Caffeine, Depression, Sugar, etc

I gave up caffeine about a month ago. Its been a bumpy ride.

Here is where I’m at:

I’m about 1 month plus into caffeine withdrawal.. and supposedly it takes that long for a body’s sleep cycles to adjust. I’m definitely feeling better this week, but part of that could also be: I cancelled most of life. I’m not going to try to train for the Half Marathon anymore, I’m not trying to be productive in the evenings, I’m just going to work getting it done, get home, and zonk out to some PC games.

Depression

Not to be confused with life-crippling, stay-in-bed, I don’t want to live depression that some of my friends have.
Also not to be confused with “I want to sit in my pity pot and whine” whine-pression.
But a definite marked “down-ness”, nothing feels “exciting” anymore, I have no desire to do anything, I’d rather just sleep and watch TV (be entertained) all day.

Also leading to: “what if I change this will I feel better” and “what if I change that will I feel better” — see last two posts on sleep schedules. (note: neither one really worked).

Awareness

Always fun when it dawns. In this case, I did my standard exercise when faced with something not feeling right inside me: I took a blank sheet of paper, drew a big box on it, and gave myself permission to be as negative as I wanted to be, within that box. Out came a ton of little messages like “I’m worthless”, “I’ll never be able to do X”, “I’m not useful”, etc — maybe in a bit harsher language, but along those lines.

After that past, I was able to look at the box with a clean, calm mind, and pose the question: what now [God]? What do you need me to know and/or do?

And the answer came back rather easily:

Maybe I have been subsituting sugar for caffeine in an attempt to cope.
And maybe I am currently in adrenal fatigue. [Note: I don’t mean the medical term. I just mean that my body ain’t right. the “feel” of the words adrenal fatigue matches my emotion]
I may need to change my sugar intakes.

Acceptance

Never jump straight from awareness to action – especially not against well-entrenched habits like what you eat, sleep cycles, and stuff like that. Sit with it a while, let it sink in, collect data – see what the reality is. Then the decisions are made from “it has to be this way” (certainity) rather than “I’m going to try my hardest” [and fail] (ego/intent).

Part 1 – collect data on sugar habits.

Eating Habits

I started on Saturday. I’m taking to getting out of bed (when the cat wakes me), turning on the S.A.D. light, and entering my food for the previous day.. and looking at finances and other stuff like that. (and facebook). Here is what I’ve logged:

Because I am actually logging it, that does affect my decisions on what I eat. Its less than what it has been in the weeks past, but as I can see, them sugars are crossing the 100 mark all the time.. and a lot of fuel is coming from carbs rather than fat. Now, I’m not a dietician, but I know I can do better than two donuts for breakfast in the morning (Sunday, Wednesday) and a crap-ton of bread (wheat) (I don’t do well with wheat).

But why? I’m not feeling as bad as I once was. For that, I need to look out to the future: What do I want to do?

Dreams

Somebody I looked up to, once clued me in that if I’m envious of somebody or something, it probably means I want to do that .. that’s a dream inside me. Maybe I’m scared of doing it and thus I won’t recognize it, and instead I’ll be annoyed at those who do actually do it. Avoidance things like that.

What has been pinging me lately? Let me count the ways:

Dream	Extent	How do I know this to be true?
Run a Marathon.	26.2 miles, at least once.	Every time I see a 26.2 sticker on a car. Every time I hear of people I know doing it.
Run a 5k faster	Under 25 minutes.	Currently at 30. My best ever was 24:50. Listening to people talking about running them in 22 or so – I would like to do that.
Bike decently.	A century, at 15mph or better.	Every time RAGBRAI gets mentioned. (I have biked a century before, but more at 8-10 mph avg).
Triathalon	The smallest possible one. Swimming is my weakness.	At least two friends whom I am slightly envious of.
Lose Weight	down to 155 lbs, which is the weight at which I can easily take my shirt of, and there’s no pot belly.	I was at 159.5 once. It was wonderful. Currently at 175.
Finish some damned fun coding projects.	Facebook catcher-upper Chore-Ban (new) Car-Metrics Burn-it (shelved)	Envy when I realize I couldn’t get to the local monthly code mash-up. Envy when I hear my co-workers talk about the fun code they’ve been working on.
Travel	First the USA – out west, mostly.	Whenever we realize we can’t go somewhere because of X,Y or Z reason Whenever I look up how much time off I have available for the rest of the year.

