Pretty Tony's Fabulous Fast

PrettyTony · January 28, 2020, 2:26am

DAY 2 240.6 LB

What happened to Day 1 you ask? I didn’t have the internet on Day 1. Remember to pay your electricity bill folks.

Tony is my name. Pretty is my game. By way of background I am 5’11 and 41 years old. I look about 10 years younger than that because black don’t crack. If I could remove this 60 pounds of unwanted weight, in fact I would look like I was twelve.

My fast is to lose weight. Secondary goals are to break food addictions and to rewire my mind for greater discipline.

I am not doing a straight water fast. That is for the excellent among us. For me mediocrity shall suffice. My fast will be supplemented with a small amount of whey protein or eggs, and vitamin and electrolyte supplements of all kinds. If only you knew the magic powders that are present in my cupboard. All together my calorie intake is 200 / day. No carbs, to make Mr. Atkins proud.

And spinach. Lot’s of spinach.

It’s about 9:30 PM at the end of day 2. I actually feel very good right now. Not much hunger. No headache. I plan to go to sleep early before this state of fasting bliss ends. Evenings tend to be my weak time during fasts, so I will need to come up with some meaningful distractions in the evenings to keep my mind off the food and the booze.

One interesting thing I noticed today was a feeling of “Habit Hunger” as I passed Popeye’s Chicken on the way home. I actually wasn’t hungry but my mind triggered a desire to stop off and get the all-mighty chicken sandwich, which has become a habit of mine since, well, the day that it came back in stock.

Hopefully the fast will help me to retrain my mind in that respect, to eliminate the habitual eating or the “boredom” eating which has me in this current state of BMI shame.

Any and all encouragement is appreciated.

Cheers.

Compdude · January 28, 2020, 2:37am

I would ask you reconsider your plan. The “Eat less and Exercise more” approach to weight loss has been essentially been debunked. I recommend you read Dr. Jason Fung’s book, The Obesity Code and also this article on the 2016 study conducted by NIH (National Institutes of Health) on 14 former contestant o the Biggest Loser:

Instead I ask you to look at Alternate Day Fasting. Here’s a YouTuber I follow who has been successful using that approach for over a year:

Also on a technical note, to keep all your future entries on this single thread just CLICK on the REPLY in the lower right hand corner.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Alipio

PrettyTony · January 28, 2020, 2:56am

Nope. But I’ll tell you what. If my plan fails, I’ll try yours. Thanks for the tech tip.

PrettyTony · January 29, 2020, 12:28am

DAY 3 236.0 LB
Feeling pretty good about Day 3 of my fast. No hunger pangs. I would say the only negative side effect I am feeling thus far is headache and a little lightheadedness when first standing up. But nothing that I have not experienced the previous times I have fasted. Much easier actually and I think that is because I am better this time around about taking vitamins.

Going to try some exercise tonight before bed. Nothing too crazy. Just some walking on the treadmill for a bit while I read.

I decided to set a goal weight for this fast at 199 LB. We’ll see if I can make it that far. Once I settle in I should still average about 2 LB a day lost. So from 236 to 199 it should not be that long on the fast.

When I drove home from work today my mind did not tell me to “stop off and get some fast food” as it often does, which is nice. One benefit of the fast is to retrain my mind. So we’ll see.

PrettyTony · January 30, 2020, 2:43am

DAY 4 234.0
Feeling good on Day 4 of the fast. Actually feel better than yesterday which is a good sign. Not much of a headache at all today and very little lightheadedness either. I would guess that I should fully be in fat burning mode “Ketosis” in the next day or two if I am not there already. I would say I am experiencing no hunger pangs at this point. But yeah probably my mind was telling me here or there to have a Big Mac. The weight loss has slowed down which I expected. I eventually think it will settle down to about a pound a day for a person of my size. This is totally fine. I don’t have a specific weight target that I must hit or a specific number of days that I am going for. I am just going day to day and seeing how I feel with it.

The last fast I did was a 10 day water only fast. It did not go well. It was pretty rough come days 4 and 5. I think primarily because I did not know enough about taking vitamins, salt, and stuff like that at the time. This time I am doing a small amount of protein, vitamins and an electrolyte powder. It totals up to about 200 calories a day. So not at true fast, but I feel like I am getting many of the benefits of it without it being nearly as difficult as it was the last time.

PrettyTony · January 30, 2020, 11:54pm

DAY 5 233
OK this fast is over. I dropped about 12 pounds in five days. Mostly water weight. But I can’t complain.

I broke it today. Ate about 1200 calories. I decided to break it because I was feeling pretty terrible this morning when I woke up. I looked at the one pound I lost from the previous day and said to myself “This ain’t worth it.”

Actually I am confident that the fast could work for people who are at one of those fasting villages, where you don’t have to work, just rest all day, and are medically supervised. My problem came down to wanting to do stuff that requires more energy than I had on the fast (weight lifting and dancing lessons). If I had to stick with the fast realistically I was going to have to give up all forms of heavy lifting and strenuous exercise until a got to a size I liked. I was hoping that I could lose like 2 pounds a day and be done with the fast in say 15-20 days, but that is a pipe dream. Day to day the weight loss was getting less and less. And I did not want to go a month or more without lifting heavy.

But I am going to continue with this journal. I am going to actually try the “Alternate Day Fasting” that was mentioned above in this thread. The plan generally will be to eat the 200 calories on the fasting days, and then to eat for around maintenance on the eating days. Also, I plan to schedule the eating days on the days that I want to lift weights and do my lessons, so on those days of the weeks I still have decent energy to do what I want to do.

One thing I am happy with is that I did not pig out after deciding to eat again. I made pretty good food choices today. Hope to continue that instead of going back to fast food, etc.