Over the past few weeks, more than a few people in my “stream” of information mentioned that they were fasting. For some of those, it was part of their observation of Ramadan. For one other, it was just something they were doing in prep of a big feast.

Regardless, it combined with several conversations I’ve been having with someone I work with. See, this co-worker (who is in what nearly everyone would call good shape) regularly goes close to 24 hours without eating while just “not hungry”. It all made me curious about the effects of fasting on the human body.

What I found was really interesting and sparked a short-term experiment carried out last week and a longer-term one starting this week. I read a few articles, a ton of medical journal abstracts and a few things became very clear along the way.

Rather than there being dangerous side effects for short term fasting (1-3 days), the benefits kept stacking up as I kept reading. However, one particular study’s conclusion really struck me. When subjects did a 24 hour fast for one day per month, heart disease in the group went down DRAMATICALLY (think 40%).

That struck me because of the health problems that my mom has and, in all likelihood, I inherited. My grandfather died before I was born of a heart attack before turning 60. My mom has had high blood pressure for as long as I can remember and, a few years ago, had a coronary blockage. My own cholesterol and blood pressure numbers indicate that it’s pretty likely that I am on track for the same problems.

As I continued reading and more and more benefits related to cardiac health were described, I became simultaneously intrigued and apprehensive. Clearly a lot of science was adding up to point to a clear way to improve my health and possibly even lose the weight that’s been stubbornly clinging to my mid-section, but the 24 hour fasts that were in the literature and used for intermittent fasting seemed like an impossibility for me.

I’ve lost, at various times 20-60 pounds, with the help of appetite suppressants (only to regain some of it back). The biggest problem I faced (and continue to face) regarding my weight is that I am so constantly hungry. When I eat “proper” meals, I am nearly never full at the end and am almost always hungry an hour or 2 later.

When on the appetite suppressants, I manage to knock back the hunger enough to make reasonably good decisions. However, once I’m off of them (and they won’t let you stay on them for the 50+ weeks I’d need them to lose the weight I need to), I struggle with the hunger in major ways.

After looking at all of this information, I am convinced that intermittent fasting is something that is likely to help both my health in general and make it easier to lose the weight I need to in order to make *that* part of my health come in line too.

However, all of that would be entirely moot if my intuition about my own hunger was true. I imagined the hunger during a 24 hour fast as horribly difficult. Fortunately, I’ve read enough books like Predictably Irrational to know better than to trusty my intuition.

So, last week, I attempted my first 24 hour fast. From 1pm on Thursday to 1pm on Friday, I consumed no calories. No food, no juice, no milk, no sugar in beverages, nothing. And, it was much easier than I thought. Yes, I was hungry. However, it wasn’t much worse than when I am leading up to a slightly delayed meal. For instance, if I normally eat lunch at 11:30, but have to wait until 1pm because of a meeting. It never got any worse than that.

I had no dizziness, no light-headedness, wasn’t any more tired or weak, etc. In short, a 24 hour fast is very do-able for me.

As this is rambling on longer than I intended, I’ll get to the point. All of my reading and my small experiment set up what I’m planning over the next 12 weeks or so.

The studies indicate that it takes about 18 hours of fasting before the benefits kick in. At about 30 hours, the benefits start slowing down, pointing to an 18-30 hour fast being a good length. Note that the science says that there is NO slow down in base metabolic rate out to 72 hours of fasting and I have no intention of going that long.

While some people have gone to a completely alternating days schedule, the benefits are achievable with far fewer fasting days, so I’m aiming for 2 days a week of between 24 and 30 hours of fasting. To still be able to eat something every day, I’m going to be starting the fast after lunch on a given day, skipping the following dinner, breakfast and lunch and starting back on food the next afternoon or dinner.

I’ve also recently started back at the gym, so will be doing weight training 3 days a week plus some days walking/treadmill.

I need to set an appointment with my doctor and at the gym too to get base numbers for things like cholesterol and triglycerides. I’ll be taking waist, hip, arm, leg and neck measurements and weight. I hope to get a basal metabolic measurements as well. Even though this is just one person, and so anecdotal, I want as much data as I can to know what the actual results are. I’ll also be taking pictures, though I probably won’t share them publicly (I trust you understand).

The reality is that going without food for periods like this was the normal state of things for the entire history of humanity for all but the last 60 years of 1st world history. The science all says there is very little risk here. However, I will be paying very close attention and working with my doctor to mitigate any risk that is present.

This is gonna be interesting.

About a month ago, I set a goal for myself to go to the gym every day for a month. The idea was largely predicated on a principle that I've seen in many other areas of life. Basically, if you do something often enough for it to become a habit and part of your routine, you end up feeling weird if it's missing.

For something that really should be part of my daily routine for the rest of my life, that seemed like a pretty good approach.

I'd heard people throw out a 14 day timeframe for things to "become a habit". In my own experience, however, that's proven to be wholly inadequate unless I already was inclined to do the thing.

So, I basically doubled the "conventional wisdom" and rounded to 30 days. The hope was that at the end of the 30 days, that mechanism in my brain that makes me feel guilty about not doing other stuff would be employed in keeping me going to the gym.

Measurement

I used Don't Break The Chain as a quick way to track whether I complied with my rules. I also kept an ad hoc kind of notebook along with my other notes for things like my weight and body fat percentage. I wasn't as thorough as one should be for really understanding what happened. However, I'm also pretty sure that if I'd imposed greater measurement requirements, I would have abandoned the whole thing.

While I don't have access to the REALLY accurate body fat measurements (i.e. the big water tank), I *do* have a scale that reports my body fat percentage along with the weight. It's the same scale I had when going to the weight loss doctor and the numbers were always fairly close to the ones that the more expensive equipment in her office reported.

I measured my weight and body fat percentage about 1-2 times a week for the duration. I logged those numbers along with the actual body fat in pounds, as calculated from the numbers that the scale spit out.

All of the workouts were between 30 and 60 minutes with most between 30 and 40 minutes long. I didn't track this for very long before patterns started to emerge. Most consisted of 25-35 minutes on the treadmill followed with 10-15 minutes of weight training.

The treadmill portion consisted of walking at 2.8mph at 9% incline with interval spikes of either a 15% incline or 1% incline and running between 6-7mph (only on some days). That consistently got my heart rate into the recommended range for cardio conditioning. I'd love to have gotten my VO2 measured before this (and should probably look even now), but didn't.

Weight training was mostly squats, bench press and seated row. From a training perspective, I pretty much just aimed to slowly bring up my condition without pushing things too far, so the weight stuff wasn't terribly intense.

Evaluation

Boolean Success/Fail

The actual goal was not achieved as I didn't actually make 30 days in a row: only 27. This is due in large part to my poor planning. The decision for the starting date was dictated almost entirely by the day that I finally got fed up and just jumped in. Had I looked at the calendar on that date, I would have noticed that I would be out of town in rural Iowa (where my gym is not) for my sister's wedding at the tail end of this 30 days.

However, once back in town, I started back up and it's clear that the *spirit* of the project took as going to the gym is now a habit. As such, I consider the project a success.

Weight and Fat

I expressly did not include any specific goals with regard to weight or fat loss.

At the beginning, my total body fat was 81.28 lbs. As of this morning, that's dropped to 74.24 lbs, for a drop in body fat of about 7 pounds. At the same time, my actual weight went UP from 253 to 256.

The combined math says that I gained 10 pounds of lean tissue and lost 7 pounds of fat in the last 30 days.

Cardiovascular

I wish I had tracked some things in this area better. Alas, it's probably unlikely that this will improve much going forward either. I *do* know that my endurance for bursts of running has improved pretty steadily.

Going Forward

Since the goal was to establish the habit of regular exercise, I do plan to keep this up. I've now been back on track for 2 days straight and see no reason to stop. There will undoubtedly be days like the wedding weekend where I can't get to the gym, but it looks like the habit is getting ingrained enough that those won't derail me.

I *have* heard from several people that I shouldn't be going every single day because I'll "overtrain". To me, that makes little sense, sorry. I spend 8-12 hours a day sitting in front of a computer plus 30-60 minutes of exercise on a treadmill and a few weights. That, compared with the amount of physical activity *demanded* of 99.99% of the population for all of human history except the last 30 years or even my own youth is preposterous.

Ten years ago, I left college and sat down, completing a slowdown that began 4 or so years earlier. When I left high school, I transitioned from doing chores every day and working on the farm to going to college. I stayed relatively active, riding my bike to class year 'round and doing IT support on campus, which required walking all over.

However, when I graduated from college, my situation effectively purged all of the physical activity I was getting all along. Because I'd always just gotten my exercise doing things I already had to do, I didn't pay attention to the fact that The Great Sitting Down necessitated changing my eating or replacing the activity.

As many of you know, I did lose about 50 pounds a couple of years ago by addressing the diet and climbing the stairs at my project site. Alas, again, when 28 flights of stairs were no longer between me and my desk, that loss stopped and I've spent the last couple of years pretty much stuck in the same general ballpark.

While I've messed with a couple of things on the dietary front, I hadn't really done much to acknowledge the physical activity side of things.

Knowing this needed to change, a few months ago, I did like so many others and signed up for a gym, went twice and then kept paying the bill, but little else. Once I'd paid for 3 months and never set foot in the place, I decided that something needed to change.

Clearly, economics says that the best way to ensure that I actually do this thing that I consciously want to do is to leverage incentives or disincentives. I'd heard about a site where you could take out a contract on yourself where money would be sent to a charity you disagree with if you don't follow through (stickK.com). I gave it a look and even got about half way through signing up before abandoning that idea.

The big problem is that even though the goals are weekly, you have to give them the total cost of failure up front. So, you could say that failing to exercise this week would cost you $10, but if you wanted to commit to a year, you'd have to give them the whole $520 off your card up front.

While that is a perfectly valid way to do it, I shied away at that point.

When I sat back to consider the situation, I remembered a study that I had read about the amount of effort people will go to to avoid something so simple as doors closing on a computer screen. That mirrored what I've seen watching other people play video games. Even simple games where you have to keep things going can lead people to get REALLY concerned when nothing more than a few pixels are going to "fall" or break through a wall, etc.

That same principle is what is at work in Jerry Seinfeld's "don't break the chain" productivity method. Given the effects that just losing that incrementing number of completed days, I wondered what would happen for me if nothing more than that number WAS the thing I'd lose by not going to the gym.

So, revived something I've done for lots of other stuff with a 30 Day Challenge. I'd go to the gym every day for 30 days. Period. The challenge wouldn't be over until 30 days in a row were touched by a visit to the gym. Of course, the first few days are often easy and then, hopefully, the cumulative effect of the incrementing number would kick in.

I'm not bundling any sort of goal to lose weight. I'm not bundling any specific gym routine; stepping in the door counts. And, I'm now 12 days in. Twice, so far, I've had a "reason" to miss, but went out of my way to do it anyway, something I've never done with previous attempts at physical activity.

In other words, it's working.

Photo: Bruce

This weekend, we again revisit the high holy day on my calendar. It sits in my favorite month of the year (though it's now sadder that my grandma has passed), with Sit on Your Ass and Watch Movies Day, fantastic weather, Halloween and the 25 hour day.

Digressions aside, the 25 hour day is usually used by most folks to sleep in on Sunday. However, consider the possibility of using the day as a much better starting point for what usually end up as New Year's Resolutions. After all, if you've been wanting to start getting up earlier, what better day than one where it *isn't* earlier to your body. Use the extra hour to start exercising, because you aren't giving up even a single minute of your normal 24 hour day.

What else?

A couple of weeks ago, I ran across a geek who's been applying geeky problem solving to some of the biggest day to day issues people face: weight, fitness, time management. I tend to gravitate to lifehacks that are driven by this kind of practical approach because it's the approach I tend to take in my own solutions.

I lost the 60 pounds that I did last year by calorie counting and climbing stairs. After I moved to an office without the stairs, my progress stalled, so I've been looking for a decent way to get some exercise to bust out of the rut.

His approach to exercise, which he calls "shovelglove" (that will be the last time I call it that for reasons I'll explain in a bit) uses a sledgehammer to mimic real-world work. It's done for 14 minutes a day, driving fenceposts, chopping wood, shoveling, rowing a canoe, etc. The name comes from the fact that he started out primarily doing the shoveling motion and wrapped the hammer in a shirt to avoid scratching the floor.

I'm not going to be calling it by the name he does because: a) I have carpet in all of the rooms I do this in, so won't be doing the cloth wrapper and b) given how it actually uses a sledgehammer and most of the movements aren't shovels, the name no longer makes sense in the other direction either. I just think it needs a marketing makeover. I'm just calling it a sledgehammer workout.

I grew up doing most of the kinds of work that this exercise mimics, so it's kind of reviving muscles that haven't been worked in a long time. Of course, it's sad how 15 minutes of this now can leave me tired when 8 hours of it used to be no problem, but that's the point, isn't it?

I've also been doing bodyweight squats (crouch down and touch the floor, then stand back up) and started out being able to do about 10-15 2 weeks ago and am up to 100 as of Friday.

On the diet end, his approach has an extra level of intrigue, given some of the reading on happiness that I've been doing. Several of my recent book reads have brought up the concept of hedonic adapatation, which is how we gradually get used to good things in our life. The No-S Diet is all about making sweets, snacks and seconds into special occasion events again. It's only in VERY recent American-style society where we've had enough cheap food to make it possible to eat those things on a daily basis. By putting them in on special days on a "sometimes" basis, we also can avoid the constant cycle of hedonic adaptation as well.

Instead of becoming numb to the true pleasure of eating some of the best foods on earth (chocolate, cheesecake and the like), we end up truly savoring and enjoying them when we do eat them. Don't believe me? Take some food you both enjoy and eat regularly. Skip it for the next 10-15 times you normally would eat it. Then have it again and tell me that the first time back isn't WAY better than it usually is.

By putting that back in a little bit at a time, you make the saved-for special foods even better and focus on eating single-plate meals during the week.

That makes his eating approach both sensible as well as appealing to someone who genuinely enjoys food (a little too much). Given how I already pretty much can and do end up doing a calorie count on every plate, I'm going to try some blend of this dietary approach along with the exercise for a while and see what happens.

I can already tell that the exercise is paying off. My legs are not only getting stronger (10 to 100 squats is a huge improvement), but more definition is showing up as well. The same is true on my arms and shoulders too.