DST wreaked an initial 6 hours havoc this year and it had a cascading effect . It's one of the increasingly deleterious twice a year events.
That correlated with an increasingly diminished sleep quality that evolved into an excruciating sleep disorder. That feeds back into an eating compensatory mechanism?!
Your weight sudden increase and values are eerily similar to mine.
I had a drop at 238 last year in January when I volunteered to work in the overflowing infectious diseases ward as a Preventative Contamination Agent ( have a clinical background in surgical and public health- but not working in the last 8 years because my spouse got a better stable job, and we made a pow-wow and decided that's more important to have a parent around and available at all times . So the one with the most stressful job ( was me at the time - couldn't just cut the cord and went into a late midlife complex grad research med degree - at least now I am more astute in identifying the plethora of manipulative and "data massage" in papers.
For reference, I am 266 now, dropped 11 pounds after a concussion, that proved to be beneficial indirectly , by getting a vast degree of solace using anti- orexin class of drugs for the sleep disorder . I take them for more than a week and it's , for now, the only thing that mitigates to a significant extent the non-24 working Dx.
In conjunction with a biofeedback sensor ( that improved in a week my breathing meditation winding down for sleep.
Fron healthmath.con.
It's in loan from the psychiatrist. It's not available directly in Canada, but it's a modality that, in the past, due to my skewed skepticism towards non alopatic medicine approaches, I dismissed as " gimmicky ".
Until I read the newer ( meaning last 9 years ) research results .
As an anecdotal empirical note. I dropped 11 pounds ( I convert because the substack is US imperial measurements oriented) last month by not necessarily dieting per se.
It's a combination of increasing thermogenesis ( progressive colder showers ) and affordability of fresh tasty vegetables/ fruits in Montréal's markets.
And deliberately reducing the baguette consumption ( the nearby bakery won a baguette contest in France - Sacre Dieux !! lol) .
Swapped my plain wool blanket with a real " french linen" linen sheet . ( painfully expensive from Baloo Canada ( it's a US based) .
As a note, I let the water evaporate and carry some heat away.
Another fun fact. Cold city water now doesn't feel so cold ( maybe because it's not, it's summer, but I don't have gasp as much when hit with cold water and I don't need to progressively go for it.
Another weird one. I don't need to take my anti-inflammatoires pain medication in fill dose . I oscilate now between 1/4 and 1/2 . Some days I think it's just by fear of not having it returning.
Very interesting. Better sleep fixes so much for me, too. Or should I say, "normal" sleep - I just am not used to having normal sleep after a lifetime of Non-24, ha ;) Congrats on the 11lbs down!
I am becoming more interested in cold thermogenesis stuff too. I'm not sure it helps much with weight loss, although maybe indirectly (lower inflammation, stress).
Please , if you are so kind to share some of the sleep fixes. Weight gain, in my case , can also be correlated with progressive sleep decreasing quality and the transformation into a sleep disorder that saps most consistent behavioural changes I am trying to tweak.
Don't know where but you recommended a buckwheat pillow. I tried one and it's.. weird :) Very malleable yet firm at the same time. I still have to get used to it, but so far I like it, thanks for the recommendation!
Do you have to awaken according to the wall clock? Could you set your schedule such that you sleep and eat according to the sun? That way, when DST starts / ends, you could simply let your body just keep going even though the clock must be adjusted.
That would be the dream, independent of wall clock time :) Unfortunately, I have to go to work and stuff. I could probably pull it off now that the sun rises very early and I wouldn't need an alarm to wake on time.
But at the time, it would've basically meant waking up at 10am, and then I'd be at work maybe 11? That's a bit late :D
Could you finesse your wake up time such that, for part of the year, you have an extra hour of leeway, and, during the other part of the year, you give up that extra hour of leeway?
It'd be tricky. Depending on DST/season/other factors I usually wake up between 9 and 10 in the winter, or between 8 and 9 in the summer. So if DST didn't exist, it would be exactly what you describe, lol!
Maybe if I could super fine tune it:
1. Move into the easternmost part of a timezone to get early sun
2. Have bedroom facing east
But honestly, I haven't tried optimizing to that level. Plenty of other stuff I should probably take care off before that, haha.
I moved to a condo with a wide window to a bedroom facing east. Works in winter - a royal pain in summer. Add big city noise and the occasional screaming exalted drunk hokey game crowds . Hence blocking curtains. Read my comment further down.
I have thermopumps- so heat is controlled without external communication ( awesome for the smog, and humidity control too. Noise is present because proximity to downtown, big intersection. Despite inert gas sealed double layered, very effective windows. I lived since university just in big cities. I use ersatz sound natures to "regress" into calmer times.
The sun rhythm, is very hard to follow in a noisy north American big city.
I have blocking curtains, so my night variable wake periods 2-3 hours usually between 2-5 AM will not trigger the morning cortisol wake-up routine, and I can now just have a consistent onset ( after 2 hours of winding sown, biofeedback, guided meditation. regardless of my sleep.
I use stage monitor in ear headphones to block sounds and an eye mask ( to mask the seeping light. In the last 25 yrs. ( I am an expert in modifying, depending on brand the left one, where anatomically I have a statistical outlier slightly longer anti helix on the external ear. And use special non allergic, heat conforming inner headphone silicone compound
tips.
Can you share, please , some of your working strategies. For example , I understand that keto worked, but I am blissfully ignorant on how to apply it. Or any ancillaries things. Make an ex non14 substack. !!!
Haha, I have a "how to sleep" post planned but it's going to be a while. I don't think that I have any amazing tricks besides the keto/Non-24 thing. (And there, I didn't "apply" it, 3 days after I began eating ketogenic, I noticed my rhythm suddenly entraining for the first time. It just happened.)
I do use (foam) ear plugs to sleep. I use a sleep mask if there's any light coming into my window at night. I've played around with different pillows, and I seem to sleep the best on very thin pillows but put my arm under it (I sleep mostly on my side).
I've experimented with temperature, but the "colder is better" mantra seems nonsense to me. It can clearly be TOO cold. I don't notice any improvement below 72F or so. Basically, if you're not too hot to sleep, it's fine. I've tried hot baths/showers before sleep, but didn't notice a difference. I enjoy them, though, so I often still do it.
Eating within a few (2-3?) hours before going to bed is suboptimal.
To me, by far the #1 "trick" is "figure out your circadian rhythm and try to sleep at an appropriate time." If you go to bed 6 hours before your circadian rhythm makes you tired, you're just wasting time and won't be able to sleep. Biology is hard to fight.
Earplugs irritate my ear canals ( the porosity is conducive to bacterial/ fungal growth, and from all the materials tried, I found best the musician silicone hear protectors ( Etymotic, etc).
I agree with the to cold mantra. Basically feel comfortable. 73 -74 ( 23 is something I keep during nights ( funny , 76 in winter - seasonal metabolic adaptation in the Great white North noisy cold wet city ?! ) .
After going through all pillows recommended ( CR included), the beast ones are the buckwheat hull filled for me. Very easy to reshape, Main one is a flat cylinder that I can "sculpt " a favourable shape. Another one between or a knee over. A smaller flat one as eventual hand rest. and a smal, undet neck cylindrical one for neck support when I am congested and need my upper airway to be open for a better CPAP flow without increasing Inhale/ Exhale pressure. They are very airy, don't really get old ( I have one that's relegated to the occasional meditation sit ( I prefer laying down). There minimal heat retention and very easy to shape. It was a big game changer .
You’re loss rate should slow as your basal needs drop as you lose weight shouldn’t it? The DST thing is fascinating. Wonder if there’s any studies linked to metabolism changes.
I don't really believe that basal needs drop very much as you lose weight. Thin, healthy people my size easily run 3,500kcal/day, meaning I'm just about right or a bit low even.
That said, I do anticipate the weight loss rate to slow eventually. But it feels a little bit early for that just yet. It definitely shouldn't cut by 2/3 overnight, which is basically what happened.
Yeah, man, run it back. Also, congrats on hitting 36 inches! That's where I was a few months ago, and now I'm down to a size 32. And, comfy. Here's to hoping it goes further for us both.
Thanks, and congrats to you! I originally didn't think I'd ever reach a 32, but now that I'm wearing a 36... it's not that far away, and there's plenty of chub that'll have to go :)
Well that's the tricky thing ;( I don't know if it was the extra meat, or if nothing would've worked in that period because of sleep deprivation (or whatever else confounded the experiment).
Plus, it was ex225 lean, in which I used very lean beef vs. my usual fatty beef - so it was actually about double the amount of protein in that meal, about 60g vs. my usual 30g.
