Notes from Project Ari Becomes Not A Fat Fuck

[Ari Rahikkala]

So I've pretty much completely given up on the idea of regulating my food- and exercise-related behaviour by willpower. But that's OK since I've been taking notes about myself. It turns out that:

- I used to drink prodigious amounts of apple juice, as in easily a liter a day, sometimes more. Then I looked at the sugar content and it turns out that that was enough to shock me out of that habit

- I don't seem to be able to resist buying some form of custard or pudding or whatever every time I go to the grocery store. Now that I don't need to refresh my apple juice supplies daily, though, I'm only going to the store a couple of times a week anyway, so that's more than OK. I could probably even replace a lot of these with yoghurt or flavoured viili

- I fasted on Sunday. That distracted me a bit at first, but later in the day I just felt awesome, so it's something I could get used to. Definitely will make a weekly thing from this (it's especially helpful since I eat daily at the university cafe - 2.60 € for a full meal - but said cafe is not open on Sundays). Might even expand it to another weekday, maybe Wednesday. Might want to ask a doctor first though, I guess.

- I don't understand the pattern of which foods I will overeat and which I won't. If I eat an apple, I'll enjoy it as I love the taste... and then I won't feel any urge to have another. If I eat an orange, I'll enjoy it, and then I will eat every orange in the house. I could make a casserole and go through it in two days but if I put the same ingredients in a soup I'll be eating for a week. But it's OK since there is a pattern so I can just try things out and pick the foods that work best for me.

- Speaking of soups, I can't believe how easy it is to make awesome soup. Seriously, you just throw in whatever, and add some seasonings that don't clash too much with what you put in (so far I've found out that pepper really doesn't go that well with cabbage-potato soup, but even with that little mistake it's still plenty tasty). It's like there's a lower limit of soup tastes at "pretty decent" that you can only hit if you really mess it up, and usually it'll be in the ballpark of "just simply good".

[Kaiser Fish XII]

*continues to be a glutinous 75kg douchebag*

Sounds mighty tasty, though!

[Ari Rahikkala]

125 kg. But you don't have a secret untapped source of self-confidence and charisma as your dick isn't half-embedded inside a bulge of fat

[Kaiser Fish XII]

Oh...alrighty then...

[CJ Miller]

167.83kg *eyeroll*

[Jonas]

So... I'm the only one with around the 57kg?

[Kaiser Fish XII]

You are so tiny! :O

[Aster]

My sympathies - I'm there too. The gym is the way to do it - you won't see an instant difference, but you'll find you want to eat less and find it easier to exercise for long durations.

[Jonas]

You are so tiny! :O

Long live my DNA!

[Erik Mortis]

Last I knew I was approaching 190lb (86.1825503 kg). I'm not happy with this.

[Icebreaker]

BLAH BLAH BLAH WHO CARES

HEY I HAVE AN IDEA, CAN YOU QUIT BEING AS GOONISH AS POSSIBLE FOR JUST LIKE, A DAY?

[Ari Rahikkala]

BLAH BLAH BLAH WHO CARES

HEY I HAVE AN IDEA, CAN YOU QUIT BEING AS GOONISH AS POSSIBLE FOR JUST LIKE, A DAY?

Being that being goonish is apparently defined as being ari, well, I'll happily do it as soon as you quit being as douchebagish as possible for a day

[Demon of Fides]

You are so tiny! :O

Long live my DNA!

You should see Andreas, I could easily hold him above my head (I have the strength of your average nerd) and he's got a good 30cm+ on me.

[Erik Mortis]

I miss 170lb.

[Ryan]

I'm at around 165-170, so around 77 kg.

Ari - Fasting is not the answer. I did that to lose 100 lbs (46 kg) and fucked up my metabolism. Don't do that to yourself. Change your diet so you're eating foods that contain fewer calories and/or reduce your intake of liquids; human body weight is, after all, 61.8% water. I lost a good deal of weight just by eliminating soda from my diet.

[Ari Rahikkala]

I've already got the "eating healthy food" bit in place. I've got this plate next to me right now with soup that's made of potato, cabbage and a bunch of other vegetables. The remaining problem is simply that I like even this sort of food too much . From what I've read, a day's fasting isn't going to cause any significant famine response, so if the math works out, it should simply mean less calories, except instead of feeling hungry every day I'll be feeling hungry a couple of days a week.

Oh, and by the way, while I'm not yet certain it *will* work out, I do intend to keep my liquids. Seriously, regular short fasts might not be the most optimal way to manage weight, but losing weight in the long term by losing water is just dumb

[Jonas]

No no, if you really want to lose weight: become a teacher! I heard that you lose 4kg's on 2 days (because of the stress).

[Harvey Steffke]

I fasted for a week in college for religious reasons. I just drank water and orange juice. The first day or two is the hardest by far. After that, you don't feel hungry any more, though your strength goes in unexpected ways. Like, I had a two story climb up to my room that never bothered me before, but by the 7th day I was winded to the point where I could barely make the climb. Anyway, I think the point of me bringing this up is that short, small fasts are awful. You'll never get over the distracting hunger phase.

Soups are quite awesome. The only way to make a bad soup is to put stuff in the pot you really don't like to eat. Other than that, it's foolproof.

[Aster]

Oh, and by the way, while I'm not yet certain it *will* work out, I do intend to keep my liquids. Seriously, regular short fasts might not be the most optimal way to manage weight, but losing weight in the long term by losing water is just dumb

So is starving yourself.

[Ari Rahikkala]

Starving? Come on, it's barely going through the glycogen reserve

(Mind you, Harvey's note might be much more important. I.e. I'm not concerned about biochemical problems - seriously, the human body is perfectly equipped for this - but if it turns out that I'm hungry and distracted all day, unlike on Sunday where I was hungry and distracted for a couple of hours and felt great afterward, then I'm gonna try out something different)

[Ryan]

By reducing your liquids I mean high-caloric or sugary liquids like soda. I don't mean dehydrate yourself like a Babkhan camel.

If you reduce your caloric intake, you can still eat the same amount of food (mass-wise) and thus not feel hungry at all. Most hunger stems simply from having an empty stomach, so you'll be "full", but instead of having excess calories going to fat storage, you'll be able to burn off most of what you eat.

[Erik Mortis]

Eat lots of celery. Takes more to burn then it's worth.

[Demon of Fides]

Urban Myth. You get the occasional particularly chewy and unnutricious stick, but aside from that it always puts on more than the actions of eating take off.

[Gil'les Mel'ang]

I lost 30 lbs. Here's how.

1. drink lots of Green Tea. Green Tea contains ingredients that speed up metabolism as well as reduce hunger. This is in fact the most important component of the following diet.
2. limit or eliminate dinner. Admittedly, can be difficult as while dinner is the least nutritionally necessary meal, it is the most social. If you can do this, make your breakfasts spectacular and eat all the awesome breakfast foods and beverages you want.
3. Cut out most processed foods. This includes artificial colors and preservatives. While not cutting out carbs per se, foods without these two ingredients are often lower in calories. Also, cutting out the artificial colors and preservatives improve your general health.
4. Run 30 minutes per day twice a week at brisk speed. This is necessary to maintain your weight loss. Do not kill yourself running. However do not do this to a busy highway as the exhaust fumes will trigger a stress and allergy response that will make you feel weaker and cough a lot. Also if you run in cold weather. to increase your body temperature and keep you warm, the cold will trigger your body to burn more fat all around your body.


However Gil'les Mel'ang cannot run anymore due to time and location and has been eating more processed foods as those are now the easiest to find and most cost effective. Thus, he is probably already gaining some of the weight back.

[Aster]

Gym. X-trainer, Bike machine and Treadmill every other day. Try 10 minutes of each.

[Ari Rahikkala]

Well, that was vaguely unpleasant. Not so unpleasant I couldn't do it again, but certainly distracting. I'm probably going to just do this on Sundays from now on and spend most of the day exercising and playing video games. Not to say I didn't get any work done, but the work that I did get done was mostly playing around with a nifty ARM gadget. Otherwise, well, I guess it's down to more soup.

I don't go to the gym, at least not yet. My basic... workout... is twenty-thirty minutes daily of something like this, though I've been adding a couple of really basic exercise moves to it (sit-ups, push-ups, bird dogs, a bunch of stretches) to it lately, and soon there will be enough snow to go skiing too. I've also been learning to scrub surfaces I never thought I'd need to clean before to avoid having the room smell funky as a result of exercising inside it.

(edit: Both of those paragraphs had a at the end. The post looked weird with that symmetry and I couldn't decide which one to remove the smiley from so I went with both. Not sure whether that made it better.)

[Erik Mortis]

DDR?

[Ari Rahikkala]

Stepmania. Almost the same thing, but cheaper.

[Jonas]

Perhaps you should go to a catholic church on Sunday. It's a perfect way to stay fit: they have excellent exercises (one moment you have to stand up, the next moment you have to sit down again ).

[Erik Mortis]

And you don't get to eat, except a single cracker for like 4 hours.