Quarter Moon Diet

I don’t make New Year resolutions.  There is no point.  New Year resolutions are things said much more out of the habit of making New Year resolutions than from the conviction that they should be kept.  So far in my life I have only managed to keep one New Year resolution, one made many years ago, and that was to cease making New Year resolutions.  All that said, this year, quite apart from anything to do with the New Year (in fact the decision was made at Yule 2015) I decided to lose some weight.

In pursuit of this plan to regain my girlish figure ( Hah! ) I decided on a diet and exercise plan.  Despite all claims to the contrary there is only one effective way to lose weight: reduce the number of calories consumed and increase the number of calories expended.  To be truly successful, such a regimen must be sustainable in the long term.  So I decided to try my own variation of the Lunar Diet.  I also decided to shut up about it until it showed some results.

The Lunar Diet calls for fasting during the three days of the Full Moon in each lunar cycle, plus a reasonable diet during the rest of the month.  (There is nothing special about the full moon, it is just a monthly marker for the purposes of the diet.)  This means that one must fast for three consecutive days out of every 29, or just about 10% of the time.  Put another way, this diet calls for a 10% reduction in calories consumed.  This isn’t a bad plan, so long as you don’t mind feeling like a famine victim once every month, or twice in those few months in which we get a Blue Moon.  But I feared that every such fast would be followed by a feast.  Going on an eating binge once per month is not an obvious path to weight loss.  So I considered some variations on the theme and came up with what I call the Quarter Moon Diet.

My Quarter Moon Diet calls for fasting one day per week (lunar quarter) and therefore four days per lunar month, one-seventh or 14% of the total days and the same percentage of calories not consumed.  So, strictly in terms of calories not consumed, the Quarter Moon Diet is superior to the Lunar Diet by a whopping 40%.  Also, because one is fasting a single day at a time rather than for three consecutive days I consider the problem of the rebound binge is less likely to materialize.  Plus I won’t wake up in the middle of the night trying to eat my own arm – now there’s a bonus!

On the fast day each month I can pretend that I’m prepping for a blood test the next day and just fast a bit longer than usual.  I consume nothing but water or coffee / tea (with skim milk) from after supper on the night before the fast day until 06:00 the day after, a total of about 36 hours. 

On all other days I try to be good.  Breakfast is high-fibre cereal with low-fat milk.  Lunch, if I eat lunch at all, is something healthy and low-fat: soup maybe, or fruit, or perhaps I’ll go crazy and have a six-inch veggie delight at Subway.  Dinner is whatever my wife decides to cook, just a normal-sized helping, no seconds and no desserts.  The rest of the time I eschew all junk food, snacks, sweets and alcohol (wasted calories), and I quaff down a lot of water.  I don’t count calories.  The result is that I’m not particularly hungry and I don’t require special treatment from the kitchen.

To go along with the Quarter Moon Diet I have increased my level physical activity by walking some miles every day that the weather allows, going to the gym for an hour or so every morning and roasting myself in the sauna after each workout.  Thus I increase the number of calories expended.  Bear in mind that it is winter in New Brunswick right now so aerobic snow shoveling is an added activity, usually on days when I don’t go on walkabout.

The other item I include in the Quarter Moon regimen is the easiest thing of all for naturists – go naked at home and don’t crank up the thermostat.  It is claimed studies show that being a bit chilly causes the human body to secrete the hormone irisin, which, it is also claimed, stimulates the conversion of fat into body heat.  I don’t have any idea how well this works but it’s a really good excuse for being naked when the Jehovah’s Witnesses show up unexpectedly.

So, how is this all working for me?  Is it working at all?

Well, yes, it does seem to be working.  Time will reveal the truth of the matter. 

Week #3 Update: The situation as of Week #3 is that I’ve found out the fasting isn’t difficult to get used to.  I have lost 3.5 kg of body weight overall.  I have no doubt lost a somewhat greater amount of fat because I’m also gaining muscle mass from my exercise regimen.  And oh, I’m spending less money by not snacking when I’m away from home.  So while my butt is decreasing in size my wallet is getting fatter.  What’s not to love about that?!  If I can continue to lose weight at the current rate (a fond hope but a complete unknown) then I could lose quite a bit by the start of summer.  I’ll barely cast a shadow on a sunny day.

