Rosalie and I both knew that we need to lose weight but were fed up with counting calories or points and being told that we must exercise. So, we didn’t bother as we aren’t that much overweight.
The other problem is that we hear that “You have to try this diet” or “You have to try that diet.” “My diet works best.” So, I’m trying not to do that, just pass on our experience.
We met up with Ronda and John at the beginning of January and Ronda mentioned a diet she was on. It intrigued us because it sounded so easy. It’s called ‘Intermittent Fasting.’
The idea is that you fast for part of the day and eat and drink whatever you want for the rest of the time. So, an easy starter would be to fast 12 hours and eat during 12 hours. The best part is that 8 of those twelve hours happen at night. Stop eating at 10 pm and start again at 10 am. Easy, nothing to it, and it works. But of course, the longer the fasting period the better it works. Check it out with this link.
Rosalie and I are currently doing, 17/7. Seventeen hours fasting and seven hours eating. In the beginning, I thought that during the eating period I would want to eat more; not so. We both noticed that were a bit hungry to start with but it goes away after a while. Now we can eat and drink whatever we want in our eating window. One of my favourite foods is bread but it tends to make me chunky so I avoided it. Now, I eat as much as I want with no adverse effects.
The secret though is that you must be strict with yourself during fasting. The only thing allowed is water, green tea, black tea, or coffee. No snacks, no gum, no cookies, not even a little bit. Nothing sweet at all. There was even some debate about brushing your teeth as the toothpaste has sweetener in it.
There were some subtle changes to our bodies but we had no idea if we were actually losing weight. When we started we didn’t have a scale to weigh ourselves. About six weeks in we bought one and were surprised to find that we had both lost some weight. Me 8 pounds, Rosalie about 5 pounds. They say don’t weigh yourselves, we got an idea why as a few times our weight actually went up. Overall, besides the weight loss, we are both feeling a lot better.
It’s recommended that you change the time periods occasionally so your body doesn’t get used to the routine. We noticed that when we changed our times, our weight went down a lot more. This isn’t a fast (pun) diet it’s a lifestyle.
We read the book ‘Fast. Feast. Repeat.’ by Gin Stephens. Here’s a summary. It’s a bit technical in the beginning but the science makes so much sense. Very simplistically, the idea is, that while we fast our bodies think we are starving and so taps into our fat reserves.
As I’m writing this our eating window has opened. I had egg on a bagel with two cups of coffee with milk. This afternoon we will have a light snack and then go to the beach for margaritas. This evening, dinner and a few glasses of wine and at six o’clock, close the window for the night. Easy peasy!
I could go on for a while longer but won’t bore you anymore. Check it out.