New experiment.
Up to now the M.O. has been intermittent fasting with a time box for eating between noon and 8 pm.
I have stated almost entirely inside the lines. The times outside the lines have been travel, or scheduled events with friends and family where I don’t want to be some sanctimonious fucking asshole and refuse to eat just because. In those situations, eat modestly and STFU. There is no reason to parade your virtue in front of others. There is no benefit to you or them.
The number of discipline lapses? Probably two or three over several months.
The intermittent fasting choice built discipline and helped me understand the value of hard boundaries and when to stop being a hardass.
My best hours for work, productivity, ideas? Morning. These are the last few hours of the fasting cycle, and I would power through those hours with coffee and water. By noon I would be noticeably drained, mental acuity dropping.
So I’m starting today with a new experiment. I will keep the hard end for consuming calories at 8 pm. But I will add in a normal breakfast. It’s no longer intermittent fasting. It’s just life.
The breakfast will be oatmeal with a dollop of peanut butter. Oaymeal because fiber, and I need that. Peanut butter because it makes everything taste better and in theory it has some dense, valuable nutrients.
Oatmeal is defined as one cup of dry oatmeal, cooked.
Dollop of peanut butter is not currently defined. Today it was a heaped soup spoon scooped out of the bottle. I need to figure out how to get a consistent quantity so I can watch the results.
Interesting observation: I finished off the bowl and was ravenously hungry. Eating triggered a desire to eat to satiation.
Instead I went and washed all of the dishes to let the food start to digest. The impulse to eat more went away. I have a French Press full of coffee waiting for me as I start the day.
That’s a lesson. In order to reduce calorie intake, eat an appropriate amount of food and then get away from the table for a while.