For the past 18 months I have been dealing with nerve impingement in the C4-C5 area that has caused a ton of pain in the shoulder, back, and arm. It took close to a year before I finally managed to get some relief. A combination of pharmaceuticals, trigger point injections, and Advil/Tylenol-1 to try to get things under control.

Its meant that I can only do physical exercise and labor to a point which sucks. Of all the things I thought I might have to deal with this was the last thing on my list.

So to say that I’ve had a few challenges between not wanting to do anything that would cause more pain and wanting to just live in my comfort food zone hasn’t helped keeping things under control or improving things.

Its only been recently that I’ve been able to get back to focusing on nutrition and exercise in order to get the weight down.

Since the last time I did a real blog post (Jan 2022), I’ve been bouncing around between 340 and 350.

The last 10 days however, when I hit 350 again, I made a concerted effort to at least get the nutrition part under control.

Today I’m under 340 for the first time in awhile and I’m hoping that this will continue.

One of the biggest things I found works for me is writing things down. Which sucks because I hate doing that type of Journaling.

Using the Fitdays app to track body composition which hooks directly up to my scale via Bluetooth has helped.

Currently I’m doing 5 things to get my nutritional goals under control

1. Carb Cycling
2. Macronutrient Tracking
3. 12:12 Intermittent Fasting
4. One full fast (under 400 calories) each week
5. One cheat day (Max 3000 calories) every 2 weeks

This has been difficult getting started again. I’m about 10 days into this routine. Today is my first cheat day and then tomorrow I’m back into the lower calorie carb cycling again.

In the past 11 days I have dropped 10 lbs

I haven’t seen the peaks and valleys that I used to see with full on fasting or the Optifast – although I’m sure they will be coming 

One of the core principles I’ve found of trying to lose weight is that the first 20 lbs don’t count.

This is because most of this weight is your body readjusting itself to a smaller calorie count and the types of foods that you are eating. 

So things like the amount of food that stays in your colon and water retention goes down in a fasting situation because your body is trying to protect itself.

So you want to make sure you keep your hydration up and include foods that are higher in fiber. 

Or at least that is what I’m doing and so far its working albeit its a struggle as I readjust all the bad habits I’ve re-engaged with since the start of the pandemic.

— K