Road Map

The nice thing is, a lot of these dreams are completely realizable and doable. But not all right now. There is a stepping order to it:

Now is not the time for me to work on the “larger” time sink items – but I definitely can make it a point to join my beautiful wife in going to the YMCA.

We get to spend time together! I’m not robbing relationship time for workout time.
Currently on Tuesday, Thursday, and once over the weekend.
Last night I ran a 28’ 5k, though it was on a treadmill.

I’m not saying anything about the nutrition yet. I’m not there yet.

One More Aspect

A lady I respect pulled me aside, and told me that her husband asked his doctor about his lack of energy. Turns out.. testosterone levels. I am 42 (almost).. there maybe be a component involved; maybe I’ve been trying to mask that with caffeine and sugar all along. Will ask doctor to check next time.

Altered Schedules Part 2: Resetting Sleep Cycle

I’m continuing to try the Altered Schedule talked about earlier. I don’t think its working.

I even went as far as trying to Reset my Sleep Cycle with a 16-Hour Fast. Twice. This is the second time. Result: While hungry, I don’t get much sleep; Sure enough I wake up at 6am no problem.. its now 11am and I am draaaaggging. If this is like the last time I did this (Tuesday morning), at about 1pm the sleepy is going to hit like a ton of bricks attached to my eyelids.

On the other hand, yesterday there wasn’t anything I could do before a 10am meeting at the client site, so I slept in. I had a wonderful day!

I am about ready to throw in the towel. My clock likes to fall asleep at about 1am or 2am, and get up around 8am. Next week, I’m going to try and respect that:

	The Plan	The Reality
8am-?	Wake up, Shower, Journal, etc	TBD
?-10am	Get to work by 10	Probably more like 9:30.
10am-7pm	Be work productive. First meal probably at noon.	Will get cut short whenever anything sneezes .. family sports, etc.
7pm-9pm	Household productive. Dishes, sweeping, etc.	Eating dinner with the wife would count as household productive.
9pm-11pm	Play	I can be pretty good at this part when I get my target figured out.
11pm-midnight	Wind down	Not so good at this.
midnight-8am	Sleep	1am: Cat. 3am: Cat 5,6am: Cat

Hey, Deployment done. Back to work.

Altered Schedule

This is day 4 of an altered schedule. Now that I’m off caffeine, and .. either (a) I’m waking up more alert, or (b) I am equally sleepy all day .. After going on a vacation, and getting some feedback from very wise person, I am trying this:

MAKE TIME for things that are fun.

However, at the same time, my wife and I are trying something else:

Can we exist with one car?

The plan on the latter was, I would have the car on Tuesday and Thursday, and she would have the car on M,W,F. I drop her at work / she drops me at a work / that kind of thing.

So here is how it has panned out:

	The Plan	The Reality
6am-?	Wake Up, jump in the shower, drink some water, etc.	2/4 days yes. 3rd day: shower followed by nap. 4th day: sleep till 7.
?-8am	Get to work (or leave for work) by 8am!	More like 8:30 arrival, or 9:00, but hey the cat has a vet appointment, so lets go for 10:00.
8am-5pm	Work till 5 or whenever I get my hours in by.	Leave at 3:30 to get the wife from her job, go home and then work at home for a few hours
5pm-8pm	Be “productive” till 8pm (house stuff, etc)	This has worked pretty well. Dishes are done! Bills are paid! Cat is brushed!
8pm-10pm	Do something fun / just for me from 8 to 10	This has also worked pretty well. Video editing, watching pro cycling, etc
10pm-11pm	Head upstairs, wind down, journal, dim the lights, get to bed	Worked ok for 2 days. Then yesterday: THOU SHALT NOT SLEEP!
11pm-6am	7 hours of sleep!	1am: Cat. 3am: Cat. 5am: Cat.

