Over the years I’ve tried some things to try to change something about me.  I mostly take what I consider to be the most basic and logical approach, which is not what a lot of people use.  This last year was a particularly interesting for me as far as experimenting, and so I shall fill you in on what I did and my observations.  A warning:  I will discuss some bodily functions so if you’re a person who is so shallow as to never… ok, never mind… but be aware that I will discuss some things in detail and you may or may not find to be, shall we say, “dinner conversation”.

An aside:  Yesterday I played golf with one of my friends, and as we usually do, we go get a beer and some non-healthy food afterwards.  He didn’t have anything, just water, because he said he had to go see his trainer afterwards, at the gym, because he is trying to lose weight.  I asked him: “When I think about losing weight, I don’t think about going to work out somewhere, I think about just eating less…”. He looked at me like I was crazy.

And with that, let’s talk about the first experiment I ran on myself, and that is, the “one meal per day” fasting diet.  “OMAD” for short.  As I do with everything I try, I do a lot of research (this usually involves watching some YouTube videos and then reading what’s available on the internet, from credible sources).  So, starting in April, 2021, I went on an OMAD.  I can’t say it was hard.  The first day I did not eat for 2 days, I didn’t find it that hard.  And I lost 10 lbs in 2 months.  I still do some fasting, but this time I don’t eat for like 12 hours, but that’s just the way I eat, it’s not for trying.  So, the positives is, that, yes, it works.  Eat whatever you want, but only once per day and you’ll lose weight.  You need a strong will for that, but it gets easier after the first week.  I didn’t think I did, but it turns out I have a pretty strong will naturally; what seems easy for me seems to be extremely hard for many people; they fall prey to their desires pretty quickly.  Now for the bad part: I think I got a hernia from doing this.  Now, I can’t be 100% sure, because I’m not a doctor, but the causality seems fairly direct.  So, when you don’t eat solid food but once a day, you also tend not to go to the restroom to do #2 for days.  I was going potty like, once or twice per week.  But when I did, it was, shall we say, pretty “hard” to get stuff out.  And it involved squat sitting and a great deal of effort, and as it turns out, the muscles you use when trying to, you know, do #2, are the same ones that get stressed and can give you a hernia.  I went to the doctor in July and September and told him about the bump I get in my groin area and he said it’s a possible hernia.  And I can’t explain how I got it otherwise, other than the effort associated with this diet.  So, there you go, learn from my mistakes, and if you do do (pun intended) an OMAD diet, be sure and have some sort of stool softener or laxative of some sort to help things through.

I watched a documentary about our largest organ; our skin.  Then I researched a bit more and made a decision to experiment on myself in October, 2021.  The experiment involves not using soap when showering, at all.  So, it’s now 2022 and since October 2021 I haven’t used any soap.  Well, I should say I’ve used a bit of soap only on some affected areas as I shall explain, but other than that, no soap on my body.  The background is that your skin is like a wall built of mortar and bricks, and when you wash, soap contains a bunch of stuff, plus its surfactant properties, that strips away at the mortar and some of the bricks in your skin.  Plus there are loads of beneficial creatures in your skin that when you use strong chemicals it throws the balance off your skin and creates skin problems.  So, after you wash, you inevitably feel the dryness of the skin based on what you just did to your skin, and then you need moisturizer to relieve the itchiness.  So, just as the OMAD experiment, I though, well, if you just don’t use soap you don’t cause dryness and then you don’t need the moisturizer.  So after 4 months of not using any soap, I can report mostly positive news.  My skin feels great!  In fact, it’s never felt better.  I strongly recommend doing it, with some caveat: mind your armpits.  Especially if you eat some spicy food.  That’s where I’ve had to use soap and deodorant (by the way, I also didn’t use deodorant for a while as well).  So, use deodorant but not anti-perspirant; that stuff is BAD for you.  

So there you have it.  I have a natural strong will and I’m able to run some experiments on myself and monitor the results.  What about you?  Have you done any things that are not conventional in order to achieve results?  How do societal conventions pressure you into convention?  Or do you not care that much about what others think and just run your own course?  What have been the results?