That said, I'll definitely try a higher protein thing again, as that's still my main hypothesis.
About the measuring: I do actually measure the beef quite often. But it is still pretty imprecise, e.g. a major factor is how long the meat's been sitting to dry in the fridge. What's 150g moist out of the package becomes 110g after 3 days of drying out. So adding more precision doesn't necessarily make a difference here, because it would just be evaporated water.
Very odd consistent empirical observation ( I just assume what ex150 vs ex 225 is ( amount of meat measured in ?!?. Per diem ? ) .
Eating some form of fried (?!!) meat ( pork shoulder / neck or beef flank from the local french butcher, qualifies better than chicken breasts in removing my migraines and are generally conducive ( now that I look in retrospect) to a better sleep onset - can't link to sleep maintenance because I am just starting to notice things).
It's also worth noting that the nutritional content probably changes with the seasons, the animal(s) diet and other factors. It wouldn't surprise me if the nutritional labels were 10-20% off.
I think they just say that out of caution. They also tell you to cook all meat fully through, yet people have been eating steak raw for millennia and are still around.
There are very different criteria between US and Canada and Québec and the rest of Canada regarding the animals diet for consumption, different labels. And the nutritional labels are generally not even considering that. When I was doing some grad gig in Pittsburgh I lost weight just because the food was barely edible ( for my baseline) and all chicken and milk tasted very off. Chicken had a weird chlorine taste. That made it inedible for what I was used. And milk undrinkable.
I might not be in the normative average because I am genetically a supertaster. Compunded by living in fairly épicurien spots by hasard in Europe , and Montréal was Anthony Bourdaine's favourite north american city for a reason. So I most definitely skewed.
But chlorine in meat was there ( in big store chicken meats ) -100%.
DST wreaked an initial 6 hours havoc this year and it had a cascading effect . It's one of the increasingly deleterious twice a year events.
That correlated with an increasingly diminished sleep quality that evolved into an excruciating sleep disorder. That feeds back into an eating compensatory mechanism?!
Your weight sudden increase and values are eerily similar to mine.
I had a drop at 238 last year in January when I volunteered to work in the overflowing infectious diseases ward as a Preventative Contamination Agent ( have a clinical background in surgical and public health- but not working in the last 8 years because my spouse got a better stable job, and we made a pow-wow and decided that's more important to have a parent around and available at all times . So the one with the most stressful job ( was me at the time - couldn't just cut the cord and went into a late midlife complex grad research med degree - at least now I am more astute in identifying the plethora of manipulative and "data massage" in papers.
For reference, I am 266 now, dropped 11 pounds after a concussion, that proved to be beneficial indirectly , by getting a vast degree of solace using anti- orexin class of drugs for the sleep disorder . I take them for more than a week and it's , for now, the only thing that mitigates to a significant extent the non-24 working Dx.
In conjunction with a biofeedback sensor ( that improved in a week my breathing meditation winding down for sleep.
Fron healthmath.con.
It's in loan from the psychiatrist. It's not available directly in Canada, but it's a modality that, in the past, due to my skewed skepticism towards non alopatic medicine approaches, I dismissed as " gimmicky ".
Until I read the newer ( meaning last 9 years ) research results .
As an anecdotal empirical note. I dropped 11 pounds ( I convert because the substack is US imperial measurements oriented) last month by not necessarily dieting per se.
It's a combination of increasing thermogenesis ( progressive colder showers ) and affordability of fresh tasty vegetables/ fruits in Montréal's markets.
And deliberately reducing the baguette consumption ( the nearby bakery won a baguette contest in France - Sacre Dieux !! lol) .
Swapped my plain wool blanket with a real " french linen" linen sheet . ( painfully expensive from Baloo Canada ( it's a US based) .
As a note, I let the water evaporate and carry some heat away.
Another fun fact. Cold city water now doesn't feel so cold ( maybe because it's not, it's summer, but I don't have gasp as much when hit with cold water and I don't need to progressively go for it.
Another weird one. I don't need to take my anti-inflammatoires pain medication in fill dose . I oscilate now between 1/4 and 1/2 . Some days I think it's just by fear of not having it returning.
Very interesting. Better sleep fixes so much for me, too. Or should I say, "normal" sleep - I just am not used to having normal sleep after a lifetime of Non-24, ha ;) Congrats on the 11lbs down!
I am becoming more interested in cold thermogenesis stuff too. I'm not sure it helps much with weight loss, although maybe indirectly (lower inflammation, stress).