What we also figured out is, my wife uses her driving time as her solitude time.. she’s a closet introvert (I am a closet extrovert?!!) .. so as much as I loved having time with her all to myself in the car while transporting each other, she got increasingly grumpy at not having recharge time.

So, in summary:

a. Our schedules are too deviant to make it work with one car. We’re keeping both cars.

b. I’ll try The Plan again. This time with my own car.

Caffeine Withdrawal 3.0

Third time in my life, I’m withdrawing from caffeine.

I wrote a blog post about it at version 2.0 – here: http://sunnywiz.livejournal.com/245127.html

Actually, that post was written AFTER being off caffeine for a while and then starting back up again.

This line struck me as particularly insightful:

When I am decaffeinated & on the wagon.. and have gotten through withdrawal.. my mental pattern is .. not so exciting, doesn’t have “spikes”, but its definitely functional. And there isn’t that large lake of sleepiness underneath it all.

And that is why I’m back off it again. I was getting non-functional. And my life was getting unmanageable.

Day 7 of no Caffeine .. I now only have to take an Advil every 6 hours to ward off the stab-me-in-the-eye headache.

Gathering Running Music

I dug out my “massive” music collection, copied some good stuff over, and am currently running beaTunes – to detect BPM. Once that’s done, I have a smart playlist for the right ranges of BPM – I’ll use that to sync to the iPhone (I have an order of magnitude more music available than space) – then run PaceDJ to pick the songs at or near the pace that I want (I usually start at 160 and speed up to 180 during a longer run).

I’m already liking the music it has chosen so far.

First run with the co-workers tomorrow. I am a little nervous. They are all so athletic.

Half Marathon Running Gear

I was thinking ahead to next week, about what gear I will be running in. It got confusing, so I made a chart.

(Click to zoom in to the larger image)

From Left to Right is the order in which stuff goes on.
In case of extremely cold weather, the stuff on the right of the purple line comes in to play

In Detail

S1	Suunto Chest Strap	Captures heart rate data, sends to S2. Helps me regulate my pace and gives me blog posting material for the future. Deploys a protective armor nanoshield in case of attack.
S2	Suunto T6d	Super computer watch which receives all the data and logs it. It will also act as defensive laser in case of alien attacks.
S3	Suunto Foot Pod	Has a built in Accelerometer and FancyMoMancyMeter to tell me how fast I’m running, accurate to +/- 10% depending on calibration. Provides extra jumpjet fuel. Uses invisible ants to send signals up your leg and down your arm to the watch. No joke. ANTS protocol.
SH1	Technical Shorts.	TMI: These are the kinds with the built-in sweat wicking underwear. They have pockets that are designed to loose things when you sit in your car. I wish that were a joke.
SH2	Technical Shirt.	Probably from the Bourbon Chase or one of my other favorite race shirts. I like the loose mesh ones better than the tight mesh ones. Designed to make me radar invisible to the aliens.
MS9	Motorola S9 Bluetooth Headset	For listening to ma’ tunes from the Pace DJ. Also used for communication with central agency in case of emergencies. Volume and Track buttons. Skips in high humidity. Can be used on single ear only.
TFMH	Tin Foil Metal Hat	Hopefully the aliens don’t invade on Saturday.
IFB	iFitness Belt	To Store the I4S and some ID/Cash. If taken off and whirled in a circular motion, can create a kinetic shield to ward off flying kitten attacks.
G1	Powerbar Gel – Green Apple – With Caffeine	25mg baby
G2	Powerbar Gel – Vanilla – No Caffeine	‘cuz Caffeine is a Diuretic, and the aliens may mistake porta-potties as enemy tanks and destroy them first.
G3	GU Powergel – Espresso flavor	Hip Hip Hipster Hooray! (less runny than Powerbar gel)
GCS	GoPro Chest Strap	I didn’t want the head mount, makes me look too techy and attract attention to myself. Seriously. Can double as an ammo belt for paper clips.
GP	GoPro	Because recording video on my iPhone is not sexy enough. Will also spot creatures using phased light invisibility techniques because of the parralax they cause in the 117-th degree FOV filter.
PDJ	Pace DJ	Scans existing music library for tempo – you don’t have to choose the music. Hopefully its all good.
CB1	CamelBak Hydration Pack	Only need to stop every 6 miles, and I never have to ask when the next water station is. Can also hold keys in the zipper part. Can be used to squirt water at the aliens, because most aliens are allergic to water, and they forget to scan before they invade.
LSTS	Long Sleeve Technical Shirt	For when temperatures including wind chill drop below 50F
TFFFHP	Tight Form Fitting Flab Hiding Pants	For when temperatures (including wind chill) drop below 40F
GL	Gloves	To prevent attempting to warm hands in more publicly embarrassing ways.
SJ	Sport Jacket	The kind with Mesh on the inside. Combine with LSTS to get it down to 35F or so. You generate a lot of body heat when running.
WRH	Winter Running Hat	Keeps them ears and the bald spot warm. Bald spot is the center of brain activity, if it gets cold, the eyes glaze over. Machine Washable! Didn’t know I had sweat glands there. Oh wait, Thai Food.
IEB	IPhone Ear Buds (new kind)	Cuz my ears are shaped funny, very few earbuds work; when wearing the WRH, the MS9 doesn’t fit, so I have to go wired. The square shape of the container helps differentiate them from a hockey puck.
GAUBAC	Gawd-Awful-Ugly Big-Ass-Coat	Purchased at goodwill, to stay warm before the race and during the first few miles; abandoned during the route; also a decoy to confuse the aliens. Pink with leopard spots is awesome.