Week #7 Update:  Hey, this diet is working, so far anyway.  Total weight loss to date is 10 kg, so says the scale at the gym this morning.   Fast Tuesday isn't getting easier but it isn't getting worse either . . . I don't feel hungry on that day, just a little cranky.  That's okay, I can handle being cranky so long as I keep losing weight.  I'll just try my best not to spread the crankiness around. 

Wintertime Blues

Okay, we are officially in the depths of winter here and it is really, REALLY difficult to think of an appropriately naturist topic for this season.  Yeah, sure, we’ve passed the solstice – all hail Sol Invictus – and the days are growing progressively longer by a few minutes each day.  However there are still almost thirty days to go until All Marmots' Mass and who knows what news, good or bad,  the furry little fellow might bring for us.  Not that I put any particular stock in the idea of groundhogs as meteorological prognosticators but really, can they be any worse than the weathermen?  I think not!

About all I can do in a naturist way these days is to sweat in the sauna or sit by my fireplace toasting my buns and dreaming of warm, sunny days ahead.  Let’s not dwell on just how far ahead!  But that lack of options is why we need a real naturist club hereabouts.  Sure, a full-service resort would be just the ticket – maybe – but when you’re talking about that sort of thing you’re talking about major gelt, and not the kind that comes with a chocolate filling.

Barring a white knight with a disposable fortune to build such a place and be prepared to operate at a loss we must set our sights lower, on a non-landed club with a good enough organization and enough willing people that we could, for instance, rent a pool for an evening.  But given the level of enthusiasm demonstrated for forming such a club perhaps it is best to wait for the White Knight . . . or maybe the Mad Hatter.

Enter the Mad Hatter, stage left.  In the meantime, why not launch an assault on the bastions of power and suggest that permissive regulations for topless beach use by women and more limited nudist beach use by all might give the province a competitive advantage in the tourism market.  Hey, why not?  A few thousand more visitors per summer month would surely be welcomed by our tourism sector and every dollar put through their cash registers means more tax money for the government – that’s the carrot.  Unfortunately I don’t have a stick to go with it.

It really isn’t that big a deal if you stop to think about it.  Yes, the existing law makes public nudity a criminal offense but it also requires the approval of the Attorney General to prosecute such cases – the provincial Attorney General.  So it is really a simple matter of making a cabinet decision at the provincial level and sending out a circular to the police: “Don’t hassle the nudists unless they are being lewd.” 

Again, why not?  All across the country there are nudist beaches that are either officially recognized or semi-officially tolerated and no harm has come to society as a result.  We have World Naked Bike Ride events in several cities across the land and it hasn’t resulted in public fornication or any other signs of societal collapse.  We have PRIDE parades all over the place with semi-clad and (some) altogether naked people marching through downtown cores and the federal, provincial and municipal governments stand proud, if not erect, in their support.

What we DON’T have is governmental support for, or toleration of, simple, innocent public nudity in appropriate places.  Would that we did!  And why can’t we have such support, or at least benign toleration for a lifestyle that is completely natural?  I won’t claim that it is inoffensive because we all know that somebody, somewhere will somehow endeavour to be offended by anything.  So what?  When WNBR events and PRIDE parades first showed up there were all sorts of public moralists bleating their brains out about them.  You don’t hear them so much anymore because they have been relegated to the dustbin of societal progress.   The same transformation is possible for public attitudes toward nudity in appropriate places on public lands: beaches, designated camping areas at federal and provincial parks, wilderness trails, etcetera.  All we need is for a few politicians to be a little more open minded and we could be well on our way to a new recognition of an ancient freedom – the freedom to appear in public in the wardrobe provided by our Creator.  Because whether you believe in God or just the random collision of the precursors of life followed by a course of evolution that is nearly impossible to credit, the inescapable fact is that we are all born naked, and it is an abomination before the throne of simple logic that we should be forced to be ashamed of our bodies and wrap them in consumer goods that are often completely unnecessary.

Okay, that’s all for the moment.  Now I have to figure out a way to present this to government.