My name is Charles.
Like many of you, I’m overweight. Maybe not as much as some, but enough that I’m uncomfortable with my weight and need to make a change.
Enough has been said about the self-esteem issues of being overweight, and the motivations that you and I (and millions of others) out there all share. Let’s just say that for all the reasons out there, I’m doing something different, and I’m documenting my experience for anyone who may stumble upon it.
So whatever your motivation is for visiting here, thanks for stopping by!
What This Site is All About
This site begins with a personal challenge that I gave myself to improve my health.
It is also a total project site, my first WordPress site actually! I’m taking a WordPress course on Udemy. So yeah, I’m doing a lot of little things on here to experiment and test stuff out as a I learn.
But I digress!
Improve My Health
How pathetically generic and boring is that for a challenge?
I agree. So I took that as a foundation and spiced it up a bit.
But first, let me explain a bit about me to help lend some context.
Who Am I
I am a pretty common guy in most ways, but one thing that sets me apart from most others is my work schedule. I work 12-18 hours a day 7 days a week, usually for 3-4 months at a time in remote areas without access to a lot of the niceties of home.
The tradeoff is that after each work cycle, I usually have 60-70 days completely free from work or any real obligations (I’m happily single).
At least that’s how my schedule is supposed to go.
Instead, for all of 2018 and early 2019, I worked non-stop 12-18 hours without a single day off. I was burned-out. Without the time/energy/motivation to workout at all, I’d packed on 50 lbs, and my energy levels, self-esteem, and health had suffered accordingly.
Knowing that I had an extended vacation coming up and with a ton of other goals I needed to catch-up on (sleep, reading, learning WordPress, etc), and wanting to lose as much weight as I could as quickly as possible before returning to work, I booked an Airbnb in a high-rise in Thailand for 30 days.
“WTF, Charles? Thailand?”
I know, I know! It’s complicated and has to do with U.S. tax-laws on money earned overseas. Look up the Foreign Earned Income tax exclusion here if you’re really curious.
Back to my story:
So the idea is to lock myself up some place where I won’t be distracted by nay-sayers and haters (or friendly co-workers who keep giving me food), where I have access to a gym, and where I can work on my other goals as well undisturbed for a month straight.
What Would you Accomplish with 30 Days to Yourself?
You could:
- Get in shape
- Learn that language
- #LearnToCode (lol, sorry everyone, couldn’t resist)
- Write that book you’ve been talking about
- Sleep for 24 hours straight (It’s great every once in awhile!)
- Binge every episode of Game of Thrones and Futurama multiple times
- Learn 24 new skills (following the 20 hour rule)
- This list could go on…
- …and on
What’s My Strategy?
Years ago, I watched Joe Cross’ video, Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead about juicing. It blew me away what he was able to accomplish with what was essentially an extended fast with some juice thrown in.
I still like to juice, btw.
But there’ll be no preaching here about all that hippy nonsense about my body “detoxing” and everything else you usually hear. I just genuinely love fresh juice, and I love how it makes me feel.
Juicing full-time can be expensive. And messy. And complicated. None of these are things I wanted to deal with during my break. Good thing I’d discovered something else!
Water Fasting
What is a water-fast? Put simply, you drink water and you don’t eat.
Sound too simple? Not too worry, just get on YouTube and you’ll find a thousand examples of it being made much more complicated than it needs to be.
To expand a bit on “simply”, most all of us have a pretty decent supply of fat that we’re hauling around. In my case, I’ve got the equivalent of an extra 4th grader stuck to my frame.
When you are fasting, you’re drinking the water that is critical to survival, but by not eating, you’re giving your body a chance (compelling it, actually) to burn existing fat instead of the food it would normally digest for energy.
YouTube is Confusing!
Yeah, there’s a lot of nonsense out there. Lots of hippies talking about detox, mystical energies, primal suppression, bah.
Here’s a couple of actually useful sources on YouTube:
- Uber-Bro-Nerd Thomas DeLauer explains the process of autophagy (how your body self-cleanses old cells) is enhanced during fasting in his video here.
- Ordinary chick turned will-power fanatic Mariah Vitoria went 54 days on a water fast. Here’s a bonus video of the moment she eats her first solid bite in almost 2 months. It’s bacon! This girl is gnarly.
To Wrap This Up
My name is Charles. On 27 March 2019, I’m starting a water-fast.
It’s not going to be as entertaining as season 8 of Game of Thrones, but it will be 100x more meaningful to me.