Intermittent Fasting for Weight Loss

When people see my weight loss pictures, I always get asked the same question “what did you do?” I give all the cliché advice; I ate better and exercised more. And yes, that did help with me losing weight initially. But then the problem came where I felt I had to eat like a bird in order to lose and keep the weight off. If I ate a little bit too much, the next day I would have gained 2 pounds. I realized that this was not something I could keep up because I’m prone to binge eating. If I continued to eat like a bird only to lose two pounds that week, then the next week I would probably end up overeating one day and gain two pounds and then feel discouraged the rest of the week and continue overeating.

It was a ridiculous pattern and it wasn’t working for me.

Then I heard of this “diet” where you don’t change WHAT you eat (if you’re eating sufficiently healthy), but more of WHEN you eat. I ALWAYS had a problem with eating in the morning. I wasn’t normally hungry when I woke up and I would have stomach pains no matter what I ate. So when I heard that I could skip breakfast and lose weight, I didn’t freak out thinking that I wouldn’t be able to do that. Skipping breakfast was something I always did. I have just always been told that it’s not good for me. So when I started my weight loss journey I would try hard to eat in the morning and very little but often throughout the day. After listening to one of Chalene Johnson’s podcasts with Melissa McAllister, I decided to go back to my old eating PATTERN (not habits). The good thing from eating less but often was that I didn’t generally eat bad food anymore, so I kept that habit when I started intermittent fasting. When I went back to skipping breakfast, eating bigger portions with healthy food (most of the time), the results were insane. I lost weight and looked lean. BONUS! When I did binge eat or eat bad food (which happened often enough), I didn’t GAIN weight.

Any progress I had made, I could also maintain even if I didn’t stick to my meal plan.

There are multiple types of fasting schedules you can do. Personally, I don’t eat until 12n and stop eating at 8pm. I also throw in some HIIT workouts in the morning (yes, I exercise without eating). I live by intermittent fasting. It’s natural to me and so I plan on sticking with it for the rest of my life. Do I always no matter what start eating at 12n and stop at 8pm? No way! There are definitely times when I eat in the morning or get a late night snack. The great thing about intermittent fasting though is that it’s okay to break it at times. Sometimes you have to eat in the morning or late at night, but you won’t gain five pounds because of it.

If you want to know more about it, then go to the links below that helped me get started!

http://jamesclear.com/the-beginners-guide-to-intermittent-fasting

http://www.chalenejohnson.com/chalene-show-podcast-show-notes-8-hour-ab-diet-melissa-mcallister-little-known-secret-turning-body-fat-burning-machine/

#fasting #october #weightloss #dieting #diet