great great read.

the democracy of culturematic is what makes it so appealing. from numa-numa boy to carrot-mob

Dan
Casual Kitchen

I'm 6'3'', 275 pounds, a large mammal – or was one. I tried a very familiar experiment, no sugars of any sort in my diet. I lost 22 pounds in 30 days; my health improved, blood pressure, etc. This is a well-worn path, the high-fat diet.

However, the weight loss stopped at about six weeks, which I found out is also common. I tried intense cardio, greater caloric restriction, resistance training, and still I gained weight.

What to do?

One of the great things about the net is the sheer number of intelligent and creative people out there living various experiments. One site passionately describes not throwing anything away for a year. Never thought of that one.

I came upon the intermmittent fasting subculture – which is a robust and dedicated group of people.

After 8 weeks of dieting and intense exercise, I could not change my weight. Now I know that dieting is rather mundane to intellectuals, but for me it has been very exciting and frustrating.

This culturematic, for me, is not actually that trivial and perhaps violates the spirit of this post. it deals with metabolic syndrome and many other serious illnesses.

That's the background. Here's the experiment and my results thus far:

Intermittent Fasting (see Brad Pilon, Martin Berkhan) or IF is not necessarily reducing one's total caloric intake but going without food for a length of time.

My approach has been to eat from 9am to 1pm every day, and that's it. So I fast every day for 20 hours, period.

I thought it was impossible to do – in the past I couldn't go more than 8 hours without getting hungry. Turns out the trick is sugar – without it, you can go much, much longer without eating AND without hunger than I realized.

So I have eaten 4on/20off for 12 days now, and I have lost 12 pounds. Water is lost, of course, but this is not solely water. For me, this is true because I have already depleted much of the water required to store carbohydrate as glycogen.

The interim results that fascinate me, however, pertain to hunger.

When I tried vegetarianism a few years back, I was shocked at the feeling of not being bloated after a meal – not 'full.' I had heard many, many people say that meat gives you that bloated feeling.

Untrue. Amazingly, completely untrue. It's sugar/starch that does so – I have eaten 2 lbs of meat in one sitting and found that I was not full afterwards. A high fat diet is not bloating, leadening, etc.

The other aspect of the eating experience that is a genuine shock has been to eat only 4 hours a day – and this is a piece of CAKE. (So to speak.)

This morning, at the 20 hour mark, I ate simply because I love coffee so much. The first three days were a bit rough at 8 hours; then after that there was no experiential cost at all en route to 20 hours.

I can't tell you how odd it is to sail through the day, the whole afternoon, evening, night, bedtime, and then to a late breakfast after taking my kids to school and waking up early – to simply eat nothing at all. I just replenish fluids with water during this time.

Anyway, I'll let you know how this continues, if you are interested.

But Morgan Spurlock's experiment (McDonald's every day for a month) was interesting but misleading – see Fat Head for a critique, if you haven't already.

This has been the most counterintuitive experiment I have ever done, myself.

This experiment has altered one of the most fundamental aspects of my life – I had a sweet tooth that was extraordinarily rapacious until I stopped eating them.

So my culturematic has been toying with hunger control, or satiety. It is obvious that eliminating temptation cuts at the root of bad habit; it's quite another to actually have achieved it and continue moving on, experimenting and tweaking further.

There are so many metabolic self-editors out there, I am surprisingly one of them. (See Viljhamur Stefansson, sp, as one of the earliest and most profound examples.)

I thought that had happened to me, too, then I noticed a "next" button at the bottom of the comment thread…that may not be your issue, but you might want to check.