Yep, I’m crazy. What the heck, I’m owning it.

In case you hadn’t figured out, italics = for fun, not real.

Picking up Running again–analysis of Heart Rate vs Speed

In 2010, I started running. I started at a max distance of 0.25 miles; ran into shin-splints; did a bunch of research, bought some Vibram Five Fingers, and ran my first 5k in 36 minutes or so. I (too) rapidly progressed to running the Bourbon Chase that year, and in 2011, I competed in the Louisville Triple Crown of Running. At the time, I was pretty well conditioned (for me).

2012, nada. I had a knee injury late in 2011, and didn’t do much of anything.

2013, I’m back in running form.. just barely. I started a few weeks ago, I’m barely keeping up with the distance I need for the Triple Crown. The 10k is tomorrow morning.

Geeky-ness

I have heart rate data from both years:

I have no idea what unit the speed is in.
The Y Axis starts at 70, although for me it could start at 90. If it were zero, I would be dead.
The Purple shows a training run (I think) from 2011 January, when I was running around 4-5 miles.
The Red shows me competing in the 2011 Rhodes Run (I think). Or, it was a long run. You can see the significantly higher speed (to the right)
The Blue is my training run from last night. I went REALLY slow – that’s probably 3-3.5, somewhere between 15 to 18 minutes per mile.

My take-away is that purple is shifted to the right of blue – I could go faster at the same heart rate, back then.

Here’s a slightly different view, courtesy of the free-compare tool at www.movescount.com – which came with my kick-ass Suunto t6d watch.

Orange are all the runs from January to March of 2011.
Black are all the runs from 2013 (I haven’t “associated” the workouts with running, so they are still black)
Once again, same heart-rate, less speed.
I have some room for improvement.

There is a direct relationship between heart rate and speed.

