Dieting is personal

Friday 6 December 2024 at 10:30 CET

Yesterday, I did something I’ve been trying to do all year.

I didn’t eat.

I’m writing this for two reasons:

1. to remind myself how my body works, and
2. to encourage you to think about how yours does.

Fasting, and its effects upon my body

Whenever I fast for a day, I feel great.

It’s not a true fast. I drink water, tea and coffee (with no milk, sugar, or whatnot). That’s what works for me.

By drinking tea, I can generally offset the feeling of hunger when it shows up. It comes in waves; there’ll be periods of hours where I don’t notice it, and then it hits like a hammer. It takes a lot of willpower for me to overcome the feeling and ignore it until it goes away.

In the past, it’s been relatively easy, especially if I’m on a roll. There have been periods on my life where I endeavoured to fast one day per week. This year, I’ve really struggled to do this. I can generally manage it until the evening, at which point, I give up. It’s not even that the feeling is so terrible; I just don’t have the mental fortitude to manage anything of the sort by the evening.

Yesterday, I did it. And I’m very proud of myself.

The daily cycle

I don’t typically eat breakfast. I’m not a breakfast person.

There’s no moral standing here. I’m just not hungry in the morning. As I write this, I haven’t eaten for about 36 hours, and I’m still not hungry. I fast intermittently by default.

By midday, I’m typically feeling it. I want some food. I love my lunch. IMO, there’s few greater pleasures than the first meal of the day.

By the evening, I am a dustbin. A trash can, if you prefer. I will eat everything in my sight, and I will not stop until I go to bed.

I’m alright with this. It’s what my body needs. I feel fitter when I eat when I’m hungry, and don’t when I’m not. I can run faster and further in the morning if I eat a bowl of chips (fries) before sleeping. This is not normal. It’s probably not good advice for you, but it works for me.

I write this because I need a reminder sometimes that I’m weird and that it’s OK, and also because maybe you’re weird too, and traditional diet advice doesn’t serve you. Perhaps you need someone to tell you that it’s OK to be different, and that no one knows how your body works. They barely know how anybody’s body works; just some “average” person.

The “average” person

The “average” person doesn’t exist.

The daily cycle I outline above is fairly normal for some subset of people with male anatomy. Others might find they have the opposite needs. Whatever, you are you.

And for about half the human population (people with typical “female” anatomy, who have a menstrual cycle), the daily cycle seems to be nowhere near as important as the monthly cycle. In particular, intermittent fasting is often a terrible idea for anyone whose monthly cycle beats their daily one.

Of course, the “average” human is not a woman, it’s a cis man, because no one studies women or non-binary people. They study cis, white, European, healty, abled men. Which means that when you read diet advice, even scientifically-backed diet advice, there’s about a 90% chance that the study included only people who are nothing like you.

So ignore it, and experiment on yourself.