Updates and a potential new interest

Floor sleeping: still doing it, will be coming up on 100 days this week or next. I did sleep in a bed one night that I stayed in a hotel, and to be honest it was a little uncomfortable. I felt like it was sagging in the middle, and of course it was, relative to what I'm now used to. At this point I imagine I'll be sleeping on the floor until my future spouse says "fuck that, we're sleeping on a bed." My joints have gotten more used to the pressure, and if it does start being a problem I'll simply put a camping pad or something under my current "mattress".

Fasting: I did this because of the BBC documentary "Eat, Fast, and Live Longer". I don't know if it's actually from the BBC, but it's British and as an American I assume everything British is made by the BBC. Basically there's a bunch of emerging science that fasting is really good for you- it reduces hormones associated with aging, heart disease, and cancer, and, at least in mice, has been linked to drastically reducing the risk of Alzheimer's and might even cause the brain to grow new neurons. Now this is all very new, and there haven't been a ton of studies on it, so it would be wrong to act as if any of this was proven. But I decided fasting one day a week would be a good experiment for me to try, for the following reasons:

• Possible health benefits mentioned above
• Low risk of adverse effects (even if it doesn't help me, I don't think it will hurt me)
• Increasing my self-discipline
• Easier food budgeting, from both a caloric and financial perspective
• Improved adaptability- on rough days where I am unable to eat for whatever reason, it will affect me less

While I can't speak with any certainty to reasons 1 and 2, I definitely feel that I've increased my self-discipline, and it's amazing what simply eating 6 days a week instead of 7 does for your meal planning. I'm currently trying to lose the weight I gained through the summer (I was lifting and trying to gain mass, but overestimated how much the exercise would burn and gained more fat around my stomach than I've ever had), and simply cutting 1900 calories from my week adds way more flexibility to my eating days. I could add an extra 250 calories a day and still come out ahead. My diet has been very effective so far, and my fast day is a big part of that. It also cuts down on the amount of food I have to buy by over 10%, which for a cheap ass like me is pretty great.

The other thing I noticed my first couple times fasting is how much our lives are built around meals. The whole way you think about your work day is Before Lunch and After Lunch. Then most days as the clock nears 5, I look forward to going home and sitting down with dinner in front of the TV. You never think about it when you're eating, but when you're fasting you realize how much it controls you. It makes me wonder about what a post-food life could be like. Obviously that's impossible so I don't think about it too hard, but it's an interesting thought experiment.

I haven't had a day yet where circumstance has made me unable to eat, so I can't see the extent of my adaptability, but I have noticed that when you regularly go 30+ hours without eating, small inconveniences are a lot less bothersome. My best example of this is when I went to a restaurant with my parents that we were really looking forward to. It was pretty late and we were quite hungry, and we were told it would be at least 45 minutes before we would be seated. A few months ago I would probably have walked right out and found a different restaurant, but I simply thought to myself "I've done a lot worse than this- hell, I did worse than this on Tuesday." We waited patiently, made small talk with other waiting patrons, and were rewarded with a great meal.

I've enjoyed fasting so far, and I plan to continue indefinitely.

Okay, so that could have been a post on it's own, but the title guaranteed updates AND a new interest, so here goes. I watched a documentary on Netflix today called Tiny. It's about people who live in extremely small houses- always less than 200 square feet, sometimes less than 100. The houses are often on wheels not because they are moved often, but because building codes in this country are fucking fascist and it's illegal in most places to build a "permanent" structure that small.

Anyway I thought it was very interesting and aligns quite well with my More-Minimalist-Than-Not lifestyle. I don't plan on making a house that's less than 200 square feet, but the idea of it does make me reconsider my desires in a home, which are based largely on the sizable house I grew up in. It's also got me thinking about the ranch I hope to own in retirement. Since my passions will have me travelling and possibly moving quite often, it has always been my dream to have a large piece of property, probably in the southwest, with a nice house that would serve both as my own home base/billing address as well as a gathering point for friends and family. Now because of the functions I want it to serve, it can't be a tiny cabin, but what if I reconsider the $3-6M design I was thinking for it, and instead create a much more minimalist space? Haciendas in New Mexico are often built out of clay dug up from the very ground they're built on- what if I used traditional, local techniques and resources with just a few modern upgrades, reducing the impact on both the environment and my wallet? Definitely an interesting thought which I would not have considered before watching Tiny.