The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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For more context: I am a man, 1m85 tall (6'1") with a medium build. At the start of my third fast I was 58 years old and weighed 109.2kg (241 lbs). After 75 days I had lost 30.1kg (66 lbs) and weighed 79.1kg (174 lbs). At that weight I look healthy and slim, but not 'skinny'. I have no idea what the BMI or fat percentages are. The vast majority of weight lost was clearly fat. I assume some muscle was lost too, but I don't care about that since if you are 30kg overweight your number one priority should be losing all that blubber.
Re refeeding: I did not do refeeds during the fast. As I said in my original post, this was a zero-calorie fast. I consumed zero calories during the entire 75-day period. After the fast ended, I started eating very cautiously: bouillon, broth, salads, very small portions of meat and vegetables.
As you can imagine, after not eating for 75 days your stomach 'shrinks' and it does not take much food to feel full. At this stage, the main concern is not to let yourself slide back into the habit of overeating.
Thanks for your reply and your experiences!
BMI is short for Body Mass Index. Its your weight in kilograms divided by the square of your height in meters. In your case 109.2/(1.85^2)=31.91
BMI is medical screening tool used to categorize people by the healthyness of their body weight. 18.5-25 is normal/healthy weight, 25-30 is overweight, 30-35 is obesity, and so on. Your most recent fast took you from obesity (31.91) to normal/healthy weight (23.11).
Body fat percentage is literally what it sounds like, the percentage of the body that is fat. There are plenty of ways to measure this and most half decent modern digital scales can give you a reasonable estimate. Some people prefer this to BMI, as it can be more accurate if you have an unusual body or if you're competing in certain sports.
Thanks for the information. Sorry, I wasn't clear in my reply: I know what the concepts of BMI and body fat percentage are, I just hadn't calculated them for myself. :) In any case, thanks for doing the calculations for me. If you want any more information about my experience with fasting, feel free to ask!
Man, I thought it was a bit strange that someone wouldn't know what BMI is but who am I to judge? Rereading your post I know realise that you wrote "I have no idea what *the* BMI or fat percentages are." rather than "I have no idea what BMI or fat percentages are."
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As for the fast I think I'm mostly ready to roll for when my wife and kids are going to stay with her parents at their countryside home for a week in a couple of weeks. It seems like it will be easier to do this when I'm not having to cook meals for the family that I don't get to eat ;)
Yes, it is much easier of you don't have to cook meals for the family. I live on my own, but have shared custody of my young daughter, so I did have to cook for her when she was with me, but it was doable. Having to cook daily for a family would be much harder.
The two key pieces of advice I would give are 1) keep yourself very busy, ideally doing real things in real life, and 2) stay off the Internet, since it is easy to start going on recipe sites, watching food videos, etc.
By the way, the first time I did a fast, my goal was not to do 10 days or 20 days, it was to do 2 days. Then after 2 days, I realised that it wasn't that difficult, so I decided to add an extra day, and then I added anther day and so on.
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