Getting Control

I have been trying to do the 2 hour window with little success...I ate past my window a couple of days this week, even past the 5 hour window. I think it is just stress but I have to get my eating window back under control.

Today I did well, I am waiting for my window to open at 5pm today and we are going to have some burgers at Red Robin tonight and then later have some wine with friends. I will keep my regular 5 hour window for the weekends but next week I am going to try again on the 2 hour window experiment.

I would like to keep it to two hours Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and do a full day fast on Mondays. Then have a regular 5 hour window Friday and Saturday. Hopefully this schedule will help me get back on track.

Aside from this, I do feel happy with the way I look in the mirror lately. I find I look thin, and don't feel bloated or fat lately at all. I think yoga is helping with that. I have really been enjoying yoga, I go three days a week and always look forward to it and feel amazing after class. It is a great little break from the grind of life too, to just focus and breathe.

If I never lose the last 30 pounds, I will be happy with that I think. It would be great to reach my ultimate goal though but I am not obsessing about getting there. I am just going to try to get my overeating under control, continue with my yoga and see how it goes.

Fasting Advice

Thank you so much for all your comments and advice. I am going to take a little bit from everyone of you. Carmen Theresa, thank you, I totally agree with you that self acceptance is a big factor, and not judging myself when I overeat, yes there is always tomorrow!

Breaking the momentum, great advice, I will keep that in mind when I am in my eating window. Scott, avoiding starchy carbs, very good advice. I notice that the more of those I eat, the more I want to eat.

And shortening my eating window will be the biggest thing I can do to ensure success, a lot of you have suggested that. Thank you to my Fast 5 Group on Facebook who have also given me great advice on how to stop the over eating, and to Paula who is now trying just one meal per day which I think is a great idea.

I plan to follow the above advice, avoid starchy carbs as much as possible, break the momentum and take a break, shorten my eating window to 2 hours 5 days per week and 4 hours 2 days per week, eat just one meal and one dessert, and not judge myself if I am not perfect, there is always tomorrow!

Thanks again everyone, I am so lucky to have such great support from a group of people who truly understand what I am going through, invaluable.

Wish me luck!!!

Overeating

I still struggle with overeating. I know this is the reason I have been on this plateau for so long. I am eating the amount of calories I need to eat to maintain this weight. Maintaining is good, I just want to maintain at a lower weight.

When I started this process I had 80 pounds to lose. I have lost almost 50 of that. I still have a long way to go and even though I have found my "diet soul mate" I still struggle with the thing that got me here in the first place. I have a food addiction and I always overeat.

I am sure this is why intermittent fasting has worked so well for me, it is easier for me to eat nothing than to just have a little bit. But, once I start eating I have a really hard time stopping within my window even though I am full, extremely full sometimes. I really want to work on this and try harder. It is just that this feels like the hardest thing in the world sometimes. It is so weird though, even I don't understand how I can go for 48 hours without eating anything yet when I am eating, I can't stop myself from having another snack.

It is all in the mind. I have just made the decision that I am fasting and therefore, eating during that fasting window is just not happening, because I have decided. I have to find a way for that to happen in my eating window too. When I am full, I stop, no discussion. I have to make a decision that this is what I am going to do. But how? When is it clear that a person is full? There is so much room for error here. I could talk myself into believing that I am not quite full yet.

Maybe I need a more clear cut indication of when it is time to stop? It is so tricky...because how do you help an addict not overdose? Any suggestions?

Working out for weight loss

I often wonder how we are all so misinformed about so many things in the diet and exercise industry. I think it is mainly because people create these myths to help themselves make money and then they are repeated so many times by people who seem to know what they are talking about and so we believe them.

It only makes sense once you actually think about it, that what they say cannot be true.

If starvation mode was true, how are people who are actually starving so skinny, skeletons actually. Anorexics, poor starving children in Africa etc...If starvation mode were true they would look fat.

The same is true for silly things like "abs of steel" videos. Use this workout video 20 minutes a day and you will have abs of steel! How is this actually possible? If all the person changed was doing this video 20 minutes a day their stomach would actually get bigger.

