So the Fasting to lose weight journey continues. Today is the end of week 8 and the good news for me is I lost another 2lbs – just about 1 kilo. That is a total of 26lbs pounds lost while using I.F .
I mentioned last week that I was going to experiment and change my intermittent fasting plan to suit what I feel is more fitting with my weekly lifestyle. The longer you use intermittent fasting to help reduce weight, the more you become aware of the problems that have caused your weight gain in the past. In my case I enjoy my evening meals, all the family sit down, and I am not adverse to a second portion of anything !. In the daytime this is different. In the past I would eat at my computer, I would eat breakfast, not because I was hungry, just out of habit, I think the best way I can describe it, is eating on autopilot.
I also think there is a pyscological part to this too. I would often be working on a project and will have gone from eating breakfast to mid afternoon and think ” oh I missed lunch, I have not eaten anything, I need to eat ” . What I have realised over this last 8 weeks is , this was a habit, it was my head saying I needed to eat something because I missed lunch, not my body. It really is common sense, but there is nothing written that says we must eat 3 meals a day , and eat them at set times.This is what I mean by saying I am more in tune with my body and if I am hungry or not.My other problem, like most people who are trying to restrict calories is simply over estimating how many I have consumed, a problem you don’t have if you have not eaten !.
I know I have said it before, but I do feel flexibility of intermittent fasting is what makes it work so well. For the first 6 weeks, my intermittent fasting has been by following eat stop eat . My IF plan this last week has been to fast on weekdays, and eat normally on the weekend. I would estimate this has meant my fasting times is actually around 22 hrs. I have an eating window of 2hrs. I am breaking the fast between either 5 or 6.30 pm. Intermittent Fasting burns body fat once we are out of the fed state. As humans we are only ever in one of 2 states, Fed or Fasted. During the fasted state we burn most body fat between 18 and 24hrs , so even with the eating window I am using , I am still getting a significant benefit from the time I am spending in the fasted state.
So what about the weekends ? . I eat what I want, when I want on the weekend. The weekend starts Friday evening when I break my fast, so if later on Friday night I wanted a snack, I would have one. If I am honest, I think the calories on the Friday evening are more likely to come from a glass or 2 of red wine, or a beer or 2.
Last weekend I did eat breakfast on the Saturday morning around 10.30am. Sunday morning I was not hungry and just had a coffee, but this was a cafe latte with sugar, so I was not fasting, I just didn’t feel like anything other than a coffee. I did eat lunch on Sunday which was a Spanish omelette with salad. Sunday evening I had roast chicken, and yes with the skin on, I had the chicken with roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, vegetables and a 175ml glass of red wine. I hope this helps show why I don’t feel deprived using Intermittent Fasting to lose weight. When I say nothing is off limits , I mean it. I still lost 2lbs this week, and I continue to eat the foods I want. When I did the Atkins diet, one of the biggest problems for me was the Sunday roast dinner. Atkins would say no problem with the roast chicken with the skin, but I would be passing up the Yorkshire pudding and roast potatoes, sorry but long term when the rest of the family are eating those things, there is only so many weeks I am going be able to say ” no thank you “. If I look back at the last 7 days, I have restricted, or saved calories at times where I have not been truly hungry, and this has enabled me to enjoy the times I do eat. I will point out that I have eaten normally, I didn’t eat a whole chicken, you still have to be realistic. I eat until I am satisfied.
I am going to continue with using intermittent fasting through the week, and eating as I wish on the weekends. I have not found any problems with this plan. If you are just starting with Intermittent Fasting, I would still say to start with 1 or 2 fasts per week. Looking back, If you had told me to fast every weekday for 22 hours or more I seriously doubt I would have used I.F. I can do this now because I started slow, and started to understand what works for me. We are all different, this is one of the reasons that trying to follow a diet is not sustainable, and why diets fail. The people who write the diet books, do not know you, and what your lifestyle is like. I can’t tell you to do the same as me with I.F. because I don’t know your daily routine. What I can tell you is that using intermittent fasting to reduce body fat will work, all you have to do is find how best to make Intermittent Fasting fit your own way of living. Even after 8 weeks I am still fine tuning how I use it, but with 26lbs of fat gone in that time, I am glad I became a retired dieter.
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