Heart Rate Training

According to the book “Total Heart Rate Training” there’s also markers of heart rate zones to be found. Here’s my interpretation of it, augmented with data collection devices:

Walk for at least 15 minutes first, to get the “jigglies” out.
Start slow, on a treadmill, but at least jogging, like 3.5 mph. Your jogging speed could be slower than your fastest walking speed!
Slowly speed it up. Let yourself adjust to each new speed. I do a count to 8 or 16 before adding another 0.1 mph.
At some point, you will feel yourself start to breathe a bit harder. You will still be able to talk, just not as easily. (There is no telltale thing on the graph for this). Call this point “A”.
This will last for a while.
At some point, it will start to get much harder much quicker, and you won’t be able to talk anymore, and you’ll be sucking for air. Welcome to Anaerobic? Aerobic? THE OTHER ONE, the zone where you have 5 minutes of energy left, use it, loose it, and you’re done. Call this point “B”
Charting the heart rate vs speed, you should see a bend where you switch to the other zone. Up till that point, everything should be “approximately” a line. When you switch to the other zone, there will be a “bend” and you’ll get a new (line/curve).

These are from two this year. I had a beautiful sample from 2011, BUT, I didn’t have any distance measuring equipment, so no speed data, only HR.
I’ve added an elbow in blue (older), and orange (more recent), as to where I think my transition point “B” was.

Another sign of transition: Your heart rate does not slow down, so no “wobbles”. Just unpeels upwards.

You can see my transition point move up – that’s me getting heart-toned, or, well, shaking the cobwebs out.
You can also see the orange is just a bit to the right of the blue – better speed at the same heart rate. Although I suspect I was getting bored, hence there’s very few data points for 28 to 30.
I’m pretty sure my “A” point is somewhere around 145.

Anyway, the heart rate training book talks about this in depth. My understanding:

To improve performance, you need to keep your heart rate UNDER that elbow of “B” but near the top of it. This helps nudge it upwards, which gives you more range to go faster for longer. And it will get your muscles accustomed (built up) to that kind of workload.

To improve endurance, you need to train with your heart rate closer to “A” (just north of it). This also helps improve “B”, but then your (leg) muscles will need time to catch up.

Caveat: I tried this out with a friend who is VERY much out of shape. While Walking, he got to his A point. As SOON as he started jogging, he crossed “B”. He needed a lot more heart toning before he would be ready for jogging. My suggestion to him was: Get to walking 4 miles comfortably, before you start trying to jog for one. And then when you jog, jog slower than you walk.

Double Caveat: The other really awesome exercise for running if you can stand it, is the Hundred Up. Helps with all the muscles and landing your feet.

Randomness: 5:01 A1C

I had been putting off taking my A1C for at least a few months.. knowing that I was slacking off on being regular with my medication, and I had been eating crap and drinking pop. Last time it was taken was at the doctor’s, I think it was a 6.0 or a 6.2, which is technically really good, I was sure it would be up around 6.5 or 7.0 by now.

So after all kinds of procrastination (I need to do dishes… no, the lawn first… how about some more minecraft… I can’t find my self-test kit…) I finally took it.

5.7 ??? WTFudge? That’s AWESOME!

I’ve been on a semi-gluten-free diet. As in, avoiding gluten Sunday-Thursday, and then treating myself on Friday and Saturday.

“Treating” is a relative word.. “enjoying delicious treats” followed by “twitchyness, and joints that hurt”.

“Avoiding” is also a relative word. More like “1 oreo cookie every two days”. Occasional donut relapses. Its so hard to turn away when they are placed in front of me. I could easily be a food addict.. I love my sugar, and eating in general. (I have been to OA. I will go if life becomes unmanageable. They are good folks.)

I think this (relative) lack of gluten in my system.. is what has been saving me. So I can have that pop without guilt, right? No, maybe I’ll have a Coke Zero or Diet Pepsi instead. There’s something in regular Pepsi that I absolutely crave, that I don’t get from regular Coke.

5:01 And I’m Outta Here

There’s an article going around, I just caught it off the S.H. feed:

Original Article: http://501manifesto.org/
Somebody’s response: http://thedevstop.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/reflections-on-the-501-developer-manifesto/
Awesome graphic from above response (crosslinked:)

SH weighing in: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/501DevelopersFamilyAndExcitementAboutTheCraft.aspx

I feel guilty about this.

