Hunger games

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

A couple of things regarding diet this week. I mentioned that I was doing Fast Thursdays beginning the Thursday after Thanksgiving. In other words, I’m not eating from breakfast Thursday until breakfast Friday. I do drink fluids. I didn’t do it for any particular reason; I just wanted to see what would happen. Anyway, I’ve had a few people ask me about it, so let me tell you what I’ve figured out so far. Some of this stuff is only tangentially related, but it’s still food for thought.

No significant weight difference. A significant difference in my appreciation and sensual relationship to food on Friday—the smells and flavors and “gratitude,” for lack of a better word.

As long as I don’t work out on Thursdays, I don’t see much difference in my body, metabolically speaking. I can tell this because on a regular day, I burn 640 calories in 45 minutes on the elliptical trainer. On Friday, if I work out on Thursday, I burn about 590.

I’m not drinking alcohol through the semester, but I did notice that if I didn’t eat a huge lunch on Friday, I would get drunker, faster on Friday evenings. Not that I let that intimidate me.

Drinking coffee: I had no idea I was lactose intolerant until I had a decaf breve mocha on Fast Thursday: I felt as pneumatic as Violet Beauregarde from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. That inspired me to try a decaf soy mocha. Guess what? Soy beans are beans.

When I had my annual blood test two weeks ago, my fasting blood sugar has returned to what it was 15 years ago. No diabetes drugs in months, and I was running 92. I have no idea if this is directly related to the fasting, but I think maybe the act of fasting has made my body more able to cope with going without food.

Yes, I get a little crabby toward bedtime Thursday night, and fasting does affect my sleep—all night long, I dream about chicken wings.