Yesterday I hit a new low of 292.6. I am so close to leaving the 290s and entering the 280s. This recent milestone was very hard won. Just as I was feeling my absolute best in body and optimism I hurt my lower back lifting. I’ve had pains and aches before in this process, but nothing before this point interfered with what little basic life capacity I had gained so much. In those moments I felt like I was just as limited as I was at my highest weight. The stiffness and soreness of the lower back caused me more than just hurt, but also absolute despair. I wasn’t at all confident I would recover. I endured a week of pure panic as I worried that I had doomed myself.

The pain itself made any kind of restraint I had when it comes to eating habits completely dissolve. Being in a state where every movement was painful and constrained terrified me on top of the shame of feeling completely out of control. In hindsight, I had so much less to fear than I thought. It was certainly scary to see the scale rise all the way up to 320 after reaching the mid 290s, but I massively underestimated how quickly I could get back on track. After a very difficult week I started to feel well enough that I began to feel in control again. I learned so much about myself throughout this.

Above all, I am very grateful for every small piece of patience I have built up throughout this process. It would seem that giving myself flexibility in the past helped allow me to better recognize the impermanence of bad food choices. In the past I would have been much harder on myself for getting off track at all. What made this different is that I was thankfully able to suspend judgement of myself for bad choices made in extreme conditions. Looking back I can definitely see how much of a real difference that made in helping me recover as I regained control.

Betting everything on a good night’s sleep

During this ordeal, I came across a quite fitting quote: You can have 1000 problems in your life until you have a health problem. Then you only have one. It was equal parts frustrating and terrifying to experience my capacity shrink in such a sudden and extreme way. To compound the misery I developed a cold on top of the back pain which felt like a whole new level of difficulties. In a ironic sense, this was actually an excellent opportunity. I decided that since I was already feeling terrible and miserable that the huge amounts of caffeine I was back to having were not actually able to help me at all. So I chose to take advantage of this already challenging time to quit caffeine ‘cold-turkey’ yet again.

This time around, I actually learned something new about myself: all these years, I have actually just been masking sleep deprivation with caffeine. I vastly underestimated the benefits of sleep during ideal circadian timing. Since I was still able to walk, one of the first things I worked to rebuild as I began to feel better was getting my daily step counts back to over 15K. What I noticed is that the high daily activity and no longer having caffeine in my system made sleeping at proper times much more accessible, even if it is still a daily struggle. Having only improved my sleep moderately for a short period of time, I can say the advantages in terms of alertness and focus are un-paralleled.

Moving forward, I am going to continue to spend effort prioritizing proper sleep. I am hoping it will nicely compliment my ambition to stay highly active, and I think it will be required to continue to make radical progress. The hardest part about it really is having to go without many personal tasks that I would like to accomplish day-to-day. At least for now, I see this as me investing in future capacity and that I just need to be patient with myself as the rewards come in.

Volunteering at a power-lifting meet

As I was beginning to feel better, I had the excellent opportunity to volunteer at a power-lifting meet. To me, it really meant a great deal to be able to be there for the many people from my gym who have been cheering me on in my process. I’m fairly used to seeing people lift heavy weights, but seeing people I knew make world records in their weight class was quite the eye-opener. It was quite a lot of fun to witness and a joy to be a part of. In the short term I’m very hesitant to put a lot of weight on my back, but I can certainly see myself working on my bench press to eventually participate. I can definitely say being more engaged with the community around my gym goes a long way to expand my horizons in helpful ways.

Reflections on nervous system regulation

I’ve said before that dieting is just a collection of skills, this recent ordeal has emphasized to me the principal importance of stress management. I am beginning to recognize that the root of my emotional eating patterns is a more broader response to soothing myself with food for a much wider variety of stressors. In reflecting on this I now believe that becoming familiar with a variety of activities is not just useful for neuroplasticity but also to not confine oneself to a single method of soothing. Of course, this area seems to be where prevention is worth a pound of cure. So it is worth doing what can be done to manage internal and external sources of stress.

Unfortunately, it seems to be quite difficult to turn away from well-reinforced methods of soothing and adopt new ones. I’m beginning to recognize how important it is to proactively develop a wider variety of tools for bringing comfort. What seems to help is to embrace a combination of active and passive strategies to account for time and energy limitations. This helps me realize what makes doom-scrolling such a difficult trap, it’s the worst of both passive and active engagement. You’re engaged enough to be drained, but it’s too passive to feel accomplished at all.

Active soothing

• Exercise & movement
• Creative pursuits (Writing, programming, arts)
• Reading
• Puzzles
• Competitive gaming
• Cleaning, collecting, and organization
• Prayer & breath-work

Passive soothing

• Sleep/naps
• Low-stakes gaming
• Podcasts, Music, shows & movies
• Connection with others

I’d love to hear what really helps keep you fresh!