Very often I am watching the clock, trying to get all my billable hours in to continue justifying the wonderful salary that I’m paid.
When I was in my 20’s, I definitely coded for fun. A lot. At its worst, my life was: drive to work, drive from work to a college campus and code for 2-3 hours, drive home (125 miles total) and code some more. Eat at Wendy’s. I was involved in running an LPMud, and there was a lot of fun stuff to create, and I loved it.
I receive a boon of 4 hours of “personal coding time” at work to have fun with. I look forward to using it every week. I have two projects to work on it with. But all it takes is one day where I don’t meet the billable hours, and I loose a little more play time. Like today: I had to leave early so I could be an announcer at my son’s soccer game.
I think the truth is, I have about 6 hours of “natural focus” in me that I can apply towards coding. After that, my brain just plain shuts down, and it takes a lot of energy to try to kick start it into focusing more. And because I’m in an environment where there are no meetings, there’s nothing to distract me from coding.. I hit that wall very quickly.

But I can be proud of myself too:

So far, this job has been my best trade: hours for pay, + in line with the joy of learning good things, + the joy of working with good people. I’m going to keep on doing it, as long as I am able. Wrist braces do help, as do adjustible-height desks and larger (25”+) monitors. #lawn
It may take me 50 hours of “clock” time, but I am definitely going to give them their money’s worth. Because I’m definitely better for it as well.
To that end, I’m willing to go at my natural pace during the week.. not push it too hard.. and if I have to work on Saturday, try to do it with as little of a hissy as possible. Note: not my employer’s request. My own voluntary contribution. (The hissy is directed at myself)
If I do get to noon on Friday, and I have 4 hours of joyful coding time available to me.. queue the Oh Yeah! song by Yello. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq0skIEkfUw
And I seriously get good stuff done at work. I am of service, I build things, I am detailed, and my work is solid. I get it done.
When paired up with a more passionate faster developer, I switched gears: Make sure he is unimpeded, shield him from other’s ineptitude, and watch him shine. I wouldn’t want to make that my day job, but wow, that was an interesting experience.

Bye Bye iPad

I gave my iPad 1st Gen 3G to my mom. She needs it for internet access at her store .. so she can show her customers what options they have. (KCUniforms in Morgantown, WV). I only twitch a little bit, at night, now that its not here.

The plan is to buy another tablet towards the end of the year, hopefully with the Christmas Bonus. I haven’t made up my mind yet.. I know for sure it will have a Retina display, but I need to see what Windows 8 goodness comes out in October. The default would be an iPad3, but there’s some really strong contenders, and honestly I get more done on Windows.

Entertainment List

There is way more entertainment available to me than I have time for. This gives me the ability to say “that’s wonderful, but Nope” when new options arise.. like the impending release of Borderlands 2, which has my work buddies all in a tizzy, and the previously released Diablo 3. My list right now for entertainment is:

Brainveg: catching up on Facebook, Twitter, and several blogs including Slashdot Science and Geek{Mom|Dad}
TV: shared with wife: Dr Who, Top Gear America, Grimm. Thank you Tivo!
Music: Listening to more current music (compared to: 80’s), really enjoying Maroon 5 at the moment
Comics: Schlock Mercenary (I just got the new board game!)
Games:

Minecraft – just for me. Watching http://paulsoaresjr.com/tag/survive-and-thrive/ when I don’t have the 2 hrs of contiguous time it takes to play. Almost out!

Books: http://www.warriorcats.com/warriorshell.html 2 more left to read in the original series

Okay. Family is home.. the game tonight was rough, my kid got tangled up and was the source of a PK; we lost 3-1. One of his best friends got nailed with 5 seconds left, has a concussion (ouch). Son and Wife are torturing the opinionated cat upstairs right now (lovingly), I better go and see what’s up.

Cheerio!

Calories In Minus Calories Out

There was a conversation at work. Simplified:

VP (Visiting Person): “What Kind of Cookies do you have here?”
Me: “I don’t know, I haven’t checked. I’m not eating Wheat right now, and that shelf is all wheat.”
VP: “How’s that going? I’ve heard about that.”
Me: “Pretty good. I’ve lost a few pounds even without exercising.”
VP: “Yep, calories in and calories out.”

