Experiment - Intermittent Fasting
Report:
I read about intermittent fasting on Tim Ferriss's blog the other day and thought I would give it a try - for the sake of science, let's say.
Monday:
I had already eaten breakfast when I read the post, but I skipped lunch and ate a fairly sensible dinner at 6 pm. I decided I was going to try the schedule where you eat breakfast and lunch one day and dinner the next. I didn't find that I was particularly hungry, and I enjoyed the burst of energy I got from not eating.
Tuesday:
I ate breakfast and lunch as planned, but work intervened and I got roped into a business dinner at the last minute. So that day was shot. I knew I had another work dinner coming up later in the week so I decided to change to a dinner-only schedule.
Wednesday:
I fasted all day and ate dinner only. I felt great all day. A little hungry in the afternoon, but it was ok.
Thursday:
I fasted all day and ate my business dinner. Everything was good, except I noticed that I was more hungry that afternoon. I hadn't been very good about weighing myself, but it seemed like I'd dropped a couple of pounds - probably water.
Friday:
Fasted all day. By 3 pm I was bloody starving and counting the minutes until dinner. Even though dinner was a little larger than it should have been, I was still hungry when I went to bed. Maybe because I ate at 5pm?
Saturday:
I woke up starving and couldn't take it anymore. The fasting experiment was over. My weight quickly returned to where it began.
Conclusions:
Sure, I know this wasn't exactly scientific, but here are some thoughts anyway. Take them for what they're worth. I actually liked not eating and having extra free time at lunch and breakfast. However, I don't think I could do the dinner-only schedule every day. In future experiments I might try a late breakfast/dinner schedule, or a three-days-on, one-day-off scheme. In terms of weight, I think fasting was a good way to clear my head and get myself out of the snacking pattern I was in. Even though I'm not fasting this week, today I have been more careful about the size of my daytime meals. When it comes down to it, I really felt great when fasting, at least at first.
Bottom line, it's good to remind yourself that hunger is ok now and then.
Feed reading and blog posting
Thought I would share my current system for evaluating new posts in my RSS feeds and deciding whether I want to use them for my blogs. I have folders in Google Reader that group posts according to which blog they're related to and how valuable they are. ("Read for Lifemuncher", for example, or "Lifemuncher Second Tier".)
For the top-tier feeds, I go through folders in expanded view, starring the ones that look interesting. I use the keyboard shortcuts J (next) and S (star). I find that I need to see them in expanded view to know if they're worth reading or not.
When reading the second tier folder, I usually use list view, because I know that most of them aren't going to be interesting. I go right by things like "Use Linux to wash your dishes" or "17 Ways to Find Eternal Happiness." C'mon. Really?
I then go through the starred items folder for a second look. If it looks like something I want to read, I open it in a new tab and quickly go to the next post. If my first instincts say that the post is promising, I leave the star, but if it seems like it might be boring, or something I will be able to post immediately using the Firefox BlogThis extension, I take the star off. I leave the star on more interesting articles so that I can find the article easily if I decide to write about it. The fact that it stays in my starred folder serves as a reminder as well.
When I have a few open tabs, I go to them to look at the post directly. If it seems boring, I close it. If it looks like something I could post about right now, I do so. If it's a long article that I'll probably sit down to read on the couch, I print it out. Then I go back to the starred items and repeat the process as time allows.
What do you think? Any suggestions?
Does it make coffee?
Web Worker Daily - Archive WWD Coffee Break: Xambox, Link Bunches & Traffic:
"In addition to scanning documents to indexed PDFs, it also files the hard copies for you in a special tray. If you ever need the actual piece of paper, the application will tell you where to find it - “three places beyond the black divider,” for example."
This is kinda cool
"Blogger in Draft (a pre-release version of Blogger) added an interesting widget that lets you display the latest posts from your favorite blogs. It's an enhanced blogroll that displays the recently updated blogs and snippets from the most recent posts."
Hey, me too!
Scott H Young - 20 Tips for Batching to Save Time and Cut Stress:
"I’m batching right now. Although my articles appear almost daily on this website, I only write twice a week. This is my third article today. I was batching this morning too, when I did all my daily e-mail, RSS, website maintenance, comment-handling and inbox dumping over one 30 minute period."
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy defined
How to Change Your Beliefs with Praxis, Part 2:
"The idea of praxis is that by taking consistent actions and creating results you will create new reference points for yourself that will change your thinking. By doing and taking action you will change the way you experience yourself. When you change the way you experience yourself you change what you believe. The key is to take action, do things and do them consistently."
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