Please , if you are so kind to share some of the sleep fixes. Weight gain, in my case , can also be correlated with progressive sleep decreasing quality and the transformation into a sleep disorder that saps most consistent behavioural changes I am trying to tweak.
Don't know where but you recommended a buckwheat pillow. I tried one and it's.. weird :) Very malleable yet firm at the same time. I still have to get used to it, but so far I like it, thanks for the recommendation!
Do you have to awaken according to the wall clock? Could you set your schedule such that you sleep and eat according to the sun? That way, when DST starts / ends, you could simply let your body just keep going even though the clock must be adjusted.
That would be the dream, independent of wall clock time :) Unfortunately, I have to go to work and stuff. I could probably pull it off now that the sun rises very early and I wouldn't need an alarm to wake on time.
But at the time, it would've basically meant waking up at 10am, and then I'd be at work maybe 11? That's a bit late :D
Could you finesse your wake up time such that, for part of the year, you have an extra hour of leeway, and, during the other part of the year, you give up that extra hour of leeway?
It'd be tricky. Depending on DST/season/other factors I usually wake up between 9 and 10 in the winter, or between 8 and 9 in the summer. So if DST didn't exist, it would be exactly what you describe, lol!
Maybe if I could super fine tune it:
1. Move into the easternmost part of a timezone to get early sun
2. Have bedroom facing east
But honestly, I haven't tried optimizing to that level. Plenty of other stuff I should probably take care off before that, haha.
I moved to a condo with a wide window to a bedroom facing east. Works in winter - a royal pain in summer. Add big city noise and the occasional screaming exalted drunk hokey game crowds . Hence blocking curtains. Read my comment further down.
Yea loud noise sucks for sleep. Royal pain - because of the heat?
I have thermopumps- so heat is controlled without external communication ( awesome for the smog, and humidity control too. Noise is present because proximity to downtown, big intersection. Despite inert gas sealed double layered, very effective windows. I lived since university just in big cities. I use ersatz sound natures to "regress" into calmer times.
No , I can wake up when I can .
The sun rhythm, is very hard to follow in a noisy north American big city.
I have blocking curtains, so my night variable wake periods 2-3 hours usually between 2-5 AM will not trigger the morning cortisol wake-up routine, and I can now just have a consistent onset ( after 2 hours of winding sown, biofeedback, guided meditation. regardless of my sleep.
I use stage monitor in ear headphones to block sounds and an eye mask ( to mask the seeping light. In the last 25 yrs. ( I am an expert in modifying, depending on brand the left one, where anatomically I have a statistical outlier slightly longer anti helix on the external ear. And use special non allergic, heat conforming inner headphone silicone compound
tips.
Can you share, please , some of your working strategies. For example , I understand that keto worked, but I am blissfully ignorant on how to apply it. Or any ancillaries things. Make an ex non14 substack. !!!
ex non 24 deprived I mean .
Haha, I have a "how to sleep" post planned but it's going to be a while. I don't think that I have any amazing tricks besides the keto/Non-24 thing. (And there, I didn't "apply" it, 3 days after I began eating ketogenic, I noticed my rhythm suddenly entraining for the first time. It just happened.)
I do use (foam) ear plugs to sleep. I use a sleep mask if there's any light coming into my window at night. I've played around with different pillows, and I seem to sleep the best on very thin pillows but put my arm under it (I sleep mostly on my side).
I've experimented with temperature, but the "colder is better" mantra seems nonsense to me. It can clearly be TOO cold. I don't notice any improvement below 72F or so. Basically, if you're not too hot to sleep, it's fine. I've tried hot baths/showers before sleep, but didn't notice a difference. I enjoy them, though, so I often still do it.
Eating within a few (2-3?) hours before going to bed is suboptimal.
To me, by far the #1 "trick" is "figure out your circadian rhythm and try to sleep at an appropriate time." If you go to bed 6 hours before your circadian rhythm makes you tired, you're just wasting time and won't be able to sleep. Biology is hard to fight.
Earplugs irritate my ear canals ( the porosity is conducive to bacterial/ fungal growth, and from all the materials tried, I found best the musician silicone hear protectors ( Etymotic, etc).
I agree with the to cold mantra. Basically feel comfortable. 73 -74 ( 23 is something I keep during nights ( funny , 76 in winter - seasonal metabolic adaptation in the Great white North noisy cold wet city ?! ) .
