Day 6 Fasting - 163.3 Pounds

11:37 PM

Today is my 6th day of fasting, although with a caveat. I felt so miserable, lethargic, and felt unable to do anything last night, that I caved and ate 50 calories of dried passion fruit at around 3 AM last night. The sensation of eating for the first time in days was pure bliss, especially with a food as delicious as dried passion fruit. They taste better than dates, taste better than dried mango (debatable), are on par with dried mulberries. The dried strawberries, dried blueberries, raisins, prunes, all have a similar taste, whereas the other ones I listed prior are a league on their own.

If people knew about dried mulberries and dried passion fruit, no doubt they would be much more popular. They have a taste so exquisite, but are extremely hard to find anywhere. Same with ube, which is a purple yam that has a unique taste, found in the Philippines where I was born. Probably 99% of people have never tasted ube, and it really does have a unique good taste that is indescribable.

Taro is another root vegetable with a unique taste, similar to ube but very different, it's really hard to compare flavors to be honest. Lychee is a fruit that has a unique taste too, that few people have ever tasted. It's like the difference between an orange and a strawberry, they are completely different flavors, and if you have never tasted one, you would never know what it tastes like by description alone.

There are probably other plant foods I have not tried yet, that have a unique taste too. I just know these plant foods from the top of my head are ones most people have never tasted, and have very unique flavors.

Fruits and vegetables have unique flavors, because our bodies are evolved to eat them. Animal corpses all taste the same, hence why every animal body part from any animal "tastes like chicken" and are tasteless without seasoning. At minimum, every animal corpse piece has salt added, or else it has no taste at all. People think these body parts have any flavor, whereas it's the seasoning, the vegan seasonings in particular, that really add flavor. Hence why you can just use tofu or another meat substitute like tempeh, seitan, or textured vegetable protein, to make all the same tasting meals without any body parts at all.

Our eyes can see in color, we sleep at night, we sweat from our pores, our teeth resemble plant eater's teeth (gorillas, chimpanzees, pandas, water deer, hippos, etc. all have larger canines than humans and mainly or exclusively eat plants).

Humans need tools to kill animals, and we need to cook their body parts to eat it. If we just found an animal body part on the ground, it looks detestable and inedible, it has a foul stench and appearance. The blood and guts make us not want to get close to it. Animals that evolved to eat body parts, to them, they don't see in color and are attracted to that odor, and the flesh has a taste to them without cooking and without seasoning. From just basic intuition, humans are not meant to hurt other creatures, no human wants to, and it's good we don't since we don't have to eat any animals, I haven't in 12 years.

Anyway, at 3 AM last night, eating the dried passion fruit instantly revitalized my energy and mood for the rest of the night. I still didn't really channel this energy into anything productive, but at least I wasn't feeling miserable and lethargic anymore. I fell asleep at around 7 AM, just from browsing the Internet mainly. I don't even remember what I did exactly, but I knew I was happy and was full of energy prior to going to sleep.

When I woke up at around 12 PM, I felt lethargic, starving, and lazy again. I checked my emails and knew I had some work to do, but I had a hard time concentrating. I tried focusing and working, but I found my low blood pressure, low mood, and low energy levels drastically affecting my productivity. Whenever I stood up, I still had that feeling of blacking out from low blood pressure, this is a common symptom after fasting for a few days.

Still, when I checked my weight, it was so much lower, in the 163s this time. I checked myself out in the mirror and was super happy with how I appeared now. I still don't look ripped, my body fat % is still way too high to appear muscular and ripped, it has to be 12% and below for me to appear ripped, currently it's around 16-17%.

A few of my friends in real life are ripped, like Gus and Wahl, they are both vegan, muscular, and have a low body fat %. Eric does too, but he has a higher body fat %, since he doesn't look that ripped, although he does have visible abs without flexing or sucking in his stomach. Pretty much all of my friends have abs when they take their shirt off, even women friends, and nearly all are vegan. I'm the fat and obese exception in comparison. Even now, I don't have visible abs, although with the right lighting, a glimpse of it appears, even without flexing or sucking in my stomach.

Also, in my entire family, no one has any abs. It's something I've always viewed as exceptional because no one in my family ever had it. My friends have abs, none of my family members have them, and I have 50+ family members, some are vegan and plant based too. Many in my family are obese, higher than 35 BMI, none of the vegan and plant based family members are overweight though, except for me prior to fasting.

