I’ve heard people talk about weight loss and trying to stop spending money as a 2-for. It seems that some of us who overeat also overspend. I find it interesting that those two go together and wonder why. But it shouldn’t be too mysterious, especially today when food is so EXPENSIVE. At least where I live in northern California. And then when you add in the fees and tips when you order online, it really is ridiculous and embarrassing, even when I’m the only one who knows about it. I’m embarrassed for myself.

Excess seems to be the keyword there. Excess of food intake and excess of spending when I’m on a finite retirement budget. Scary. That’s where my faith in God has to sustain my sanity because fear can drive a person nuts.

Then I think about when I Don’t spend money on something because it seems like an indulgence, and then realize I just spent more than that this week on snack foods (mostly ice cream, but also other treats). Hypocrite. And foolish. My mother used to say you’re penny wise and dollar foolish. In other words I worry about spending a little on something that matters but will easily spend a lot on something stupid. Compulsively ordering ice cream plus online, then neglecting myself a valid purchase because I’m “not supposed to be spending money” is a perfect example of her favorite  saying.

So now I’ve started alternate day fasting affectionately called ADF. I heard about it years ago but never had the courage to try it. Rachel Sharp is the lady who had a YT channel (still up) and talked about it and I watched all her videos but never engaged. I did do IF—intermittent fasting, which almost everyone knows about these days, but not so when I started years ago, but you could say I did IF intermittently. :- )

And I still do it today, keeping usually between 16-20 hrs between one day and the next’s meals. Except when I’m off the rails, then anytime is meal or snack time.

So on Aug 14^th I started ADF and lasted until around Aug 25^th . I fasted a total of 7 days, eating on the in-between days. And the fast days were remarkably “easy”. I use quotes because not eating for 36 hrs is not really what I call easy but easier than I ever thought it would be, is what I mean.

THEN I went off the rails and don’t know why. I’m reading a book about we don’t overeat because of all kinds of psychological reasons. We just overeat because we don’t control ourselves. If I post again, I’ll give the name of the book and author, but I just don’t know yet of its value. Though I do agree w that premise. And I don’t agree w the idea that we overeat because it’s “emotional eating”. I may do that on occasion, but easily 90% of my overeating ice cream, pbj’s, oatmeal cookies, cheesecake etc. is because it tastes good, and I thoroughly enjoy the pleasure of good-tasting foods of all kinds.

I’m a recovered alcoholic, drug addict, smokaholic (cigarettes), and this is just my last addiction not yet beat—I’m also a foodaholic and was since early childhood. I can remember filling my bathrobe at about age 5 with chocolate chip cookies and I loved that particular robe, not just because it was bright pink, but because it had unusually large, elongated pockets on either side (I wonder if a binge-eater designed it?). therefore, I could load up both pockets and shimmy up the stairs to my room undetected and eat them one by one with great pleasure.

My older sister, #2 of us 3 girls, was the “chubby” one in the family and I was the “skinny malink” as they called me. My oldest sister was average and strangely remained that way for life. Sadly, my overweight sister (she loved food as much as I did) suffered greatly for her weight until she finally lost it as a teenager but never forgot the taunts in school and the pressure from my well-meaning parents not to eat so much. She ended up addicted to plastic surgery as an adult and it, sadly, killed her in later years. The attending doctor actually wrote that she’d had “one plastic surgery too many”, to which I took umbrage, but, supposedly, she hemorrhaged internally after a “chin lift” advertised everywhere at the time (2010). She was 61 and already had had so much surgery all over her body, that she looked more like 41, but she still was not satisfied, never satisfied with her poor body which was doing its best to keep her happy despite all her self-torture.

She showed me a picture of her once back then of some facial surgery she’d had and it scared me! It looked like she’d been beaten to death. As I think about it now, it seemed to portend what these money-hungry “surgeons” would eventually do to her.

Okay, I’m way out in the woods now from the topic, but not really. I thank God that I was able to accept myself and my body when it blew up because I finally quit smoking after 26 years too many and ruining my lungs (doc said my lungs were at 70% capacity=COPD at age 35!). upon quitting smoking my hormones and metabolism went nuts and all the weight I’d lost over a lifetime since puberty. (forgot to mention I went from skinny malink to chubby when I turned 13-14, then took up my father’s Camels to lose the weight and it worked!, so did the cocaine later, etc.).

Yes, so I’d read a lot when I quit about nicotine (I’m a researcher at heart) that when you quit smoking you gain weight not only because you’re probably eating more but also because when you stop inhaling the 4,000 or so chemicals in cigarettes (look it up) your metabolism changes (nicotine is a stimulant) back to its original form (if it even remembers what that was!!) and things get hairy. You can’t concentrate, you sweat, you get giddy, you can’t think, you eat a lot. I remember laughing a lot and saying I must be high on oxygen, because I wasn’t inhaling poison every minute of my waking hours. I’d gotten up to 2-1/2 packs a day when I quit and I worked full time (until I ended up in the ER and had to quit job, and everything else for a while). But I couldn’t smoke at work, so I made up for it on off hours.

You could say I smoked voraciously, the way I eat sometimes. So anyway, here I am back at my first and original addiction, food, before I discovered all that other stuff that I could derive “pleasure” from that would try to kill me. Problem is that, now that I’m older, my first love food is trying to kill me, too, especially since food ain’t what it used to be when I was a kid, or even a younger adult!

So I’m back on ADF with a new enthusiasm because even though I fell off the rails, I did notice that those 7 days of fasting (though not consecutive) kind of made me feel better mentally. And that’s the key. When I started again this week, I used 1-2 cups of bone broth to ease hunger during the day. But those other 7 days I just drank water and 4 cups coffee, and some decaf with an herbal coffee substitute. But this time I just used the broth. I’d rather that than all that coffee (another one of my addictions, btw) but I’ve beat that particular one and now just drink coffee off and on, and am about to cut it out for the most part again. My stomach’s not liking it and it tends to make me drowsy which, I’m told, means I’ve got ADHD. Whatever. Probably true. (that’s another story) :- )

So on my eat days I had chicken thighs with skin/bones and saved the bones and made the broth to have the next day which would be the fast day. They call it “feast/fast repeat” but the word Feast can get too literal in my addict mind and that’s exactly what I might do, so I just say eat/fast, repeat.

I’ve been doing carnivore, ketovore, or omnivore (ice cream :- ) but mostly carnivore which I’ve come to find makes me feel the best and helps me get thru the fast the next day the easiest. Carbs cause hunger. There’s no getting around it. And often they cause hunger the following day. So that gives me extra motivation to limit the carbs or cut them out completely.

So, here’s what happened yesterday on my fast day: I was doing great. Just water and a cup or 2 of broth. Then I was getting frozen burger patties from the freezer for my dog Zoe (she’s a carnivore) and couldn’t close the freezer door. I finally got it to close but then when I opened it again to return the bag of patties, the door got stuck again. So I bent down to see what was the problem and lo! And behold! A strawberry Mexican ice cream bar!!!!!! Yikes! What was that doing there? you might ask. Welllllll, that would be my last “treat”, a box of 16 Mexican ice cream bars: strawberry, mango, and my favorite , coconut. Yes, you guessed right. I’d eaten all of them in 2 days but somehow missed one survivor.

I laughed and said to myself, There is NO WAY I’m saving this until my eat day tomorrow. It just will drive me insane. So I ate it. Period. And enjoyed every last tasty bite of it. That was about 3pm on my fast day. I let myself be ok with it and vowed to do better next time. Well, it would have been nice if that were the end of that story. But…you guessed it, next thing I know I’m ordering online delivery of what? More ice cream. Not those cute little bars this time but a container of Haagen-Dazs chocolate, my favorite .

And yes, more money spent, fees, tip, blah, blah, blah…

Today was an eat day. I’ve eaten some carbs but not overboard and tomorrow I plan to fast again. In fact the bone broth is on the stove as I write this, ready for tomorrow. Not sure if I’ll have coffee. I’ll play it by ear. I’d rather stick to cold water in the a.m. It’s more refreshing.

So yes, in case you didn’t know, 36 hrs from the last meal on day 1 until the meal on day 3 (day 2 is a fast day). So I ate last tonight at around 6 pm. At 6 am on day after tomorrow, it’ll be 36 hrs. obviously, I’m not going to eat that early. I usually don’t eat until around 1 or 2pm, so it’ll work out to maybe  around 43 hrs by then. But some people eat in the a.m. so they’ll be close to 36 hrs.

On my eat-day I plan for my fast-day (make broth, and ck calendar for social events, mostly just family for me, these days), and on my fast-day I plan what I’ll most likely eat the following day, though I’m not strict about this. I just like to have an idea of what to take out of the freezer, etc.

Well, I’ve rambled now more than I’d planned and will sign off here. I am sorry about not writing sooner. But will try to write more diligently. Be well and be gentle on yourself. I’ve recently realized I haven’t had much in the way of gentleness bestowed on me from life and those around me, whether I chose them or they were the family I was born into. So I have a picture of myself when I was about 20smthng and thin and pretty and cute (and naïve) and have apologized for all I put her thru with my self-destruction on the payment plan thru the years and vowed to make it up to her. I’d found the picture by accident and thanked God for the reminder of who I used to be and kept it out so I don’t forget.

Which reminds me of one more thing I’ll say before I go. Recently about a year ago or less, I lost 60 lbs. I think it scared me. I’ve become so used to myself as overweight (can I say FAT) with my favorite  comfortable clothes and my chubby face in the mirror (which actually didn’t look chubby, just what had become normal). After losing the weight, when I started to see that cute girl in the photo on the fridge (this was before I’d found it) in the mirror, I think I didn’t know what to do. I don’t know. I’m not into psychoanalyzing things, really I’m not, but if I were, I’d probably say I purposely let the pounds creep back in (because that’s what they did) because it was safe. Who knows?

I just know I want her back! And I owe it to her to give her life again, before all the addictions listed above worked on her cute little body (and lungs—let’s not talk about teeth, though it could be worse, I admit, thank God).

Okay, enough now. I’m done for now.

I’ll hopefully be back to update how the ADF went.

Again I say, be well, be patient, and be gentle with yourself.

~~Val