The longer I do this, the harder it is to find any type of eating or non-eating low-calorie concept that I feel motivated to experiment with.

However, somehow, I always seem to find some type of diet or non-diet that gets my interest long enough for me to try it out.

Of course, I continue to consistently record all of my food intake every day in a computer food journal.  I have now done this every day for 11 years, and this is my most valuable dieting tool.

This past couple of months I've been experimenting with intermittent fasting again. 

I started by personalizing a 24 hr alternate day fast, similar to Eat Stop Eat, but designed for my own personal preferences.  I followed that for about 3 weeks, then I did one 36 hr fast, from dinner one day, skipped all food one day, ate breakfast the following day.  That seemed to work well for me, and the following week I did a 72 hr fast, where for 3 days I had water only with up to one cup of bouillon per day.  I had hoped to have a 5 to 7 day fast, but my body decided otherwise.  Day 1 was as I expected, Day 2 was far easier than I expected and on Day 3 I felt quite weak and nauseated. I woke up on Day 4 feeling ill, and ended the fast.

Although, I do like the concept of Fasting and want to run some more experiments, for a few weeks after the 72 hr fast, I was simply unwilling to fast any more, and followed my "normal" eating plan of trying to eat an average of under 1000 calories per day - eating whatever, whenever.

On Monday, Sept 14, I began another water fast, aiming for the goal of 7 days, with the understanding that I would stop when, and if, my body gave me the symptoms it did during the 3 day fast.  My fast went as expected, and this time the symptoms didn't show up until the evening of the 6th day.  My night was uncomfortable and I ended my fast at breakfast time the following day. Sunday, Sept 20. 

Today is the morning of the 3rd post-fast day.  The 1st day I broke my fast with a 6 oz can of tomato juice, then an hour or so later, 1/4 of an avocado. Several hours later my lunch was a saucer plate containing 1 1/2 oz roasted chicken, 1/2 cup green beans, and 1/4 of an avocado. Several hours later I ate 1/2 raw apple with 1 oz cheddar cheese.  I finished up the day with another 6 oz tomato juice. About a 1/2 hr after first taking food, my nausea receded and stomach cramps lessened, but all day I felt weak, tired, and crampy. I felt better the 2nd day, yesterday, but still very weak. This morning, the 3rd day, I feel normal.

Over my lifetime I've set a great many goals,
and I reached the majority of them.
This taught me that while a Plan will help direct my path,
 the Reality of my journey will always be very different from my Plan.
Life just tends to always work that way. 

At this moment I feel like I’ve arrived at the end of the line. 

As a 5’0” tall, “reduced obese” sedentary 70 year old female, my weight continues to creep upward, no matter what macronutrients I eat or don’t eat; no matter how small I keep my portions; or how hard I work to keep my calories low.

This last calendar year I continued with my best efforts at recording every bite taken in a computer food journal, every single day.  Sometimes I ate large amounts of food, and sometimes I ate tiny amounts of food.  Sometimes I ate a “balanced diet” and sometimes I ate “low-carb; sometimes I ate “high-fat, moderate protein, low-carb”;  sometimes I worked to keep my calories around 1000 calories per day; sometimes I worked to have only two 5-bite meals of whatever.  My computer eating records show that my overall 365 day calorie average was about 780 calories per day.  That number was the total of all my big eating days combined with my small eating days, divided by 365 days. 

At this point in my life, I am elderly, and although I am in excellent health overall, I have developed a problem with my right hip which restricts my activities, and I lack the ability to do physical “exercise” except for brief periods of slow walking.  However, over the past ten years I’ve run many extensive personal experiments on how various exercise affects my own bodyweight, and the results have proven to me that however much or however little I exercise has almost no effect.  Apparently my metabolism adjusts down to keep me from dropping weight during periods when I engage in heavy exercise… however it does NOT adjust up to keep me from gaining weight when my food intake goes up whether with or without exercise.

During most of this past year, I’ve weighed in my mid-130s - which gives me a BMI in the “overweight” range.  During the past 9 years I’ve worked and worked on maintaining my large weight-loss, and tried to drop as low as possible inside the “normal” BMI range.  The middle of a “normal” BMI range is, for me, 115 pounds.  I struggled to drop and stay below that number for the first couple of my maintenance years, without success, then … while continuing consistently with my ongoing struggle at a food intake averaging around 1050 calories daily … my weight began climbing.  Instead of bouncing within a 5 pound range between 110 and 115, it bounced between 115 and 120.   Then despite a few more years of working hard to drop back to those lower numbers, my weight climbed to bounce between 120 and 125; then over more time, while eating even fewer calories, and additional exercise, my weight climbed to bounce between 125 and 130; then between 130 and 135.  This past several months, my weight has been bouncing between 135 and 140. 

There appears to be no end in sight.  This has been happening over a 9 year period. Since my activity cannot...

My 3 Principles investigation is still ongoing, however, today I am setting some new eating boundaries for myself ... which means I'm starting another new-diet-experiment-of-one. 

I'm not ready to share specific details of my own personal plan, but it is based on the information and recommendations provided by the Canadian kidney doctor, Dr. Jason Fung, at www. Intensive Dietary Management.

My current experiment will be different than any diet that I've previously tried, although (of course) many built-in similarities do exist between this specific diet experiment and some of my past diet experiments.

I will be continuing with my practice not to share details about a diet experiment while it is still ongoing.  So, why even share this much? Because I want to, and since this is my own personal Blog, I can.

We all have choices on how we are going to live our lives, and where we are going to place our focus.  My choice may not resemble your choice. I am a “reduced obese” person who has maintained a “normal” weight for more than 9 years, after a lifetime of Yo You Dieting. See ABOUT ME for details.

Doing this has required my constant vigilance, ongoing effort, and tremendous focus, and even though I have been more successful than 95% of everyone who has ever accomplished a large weight-loss, it is been a tremendous personal struggle, and year-after-year, despite CONSISTENT and CONSTANT effort, my weight has continued to slowly creep upward in small increments over time.

This is despite the fact that the recorded daily calorie average of my food intake has been dropping lower and lower each year.

For example, at the start of 2015, my weight was the same as it was at the start of 2014, however, the average daily calories of all of my daily food intake during the year of 2014 was only 754 calories.

In 2013, the average daily calories of all of my daily food intake was 1033. So my average daily food intake was about 280 daily calories LESS than the prior year, and during that prior year, from the start of 2013 until the start of 2014, my body gained 8 pounds while eating that 1033 calories per day.

These are my personal facts, based on numbers which I recorded as accurately as humanly possible, every single day for the past 10 years. For years I felt like Garfield in the cartoon below, but now... instead of yelling "Liar" at the scale, I mentally yell "Liar" or "You Idiot" at the 'Diet Experts' who smugly believe the B.S. and provide to us the results of bad Research, while asserting that "Science Doesn't Lie".

NOTE: that I am a 5’0” tall, 70 year old, sedentary woman with a lower than average metabolism, and according to the Mifflin formula, the AVERAGE woman with my numbers requires only 1237 daily calories to maintain her current weight.

I give you this information so you can see that my recorded calorie numbers are not as far out in left field as some of you might first suppose. You can’t accurately compare my body’s numbers with your own body’s personal calorie calculation requirements if you are larger, taller, younger, more active etc. ...