My brain took off on that conversation. Hence, this blog post.

Normal

The assumption is that people simply control the calories out. “Just work out harder”.

# Powershell
"Normal Situation: "
"Calories In : {0}" -f ($caloriesIn = 2000)
"Calories Out: {0}" -f ($caloriesOut = 2000)
"Net Calories: {0}" -f ($netCalories = $caloriesIn - $caloriesOut)
"Gain/Loose {0} lbs per week" -f ($netlbsperweek = $netCalories * 7/3500)

Normal Situation: 
Calories In : 2000
Calories Out: 2000
Net Calories: 0
Gain/Loose 0 lbs per week

True, but there’s a twist that I found out, due to my type two.

Conjecture for DM2

This is only my understanding of it. It is not proven or fact.

The hidden factor for me was insulin release, and and insulin resistance.

Lets say that for the calories I was taking in, my blood sugars bumped up to the 140+ range. Lets assume that I’m not working out actively at the moment. (when engaged in physical activity, some other form of transport happens, and sensitivity to insulin goes up).

My body is desperately trying to shove this energy into my cells, and is pumping out insulin (all that it has). The insulin has the effect of transmuting some of these calories to stored fat – almost immediately – before I have a chance to use it.

# Powershell
"Actual Situation: (not on drugs)"
"Calories In:  {0}" -f ($caloriesIn = 2000)
"Converted to fat due to high insulin levels: {0}" -f ($insulinToFat = $caloriesIn * 0.15 )   # total guess
"Fat gained per week: {0} lbs" -f ($fatperweek = $insulinToFat * 7 / 3500)
"Body must make do with {0}" -f ($bodyAvailable = $caloriesIn - $insulinToFat)
"Feeling as though only consuming {0} calories - ie, starving" -f $bodyAvailable

Actual Situation: 
Calories In:  2000
Converted to fat due to high insulin levels: 300
Fat gained per week: 0.6 lbs
Body must make do with 1700
Feeling as though only consuming 1700 calories - ie, starving

My evidence for myself:

There were 2-3 months that I went off my medication, but was watching and logging what I ate.
During that time, I ate 1800-2100 calories a day. Yet, I gained 5 pounds in about 4 weeks.

My deduction:
By storing those 5 pounds => that would mean 17500 calories over 28 days = 625 calories a day.
Which meant that I lived on around 1200-1400 calories a day.
And yes, I felt starved the whole time. (not really starved, but you know, the feeling? I have never really starved, except perhaps once)

So what the heck does my medication (Metformin) do?

Everything says “it limits the production of hepatic (liver) sugar”.
What does that have to do with anything?

My understanding (only my understanding) is:
The body MUST MUST MUST not get into a hypoglycemic situation – because the brain dies. Therefore, it monitors it very seriously.

As blood sugar gets too low, it tells the liver to go make some more. Its not an all or nothing – its a gradual release type thing. However, its tuned based on “relative” levels of blood sugar, not absolute levels.

Being diabetic, and having repeated elevated blood sugar levels “reset” what my body thinks normal is. So my body is churning out sugar even when I’m at a comfortable spot, like 110. It thinks 110 is low.

By jumping in and cutting that link (or reducing it, anyway), Metformin allows my “average” sugar levels to come back down to what they are now.. a fasting number of 80 or so.

And once I get down to 80.. and if I watch what I eat, such that any meal, 2 hours after, I’m back under 140 (these are numbers I’ve chosen for myself), my body leaves the second equation, and goes back to the first equation. Or maybe, the 0.15 goes down and becomes a 0.5. I don’t know exactly.

What I do know is: If I stay off Metformin, my weight goes up, and my fasting blood sugar levels go up. If I stay on it, and I eat wisely, they come back down to normal levels.

In Conclusion

All of the above is my explanation to myself.
Its probably wrong. The reality probably has something to do with aliens, monkeys, ninjas, and a turtle.
If you have a better explanation, grand unifying theory of blood sugar, please do post it and point me at it.