body image – The Fasting Life

I’ve lost half of myself…

… which is to say that I’ve lost half my original body weight now!

It’s not a particularly special number, but kind of a cool milestone to note, so I thought I might! Plus, it’s been awhile since I last wrote a post, so I thought I was due for a check in. If you like the numbers talk, then here it is: when I started losing weight, I was 335 lbs. As of yesterday morning, I weigh 167 lbs, with a projected 17 lbs to go. Or so: we’ll see what things are like when I get there! It was never about the number itself; that was just a way of tracking things.

In the past few months, a lot of people have been asking me whether or not I’m “done” yet (and we’ll come back to that one in my next post!), and when I say no, that I’m still actively losing weight, they’ve frequently asked me why. At that point I generally shrug and say something like “I’m not at my goal yet” or something along those lines. To be clear, I never mind discussing this with anyone, as long as their interest isn’t malicious. It usually isn’t, and I’m all for helping people understand how weight, metabolism, hormones, and food are all connected. That said, in these conversations about whether and why I’m still going, people often say “but you look great!”, as though that should be enough reason for me to decide that my current weight is fine. I appreciate the sentiment, but how I look isn’t the main point here.

It’s definitely a big perk. I’m a whole lot happier with the way I look than I was before I started, and I wasn’t wallowing in self-hate even then. What I’m even happier with, and what matters more to me, is how I feel. What things have become either more possible, or vastly more enjoyable. I was always active, but I didn’t enjoy it the way I do now. I always walked a lot, though nowhere near as much as I do now, and it takes me a whole lot less effort than it did before, even if I didn’t notice it per se. I was always health-conscious in the way I ate, but I didn’t understand as much about nutrition as I do now. People who haven’t been overweight don’t realize how much more difficult it is to be active when you’re literally carrying the weight of another adult around with you. I took the joint pain, constant fatigue, limb chafing, overheating, all of it, for granted. I didn’t actively realize that they were things that don’t necessarily come with life, that not everyone experiences when they walk, run, swim, hike, etc. And beyond this, I just feel better in every possible way. My moods are better. My skin is better. I sleep better. I feel more alive. It’s amazing.

Taking a step back to reflect a bit, it does feel amazing to think that I’ve literally lost half my original weight. The weight of another other human adult. That’s pretty cool. 🙂

Taken at my bestie’s wedding two weeks ago:

Sandra - N&B wedding 1

Breaking free

Most of my blog posts, both here and over at my old blog, have focused on fasting and ketogenic eating. This time I’d like to talk about another aspect of healthy living: movement!

When I first embarked on this process of changing my lifestyle and claiming my health, I understood that it was going to be, if my efforts worked, life-changing. What I didn’t know then was exactly how life-changing it would be!

Early on in that process, I came across a photo of this sculpture (edited to add, courtesy of Michael McKay): by Gabriel D’Orazio:

free yourself

It’s been criticized here and there, but for me it hit home in a very poignant way. For years, what I saw on the outside didn’t match my inner view of myself at all. I’ve always been a hard worker, intelligent, driven, highly competent, and I’ve also always been rather active. I’ve been a regular walker and semi-regular lap swimmer. I’ve played various sports, even voluntarily (lol) and enjoyed it.

Here’s the secret no one ever tells you when you’re overweight: it’s so much easier to be active when you’re not. It’s easy for a fit person to tell someone heavy to “just” take the stairs or walk more. I always did – but I’m constantly amazed to find not only how much easier it it now, but how much more I enjoy it – and I always did enjoy being active!

The sculpture above struck me because it felt very much like the thing I’d always yearned to be able to do: free myself from a body that didn’t always serve me the way I wished it would, in favour of revealing what I felt was a truer form of my physical self. Interestingly, beyond just having more physical energy now – particularly when I’m fasting! – I also find that this same energy has spread into enthusiasm for other, non-physical arenas of life. I have no idea how or why, but I like it. I find myself feeling more open-minded about trying new things, more gung-ho about everything from my work to areas of my personal life. And when it comes to fitness, I barely recognize myself.

In the past six weeks, I’ve suddenly, overnight, become a gym person?? It’s bizarre, truly. There’s a small gym in my building which I’m frequently the only person using (whoo!), so I now use it regularly, almost daily, either for cardio or weight training. I managed to catch the last good day for cross-country skiing the weekend before last, and find myself looking for active things to do outside that are possible in our current, transitional winter-to-spring mess. I want to get a bike! And maybe some rollerblades! (Who AM I?!)

I’ve spent a lot of time in the past year and two months feeling so much more awake and more alive than I ever felt before. I attribute this very much to the constant fog that people typically recognize as having come from a diet of too much sugar/carbs. Now that I’m out of the fog, I feel like I’ve missed out on a lot, just due to having been too low energy, lethargic, and depressed (sugar is a known depressant). What might I have felt more enthusiastic about tackling, had I only had the energy or the enthusiasm for it?

