fasting, Day 4: numbers

I'm about to shove off for work (am still trying to make up hours), but here are today's numbers at the halfway point of this seven-day fast:

Weight: 104.5 kg
BP: 138/96
Pulse: 79
Blood Sugar: 83

Weight didn't change from last night's post-walk weigh-in, but it's still a loss, I guess. BP is down ever so slightly, but it's not a statistically significant reduction. Pulse remains too high for my taste; I thought my pulse of 69, earlier on (Day 2), would indicate some sort of progress, but apparently not. As I said before, though, pulse tends to be all over the place, varying depending on the time of day. I sometimes think that the mere act of moving my huge body around inside my studio apartment is enough to raise my heart rate by a lot, and I'm taking this measurement while seated upright as opposed to doing it while I'm lying down, which is when my pulse is at its lowest. Blood sugar is up a bit, but still well below 99, which is the upper limit for normal.

Today being Sunday, I'm giving myself a break from all the exercise, so in truth, I'm not expecting my Monday numbers to look much better than today's. Normally, I'd say that walking tends to lower one's blood sugar, but the slight spike in my blood-sugar number may indicate a phenomenon called gluconeogenesis, in which the liver* is prompted to produce glucose in response to potential hypoglycemia. You'll recall that yesterday's blood-sugar number was 74, which is pretty low. It's funny how the liver and its neighbor, the pancreas, often seem to work at cross-purposes: the pancreas produces insulin, a fat-storing hormone that also lowers blood sugar. So I've got some sort of Hatfield/McCoy thing happening inside my body, but whatever: the fasting will continue as long as I am able.

Of course, as I get closer to Day 7 of this fast, the option of quitting the fast becomes a real question: on Day 7, the day right before I go to my doctor's appointment, I have to fast because the hospital will be drawing my blood to do blood work. That leaves only Monday and Tuesday as days when it's possible to quit fasting. So, increasingly, it looks as if I'm committed to going the whole seven days.

Interesting times. More news and numbers tomorrow.

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*The kidneys can also be involved to a lesser extent.