Getting old and gaining/losing weight

 "Fate leads the willing and drags along the reluctant." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

 Below:  None of these guys is me.

I'm no longer a young fella - over 60 and well past my prime.  I don't get as much exercise as I ought to.  Additionally, like many others, I don't eat as healthy as I should.  There is a tendency I have to quit worrying about health and weight.  Then, then when the big clothes start getting too tight, I freak out and over-react, going overboard with restrictive diet and exercise.  Like Oprah Winfrey, I've probably lost my own body-weight several times over.  Unlike her, I've not completely surrendered to self-indulgence or had intervention surgeries.  That shit is the biggest cop-out since they invented suicide.

I like a ketogenic diet to get the body fat off, but over the years that has become less effective.  That's either because the body has learned my tricks and no longer feels obliged to respond to reduced carbohydrates, or because the fast metabolism to fry off that fat isn't what it once was.  Probably a combination of the two factors. 

A few months ago I was convinced by a friend to take up intermittent fasting.  Intermittent fasting works, and it works pretty well.  I've managed, without a ton of additional effort, to drop 20lbs (~10kg).  That's about halfway to where I'd like to be, and in spite of not being terribly strict about what I've been eating.  I've either used an eating window of about 6 hours per day, or simply eaten a single meal per day.

In addition to intermittent fasting, I've been trying to stick to mostly ketogenic foods, although that is not really necessary when you do intermittent fasting.  Ketogenic foods seem to help though - high fat, high protien, low carbs, and do a bit of modest exercise when possible.  I've also cheated at times - eating fair food, ice cream, cookies, and other processed garbage.  Those have stalled weight loss progress, but fortunately I was able to get back on track before those foods caused weight gain.

There is a great article on the advantages of intermittent fasting here.  Like keto, the routine nose-dives your insulin levels, which causes the liver to burn fat in order to bring your blood sugar levels back up to normal.  The down-side is that you are frequently hungry.  The up-side is that every day there is an end in sight to your hunger.  I suspect it also shrinks your stomach, which means you feel full more quickly when you do eat.

 The guy in the video below explains many benefits of intermittent fasting.

 

Two things you should not indulge in while trying to lose weight - or really anytime - is sugar (fructose) and alcohol.  Here's why:

• Both fructose and alcohol are toxic, and toxins have to be removed from the bloodstream by the liver.  Because these substances are toxins, the liver prioritizes their removal over *everything* else.  While your liver is tied up removing toxins, it interrupts the process of dissolving body fat.
  
• Both substances are carbohydrates.  If you desire to be in a ketogenic condition, they will knock you out of it, and cause you to stop burning fat until a couple of days have passed while the carbs are burned off.  So you won't be burning off body fat then either.
  
• Both dump empty calories into your metabolism - calories that you have to metabolize, but that don't provide any nutritional value.  Dumping these non-nutritious calories into your body is at odds with weight loss.  Calories should come from nutritious foods - vegetables, meat or dairy.  

Exercise is good too, if you have the time and energy for it!  Very highly recommended! 

Lastly, a bit of humor from a science perspective :)