Health Hacking: A Quick Update (Premium)

It's been over six months since my last "health hacking" check-in. But I'm happy to report some mostly good news after a series of doctor visits and lab tests.

First, I expected to provide an update before now: Back in February, I had started investigating intermittent fasting and hoped this would be the secret for getting me over the weight loss hump. But since then, my weight has simply remained the same: Indeed, when I was weighed at the doctor's office recently, I weighed exactly the same as I did six months earlier.

That's good and bad, I guess. But I do want to lose weight. And what I've discovered, I think, is that what I thought of as intermittent fasting is really just "time-restricted eating." And while there is a growing body of thought around the benefits of this---I didn't eat breakfast for the better part of a year---it hasn't made the impact I had hoped for.

I think I've been doing it wrong. So I'll keep working on that. And will again recommend Jason Fung's excellent book, The Obesity Code so you can learn more about this stuff as I work through this.

Regarding my diet---which these days is very much "low carb" these days and not truly ketogenic---I've stayed on course. In fact, I just passed my diet's 21-month anniversary. By early December, I will have been on this diet for two years.

I knew two things going into this. That my body would fight weight loss aggressively, as it always had. And that I could maintain the diet regardless. This is the way I am: When I know something is right, I can just stick with it.

And it's not hard. I've not eaten a potato, or french fries, or bread of any kind, or had an actual beer during this entire time. Well, mostly.

I'm human and I do I cheat sometimes. I tried to drink a beer in Europe this past month after an incredible hot spell, but couldn't do it. And this past weekend, in celebration of the diet anniversary, I did pizza (two pieces!) for the first time in two years. It was good.

More regularly, I eat things like corn, popcorn, and sushi rice, which aren't strictly low-carb but actually sort-of qualify because of the way our bodies absorb these types of foods. I'm doing low-carb here. Not no carb.

The one thing that's sort of bothered me, however, is that my diet has evolved into being too meat/protein-centric. This is boring, believe it or not: Even something as good as a rib-eye steak gets tedious if you eat too much of it. But it's also potentially unhealthy: When you consume too much protein, your body stores it as fat. This is exactly the opposite of what I'm shooting for.

Given all this, I'm now attempting to make two behavioral changes.

I'm trying to eat only within a 12-hour daytime window to address the intermittent fasting/time-restricted eating issue. Longer term, I'm going to look into true fasting, which should be 24 hours or more. For now, eating anything in the morning is hard. I'm just not hungry.

Secondly, I'm trying to eat less...