Think about it. Their diet stays the same, they don't burn fat any other way, like through cardio exercise or fasting, and they are going to get a flat stomach from doing sit ups? NO.

Just doing sit ups will work out your abdominal muscles which will increase their size. When you work out a muscle you make it bigger. That is why body builders have such big arms, they get the muscle bigger by working it out. If you change nothing else and don't burn the fat away that is on top of your ab muscles, your stomach will look bigger with just working out your abs because you are just increasing the size of your abs under your fat.

If you want rock hard, six pack abs, you need to burn the fat away that is on top of them. We all have a six pack under there, it is just waiting to be revealed.

Unfortunately, you cannot isolate the area in which you want fat to burn away over others. Fat will burn away in the way the body wants it to, which is usually not the area we want it to. If your stomach is the area that is always the biggest, your stomach is probably the area that will lose weight last. Fat tends to burn off in the order in which it was put on, from last to first. So if you gain weight in your stomach first and your face last, then your face will lose weight first when you start burning it.

Doing crunches or squats will not speed this process along and somehow allow your body to jump to that area first. You cannot make muscle burn the fat around that area, it doesn't work that way.

Burn off the fat using an actual fat burning method like FASTING or CALORIE restriction. Add in some cardio to help kick it up a notch, Then, your muscles will be visible without all that fat on top of them.

No Diet Guilt

This weekend was a really fun long weekend, it was Canada Day last weekend and it is the 4th of July celebrations in the states. I know I ate WAY too much this weekend celebrating...it is so hard when our lives are so centered on food when we are having fun!

I ate in restaurants tons and had lots of wine. I ate outside my eating window on Saturday and was really bad, having fast food at 3AM after coming in from a night out watching live music at a fun lounge.

It was fun, but now it is over, back to regular old day to day eating schedule...which is another reason I love intermittent fasting. Yes, I was bad this weekend, but NO I don't feel complete guilt and I haven't beaten myself up and thrown all my goals out the window. I just know that I will go right back to fasting for 19 hours every day, eating low carb three-four days per week, doing yoga three days a week and enjoying life with a smaller body.

I know this because, this is my life. There are lots of people I know who are skinny and have been their whole lives. Just because they are thin, doesn't mean they never enjoy a burger at 3am, or drink too much wine one night or have too many desserts one day. They still do these things and stay thin because once the fun is over, they go right back to living their lives like they did before, following whatever healthy lifestyle they live that keeps them thin and healthy.

I have found my way of life and I know that one weekend of over indulgence is not going to take that all away from me.

Live your life, enjoy your celebrations, and get right back to your healthy lifestyle when the fun is over and you will be just fine!

Fasting and Detox

I have noticed lately that my skin is not looking as good as it usually does. I have a pimple...haven't had one in ages and rarely get any at all since I have started intermittent fasting.

I have not been doing as well with my all day fasts that I usually do on Sundays because pottery is on a break for the summer and I find it harder to fast on Sundays when I am at home and doing things with my husband and friends. I really realize that my long fasts are a part of my schedule and help keep the scale in the right range and help me detox whatever it is that have caused my skin problems in the past.

I need to to a small adjustment to my schedule for summer just like I do when I am on vacation. I will now do my long fasts on Mondays at work rather than Sundays until pottery begins again. I think this will help clear up my skin, and keep me feeling good.

The beauty of intermittent fasting is that it is so flexible. You really can just asses how your schedule is working and adjust it to fit your lifestyle. In the fall when pottery begins again, I will switch back to Sundays. When I am on vacation I can move my eating window to evenings...all of these changes make it easy to keep on track with fasting unlike most diets that are really difficult to incorporate into our everyday lives.

Since I missed my fast on Sunday and it is now Tuesday, I am going to do my long fast today and into tomorrow, breaking my fast at dinner on Wednesday which will be a total of 36 hours. I am off work on Thursday and Friday because of our Canada Day holiday, so we have a fun weekend planned of camping. I look forward to enjoying a roasted marsh mellow over the fire on Wed night!

A book?

Thinking of writing a book on Intermittent fasting...what do you think?

Lifestyle Change

Lifestyle change is not as easy as it sounds. You can't just wake up tomorrow and decide to change your lifestyle.

"Today I am going to change how I eat, how active I am, what foods I like and the portions I eat...no problem." Uh, does anyone else see a potential issue here?

It is like trying on shoes...if you buy those really cute ones that make your calfs look fantastic but hurt like hell and make you bleed, what are the chances of you wearing those shoes every single day for the rest of your life? Chances are you will wear them on a hot date or to your high school reunion or that wedding where your ex will be and then they will sit in your closet for the rest of your life untouched.

Trying on lifestyles is the same thing. Keep trying pairs on until you come across that really cute pair that look amazing and are SO comfortable. Just wait, try one at a time, don't rush it for that wedding next week. Take your time and the right shoes will be found if you just keep trying them on one pair at a time.

Little by little, try new things, give them a chance, one at a time, until you incorporate it into your life because you really enjoy it. That is how a new lifestyle is born. You can't rush it in time for summer.

Question everything

Intermittent fasting opens our eyes to just how much we consume and how unnecessary it really is. It makes us feel better than we have ever felt and we start to question everything we have been taught. It makes us understand just how we have an obesity epidemic on our hands and frustrated that the answere is so simple yet so difficult at the same time because intermittent fasting is so different than what the diet and nutrition industries have been selling for so long. 

Keep questioning and keep discovering the truth and together with the rest of the IF community maybe we can start to make a difference and free people from obesity!

What is Starvation Mode?

We have been SO mislead and have completely misunderstood the science behind Starvation mode. When physical trainers or dieticians say it we automatically believe it because they are the "expert". But they are also just repeating what we have all somehow misunderstood and repeated to everyone we know who is on a diet. Lets take a real look at what Starvation Mode actually is.

Starvation mode as we know it is a myth. When we think of starvation mode, we think that when we skip a meal or go on a low calorie diet, our bodies go into "starvation mode" and start storing everything we eat as fat because it thinks it is starving, thus causing weight gain rather than weight loss. People in our society also have a very strange idea of what starving is. To them, starving can be as little as skipping a meal or even a snack. Actual starvation means cutting the total caloric intake to less than 50% of what the body requires per day for an extended period of time (meaning weeks and/or months). So skipping a meal or snack is nowhere near starvation. 


Also, starvation mode doesn't cause weight gain, not even close. Research shows that at no point does the body stop burning body fat during fasting or even during extreme starvation until the research subject hits a rate of approximately 5% body fat. So, if we have body fat to burn, our bodies will not gain weight, but continue to burn body fat for fuel.

What does happen in starvation mode is your metabolic rate drops (after several weeks or months of less than 50% of your recommended daily caloric intake). Which could explain why there may be a misunderstanding that the body would gain weight because we are told that a slow metabolism means weight gain. However, the slow metabolic rate associated with starvation mode is also misunderstood as outlined in the below quote from this article:

"Lyle McDonald explains it this way: 

In general, it's true that metabolic rate tends to drop more with more excessive caloric deficits… But here's the thing: in no study I've ever seen has the drop in metabolic rate been sufficient to completely offset the caloric deficit. That is to say that cutting your calories to less than 50% of what the body needs per day leads to a reduction in the metabolic rate of 10%. Starvation mode you say. Well, yes. But you still have a 40% daily deficit."

This means that you are still so far under the amount of calories that you should be eating that you will certainly continue to lose weight and not gain it as we would be led to believe.


Intermittent fasting is not a starvation diet. People who practice intermittent fasting generally eat near, if not above their daily required calorie intake and so are no where near starvation mode, something which as we understand it, doesn't exist anyway. Furthermore, studies show that intermittent fasting actually increases the metabolic rate, so that would put us well out of "starvation mode danger."