At the beginning of the month I did a week long “water” fast meant to potentially reduce my life-long cancer risk. The methodology I was trying for was described in this kick-off post . With now two weeks of data for the period afterward I can fully document how successfully the fast went and what the effects were on my immediately measurable and tracked biomarkers. What is impossible to do is determine if this is actually doing anything to reduce my cancer risk. That’s something that will at best be determined over time. It’s anti-climactic I know. The “results” question for me in the immediate term is if I’ve crafted a fasting protocol that works for me with minimal side effects.

The usual disclaimer applies: I am not a doctor, trainer, dietitian, nutritionist, or any other expert in any related field. I’m talking about my amateur and anecdotal experiences here and none of this should replace expert medical advice.

It’s about time for me to ramp up my second week long fasts. I developed this for my own needs and did the first try of it back in July, as documented here . For this second round I’m going to be tweaking some things based on lessons learned from my first attempt. Below I’ll outline everything again and the changes I’m making to it.

The usual disclaimer applies: I am not a doctor, trainer, dietitian, nutritionist, or any other expert in any related field. I’m talking about my amateur and anecdotal experiences here and none of this should replace expert medical advice.

Year after year my annual review starts with a lament about wanting to do better, a candid review of actual metrics, and then some plan for moving forward. This year is similar but also different. I still wish I did better but this is the first year that I had a serious, long term fitness reboot since I started this annual tradition. So no, it wasn’t perfect. It started off pretty poorly actually, but with the longest period of having stuff dialed in and a stronger finish than I’ve had before I am excited for what is to come.

I’ve been on the fediverse since creating my first Diaspora account in 2018. I’ve maintained my own presence here since establishing my own Friendica server in late-2021/early-2022. While it definitely has its ups and downs by far one of the biggest things to watch out for is the ever increasing size of the local storage for these servers. It’s not just about content generated by the local users but also content comming from across the fediverse that those users interact with. This post tries to capture some of the commands I use to get a picture of what is going on on my server.

I started with making sourdough bread back in 2010 when a neighbor gave me some of his starter. I’ve kept that going ever since, with him having kept it going since the mid-1970s. During the COVID lockdown when the sourdough bread making thing was taking off people kept asking me how to start one. The thing is, I never started one from scratch. I decided to do it, document it, and post about it on my blog to help people. As I see now I did the first two parts but never actually documented it here. This post remedies that, albeit almost four years later. Below you will see the source of the program I used, the overall theme of it, how the process unfolded for me, and my first bake with it.

Phase 9 of this year’s Goal Accountability is now in the books as well. The novelty of keeping the exercise being dialed in is now gone. I’ve manaed to keep that dialed in for another four weeks straight. There was some falting, both planned and unplanned, in the other metrics though.

A third full Goal Accountibility Phase since my reboot is now in the books. I’ve continued to build on my previous three periods of momentum even as I have had more perturbations to my schedule. I’m thinking of making big plans beyond the baselines here, specifically with respect to my cardiovascular training. However I don’t want to self sabotage by having those loftier goals cause me to stumble and bring the whole house of cards down.

With enough time to capture a couple of weeks of data after the fast, it is now possible to take a look at what the results were from the fast as well as to discuss how I felt about it overall and potential tweaks for the future. This is the final post in this series for my first go of this fast. The usual disclaimer applies though. I am not a doctor, trainer, dietitian, nutritionist, or any other expert in any related field. I’m talking about my amateur and anecdotal experiences here and none of this should replace expert medical advice.

You can find the other posts at:

• Recipe for the transition in/out day soup
• Description of the My Longo Inspired Cancer Avoidance Fasting protocol
• Fasting Day 1 Journal
• Fasting Day 2 Journal
• Fasting Day 3 Journal
• Fasting Day 4 Journal
• Fasting Day 5 Journal

I’m finally getting around to writing about the end of my fast. First up is the highly nutritious, low sodium, 100% plant based soup that I ate throughout the day on the two transition days:

I’ve now completed two full Goal Accountability phases after my health reboot in springtime. I had enough confidence in my ability to maintain momentum even with more challenging requirements for each of my metrics. I definitely maintained my momentum but there were more stumbles than before as a consequence of that. Even with those stumbles my grades for the past four week phase were pretty solid.