast and coffee” kind. This morning, without a real breakfast, I’ve exercised (while being completely out of shape), went to work, came back home for lunch, had a nice (not huge) green salad with bits of ham, and here I am at work again, not starving or feeling depleted.

Anyway, I googled for “why breakfast is important”, and read through the first five results. The justifications were always the first three on the list above, nothing more. Nope, that’s really not me.

Now, admittedly, I’m weird.

But, well, here’s a challenge to you: please tell me, in a comment, why having breakfast is important. The challenge is this: don’t use a variant of the above 8 answers. (Exception: if you can justify answer 4, it’s acceptable.) If you know of another good reason, please let me know. Links to nutritional / medical information are welcome.

Note that I’m not doubting accepted medical wisdom; I simply find the explanations I’ve found so far to be either non-explanatory, or not applying to me, as far as I can see. Which is why I’m asking  for a better explanation. I’m like this: I need to understand things, instead of accepting them on faith.

More about breakfast in the next post…

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