Send to KindleMy last post took us up to the pandemic. This one will back up a bit. It will also go through mid-2024, even though the last post claimed (incorrectly) that this one would conclude in 2022.
In late 2019, out of the clear blue, sleep started to elude me. I had a few nights of zero sleep, but mostly, I averaged 1-3 hours a night.
That’s obviously bad (on every possible level), but making it worse is the fact that my amazing wife can’t stand me getting out of bed before any official semblance of morning. If I try to sneak out of bed, she’ll claim to be up and leave the bed as well (true to this day!).
My guilt overwhelms me, and I simply lay in bed for hours on end, wide awake, not moving. I only know now, in retrospect, after getting a smart watch and a smart ring, that she might have saved me from shaving years off my life. It turns out that this wakeful resting was nearly as good as sleep in a number of ways (measured by my heart rate, SPO2, body temperature, etc.).
The first question that people asked me back then was: “What are you anxious about?”. My answer was nothing. My mind wasn’t spinning thinking about anything in particular. In fact, one of the things that made laying there tolerable was that it was also somehow meditative (too many hours in a row if you ask me, but still, a possible positive spin on it).
The next question: “What changed?”. Again, nothing I could put my finger on. But, I decided to make changes to see if I could isolate the problem.
I cut out coffee completely for at least six months with zero positive affect on sleep. I cut out liquor (which I know has a poor effect on my sleep, even though it puts me to sleep more easily, but then makes for very poor sleep!).
I changed what I ate, trying to avoid eating late and avoiding foods that ramp up metabolism. Nothing helped. Then Covid-19 (I missed the first 18 Covids…) hit.
That ended up not changing anything about my sleep either. One could have assumed that practically zero socialization might be relaxing, and I admit to not being any more anxious either (having been retired for eight years, not much changed in my routine as a result), but everything regarding sleep remained the same.
I’ll return to the sleep issue further down, when there is something new to report, but as long as I don’t mention it, assume that it was horrible throughout…
I was pleasantly surprised that for the first eight months of Covid, I basically (easily) maintained my weight. I assumed that being stuck in the house all day every day would lead to snacking and comfort food binges, but that wasn’t the case.
Then the holidays hit. Of course we didn’t go to wild parties, but we had our pods, and restaurants were much more open in VA than they were in NYC, so the eating ramped up. Once started, especially not going to the gym (and not exercising at home either!), the weight started to pile on.
Over the course of 2021, I gained at least 20 pounds. In the first quarter of 2022 I put on another 10+ pounds. I was back at 231 pounds and disgusted with myself.
After reading an interesting article about Intermittent Fasting (IF), I decided to try the 16:8 method, mostly trying to achieve 17:7 (if we weren’t eating out with friends). That meant trying not to eat anything after 7pm and nothing before noon the next day (I never skipped breakfast before then).
The first week or two were difficult (not terribly, but not easy). Then it became wonderful, not only because it was easy to skip breakfast, but also because everything about my morning changed for the better.
I used to be a rigid, timed eater. If we weren’t socializing, I ate at 7am, noon and 6pm, on the dot. That meant that things like morning Yoga, meditation, basically anything else, had to be worked around a meal, rather than the other way around.
I felt so free in the mornings, with the meal not being any part of my scheduling.
In the spirit of IF, I intended to eat the same amount of calories (roughly) in the allotted time that I would have otherwise, but as many people find out (and many studies point out), more often than not, I ended up consuming fewer calories.
I also started walking outside for exercise again. Coupled with the reduced caloric intake, the weight started to melt off of me. I started the IF in March of 2022. I ended it in August 2024 (that will be the subject of the next post). Beginning weight: 231. Ending weight: 195!
Sleep never got better (the rarest night when I slept for four hours), but I felt pretty good, and was rarely exhausted during the day (probably because I rested in bed the entire night rather than getting up like I wanted to…).
The next post will introduce a dramatic shift in my lifestyle and will comprise the months of Jul 2024 through October 2024 (a short, but extraordinarily impactful period in my life).
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