Unless I try

It’s common in discussions that sooner or later one, or the other, will express an opinion about something related to fitness, health and wellness, expressed authoritatively as if they're an expert on the subject; I know I have.

Generally, the source of this "expertise" comes from something read somewhere else written by someone else who believes it and then regurgitates it to others.  I remember, the first time I experimented with intermittent fasting over ten years ago, telling my Mom that I only ate during a two to three-hour window all my food for the day.

“it’s bad for you to do that”, she said to which I replied, “How do you know?”  “Because”, she said, “Dr. Oz said so.”  And how does Dr. Oz know this was the question I next wanted to ask but didn’t because the conversation would have led to nowhere.  Pick your arguments and battles wisely with parents and other family members.  It isn’t worth the effort.

Recently, I read an article authored by Jeff Novak, a dietician and nutritionist with over 25 years of experience.  The title of his article was, “Did you hear about the study in the news today?”  It cleverly drove home a point about how, thanks to the internet, health information today is much more common than the past.  We constantly hear or read about another new study or report on health. These reports are often very confusing and conflicting because if you listen to them, one moment something is good for us and the next moment it’s bad.

The good news is we’re now able to pick a study supporting what we believe and spread it around like wildfire.  The bad news is so can everyone else and, as a result, it makes for some heated discussions.  Such heated discussions are no longer limited to Christians and atheists going at it, or political conservatives mixing it up with progressive liberals debating capitalism versus socialism, or whether global warming is real or imaginary.

We now have heated debates about whether cholesterol is good or bad, whether the Keto diet is good or bad or whether fasting is good or bad.  As an experienced practitioner of intermittent fasting, I’ve wasted time discussing it with those who believe it’s a bunch of nonsense offering no proven health and wellness benefits.  Generally, these are people who have not tested the waters, but get their knowledge from something they’ve read written by someone else who may also not have first-hand experience either but, nonetheless, believes it’s good or bad for whatever reason. 

Mr. Novak’s article points out that studies over the last few decades, have repeatedly shown that less than five percent of Americans follow the basic healthy lifestyle habits with regard to smoking, alcohol, body weight, activity and diet and less than one percent follow the basic minimum nutrition guidelines of a healthy diet. Yet up to 90 percent claim they consume a healthy diet and over one-third say they consume a very healthy diet.  Many of these “experts” will be the ones dispensing advice based on something they’re read or heard.  Most will not be from actual experience.

Unless we go beyond the internet article, generally written click bait style, we’ll never understand what a research study completely reports but only what the author decided was important.  And, unless we occasionally test the waters with our own sample-of-one “science experiment”, we’ll not have the perspective from personal experience allowing us to have a higher-level perspective to share with others when having fitness, health and wellness discussions.

This is what Pierini Fitness tries to do.  Whether it’s testing an exercise approach or doing an experiment with eating a certain way, he’s constantly testing the waters for his own personal benefit.

So, when someone says that fasting is not good for you, he’s able to share real-life experience of having fasted 22 hours a day for 45 consecutive days and what was his experience.  Reading some article can never be as good as a real-life anecdotal experience.

While sample-of-one results may not be representative of the “truth”, it happens to be my truth and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.

So, he'll continue with the science experiments from time to time in his pursuit of his truth because I’ll never know unless I try. 

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Summer 2019 at the beach

 

Pierini Fitness has been AWOL for a while due to the rigors of his profession but today is a new day and those demands have come to an end. What a breath of fresh air!  I’ll now have a more relaxed remainder of the year, time to train hard, have fun and add more content here of middle-aged man reflections about living and dying, gracefully aging and trying to live a good and honest life.  I’m excited and looking forward to it.

My Lent 2019 OMAD journey will soon come to an end and I’ll give an “executive briefing” sharing my experience.  It’s been an amazing journey to say the least.

I’ve been practicing intermittent fasting (IF) for over seven consecutive months and, more recently, one meal a day (OMAD) for Lent 2019 as previously noted.

The demands of my profession required me to work 16 hours non-stop on April 15^th, from 3:30 am until 7:40 pm. The discipline gained from my Lent 2019 abstinence from meat and fasting from food 22 hours a day made it possible.

While IF or OMAD are no longer “needed” for weight loss because I have “arrived”, I’ve arrived before only to let it slip away. Moving forward, I can maintain my current lean and mean “fighting weight” with a more traditional eating approach, but I’ve grown fond of both mainstream IF and its outlier ugly stepsister named OMAD. There’s a certain renegade rebel being an OMAD’er that's attractive and I toy with the idea of coming back often for a visit.

I started this journey of reclaiming my lean and mean “fighting weight” last August 31, 2018 weighing in that morning at an embarrassing 210.8 lbs.  My goal was to weigh 180 lbs. by my 64^th birthday on February 19, 2019.  Along the way, I reset my goal for 177 lbs. and achieved it the day after my birthday.  

Then I learned from others how it’s good to have my ideal weight expressed as a range rather than a single point.  Therefore, I set my ideal weight range for 172 to 177 lbs. and have consistently been at this weight or less the past six weeks.  Yesterday morning, I had a pleasant morning weigh-in at 171.4 lbs.  

Pierini Fitness “has arrived” and is now the lean and mean fighting machine he deserves to be from disciplined hard work he’s done the past 231 consecutive days.

This year, it’s going to be a great Summer 2019 at the beach.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

An update of my Lent 2019 OMAD journey

Today is the 27th day of my Lent 2019 OMAD journey.  By the way, in case you don’t know, OMAD stands for one meal a day.

If you missed it, Pierini Fitness chose to practice a demanding form a fasting during Lent 2019 that began on March 6^th.  He’s fasting 22 hours each day and eating during a very small feeding window of two hours, but not until the sun sets.  Additionally, he’s chosen to abstain from meat during Lent.  He’s never done anything this demanding before so thought it would be a good idea to give Pierini Fitness sports fans another update on how it’s going.  The last update was on March 15^th.  If you missed it, you’re welcome to find and read it. 

So, how is it going?

As previously reported in my March 15^th update, not bad.  I don’t recall ever going this long fasting this way or abstaining from meat.  I’m sure as an infant, there was a longer period when I didn’t eat meat, those early days when being breastfed or guzzling baby formula.  I’d have to ask my Mom for details and know she wouldn’t remember how long it was as an infant before I had my first meat dinner. 

Sun sets a minute later each day and today, according to my sources, it sets at 7:28 pm so that’s when I’ll begin eating.  It’s a little later than what I’d like but my Lent 2019 promise was made and so it’ll be. 

The hardest time with this fasting schedule is the last two hours.  This is because I’m generally home and not as occupied with work. I’ve done various things to keep my mind occupied, ranging from a light resistance bands workout, doing minor chores and even laying in bed just relaxing after a hard day of work.

Another hard time is Sunday because that’s the day I run for 60 minutes, generally around noon.  After my run, I have a long wait before feeding time.  It’s a challenge but a great opportunity to test my mental toughness.    

What about my abstinence from eating meat?

Surprisingly, I haven’t missed, too bad, being a carnivore.  A couple times, meat thoughts entered my mind.  One was a passing thought about eating one of my favorite lunchtime meals when on the go, a chicken teriyaki rice bowl.  The other was thinking about the giant plate of barbeque baby back ribs I ate on Fat Tuesday, the day before Lent 2019 began. 

Since I didn’t want to lose any more weight during my OMAD journey, I’ve had to eat more than what I had prior.  And, I’ve had to taper my workouts.  Although, being busy with work has contributed more to tapering my workouts that OMAD.  Despite these adjustments, I’ve lost a few lbs. but nothing to be concerned about.

What I’ve shared might be a yawner for some and if this is your case, oh well.  I just wanted to make it a matter of my Pierini Fitness archives, so this is an update of my Lent 2019 OMAD journey.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

That you fill with food

During the last six months in my journey to chisel off excessive middle-aged man bodyweight, I did what I’ve done in the past when having a similar task but was open to what others had to say.  Obviously, there’s only one way to lose weight and this is by having a constant calorie deficit; eating less calories than calories burned.  By the way, I have “arrived” at my target bodyweight and it feels great to be back at my “fighting weight.” 

Nonetheless, there are some who advocate that there’s more to it than having a calorie deficit.  Some will suggest that meal frequency and timing is important.  For example, eating small meals several times a day as opposed to eating three square meals like we did growing up. 

A meal timing approach I currently use is intermittent fasting where I only eat during a narrow feeding window in a 24-hour day and refrain from eating the rest of the day.  I do this because it’s convenient and efficient.  Currently, I’m practicing a more challenging version of intermittent fasting called One Meal A Day or OMAD for short.  I’ll have more to share about my OMAD experiences in future Pierini Fitness blogflections.

So, what do I think having followed various meal timing protocols in the past?  Does meal timing matter?  If it does, what is the “perfect meal timing protocol to follow?

My opinion only is that meal timing doesn’t matter.  But this may not be the answer you hoped for so let me give you a good meal timing rule to follow in your middle-aged man fitness, health and wellness journey.

Eat only when you’re hungry and know the difference between real hunger rather than an excessive desire to eat out of boredom, habit or an emptiness in your life that you will with food.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Awesome and powerful

Since powering PIerini Fitness back up the beginning of this year, I’ve shared much about diet and nutrition, drawing from personal fitness, health and wellness goals I was chasing.  I’ve written about diet and nutrition in years past, including intermittent fasting (IF) which is, simply, an eating timing protocol helping one practicing it eat a sensible amount of food.

I've previously written:  

“Eat and exercise as little as possible to be as 

fit,  functional and strong as you need to 

be living the life you've chosen."

Read more here:  Prescription for today

I won’t devote any time to explaining IF or listing the many versions of it existing; that’s your job if you’re interested.  But what I will do is share that I’ve used it very successfully, both past and present, to meet my goals.  Even after having “arrived” at a target bodyweight, I continue practicing it because of its economy and efficiency.  

And, I’m about ready to practice a more challenging version of it for this upcoming Lent 2019, something I’ll share the details about within the next week.  Until then, let me part with a few words what I think about IF, based on my experiences.

For me, IF is a discipline builder that contributes tremendously to my fitness, health and wellness goals.  Unbridled discipline is awesome and powerful.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Not a typical day as an IF practitioner

I’m an intermittent fasting (IF) practitioner again and have been since the middle of August 2018 when beginning my current fitness, health and wellness journey.  

This isn’t the first time I’ve been riding the IF pony.  The first time was almost 10 years ago, and I shared my experience here at Pierini Fitness:  My intermittent fasting journey

There are several versions of IF and you can read up about them if you’re interested because I won’t explain them in today’s blogflection.  Some prefer to use the term “time restricted eating” and explain the subtle difference between it and IF.  Again, I’ll not take valuable content space here lecturing you about it.

I don’t know exactly but would guess that my average fasting period is about 19 hours, so this means my feeding window is about 5 hours.  Sometimes I fast longer and other times shorter.  Therefore, I’m guessing my feeding windows have ranged from two to eight hours in a 24-hour period.  Some would refer to a short feeding window of two hour as OMAD, an acronym for one meal a day.

I thought it would be interesting to share with you a day in my life as an IF practitioner, so I chose to share my feeding window last Saturday.

It began at 10:25 a.m. after a fasting period that started 7:40 p.m. Friday evening.  This means my fasting period was 14 hours and 45 minutes.  This is a little shorter than normal because, again, my shortest fasting period is typically 16 hours.  Friday was an atypical day and, as a result, my last meal ended much later than normal.  Typically, I like to be done eating by 6:00 p.m.

So, when beginning my feeding window, I ate three pieces of fruit – a banana, an apple, and an orange – during a one-hour period.  That was it until later in the day when I had my main meal.

It consisted of treating myself to one of my favorite meals at a restaurant I frequent about once every two months.  I treated myself to a full rack of barbeque baby back ribs and a “naked” baked potato, naked meaning I ate it plain without the typical gobs of butter and sour cream that many prefer when eating one.

What’s the bottom line of this big meal I feasted on?

BEFORE – 1,672 calories

AFTER – 0 calories

That was it?

My total caloric intake was 1,965 calories and my feeding window this day, which ended at 5:00 p.m., was 6 hours and 35 minutes.

I normally don’t pay much attention to macros except as an afterthought.  In case you’re interested, here’s how the day went in the macro department:

Now, I know what some of you are thinking.  Where’s the vegetables or, not enough fiber.

Every day is different.  Some days I’ll have a starch-centric high carbohydrate, low protein and low-fat day.  On other days, it’ll be very high fat, monosaturated fats preferred, along with balanced protein and fat day.

All in all, most days are much different but, for me, last Saturday was not a typical day as an IF practitioner.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum