A week off due to illness, but now firmly back on track

After my flu bug and mysterious fainting spells were resolved, I’ve been gradually recovering. That meant not only letting my flu bug run it’s course but nore importantly, giving my blood pressure a chance to adapt to the lower dose of my main BP medication. As I previously reported, the ‘mysterious’ fainting was actually a sign of success – my body had simply outgrown the old dosage.

As a result, I decided against fasting, as I wanted to track my BP, and fasting is one of the things that can affect your readings. And of course I didn’t risk any exercise given the risk of fainting!

So it was a frustrating week, only made marginally more bearable by the fact that I was at least able to take some time off work as well. I’m not one who easily gets bored sitting around – I watched lots of movies, and some TV – including the new Marvel Wonder Man TV show, which was excellent! And got some of the lower effort chores around the house done as well.

I did have a weigh-in earlier in the week in which I’d put on 1.5lbs, although I haven’t really counted it due to the illness. No great surprise that a few days without fasting or exercise would see an increase in weight, but given that I’ve pretty much stuck to my eating plan, the damage was negligible.

Anyway, yesterday I did my first 36hr fast since falling ill, and today I weighed in again. The results demonstrate that I’m back on track with a bang! Not only did I lose the 1.5lbs I put on, but I lost an additional 1 lb to take my total weight loss now to 19.3lbs.

Barring any further unexpected illness or other disasters, I’ll break through the 17-stone barrier this week and should have exceeded 20lbs lost since December, which is a huge milestone.

While I’m tracking my weight loss from my reboot in December, one figure that I track all the way back to my starting weight at my original diagnosis of type 2 diabetes is the % of my body weight that I have lost. This is a key milestone by which Diabetic medical professionals track progress. And as of this week, I have now lost 10.13% of my starting body weight, which was an embarrassing 18 St 13.5 lbs (265.5 lbs / 120.7kg).

However you look at it, it’s a great achievement – and one that, as I’ve mentioned, has already made a real difference to my health. I’ve been able to reduce my main hypertension medication by 50%, the first step in many towards me getting back to being “medication-free”. I simply refuse to be tied down to medication whose sole purpose is to counteract my own bad lifestyle choices!

This weekend I’ll get back to some exercise, maybe starting with a run, and then a swim.

I am going to take it a little easier on fasting this week, targeting just 2 * 36hr fasts rather than the 3 * 36hr fasts I did before I got ill. Perhaps that was just a little too much too soon. But I will also be checking my blood pressure and how I feel, and may revise that if I’m feeling up to fasting longer.

Despite that week’s layoff and the 1.5lbs I put on briefly as a result, my average weight loss is still at 2.8lbs per week. That’s well over my 2.56lbs per week target. But that said, I’d like to try and get a couple of weeks in where I top 3lbs per week just to give me a bit more of a buffer. Every week that I exceed 2.56lbs lost adds to my safety net. I’ve already had 5 weeks where I blew way past 2.56lbs and reached 3 or even 4lbs lost in a week so no reason I can’t repeat that success.

More updates soon!