Well, I don't do too much personal blogging lately. I have a trip full of Steem Fest photos and nothing is going up any time soon. There's too much to do.

That said, i wanted to share one thing that I did. Before I left for Asia I made a decision to try a Master Cleanse when I got back. I made it back and so I started right away.

What's a master cleanse?

The Master Cleanse is a fast. From Saturday Night through Wednesday night I didn't eat anything. It's usually supposed to go for 10 days, but I'm running into early holidays and thanksgiving observed. So, I kinda lost my will to keep doing it knowing that I have to stop early anyway.

Anyway, every time I got hungry I'd drink some lemonade. It was made in a big glass. I'd put in two table spoons of lemon juice, 2 table spoons of maple syrup, and some cayanne pepper. As it turns out I actually like the drink. The other thing that amazed me is that I really didn't hate the whole thing. In fact, after the holidays I'll likely do multi-day fasting with some frequency.

Problem: I'm a big fatty

When I was young I was a wrestler. At the age of 18 I wrested at 140lbs. Not the most healthy weight for me. Actually after the season ended it took about a week to get to a more natural weight of 165.

These days I'm about 230. My frame is larger and some muscles are actually much stronger now that I'm an old man, but way too much of that is just fat.

I've been doing a lot of outdoor activity, and the weight is very slowly falling off, but I have a bad habit of eating more when I'm doing more work so it kinda cancels out.

I know I overeat and I thought this would be one of the best ways to control my eating and reset how much my body thinks I need. As my buddy Parker says "abs are made in the kitchen!" And he's right. So, I needed a way to be back in control of my eating habits.

It wasn't as bad as I thought

Every day I'd get up and drink one. Throughout the day I might have 5-6 more. At some points I'd get light headed or a little hungry. Something about the lemon juice seems to take care of the hunger. So, I'd down another glass and within 5 min the headaches and light headedness would go away. I missed food during it, and was certainly hungry at times, but this wasn't nearly as bad as I feared.

Also, consider I'm going from like 2500 calories or more per day down to like ~600. So, for this to be a little hunger inducing and mildly inconvenient wasn't all that bad.

I ate some yesterday

I lost some of my will since I have a family thanksgiving observed this weekend. So, I had to stop early anyway so I decided 4-5 days was a good test run and got myself some salad.

I'm sorta considering like a Ramadan inspired thing where I don't eat all day and then have 1 big meal at night. Might give me the weight loss I'm looking for, but also some of the regular sustenance that I'm used to.

Weight Loss

Normally when I do athletic activity to lose weight it's a snail's pace. This was actually pretty incredible. Each day I could feel my body noticeably change. This was literally the fastest weight loss I've ever done.

Planning on more

So, for now, I'm doing some hybrid thing and seeing if there are ways I can lose weight with this, but still eat some. That sounds like it would cover what I'd like it to, but I'll have to see. If that doesn't work I'll pretty gladly eat for a week or two and come back to a 3-10 day fast. 3 Days was pretty easy. 4-5 was getting a little harder. So, I could imagine once a month cycling in a 3 day fast.

Overall I feel pretty good, had noticeable weight loss, and learned that I have some capacity for food control that I haven't really experienced in a number of years.

8/10 will do again.