Sunday, January 26, 2014

125.5

I am now at the lowest weight I've been in years, 125.5 kilograms (276.4 pounds), and my new diet has only barely begun.

This is good, though; I'm firmly in the mid-270s, which means the 260s are, at long last, imaginable. It's enough to make me wonder whether I should continue this regime even after I can afford to eat more. I really don't mind fasting every other day at all; I have enough adipose tissue to keep my blood-sugar levels from going too sinusoidal, and because I'm eating every other day, I'm avoiding having my body go into starvation mode. Emotionally speaking, fasting like this hasn't been the least bit stressful, either—a fact I find surprising, given my self-indulgent nature.

Paleo enthusiasts often speak of the value of the occasional random fast as a way of keeping the body in balance: the theory is that our ancient ancestors didn't consistently bring home kills, so the human body evolved to handle food-less periods. An intermittent fast, so the modern wisdom goes, is perfectly natural and probably beneficial. My fasts aren't occasional, per se, but if current effects are any indication, fasting every other day is quite salubrious.


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5 comments:

Jason said...

Congratulations on the weight loss! When I was in living in Korea, the amount of walking I did on a daily basis was probably triple what I do here in Mississippi. I actually bought a pedometer, so I can try to mimic the amount of moving that I did. I remember at one point you were doing a lot of hiking. Are you still hitting the trails?

Kevin Kim said...

Jason,

I haven't hit any trails, but I do try to get in several thousand steps' worth of walking every day. Now that I'm on vacation, I have days where I stay inside and don't walk at all, but otherwise, I've been using my new cell phone's nifty built-in pedometer (sounds like a device to count how many kids you molest) to measure my output. I rarely make the goal of 10,000 steps; my normal average is about half that or less. Still, that's a damn sight better than the nothing I was doing while I was in Front Royal and had a car to take me everywhere, including a mere half-klick down the street for groceries.

John said...

Good job! Keep it up!

What do you reckon 10,000 steps to be in miles? Do you believe walking and sensible eating is sufficient for sustained weight loss? I hear experts say that brief periods of intense exercise is better than walking, but then other experts say walking is just as good for you. It's all so confusing...

Kevin Kim said...

John,

According to my phone, 11825 steps equal 5.3 miles. So if I do the proportion, 10,000 steps equal about 4.48 miles (and 793 calories burned—about half a meal for me).

I've heard that intensity is better than the slow-burn approach, too, but I'll have to shed a lot more laziness before I start jogging and sprinting. In my case, I'm more likely to ramp up intensity by walking places that are hillier.

One of my colleagues has invited me to walk with her; she does a 5.5-km hike up some local hills (that's about half the distance for 10,000 steps, but probably 1.5 times the intensity). Since the beginning of the semester last year, she says she's lost 20 kilos, which is an unbelievable amount of weight. She walks this route five times a week. I admire her grit and persistence.

Jason said...

Yeah, getting in the steps has been tough for me. I have been volunteering to run errands across campus so that I can make my steps. My biggest battle is actually with my diet. I play tennis 3-4 times a week, and with the way that I am currently eating, I am only maintaining my current weight. If every thing wasn't so damn delicious, I would probably be back to my high school weight.