Intervention: Day 11, 262 hours, 313 lbs, BMI 45.3

I’m having trouble sleeping – again. It is the weekend. I used to be able to sleep until like 10 or 11 on a weekend before the fast and now I seem to want to get up like 7 or 8am. It is unnatural I tell you. Almost as bad as those constantly smiling runners you see out at 5 am in the morning claiming a morning run is invigorating. Ug.  Yes. Yes. I know. If I don’t get up until later in the day how would I know there are people who run at 5 and 6 am 😛

Regardless . . . . its a weekend damn it – I want to sleep in. (sigh)

So two things the last couple of days. I put off the walks because my back was hurting so much and I wanted to see if it was possibly something I had done while walking.

I don’t think it was, as the feeling has been getting better over the last two days but hasn’t fully gone away.

A few other things I’ve been changing around. I’ve moved my base, goal, and stretch dates around to line up with a Thursday evening. This is mainly so that I can have the weekend to adjust to any weirdness my body might throw at me and not having to deal with those types of problems at work.

New Goals:
Base – 528 hours – November 23rd
Target – 864 hours – December 7th
Stretch – 1032 hours – December 14th

Last day of the fast will absolutely be December 14 if I can go that far, as Christmas is coming up and I’m already turning down some invitations to various lunch get-togethers happening prior to that. While a lot of restaurants have a cobb salad or similar, I really don’t want to be put in a position where one of my main meals right after a fast has the potential to be a beer and a plate of french fries.

On the plus side, later today I hit the 50% point on my base goal of 528 hours. You cannot imagine how awesome that feels compared to how big the mountain looked when I started this.

A few other things I have noticed. No one lied when they said you need to brush your teeth more often, especially your tongue. I’ve stopped drinking the herbal teas because it doesn’t taste like tea anymore. There is a metallic type taste that you get in your mouth and brushing the tongue seems to get rid of it for a little while. So lots of brushing and lots of mouthwash is a good thing to have on hand.

The exercise REALLY helps with weight reduction. While I’ve taken two days off from the daily walks my weight loss per day has dropped significantly. Between yesterday and today, it was only one (1) pound as compared to an average of just over two (2) pounds. I can attribute that to being closer to my RVCO2 limits since there was no extra effort that required the metabolism of fat.

There is this 1982 article, Fasting: The History, Pathophysiology and Complications, on the National Center for Biotechnology Information website that suggests that weight reduction typically starts in the 0.9 kg (2 lbs) and should gradually taper off to approximately 0.3 kg (0.72 lbs) per day after the first three weeks. My own data has me currently at an average weight loss of 2.7 lbs (including the initial weight loss from food poisoning which skews the number up a bit) or 2.1 lbs when accounting for water weight.

Further, from the data I have been tracking so far, it appears that when not exercising, the RVOC2 number when fasting contributes more like 50% towards weight loss with the balance of CO2 being created as a result of other metabolic functions. When adding in the modest exercise of a 40-minute walk, the contribution seems to increase to more like 80-85%. So will definitely be increasing my walking rather than decreasing and trying to get in at least one walk per day every day without skipping any.

Three other items:

The salt seems to be helping a bit. I don’t think a full 1/8 teaspoon is necessarily what is needed as you do get a bit of a nausea type feeling and it can lead to an irregular heartbeat if you take too much too quickly. I’m going to play with maybe half that amount and include a bit of no-salt to bump up the potassium levels.

The swelling in my legs has gone down substantially. That is probably a combination of the walking and the water fast. They still are not 100% normal as compared to other people but at least they don’t look like blow-up balloon animals anymore.

I’ve stopped taking the Emergen-C in the evenings. While it helped a little with the back pain, it also seemed to contribute to the typical types of laxative effects you get when you have too much vitamin C in your body. Considering I’m already taking a multi-vitamin in the morning, the extra doesn’t seem to be contributing to much.