After going through all pillows recommended ( CR included), the beast ones are the buckwheat hull filled for me. Very easy to reshape, Main one is a flat cylinder that I can "sculpt " a favourable shape. Another one between or a knee over. A smaller flat one as eventual hand rest. and a smal, undet neck cylindrical one for neck support when I am congested and need my upper airway to be open for a better CPAP flow without increasing Inhale/ Exhale pressure. They are very airy, don't really get old ( I have one that's relegated to the occasional meditation sit ( I prefer laying down). There minimal heat retention and very easy to shape. It was a big game changer .
I'll have to try those pillows.
You're going to be surprised. I was very ( being very skeptic about that).
You’re loss rate should slow as your basal needs drop as you lose weight shouldn’t it? The DST thing is fascinating. Wonder if there’s any studies linked to metabolism changes.
I don't really believe that basal needs drop very much as you lose weight. Thin, healthy people my size easily run 3,500kcal/day, meaning I'm just about right or a bit low even.
That said, I do anticipate the weight loss rate to slow eventually. But it feels a little bit early for that just yet. It definitely shouldn't cut by 2/3 overnight, which is basically what happened.
Yeah, man, run it back. Also, congrats on hitting 36 inches! That's where I was a few months ago, and now I'm down to a size 32. And, comfy. Here's to hoping it goes further for us both.
Thanks, and congrats to you! I originally didn't think I'd ever reach a 32, but now that I'm wearing a 36... it's not that far away, and there's plenty of chub that'll have to go :)
What bothers me is the small gap between ex150 and ex225.
That's but a small chunk of meat, yet at 225 it completely hosed everything.
And you still don't really measure, just approximately divvy up the meat.
Well that's the tricky thing ;( I don't know if it was the extra meat, or if nothing would've worked in that period because of sleep deprivation (or whatever else confounded the experiment).
Plus, it was ex225 lean, in which I used very lean beef vs. my usual fatty beef - so it was actually about double the amount of protein in that meal, about 60g vs. my usual 30g.
That said, I'll definitely try a higher protein thing again, as that's still my main hypothesis.
About the measuring: I do actually measure the beef quite often. But it is still pretty imprecise, e.g. a major factor is how long the meat's been sitting to dry in the fridge. What's 150g moist out of the package becomes 110g after 3 days of drying out. So adding more precision doesn't necessarily make a difference here, because it would just be evaporated water.
Very odd consistent empirical observation ( I just assume what ex150 vs ex 225 is ( amount of meat measured in ?!?. Per diem ? ) .
Eating some form of fried (?!!) meat ( pork shoulder / neck or beef flank from the local french butcher, qualifies better than chicken breasts in removing my migraines and are generally conducive ( now that I look in retrospect) to a better sleep onset - can't link to sleep maintenance because I am just starting to notice things).
Yea it's 150g vs. 225g of beef. But the 225g was very lean beef (94/6 IIRC) versus the 80/20 ground chuck beef I usually buy. So double the protein.
It's also worth noting that the nutritional content probably changes with the seasons, the animal(s) diet and other factors. It wouldn't surprise me if the nutritional labels were 10-20% off.
That could be, I hadn't even considered that.
Don't want to be a condescending know-all, but: ground beef does not really keep for three days in the fridge.
When I buy some I portion out 150g bags and put them in the freezer. This aditionally helps against the temptation to take a bit more...
I've been doing it for the entire time, so I'm pretty sure it does keep ;)
I'm really wondering why that is. Used to be that you were supposed to consume it the day it was ground. What are they doing to the meat?
I think they just say that out of caution. They also tell you to cook all meat fully through, yet people have been eating steak raw for millennia and are still around.
There are very different criteria between US and Canada and Québec and the rest of Canada regarding the animals diet for consumption, different labels. And the nutritional labels are generally not even considering that. When I was doing some grad gig in Pittsburgh I lost weight just because the food was barely edible ( for my baseline) and all chicken and milk tasted very off. Chicken had a weird chlorine taste. That made it inedible for what I was used. And milk undrinkable.
I might not be in the normative average because I am genetically a supertaster. Compunded by living in fairly épicurien spots by hasard in Europe , and Montréal was Anthony Bourdaine's favourite north american city for a reason. So I most definitely skewed.
But chlorine in meat was there ( in big store chicken meats ) -100%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster