Two new disciplines/challenges I started in 2018

Intermittent Fasting

Three/four weekends ago, I stumbled on a YouTube video whose concept was about giving your brain a better energy source to double its operation efficiency. Little did I know that unlike most of the videos I watch or self-help stuff that I read, this was actually going to change my life with near-immediate effect.

The point of the video is that the brain runs twice as well with energy released from burning fat reserves versus that released from burning sugar in the bloodstream. So, if you eat regularly throughout the course of the day, then there will be ample sugar in your bloodstream for the brain to work with. Meaning that your fat reserves and the energy there-in would remain inaccessible to the brain. Hence, your brain won't work as efficiently as it could.

The secret to unleashing your brain's preferred type of energy, hence, is to limit how much sugar is available in your bloodstream for most of the day. And the most effective way to achieve that (quite reasonably) is to shrink your daily eating window. The video's recommendation is to fast for 16 hours, while you can eat anytime within the next 8 hours of the day.

Call it health-science bullshit but I concluded the idea didn't sound so bad. I'd heard about intermittent fasting several times before but I didn't know that the concept was this simple. Now armed with more knowledge, I decided I'd give it a shot since I didn't have much to lose anyway. Apart from a few kilograms of body weight which I won't have much trouble putting back on if I had to, anyway. Perhaps, I was starting to grow worried about the size of my waistline, however insignificant it might appear to onlookers. you know how our kind can be vain like that now

If my counting is correct, this week makes it the 4th week since I hopped on the intermittent fasting bandwagon. Since I started, here has been my daily eating schedule:

Eating Schedule

Breakfast: Milky coffee with one or two cubes of sugar at 8 am on weekdays only. Nothing except water until noon on weekends. I'll either be busy with chores or in church anyway, so that serves as ample distraction until lunch time.

Lunch (Noon - 6 pm): A well-balanced meal between noon and 2 pm. Sometimes, I would get a snack, yogurt drink or chocolate bar to eat a little closer to 6 pm to reduce the chances that I'll be craving for a snack in the night

Dinner: Nothing, except there's some tempting snacks around me (which unfortunately is more often than not, the case). Then I help myself to a bite or two, but nothing grand.

Last night, I indulged myself with two slices of fried plantain (I fried it for today's lunch and you know what they say about fried plantain and self-discipline) and one shaki from the pot of stew just before bedtime. "It won't count", I said to myself. "Plus you exercised this evening by taking a 20-minute walk", I said to myself.

Progress so far

I've lost about 4 kg since starting to eat just one meal per day, going from 84 kg to 80 kg. I think I might get down to 75 kg, which was my weight for many consecutive years before my life became better (if you know what I mean).

Who knows where we're headed? Perhaps, my family of 6-packs might see light of day for the first time in their lives. They've been shy for too long and I think it's high time they launched into the world with confidence.

And to think I could not fathom it when John Sonmez (of Simple Programmer) talked about how he eats only one meal a day in one of his videos I watched in 2017!

30 days of NoFap

This one, I'd like to describe as a dividend of my writing. Because I'm back on the NoFap challenge (which I failed at completing around this time last year) simply because a reader reached out to me on Grindr and suggested that we try it together this time. Man, was I excited when I saw that message! 

I really love it when positive stuff like this happen as a result of my writing. Because as a creator, you can never have too much validation that you're not wasting your time creating. And there's no better evidence for that than tangible results and feedback like this one.

I and my NoFap buddy (as I like to call him) are 3 days in today. So it's too early to pull out a scorecard. Hopefully, I'll be back here by the 10th day in to let you know how it's been.