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Go Hungry or Don't Go to Bed

I've made some headway since setting up my new dashboard, down 2-3 pounds since then. I'm safely and consistently under 170 now, but my weight loss has again started to stall. At least this now comes as no surprise since it is consistent with what my new widget dashboard has indicated.

I had off on Friday and with President's Day on Monday, I've been off my bike for 4 straight days. Today makes day 5 since the weather this morning was especially bitter. Tomorrow looks like snow, so it may be next week before I'm riding my bike into work again.

I also didn't really rack up the steps this past weekend, eclipsing 10k every day but not much more. I also went out to restaurants twice, though at least making the healthiest selections I could find and only drinking diet cokes (free refills down here in the south, so at least it's kinda cheapo-friendly). All in all, I guess I should be thankful that I didn't gain any weight, but it's still frustrating to have your progress derailed by events.

One thing I did notice was that even though my calorie output was low, holding down my calories between 2000-2500 every day this past weekend was enough to send me to bed a little hungry. I wasn't so hungry that I couldn't sleep but hungry enough that I could easily eat another meal. I've learned that if I don't get a around 2500 calories every day, I feel hungry by the time I go to bed. If I'm under 2000, I'll feel famished and restless, but if I'm in the mid-low 2000 range, I can at least get to sleep and not wake up due to hunger.

It also appears that even for my higher output days: bicycle commuting to/from work and 20,000+ total steps, my body still only demands the same level of calories. If I go to bed a little hungry those days, I'm losing weight, but even if I subtract the activity variable from the equation and assume light activity days, going to be hungry at a minimum means at least I'm not gaining any weight.

I had read previously that going to bed a little hungry is a sign that you're losing weight, so it seems that's at least partially true, at least for me. What I do know is that if you go to bed feeling full, chances are the scale will reflect that in the morning.

I've often wondered if I fasted all day and only scarfed down a McDonald's Double Bacon Smokehouse Burger (1130 calories) and large fries (510 calories) right before bed if I'd feel totally full, but I don't think I have it in me to fast like that. My guess is that I'd still feel hungry. As enormous as that meal may be, I've definitely had large value meals before and still felt like I could still eat more afterwards.

I work with a Muslim guy who celebrates Ramadan, so I guess I could get his opinion on it, though he likely has no idea how many calories he's eating once the sun goes down. I think he also eats a pre-dawn breakfast, so this may have to be an experiment I try one day on my own. Maybe there'll be a day where the first opportunity I get to eat will be right before bed, but such a day has yet to happen.

Lots of people have success with fasting, but it seems too much like torture and also too narrow-focused and therefore eventually doomed to fail. Have you ever known someone to have gone to their grave at a ripe old age having lived that kind of lifestyle? Being a cheapo means trying to make this as much of a livable plan as possible, and fasting just doesn't seem sustainable over the long haul.

As I wrote previously, the key to success is to have a plan with lots of safety nets. The cheapo plan is more of a lifestyle framework, which restricts nothing as long as you're tracking what you're eating, doing and your weight. When I stopped tracking what I was eating and kind of ballparking things (read: cheating more than I'd admit), my weight tracking alerted me and forced a course correction. If your plan consists only of fasting and you decide that it's just too onerous to maintain, there's no point in stepping on the scale because you're going to be fat again in no time.

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