• i invited my sister over for dinner last night and she asked me why i felt motivated to accomplish my fitness goals for the year. why exactly did i want to do a handstand / climb better / learn planche / etc? she said that she had never felt a desire for those kinds of achievements so she was curious. i told her that for me, it feels like a video game and that’s pretty much it. i don’t believe that being able to do a 30 second handstand or climb hard routes will unlock some stratum of well-being that is currently unavailable now — these just seem like fun goals that seem difficult to achieve and that’s pretty much it. basically, i recognize that they’re completely meaningless in any real sense but i choose to pursue them and breathe meaning into them because that is the fun of life
• i showed her a video of me working on my front lever and she said “wait this is you?” and my latest progress photo (in the most flattering light possible) and she responded “dayum fool u look like a marvel character”. i gotta say, the cut has been pretty effective and i’ll sometimes look in the mirror and be surprised that my body looks like this now
• i’ve been moving a lot more recently thanks to the gamification on my apple watch, which means that i’m back at a calorie deficit (i was previously eating at 500 calorie deficit before all my injuries but started eating at maintenance to help my body recover). this deficit has led to...
• BINGING. this is the topic i want to talk about in this post because my calorie restriction is significantly affecting my relationship with food. last night, i woke up in the middle of the night (yup, still having sleep issues), and for the first time, i broke my intermittent fasting and binged on a ton of food (overnight oats that i had intended for the following day, ice cream that my sister had brought, leftovers from the dinner i cooked for her). i didn’t experience much shame or guilt — just the recognition that i’d have to cut back my calories for the rest of the day to compensate. after going back to sleep and waking up, i was successful at doing that and managed to get a pretty light dinner when eating out socially so that i’d only be at a fairly minor calorie surplus for the day. but on my way back home, i craved something sweet so i ended up getting a protein bar from target. the sweetness from that triggered more urges, so even though i was full, i ended up indulging in an absolutely massive binge session where i consumed about 2000 additional calories in a single sitting on top of the day’s meals
• out of all the binges that have occurred so far, this one definitely triggered the strongest feelings of regret. unlike the last big feast from the vegan night market i had where i planned it out in advance with the intention to fast the next day, this one felt much more impulsive and even while eating, i noticed that i felt out of control. my rational mind knew that this wouldn’t benefit me and even saw that it wasn’t particularly enjoyable after the first few bites, but i just kept on eating until i was done even though i knew it was better to stop (my aversion to throwing away food definitely didn’t help here). afterwards, i thought about whether i should fast the next day but given the impulsive nature of the binge session, it felt like a punitive measure which i didn’t like.
• so let’s step back a bit. when cutting, cravings are a known phenomenon because your body thinks that there’s a scarcity of food. cheat meals are a common way to deal with this where you schedule in meals/days to consume more in order to provide some relief both psychologically and physiologically. a common problem associated with cheat meals is that people go overboard and have it snowball into a massive binge session where they counteract a week’s worth of progress. this is what i’ve been doing: having unplanned cheat meals that balloon way out of proportion
• while reading about this online, i came across a comment on reddit that recommended a book called brain over binge. the author goes into her journey with bulimia and her recovery, and i thought it could be interesting and useful given that i can see how my feast/famine cycles (binge/restrict cycles) are starting to become a pattern and while they were fun the first few times, i’d rather do without them if i could.
• i listened to most of the book while walking on the treadmill, and boy, is it good. i think i’ll have a separate post that maybe is just notes about the book (teaser: it all comes back to the power of mindfulness), but one of the core ideas is that when you diet, you cause your body to have these cravings (because of the food scarcity), and when you binge, you provide relief. as you repeat this process, your body develops a habit of sending these signals to binge even when it no longer becomes necessary, which can quickly lead to an eating disorder if you indulge and try to compensate for it by either purging or compensating in other ways (e.g. doing cardio for hours).
• reflection time: left unchecked, my current trajectory could easily turn into an eating disorder if the binge/restrict behavior becomes a regular habit. while getting to 10% body fat is a fun goal, i’m not interested in sacrificing my health to get there because i’m in this for the long haul (i.e. i want to design my lifestyle so that i look and feel great at age 50, not optimize for looking amazing now but disregarding the long-term effects).
• plan right now: continue with the slight calorie deficit for now, but if impulsive binging happens again, just stop the cut because it’s not worth it

<aside> 👋🏼 You're reading Road to Ramen, my public journal where I think aloud and share everything I learn in exploring the question: Can I make a living building things I love?

by DK the Human (@dk_the_human)

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