I don't need pieces of flair

This is me expressing myself

We just decided to....

Discovered fasting by watching "The Science of Fasting" on Amazon Prime.  Decided then and there to fast for 48 hours from 10pm on Saturday to 10pm on Monday.  I did continue my thyroid medication each morning.  On the first day I had a multivitamin and a vitamin D pill, and had a cup of tea.  On the second day I drank a few bottles of SmartWater (for the electrolytes) and took salt a couple of times when I felt hungry, which worked unexpectedly well to quell hunger pangs.

 

One thing that helped on Days 1 and 2 was creating a motivational playlist.  Mine consisted of "Corduroy" by Pearl Jam, "Bleed It Out" by Linkin Park, and "Hungerstrike" by Temple of the Dog.  Whenever I felt a bit weak, I just played the playlist and I was back in no time.  The lyrics from "Corduroy" served particularly well as a mantra for the whole venture:

 

"I don't wanna take what you can give

I would rather starve than eat your bread

All the things that others want for me

Can't buy what I want because it's free"

 

 

When I got to 10pm on Monday (my original goal), I felt so good that I decided to extend to the next day.  On day 3, to prep for breaking the fast, I had organic chicken stock.  German fasting programs do this twice a day throughout the fast.  When I got to work, all through the day I wondered why I was bothering to eat anything at all today.  But I tend to take things to extremes, so I decided to call it a successful initial experiment and finally broke the fast at 3pm Tuesday with 20 almonds.  I chewed the almonds 25-30 times a piece, and I feel absolutely full.

 

Overall, the past 65 hours have been a very, very eye-opening experience.  I thought that a multi-day fast would be difficult after the first day.  Day 2, while I did get hungry a couple of times, I felt pretty good.  Going to bed last night (around hour 48), I felt absolutely great.  At peace.  Even dealing with two kids.  It's hard to explain, but I suppose it was the euphoria that everyone in the documentaries described.  And it kept going from there.  I felt great all day on Day 3.

 

Over the course of this little experiment, I have been totally blown away at how little I have actually wanted to eat over the past 65 hours. I suppose I didn't go far enough to get to the acidosis crisis that is mentioned in the documentary, but hey, to feel this good, how could it be so simple?

 

Before the fast, I stopped eating gluten and sweets for five days.  Not sure if that helped me adjust to fasting, but I suspect that it did.  In the first 5 days of gluten/sweet free, I lost 7 lbs.  This morning, when I hit day 7, I had lost another 6lbs during the fast, for a total of 13 pounds in one week.  Still TBD how much of that is water weight, but I know at least some of it was fat. Medical studies show that once you switch over from burning sugar to burning protein / fat, about 96% of the energy comes from burning fat. 

 

Based on these results, I plan to do a week-long fast (SmartWater and chicken / vegetable stock only) in the near future.  From there, who knows? 

 

It is no wonder fasting is so despised, even reviled, by our capitalist culture.   It is the exact opposite of wanton consumerism and conspicuous consumption.  After all, if you don't need food….what else can you do without?  Could the answer be….all of it?

 

Another shockingly weird side effect is that I actually enjoyed work this morning.  I got more done this morning than I have in probably the last 3 weeks combined.  Methinks our corporate overlords have this wrong as well.  Instead of juicing everyone up on caffeine, making them overhyped, brain-dead zombies, maybe a fresh approach would actually help their bottom line.  We all know that they prefer to suck you dry than to build you up any day, though.  So shortsighted.

 

As far as going off the fast, this past week has solidified my belief that sugar is all things evil.  So, I am going to keep the gluten-free / sweets-free diet going, and try to eat a lot of protein, whole foods, and veggies.  Beans, sure.  Rice, maybe, but severely limit.  It's long past time to turn this sugar burning loaf of fat into a fat burning machine.  Will check back soon once I initiate the weeklong fast.

Neal

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"Peace has cost you your strength....Victory has defeated you!"  - Bane

Technology progress trap / we all suck

Had some interesting discussions at work today with an avid technology user.  The voluntary self-surveillance of Facebook, the phones listening

Watching a PBS documentary on uranium, and what strikes me is the both the pace of discovery in the early 20th century and the apparent obviousness of the discoveries.  From Marie Curie to Einstein to Szilard, the discoveries really seemed not the work of geniuses, rather the work of slightly more intelligent people who happened to have time to think.

Perhaps that's why the pace of discoveries seems to be dwindling, except in those areas that serve commercial interest.  Nobody has time to sit and think anymore.  Email has resulted in a vast increase in the speed of communication, but how much of that communication is really necessary.  How much of your time at work is spent actually thinking about your work, and not reacting to some farcical drama cooked up by management? 

Add to that all the electronic distractions we have in our off time.  Facebook.  Netflix.  Hulu.  News.  "Reality" TV.  Which one is which, I forget.  All these things available in a little package that travels with you all day, ever listening to your conversations for a chance to sell you something the next time you look at it.  1984 was such a quaint novel. 

There's a great scene in Repo Man where they are burning trash from recently repossessed cars, and the trash man says he doesn't want to learn to drive because "the more you drive, the less intelligent you are."  While this is still true, it needs updating to "the more you use a smartphone, the less intelligent you are."

Look at all the digital trash out there.  Statisticians love to say that a million monkeys typing randomly on keyboards will eventually recreate Shakespeare.  Look at the ever expanding pile of garbage we produce and celebrate today and you know that's not going to happen.

Progress trap.  Perpetual pile of shit machine.  Bravo, humanity.

Even academics are caught up in the never ending publish or perish cycle, and by the time they are tenured, their best years (making a grand assumption that they had best years to give) are behind them and they are nothing but dried up husks riding their way to retirement.  Not that academia attracts real talent.  Universities are just corporations at this point. after all.  By and large, professors are just frauds that are there to tow the line.

An ancillary effect of our wonderful world is that we get stuck doing things we'd really rather not.  I started out as an engineer, which was okay for a while.  Then on to the wonderful world of bureaucracy.  Then back to a polish that turd job back at the Rock (and polish them I did), then back to an engineering position, which I left to go back into turd polishing for a promotion.  Finally, back to a technical position for which I have absolutely no qualifications.  And here I am.  After 13 years of working, I can't even explain what exactly it is that I do.  Insanity must be setting in, or I'm numb to it, because I really don't mind it at this point.  Just counting down the days to voluntary early retirement eligibility in 11.82 years.  That's all at this point.  A waiting game.  No wonder no one seems to be doing a good job. Everyone's just biding their time.

And then what?  I had an eye appointment for the first time in 20 years yesterday.  Next to me in the waiting room was a lady that had to be in her late 70s.  She was playing candy crush or some other nonsense on here phone, hunched over the screen like a troll.  Is that where we are all supposed to be headed?  Consuming digital ad trash while waiting to fork over money to doctors in the last years of our life? 

Is this really the best we can do?  Wow, we suck.  Let's just admit that we all suck.  You, me, everybody.  We have failed ourselves and each other extensively.

I know you're reading this on your phone or tablet, fucker.  If you know what's good for you, find the nearest blunt instrument and put it through the screen.  Merry fucking Christmas.