Keto, as it turns out, is harder than you think. After two weeks, with only one (fairly substantial) slip-up, I've abandoned it. It's just too difficult, and the cravings for a snack other than biltong just get to you. I thought it'd be the desire for something like pasta, or pizza, but it turns out it's the little things, like honey in your tea, or late-night tuna mayo on rye bread, or cheese and crackers with wine. WINE! Man. Anyway, in the continuing saga of my body, the anecdotal laboratory of dietary experimentation, I'm now doing intermittent fasting (IF).
The response from my usual dietary detractors to this latest dietary change has been more vociferously negative than their response to keto, but I'm finding it interesting. In short, IF entails having a 16 hour fasted period, and an 8 hour feeding period. My feeding time is from around 5 PM to midnight, and my fasting period is from midnight to 5 PM. Basically, you skip breakfast and lunch, have a small pre-training meal, gorge after your training, and then have a smallish meal before bed. Also, I get to have a 'feeding time', like a shark. That's awesome.
Today's only the second day, but I'm finding it pretty easy. Skipping breakfast is easy as hell to do (let's face it - it feels like a chore most of the time), and while I get hunger pangs around lunchtime, it's nothing a cup of green tea and getting immersed in work doesn't fix. In fact, if anything, I feel more focused at work, because I'm not structuring my day around food, and by the time I get home, I'm in truth, not even that hungry. Yesterday's pre-training meal made me feel incredibly full during my training, which was something of a blessing and a curse.
Something I've noticed about gym during winter - everyone who's there looks like they train. Contrast this with summertime training, where the treadmills are jam-packed with fatties, only the serious fitness enthusiasts are committed enough to make the effort to head out into the cold to train. I realise this sounds incredibly elitist, and I don't mean it like that - it's merely an observation (from an ex-fatty to boot). In summer, it's impossible to get a power cage or squat rack because of the bros queueing up to do brocurls or rack lifts or whatever ridiculous new exercise is flavour-of-the-month, and while there's still a ton of bros working on their biceps now in winter, everyone looks serious about training. There's way fewer of those obviously confused, slightly disorientated people that flock to the gym in summer in a belated attempt to get some sort of beach-appropriate body.
There is however, always an exception, and Flat-in-Front-Fredrick in his bicycle shorts is the main culprit. About a week ago I noticed this guy, immediately, because he was wearing bicycle shorts with a padded front, and looked completely out of his depth.
They look just like this. Just with more padding. A lot more front padding.
Anyway, this guy. I see him because he trains at about the same time as me, but generally in a different section, but I'm always amazed by how androgynous the shorts make him look. There's a lot of padding there, and it just sort of creates this non-descript mound that protrudes out of his loin area that both disturbs me, and inspires a sort of morbid curiosity that means I just. can't. look. away. It doesn't help that he's really rather fat, with these tiny, spindly appendages, and that last night he was sitting on the bench next to mine while I was doing my chest program, and every time I looked left I saw him labouring like some sort of beached whale under the crushing weight of a 20kg bench press, with this perfectly smooth black mound glaring at me like the shiny bald head of a mole emerging from its lair. Again, I realise this sounds absolutely horrible, and more power to him for trying to get into shape, but the bicycling shorts must go man.
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