Week 9: Weight Management and Getting Back on Track

10:38PM 3/27/2019

So I’ve had a rough week gym-wise, I’ll freely admit that I haven’t been all week. My sleep schedule is kind-of off, it’s shifted from 10pm-8am to something between 12-4am to 10am-noon. This has definitely negatively affected my productivity, and also limits the window of time I can go to the school gym. I’ve also found over the last three days that I’m not really hungry. I’ve only had one meal a day for the past three days, and each of those has been at night. That’s definitely not ideal and something I need to work on. Ironically, even though this shift in sleep schedule sounds terrible, I’ve actually been getting significantly better sleep. But ultimately I need to shift it back to a normal time range and get more done in my day.

My diet has been great despite the disruption in my sleep and the fact that I’ve really only been eating one big meal a day for the past three days. I haven’t been gaining any weight and I’ve been further refining my diet to consist of mostly animal products (mainly beef, bacon, and cheese) with a select few vegetables (mainly broccoli). I’m convinced that low carb or keto is the way to go for an optimal diet, as it provides you with the vast majority of the nutrients that you need (and if you eat any kind of organ meat, or fish liver oil, you get way more than you need) in readily digestible forms. Also, carbs are not good for you. The human body can subsist on carbs, fruits, and vegetables if it has to, but ideally it needs animal products. Extensive carbs wreak havoc on your body over time and are significant factors in bloating, leaky gut, rotting teeth, and a litany of other ailments. I need to combine my solid, protein and fat-soluble vitamin heavy diet with a consistent gym routine to really see results that I can be proud of. The gym is clearly the hardest part.

Regarding the chapter, on weight management and eating disorders, it’s important to not stress about what the scale says as long as you look and feel healthy. I’d especially ignore BMI readings, as they are incredibly unrealistic and arbitrary. I’ve seen so many people who are perfectly healthy get classified as overweight or obese because they have more weight than the “ideal” but they just wear it differently. It’s ridiculous. I think it’s important to manage your weight by creating an eating routine where you eat relatively the same food during the same period of time every day. This creates a regularity with your body, especially your digestion, which will create a baseline for you to fine-tune your diet, exercise, or other lifestyle aspects to your desired direction. I think people develop eating disorders by eating irregularly and having issues with their body when comparing themselves to the idealized models we are bombarded with in the media. It’s important that these people suffering from eating disorders and self-hatred are met with care, compassion, and understanding, as well as an emphasis on understanding that models in the media are simply idealized. The representation of the human form in the media is not something to be hated or changed, it’s been an idealization since the origins of art. The Greeks and Romans built statues idealizing the male and female form, it’s just natural. In order to combat eating disorders and low-self esteem, I would stress to people that the media is just idealized, it isn’t real life and it isn’t pushing anything, it just is.

Here’s a picture with my suitemates. We went ice skating last weekend, it was fun.