My Weight
For most of the last 15 years I have been trying to loose weight. My goal has been to get back to what I weighed when I was forty. But since my separation its taken on a different urgency and a different focus. I started to worry about my health, my blood pressure and my risk for diabetes, and other long term risks. I tried diets, smoothies, shakes, a personal trainer, Noom, yoga etc etc...... Some of it was really good for me. I enjoyed my time with the personal trainer. It set up some accountability and gave me any number of short term goals and challenges. Yoga has been amazing for building strength and flexibility, with a much needed sense of calm. But I really wasn't loosing any weight. I wasn't gaining any more weight, but I wasn't really seeing the results I wanted. Then I read a really interesting book called "Solving the Fat Puzzle". It was great because it introduced something I think I knew all along. Intermittent Fasting.
It recommended a really radical concept that made complete sense to me. We've always been told two basic weight loss tenants that may not actually be true and most certainly live in conflict. The first - eat five to six small meals a day. The second do lots of aerobic exercise to burn fat. They both sound good but if you think about it and review your high school metabolism lessons you'd realize this can't work. If you eat five to six times a day, you body is receiving a nearly constant supply of carbohydrates which are transformed into sugars and ultimately glycogen which your body burns for energy that is then burned through all that aerobic exercise we're doing; which means while we're doing all that exercise we're not burning any fat. duh.......
So then many of us go to increasing calorie restriction which may result in weight loss but isn't sustainable for the a lifetime at least not my lifetime. I've lost weight on many diets but I've never been able to maintain it, not for years on end. I achieve my goal, go back to eating normally and then gain it all back, just like the rest of the world.
Once I came across this idea of intermittent fasting, I researched it more thoroughly I found other books, documentaries, even You Tube channels all saying very similar things. But what sold me was when I heard someone say 'this costs you nothing and you can always go back to what you were doing before'. With that thought I decided to try it, thinking I wouldn't be able to stick with it but why not, I'd tried everything else.
There's also lots of other health issues that may be due to constantly eating; which is the new normal in America but that's a blog for another day. I'm not even qualified to opine on those issues but like I said the concepts I've read made a lot of sense to me.
So on August 10th I started intermittent fasting. I started with 16 hour fast and 8 hour feed. Today I'm working towards 20 hour fast and 4 hour feeding window. Since I started I've lost just under 22 pounds and I think I could do this the rest of my life. I guess we'll find out.
It recommended a really radical concept that made complete sense to me. We've always been told two basic weight loss tenants that may not actually be true and most certainly live in conflict. The first - eat five to six small meals a day. The second do lots of aerobic exercise to burn fat. They both sound good but if you think about it and review your high school metabolism lessons you'd realize this can't work. If you eat five to six times a day, you body is receiving a nearly constant supply of carbohydrates which are transformed into sugars and ultimately glycogen which your body burns for energy that is then burned through all that aerobic exercise we're doing; which means while we're doing all that exercise we're not burning any fat. duh.......
So then many of us go to increasing calorie restriction which may result in weight loss but isn't sustainable for the a lifetime at least not my lifetime. I've lost weight on many diets but I've never been able to maintain it, not for years on end. I achieve my goal, go back to eating normally and then gain it all back, just like the rest of the world.
Once I came across this idea of intermittent fasting, I researched it more thoroughly I found other books, documentaries, even You Tube channels all saying very similar things. But what sold me was when I heard someone say 'this costs you nothing and you can always go back to what you were doing before'. With that thought I decided to try it, thinking I wouldn't be able to stick with it but why not, I'd tried everything else.
There's also lots of other health issues that may be due to constantly eating; which is the new normal in America but that's a blog for another day. I'm not even qualified to opine on those issues but like I said the concepts I've read made a lot of sense to me.
So on August 10th I started intermittent fasting. I started with 16 hour fast and 8 hour feed. Today I'm working towards 20 hour fast and 4 hour feeding window. Since I started I've lost just under 22 pounds and I think I could do this the rest of my life. I guess we'll find out.
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