As part of reaching my previously posted 808 Day Experiment II, I subscribed to a year length membership with Cronometer. I used it as a nutritional data resource in the prior 808 days, though mainly in a free, overall schema approach, not so much in a daily tracking capacity. Today, I use it daily NOT to track calories—I removed any direct references to calories—for all I'm interested in is hitting my predefined macros and nutritional requirements (mostly).

As I track things, I'm curious to see if my weightloss is comparable to my calorie-restricted diet. Since I now eat over double of the calories of past efforts, if I hold a conventional calories-in / calories-out dogma, I would expect to lose only half of pounds as I have in past Expeditions (after water loss considerations). In that context, it would be logically to have lost 18 pounds, since past losses were 40-43 lbs after each reboot. HOWEVER, what would it mean if The 13th Expedition's weightloss IS comparable to past efforts, that at 2300-3000 calories a day, there's not a statistically significant difference despite the substantially different approaches? Furthermore, does this new approach lend itself to sustainable weightloss, i.e. mitigates the threat of failure?

Not that my diet in recent years was low fat—it had a "low carb" focus with 30 net carbs total (whatever that means with soluble fiber), but, nevertheless had about 25% of the calories coming from carbs. Perhaps, the bigger indictment against it was my ignoring my body's dashboard lights about hunger and the temperature gauge of a plummeting body heat. My low calorie diet was just far too rigid, too, and by definition, it could not respond to changing condition. Once I hit my daily req's, I just had to grind it out. Whereas today, when there are days when I work harder—like today's lawn mowing, I fully expect that I'll wind up eating more. I fully respect my body's calling up more calories, "You need 'em, BOOM, here they are!" Nothing quite punches the hunger button like a butter pat as the creama in a coffee that's also kissed by a tablespoon of coconut oil.

But again, what does it say if my losses are basically the same as my past diet, but with more than double the overall calories, yet more than 50% less of calories from carbs? (I only grant the loosely tallied calories as a indicator of positive correlation, but it's the easiest way to explain things.)

Especially in a low calorie context, a diet's failure can be attributed to taking a turnoff from the drive "on a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair" down a slippery slope into an oasis to binge for months in Taco Town.

Climb aboard this 70/25/5 diet that sails on into the night...

Though a Sunday morning, I woke at my typical 3 something. While I was green lighted to work out, I stopped to listen to my body. This listening to cues is a new skillset I'm developing to move away from my more active hammer through scenarios ideology. As you might expect, mindfulness contributes to its development—for that matter, just reminding myself to breathe better breaths yields returns.

While I'm fully on board on clearing out the clutter with mindfulness, I'm also practicing visualization with an experiment of pullups. You see, back when I was at 208 lbs, although I could get at least halfway through, I could never reach the top. Therefore, I'm putting the mental reps in to see if when I drop back down to 208, if I'll be able to do a complete pull up. Multiple even? It's based on research:

NCBI: From Mental Power to Muscle Power-Gaining Strength by Using the Mind

It's a small study, but, it kind of makes sense. What makes muscle: the brain directs responses to a workout. Sports behavior being shaped by pre-game visualization is not a new thing; I practiced my Taekwondo patterns in my head all the time. While not actively pursued for gains, even when I taught English, it wasn't ALL off-the-cuff segues into the diminutive lives of gnomes, there was prep work in a spatial context, too.

And I don't have to apply it to just things I can't do, but, if I run through a program in my head before I actually do it, there's support for greater success:

NCBI: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Motor Imagery Combined With Structured Progressive Circuit Class Therapy on Gait in Stroke Survivors

While I consider the tools of performance optimization, sleep plays a critical role. In the past, I've felt I only required 4 hours of sleep, but, I preferred 6 hours to reach equilibrium. Now, I'm not so sure...I'm studying and considering all of the metabolic processes and correlations that occur with greater sleep. So in that context, after this morning's mindfulness session that went on into 4 AM, I just went back to sleep.

And yet, there's nothing wrong with having a 3 something template (until I can study it further anyway); however there's value in having the ability to slam the TQM button on my assembly line with a well-timed audible. I love this line from Battlestar Galactica: "So what's your plan here? Personally, I tend to go with what you know. 'Til something better turns up." There's no room to float in the fluid space of indecision.

I write again from this 12 oz coffee brew supplemented by a tablespoon of butter and another of coconut oil. I have been exploring it as a simple breakfast with enough fat to hold me over lunch...or so I intend—it may change as I worked out this morning and fully expect my body to ask for food payment. Yesterday, I tried taking out the butter and adding extra coconut oil in its place, but while they are similar in calories, it wasn't the same. Nevertheless, I'll readily admit one attempt a trial does not make!

I do it because I like the idea of a couple small meals with one large one to minimize insulin release, though there is the metabolic camp that thinks we need evenly spaced / evenly sized meals, not that I think that would be a practical application for our ancestors—unless they lived in a vineyard.

Honestly, all of this is dependent on hunger—that's my approach anyway. Oh, how often in past weightloss measures have I fought against it! Drink water they say...work out...swat your face with a flyswatter again and again—do ANYTHING to ignore hunger!

That's stupid.

Sure, it makes sense if a calories-in / calories-out deficit was true (it's not). Maybe what I find interesting is not why so many of us are fat, but why so many of us are relatively thin. I would suspect that not everyone tracks calories (and I've read where not even the foremost experts cannot accurately track daily calories to within 300 kcal)—for that matter a pound of fat does not equal 3500 lbs:

• 1 pound = 453.5924 grams
• 453.5924 * 9 kcal per fat gram = 4082.3316 kcal

Sooby Doo: "Ruh roh!"

More on this here, but let's go ahead and say that's a pound of fat in one person varies wildly from a pound of fat in another.

And so it follows, there's this whole business that a gram of fat in one thing to eat does not equal a gram of fat in another, further curtailing any expectations of accuracy.

And you can't tell me that BMR calculations have any basis on personal application—you can drive a bus through that margin for error!

My point is this: since many people, if not most, do not track their net calories and the ones that do cannot do so reliably, why are we relatively thin? Since there's all sorts of variety at all sorts of calorie amounts, should we not see all sorts of sizes from 100 to 1000 lbs? Instead, we all huddle around the same basic size, all collectively getting fatter as the decades pass since the early 1980s. If calories can vary so wildly, I would suspect weights would as well.

On a micro level, sure, I can drop weight like nobody's business on a low calorie diet; I've lost 40 lbs in six weeks routinely. I even went 116 days on a low calorie diet losing 85 lbs in that span. When I stopped the drive, what happened? You guessed it, I made the climb ALL the way back up to my starting point. It makes sense: in a low energy environment, the body adjusts to scarcity and when times are good, the body prepares accordingly.

The key of course is to get the body in a place where it releases fat to achieve balance, not to try to force it out of balance. And I am re-learning / de-educating myself that we do this by restricting sugars/carbs on a high fat diet. The food industry shoved us onto an intense ride of a high-to-low blood sugar rollercoaster causing insulin to course through our veins while blockheaded government bureaucrats parroted their dogma with charts of pyramids and plates promoting bread and pasta and low fat diets. Talk about dousing a fire with gasoline!

Much more can be said on this (and better documented, I might add), but lemme just say this: perhaps the key for my own weightloss, in a hitting-the-broadside-of-a-barn kind of away, is to avoid sugar and wheat; and eat when I'm hungry. And when hungry, eat lots of fat instead of the old fattening carbs I used to eat.