Day 2 Fasting - 163.7 Pounds

9:25 PM

Made it almost 50 hours of not eating anything. I stuck to my rules of no entertainment, and I'm not sure how I survived this entire day.

All my biomarkers are very healthy. The only thing that I would say is unhealthy, is my VO2 max, which is not in the screenshot, but was at 38 the last time I ran, which was on January 7th. I weighed like 175 pounds at that time, which is considered overweight for my BMI, so that's why my VO2 max was so low. I think after I finish my fast, my VO2 max will be a lot higher, potentially over 45.

My resting heart rate has always been low, even when I was overweight or obese, it was always around the low or mid 60s. My blood pressure used to be high throughout my entire pre-teen and teenage years, it probably wasn't until I was 23 or so, back in 2016-2017, that my blood pressure went down to normal levels and stayed there for years. Then when I became obese again, my blood pressure went up again and stayed there for years, and now it's low again, which is awesome.

Oh yeah, I'm at the lightest weight I've ever been, since the last 15 or so years. I was overweight even in elementary school, even in middle school. I think I was like 140 pounds in 4th grade or something. We only had a mechanical scale, it didn't work that well since you had to manually tare it and that could lead to errors, and was off by like 10 pounds at times too. Like if you weighed over 180, it might be off by 10 pounds, some weird error like that. We still have the scale, it's at my parent's home, I know it's broken because I bought them a digital scale a few years ago and that one has been more accurate.

It's weird that I still look overweight in my photo, maybe not overweight, but not thin either. I look muscular with broad shoulders. I imagined that when I reached the low 160s, I would look pretty thin. I don't look thin at all, I still look pretty heavy. When I take my shirt off, I am starting to see visible abs without any flexing, they're starting to come out and they are more visible based on the lighting.

Also, I noticed that my arms look muscular on their own without flexing, although I'm sure they did get smaller too. While wearing certain shirts, when I was overweight, my arms would fill the arm holes completely leaving no gaps. Now there's space between my arms and the arm holes. This wasn't for all my shirts, this was for some of them where they would fill in the arm hole completely.

Anyway, with no entertainment today, I spent a lot of the day just lying down in bed reading physical books. I read mainly non-fiction, all the fiction books I have are entertainment, so I'm not reading them. I have a lot of manga at home that I've collected, and I'm not going to be reading any of them anymore. A lot of the non-fiction books I have, I've already read. I'm reading through a bit of Jake Paul's autobiography You Gotta Want It right now, and it's fascinating. He lives on this island of Puerto Rico with me, though I've never seen him in real life yet. I likely will, just like how I unexpectedly met, ate dinner with, shook hands with, that other celebrity last year.

So bored. I also went through some tutorials today learning Godot game development. What I want to learn is Godot for app development. I've used Flutter and Unity, and they're kinda not my thing. I've also done some Objective-C for iOS and Java for Android back in the day, but I think it's better to use multi-platform software now.

I'm so bored, and tired, a hungry. I haven't done any brain training in a while, just because I don't feel like it right now. It's the same with social media,so I haven't done any vegan activism in a while yet either. Just tired. Of course, I also haven't done any exercises this whole time either. I'm waiting until my fast is over.

I'm not putting any obligations on myself this whole fast. I might even take the week off work if I need to, if there turns out to be a lot of pressure on me, and I'm not able to handle it, I'm going to be taking off work for this fast. Right now, I think it's doable.

So far I've been able to do this boring task of following a tutorial. My fried dopamine brain last week would not have been able to concentrate on such a boring activity long enough to do that, but now I can because I've gotten rid of all forms of entertainment. I've also gotten rid of the ability to go into my bedroom with any digital device with a screen. I can't even lie down to read anything on my phone anymore. If I want to read a boring article, I have to read that sitting down. If I want to go on social media, I have to do that sitting down, and that's way too boring and taxing for me.

I don't know if boredom is the right word to describe what I'm describing. Education and reading are boring. What I mean by that is they have low stimulation. All entertainment nowadays are extremely stimulating, extremely rewarding for doing nothing. The anime and cartoons are fast paced, extremely colorful, well drawn, have enticing and rewarding drama and overpowered main characters that make you want to have what they have. All the manga I was reading actually all had a common theme, it's that they had a special main character, special as in, they easily have the potential to be the best character in their universe, by best I mean strongest or other measurable characteristic.

Every manga I'm reading has the main character gifted some unique power or circumstance no one else has. This goes for a lot of superheroes in the west too, like Superman and Spider-Man, both have unique traits that no one else in their universe has, that could potentially make them the strongest and most powerful in their universe. This is true with shonen anime and manga as well, DBZ, Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, etc. these main characters are gifted with something no one else has, and they are superior to basically everyone else.

The modern manga takes this trope to a new level. The manga "Solo Leveling" is an example, there's another one called "I can't level up" which is the opposite power, but they are still overpowered somehow . There are manga about being transported into a video game they were previously rank 1 in, Overlord is an example of this, but there's a lot of manga with that same trope too., my favorite one being "The Acadamy's Genius Blinker" which is great, it just takes forever to update. There's also Bug Player, and The Exiled Reincarnated Heavy Knight, and just so many other stories that take this trope of being transported into a game world they mastered.

These anime and manga give us some escapism from the drudgery of our lives. I don't have any super special powers as a regular person. Everything I accomplished, I had to work for it. Everything I will accomplish, I have to work for. I am vegan and against animal cruelty, and wish everyone else were too, but I can't force anyone to stop torturing animals. I think losing weight and improving my appearance would help me gain some influence, but I don't have any control over that.

Oh yeah, fitness is one of the things in life we have nearly full control over. There might still be times where we run into an unknown sickness or something, but in general, our weight and health are nearly entirely in our control. I was obese for years, and that was entirely my fault, and entirely in my control. Oh yeah, compassion towards animals is something entirely in our control too. Anyone obese today, or having animals killed for them, it's all on them, no one else.

Unlike career, relationships, and pretty much every other life field, weight and health is nearly entirely in our control. It's simple physics that the less calories we eat, the less we weigh. The more calories we eat, the more we weigh. To become thin, we just have to eat less, or not eat at all, and to become obese, we just have to constantly eat, and based on what we do, we will get the exact expected results. We can spend years trying to start a career and end up nowhere, many college graduates can't find employment. We can spend years on dating apps and have no relationships at all. These factors are dependent on luck. What isn't, are fitness and compassion towards animals.

I'm studying Godot right now, and I don't know if anything will come out of it. I'm trying to lose weight right now, and I don't know if me becoming fitter and leaner and hotter, will result in anything positive outside of these things. I know I'll be able to do more pull ups, chin ups, be able to run faster for longer, but I don't know if any of this will lead to anything else outside of fitness. It would be nice to get more followers, but maybe that won't even happen, maybe no one would care.

Anyway, I'm pretty starving and hungry. It's been over 50 hours now since I last ate anything. I am trying to make it to February 1st, which will be in around 140 hours. So I have to last until around 192 hours or so on my timer, and if I do, that will be February 1st. Since it'll be close to 200 hours anyway, I think I'll try to go for 200 hours, so it'll be like February 1st at 8 AM or something, I think.

I can't wait to be able to run and exercise again. I would love to experience my new speed and strength being a lighter weight. I was doing 8 pull ups in a row when I was like 185 pounds, so now that I'm much lighter, I should hopefully be able to do even more. It would take like a week or two of refeeding though to rebuild my strength from a fast.

Anyway, that was my day today.