It's Only for 14 Days: Day 7 of 14

Today, the self-experiment hits the halfway point. I'm still alive, still generally healthy, and simply following the signals my body is giving me. It's a classic case of, "Doctor, it hurts when I do this!"—with the doc replying, "Then stop doing that!" For me, it's more like, "Doctor, I get chest tightness when I move around after eating too much!" And the doc replies...

WEIGHT: 127.0 kg (Scale was all over the place, so this is an estimate. Lowest reading was around 126.2; highest reading was 127.5. The number "127.0" came up most often, though, so I'm taking a gamble that that's the correct weight.)

APPROX. RESTING PULSE: 92 (15-sec calc method). No change. Not that I expect real change until I seriously engage in cardio. I'm not convinced that a mere change in diet is enough to affect resting heart rate. Maybe it would if I went from 800 pounds to 170 pounds....

BLURRY VISION: none. May this continue. I think the overall lack of sugar/carbs is helping.

SKIN: as before: scabby, patchy, and blotchy, esp. on left shin. I'm looking to see whether the skin on that shin improves over these 14 days. Skin on my face is about the same as it always is: slightly greasy in the T-zone, dry and needing exfoliation everywhere else. I'm not big on lotions and other moisturizers, so I always look a bit... eroded... if you see me up close.

CHEST PAIN: No tightness at all today.

MENTAL STATE: mostly alert and focused; generally emotionally stable. Sudden major fatigue hit yesterday evening. More on that in a bit.

GENERAL WELL-BEING: Overall positive. But...

Didn't walk yesterday, and that's worth talking about: I walked home from work, which is a goodly 30-minute trek (at a guess, about 1.4 or 1.5 miles). I had fully intended to drop off my satchel and go right back out to walk laps around the local park (which has a roughly one-kilometer track), but a sudden lassitude struck me. It was around 6:30PM, and I told myself I'd rest a bit and get off my ass to begin my walk at 7. Well, 7 o'clock came and went... and I still hadn't moved. I had drifted into that time-wasting fugue where a body just sits there, doing nothing, whiling away the minutes and getting sleepier, until suddenly there's the realization that another 40 minutes have gone by. A fugue or two later, and I suddenly decided, "Fuck it. I'm not walking." I even flipped a coin to get the gods to confirm my decision. Sure enough, with a 2-of-3 coin toss, the coin went tails-up twice.

Despite the affirmation of the gods, my conscience tugged at me for the rest of the evening: at 9:30PM, I realized I could still get in a walk that would earn me 15K steps before midnight, but another part of my brain, the part where laziness (and/or hypoglycemia) lives, said, "Nah." So I ended up not walking, and I did feel guilty about that, especially after what had seemed like a promising start the previous day. Laziness is the demon with which I constantly do battle; M. Scott Peck's diagnosis of the human condition—its "original sin," so to speak—as one of fundamental laziness definitely applies to me. We humans don't like leaving our comfort zones, whether physically or morally or intellectually. Effort takes effort, and that sucks. Still, having carried the previous night's guilt over to today, I'm now resolved to go out and do my laps around the park as soon as I get back to my place. This blog entry is a "scheduled" post, so I may be doing my laps around the park even as you read this.

End report.

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ADDENDUM, 9:06PM: Am already back from my walk. I did only 11K steps total for the day; it was cold, I had a bit of a headache, and one part of the loop I walked was covered in this weird, smoky miasma that smelled like some sort of truck exhaust. The fumes made me a bit dizzy, so I decided to cut the walk short.


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