Either way, I’m making up for lost time now! I feel like I’m breaking free at last, beginning to not only resemble the person I always saw myself as on the inside, but also the one I always wished I felt like on the outside. It’s pretty amazing!

A constant learning curve

One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is how this is a process of constant adjustment and learning. The way I find most of us think about it is “make a plan and follow it”, whereas it’s actually much more nuanced, and that learning curve applies to every single aspect of this. Beyond the basic questions of “which approach do I want to take in losing weight?”, here are some of the others that have cropped up in the past almost-year-now:

How long am I comfortable fasting? This is one that most fasters have to give some thought to at some point. Some people are only comfortable with time-restricted eating, aka eating within a limited time window of 6 or 8 hours (the 18:6 and 16:8 protocols, respectively). Others are good with alternating days of 24-hour fasts*. Some people are fine with full-week fasts or regular 5-day fasts. Personally, I wouldn’t suggest doing longer than 3 days/72 hours more than once per month. It just isn’t necessary. On average, three full days of fasting per week is the general aim. My personal favourite is three fasts of 42 hours per week. Sometimes I mix it up and go a little longer, especially if I’m balancing a planned indulgence of some sort (vacation, birthday, etc). But it’s not a competition. We all have to figure out what works for ourselves.

*Don’t do this every day! It will work at first, and then it will stop working as your metabolism slows and the weight starts coming back!

What does it mean for me to “eat to satisfaction”? I’m getting better at this one, but it’s still a constant learning curve. I’m still used to planning meal portions around my former, sugar-fed appetite – aka, it was much larger than it is now. As the classic saying goes, my eyes are bigger than my stomach now, and I’m still finding myself making more food than I need, and if I eat it all, I’m uncomfortably full. Now that my insulin (triggers appetite and body fat production) and leptin (triggers the sensation of fullness and gets suppressed when insulin is too high) seem to be in proper balance now, I still find myself needing to learn to listen to my body when it’s signalling that it’s full, rather than eating for enjoyment. I’m figuring out what my portions should be, not based on any empty notion of calorie counting or even macros (the only macro I really watch is carb intake), but based on the signals my body gives that I can now trust. A body which has too much insulin production going on gives untrustworthy signals! But my body is healing itself and I’m in the process of learning to trust it again.

How many attacks can my willpower withstand? This has been an interesting thing to observe in myself, and incredibly surprising for me. I’ve been a lifelong workaholic, but always thought that not really paying attention to what/how I was eating was the one area of indulgence I was allowing myself, so I felt very dubious about my own ability to exercise control in this area, as well. However, it seems I’m vastly stronger in this area than I ever realized I could be. That said, there are limits. In an earlier post, I mentioned a day at work when I was fasting and no fewer than EIGHT people offered me the free cake that was on offer in one of the lunch rooms. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t mind being around people who are eating while I’m fasting. I actively enjoy meal planning and even cooking while fasting now, too – though the cheesy garlic bread muffins I made the other night tested that resolve sorely! That particular day at work, I was bombarded by offers of cake, a snack cart that was being wheeled around, hot chocolate that was on offer as well, and came home feeling like I’d been in a war zone all day. My resolve held, but it was emotionally exhausting. Finding out how much we can handle is part of this, because if these elements build up too much and become triggers for failure, we’ll start resenting our fasts.

What is my body now? This is a slightly different one, but has been an ongoing question for me since about a month into this. Dramatic weight loss isn’t just a change in terms of health and literal size – it’s a change in how we see ourselves. I don’t just mean that in a strictly cosmetic manner, either: it’s a question of functions gained (or regained), a change in the way certain actions feel or work, and so much more. Sometimes when I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror, I literally don’t recognize myself. One of my newer non-scale victories is that my thighs don’t touch when I walk anymore (for the first time since my early teen years, probably!), and it changes the way walking feels. Running for a bus doesn’t make me out of breath. Sitting with my legs crossed at the knee is comfortable and easy. I have more energy overall. It’s changed the way I breathe for singing. It’s changed the positions I sleep in at night. It’s changed the way virtually every part of my body looks, and that’s an adjustment to make, too. It’s a good adjustment – but a change, nonetheless. I have never believed that the outside of myself was an accurate reflection of the inside, and while I feel that I’m beginning to look more the way I’ve always seen myself anyway, I still have these moments of seeing myself and going, “Whose legs are those? Those can’t be my legs…” It’s been a very interesting part of this whole process, and it’s not over yet, as I’m still 57 lbs away from my ultimate goal.

There are more, but I’ll leave it here for now. What are the questions you’ve found yourselves asking as you’ve gone? Leave a comment and share!