Now I'm no longer overweight, my BMI is in the low 24s now I think, maybe the high 23s. BMI doesn't really matter all that much if you have a low body fat % though. My body fat % is still high for a male. Males should have 12% and lower BMI. Women should have 18%+ body fat percent I think to be healthy, maybe even 20%+. It's been a while since I read any info about it. Yet, even with an 18% BMI, I have seen women with abs. I have seen guys my height who weigh a lot more than me, like 20 pounds more than I do now, and have visible abs. I'm like, what, how?! They are just that much more muscular, and they are vegan too.

So, back to trying to work. I tried my best to concentrate, but the lethargy, low blood pressure, low mood, just really affected my concentration levels. See, right now I've typed up several paragraphs of text. We'll get to how I was able to do this, but I tried my best to work, and really couldn't. I don't know if I am mentally weak or lazy, but I think having low energy really affected me, so I ended up eating again.

I ate 800 calories from 1 PM to 5 PM. I kept eating little by little while working from 1 PM until 5 PM, tiny bites here and there, totaling around 800 calories. I had dried chickpeas, dried figs, dried passion fruit, edamame, and like 1/4th of a Clif bar, totaling around 800 calories. This allowed me to get my energy levels back up and concentrate on working. I responded to emails, wrote code, and I was productive. I felt good.

After finishing up my work, I just browsed the Internet and worked on some personal tasks until around 10 PM. Here's where my selfishness took a hold of me. I don't know why, and I am so foolish for doing this, but I checked my weight, and saw that my weight had dropped even though I had been eating from 1 PM to 5 PM and drinking water too. I checked my weight at around 1 PM and I weighed 163.6 pounds. I checked my weight again at around 9 PM, and I weighed 163.3 pounds. My weight dropped!

I couldn't believe it. I ate a lot of food, 800 calories of food. This was no small meal, it was several plates of tiny snacks here and there for four hours, and yet, I was lighter. I was befuddled. I went back to browsing the Internet again, and, this was a mistake, I gave myself permission to eat again.

So there I went, I ate another 800 calories of the same food I listed above, minus the 1/4th of a Clif bar. That's how I'm able to type up all these long paragraphs right now with full concentration and with high amounts of energy, because I ate again. My entry last night was only a few sentences long because I felt miserable for every word that I typed. Right now, I'm feeling good with any activity that I do, so I'm able to do a lot more when I channel this energy and mood into journaling.

I think it was foolish of me to eat yet another 800 calories tonight, putting me at 1600 calories eaten for the day. Tomorrow, I think I'm going to have gained weight. If anything, I ate enough foods to restore a bit of my glycogen and that will probably add a pound or two, I think. I'm still in overall a caloric deficit of my base 2500 maintenance calories, but my body might preserve energy more efficiently now due to not having eaten for days, that's the theory anyway.

So we'll see if that theory is correct. There is a theory that if you starve yourself and ate even 200 calories, you would gain weight. I think it's a false theory, because I just ate 800 calories earlier today, despite having fasted for 5+ days, and when I got on the scale a few hours later, was still lighter. I ate yet another 800 calories though, totaling to 1600, so I might actually gain some weight this time, we'll see. We'll see which theory is correct, if this starvation theory is correct, or if overall CICO theory wins.

CICO wins if I lose weight tomorrow. I'm going to check my weight again at around 1 PM tomorrow. If I am lower than 163.3 pounds, then CICO wins. This means that the only thing that really matters for weight is officially calories in and calories out, that our "starvation hormones" have little if any effect on our weight gain.

If tomorrow I check my weight and I am heavier than 163.3 pounds, then the advice to not starve yourself or else you will just bounce back heavier, has merit. This second theory is called the "hormone" weight gain theory, because supposedly there are hormones that control our weight. The theory goes that if we starve ourselves for a certain time period, some hormones are supposedly released that can make us gain weight even eating small amounts.

The CICO theory on the other-hand, is about calculating our maintenance calories, and if we eat above that then we gain weight, and if we eat below that, then we lose weight. That's all CICO is. It doesn't factor in hormones nor prior starvation status or anything. It's all about Calories In and Calories Out, CICO.

Still, the advice to not starve yourself persists. Let's see if that advice has any merit.

Anyway, that was my day today.