Day 7 Fasting - 162.9 Pounds

11:24 PM

Technically I ate yesterday and today, so today isn't my 7th day of fasting. However, I'm going to count yesterday and today as stumbles, not disregard them completely, but discount them as if they were simply part of the process and continue my streak anyway. So today is my 7th day of fasting, and I'm going until January 29th 2025, 9:17 PM.

When I weighed myself this morning, I weighed 163.4 pounds, which is basically the same weight as yesterday, just 0.1 pounds heavier. This is after eating 1650 calories yesterday, the first time I ate in days. I thought I would be gaining a bunch of weight after this, but it turns out I didn't.

Yesterday I wrote about weighing myself today at 1 PM and from that concluding whether or not CICO (calories in and calories out) theory is valid, or whether the hormone (weight gain depends on hormones) theory is valid. Well, at around 12 PM, I drank several glasses of water, and my weight at 1 PM was around 165 pounds. Due to drinking a lot of water, I don't think it's fair to draw a conclusion from this, but I would lean more towards CICO Theory being correct and the Hormone Theory being pretty much entirely BS.

Hormone Theory (also known as Metabolic Damage theory) postulates that since I hadn't eaten anything in 5-6 days, I was in starvation mode, and that if I ate even 200 calories from a couple of apples, I would gain noticeable weight. This theory is popularized by several fitness influencers, but there's one in particular that I have in mind that says this. Looking it up, he actually calls it Metabolic Damage, not Hormone Theory. I'm actually the one who made up the name Hormone Theory because I didn't know the proper name, just the concept, so I guess we'll just call it Metabolic Damage theory from now on.

Is Metabolic Damage Theory accurate? Based on my experience, no, it isn't. I ate 1650 calories yesterday after 5-6 days of eating 0 food, so I was definitely in starvation mode, yet I didn't gain any weight even after eating 1650 calories. But my body was supposed to be releasing 500% more mass gaining hormones so that I would gain weight even after eating a few apples!! Well it turns out that's not the case at all.

Weight gain and weight loss is ultimately all about calories in and calories out. The reason I could not lose any weight the past 2 months even with calorie tracking and exercising every day, is because I would eat 4000-5000 calories some days, while eating under 2000 calories other days, so my weight would just go up and down constantly. I tracked all of this too, and I knew of the days when I was eating 5000 calories, I just couldn't control my eating enough to stop myself.

It's really not rocket science. Now that I'm someone that has lost 70-80 pounds in the past 4 years, I can definitively say that it's easy and doable to lose weight, but it requires a lot of self-control, sacrifice, pain, and time. That it's basically all about calories in and calories out. I get there are activities that are hard to quit, activities we are addicted to. It's hard to stop myself from overeating 5000 calories, even if I know it's wrong and will lead to a disastrous result, and that I don't even want to do it in the first place. Self-control can be hard, but it's needed to lose weight.

I'm still going to continue losing weight these next 7 days. I'm going to continue not eating anything for these next 7 days, and we'll see where I am a week from now. We'll see where I am every day from now on actually, I'll continue to post updates daily.

This morning I woke up pretty early, at around 7 AM. I went out into my backyard to pull out some weeds, and then went inside and worked for a little. At night time, I went out to Marshall's and Walgreen's.

I like my appearance now. I think I look fine, though I still don't look ripped. My muscles are all still there, so when I flex, it looks more enlarged on my less-fatty arms. I'm under 16% body fat now, according to my scale, so I just have around 4% more body fat to go and then I'll look ripped, because men start to look ripped at 12% body fat and below. The way to get there is to just lose weight, though you have to be at least a little muscular for muscles to become visible.

Maybe I am delusional, but when I went out to the stores tonight, I noticed more stares at me. I already stand out being pretty much the only Asian person anywhere I go in Puerto Rico. I might walk by over 1000 people in a populated place like any of the malls here, and I am the only Asian person there. Usually I don't get that many stares, or they're very quick, but with this new appearance, I noticed people looking at me more. Again, I could just be delusional, but we can all sense when people are looking at us, right?

I just looked it up, and yes, people have a sense of when they're being stared at. There are hundreds of articles on this topic. It's intuitive. It could be our eyes catching a gaze from a reflection we're not focused on, but that our peripheral vision can see, and therefore our subconscious can detect and alert us, or any other number of reasons. Still, we do have this sense, and I felt this sense at Marshall's and Walgreen's a lot more today than any other day.

I'm going to be delusional about this and attribute it to people checking me out. This is one of the reasons listed that people stare at you, and I'm going to assume it's the default when I'm being stared at. Why not? We won't actually know why we're being stared at, or glanced upon, but this is a positive way to view it. Every time I feel this sense, I'm going to attribute it to being attractive and being checked out.

I really like my appearance right now. I look 10 years younger right now, honestly. Other than being darker due to getting more sun, my face right now is comparable to my face back in 2016-2017. I was over 200 pounds from 2013-2015, so those years wouldn't have been good to compare myself to. I look better than all my previous teen versions too, as I was overweight and obese throughout my preteens and teens. So, today is basically the best I've looked in my entire life. Right now.

From my past experience, it's also true that there was basically no appearance change from days 1-4 of fasting, but things started to change on the 5th day, and on the 7th day, the changes became very noticeable. Day 7 is the first checkpoint in appearance change. This is all corroborated by my past experience fasting and checking myself out in the mirror every day, it's all followed the same pattern so far, every time. The next checkpoint is going to be day 14. If I can fast until Day 14, I'll see the next biggest appearance change.

Right now and for the next few days, my appearance won't change by much. However, by day 14, major change. Extremely major change. From past experience again, if the first appearance checkpoint had a noticeable appearance improvement, then day 14 would have a major drastic appearance improvement greatly surpassing the improvements from the first checkpoint. I've experienced this all, so I know it's true.

Right now, I'm feeling extremely happy about my new appearance on Day 7. It's the same in my previous fasts. However, on Day 14, each time, my mind was blown to unfathomable levels. Anyway, I can't wait to get there again. I just have to suffer for 7 more days.

Tonight, I ate around 1500 calories. I swore that this would be the last time I eat until until January 29th 2025, 9:17 PM.

So yeah, that was my day today. I don't really have anything else to add.