Intermittent fasting: yay or nay? I say yay — L.J. Austin

So, I know you’ve probably heard about intermittent fasting by now. It’s been a diet trend for the last few years and EVERYONE has either tried it, known someone who has, or at least read about it. So I won’t bore you with the details of what it is other than to say this.

It’s basically you stop eating for a certain amount of time each day (or certain days in the week, depending on the plan you choose to follow) and then you eat during a certain amount of time. And you try to NOT eat the day’s worth of calories in the eating window. Simple, right?

Ummm not really. This is my experience so far.

It began at the end of August 2021. I decided to give this intermittent fasting (IF) another try. I had done it back in December of 2019 until March of 2020. I was overweight, suffered from insulin resistance due to some family genetics and, really, just poor eating habits.

(The insulin resistance becomes a vicious cycle — sugar is basically poison to my body but it CRAVES the white powder like crazy — so I have to be super strict with how much sugar I consume).

Well the first go-around I lost a few pounds, but my life was really stressful at the moment and I wasn’t losing as much as I wanted. And then the lockdown happened and the world turned upside down, and I just gave up.

I DID have a miracle happen from that little stint of fasting, though. It healed something in my reproductive system and I got pregnant for the first time EVER in my entire life! Pretty miraculous for a 41-year-old woman to conceive after being infertile. Sadly, our daughter, Daisy May, miscarried but the experience of 12 weeks of pregnancy is one I will always cherish.

So…fast forward to the fall of last year. Things had settled down and I was ready to try again. Weight Watchers had worked in the past, but I HATE tracking everything I eat and counting calories.

No thank you! I like simple things. And IF is SIMPLE.

So one Wednesday — I know not even a Monday when we chronic dieters always start — I began again. I didn’t eat until mid-afternoon for a late lunch and then dinner. And then again the next day and the next and the next until I was back in the habit of fasting.

NOW….it was not that easy. There is a reason doctors and nutritionists warn that if you have any eating disorders IF may not be a good eating plan for you. And I found out this was true until I changed some of my thinking.

Get this….I was breaking my fasts with FAST FOOD. I was telling myself “Well, you didn’t eat breakfast and now it’s 4 pm, why not reward yourself with a hamburger and fries, or a taco or three?”

THIS did not help my waistline. Or my mental state — I felt extremely guilty about what I was putting into my body. And neither did eating lunch AND dinner.

And the scale wasn’t budging. Not surprising, I know, since I was eating way too many calories. I didn’t do this everyday, but it was enough that I knew it was going to be a problem if I didn’t change the way I was thinking about fasting and WHY I was even doing it.

I took a good, hard look at myself and realized I do like to use food as a reward, which can be considered a disordered way of eating. Food is essentially fuel to keep our bodies alive but, to me, that’s so BORING.

I love food and all the smells and tastes and textures that entails. I just needed some balance with how much I was still consuming and what kinds of food.

So I created a reward system for myself. On little slips of paper I wrote down things that would be a nice reward as I lost weight — a dinner out, a new shirt or new shoes, popcorn at the movies, etc. I made the increments two and a half pounds and also milestones of ten pounds for a larger reward.

Has it worked? Ehhhh, kind of. It’s a work in progress since I am unlearning decades of bad eating habits. I still snack before dinner sometimes but I only eat one time a day.

Yes, you read that right. I eat dinner, that’s it. The rest of the day I drink coffee (with cream — that nonsense about a tiny amount of cream breaking your fast is not true for me and black coffee is horrible! Just make sure there’s no sugar in it.) And I drink water as well. Sparkling water really helps because it’s fun and fizzy and feels like a treat. Or maybe it tastes like tears from not eating chocolate. I’ll get back to you on that.

As of now, I’m following the one-meal-a-day plan or OMAD (little diet jargon there for ya). Why, you ask?

Well I think my hormones that regulate my hunger are so out of whack that to heal anything I have to eat once a day so my body will use up the extra fat laying around. I have come to accept OMAD as my long-term lifestyle until I reach a healthy-for-me weight, which is still at least another 50 pounds. Once I am there, I will reevaluate and not live such a strict lifestyle. But I know I will still incorporate IF daily in some way.

For now, though, if I eat one meal a day, and the correct amount of portions and calories, I am losing weight regularly. Averaging about a pound a week, actually. (Woohoo!) I have never gotten those results with any other diet regimen and this one costs me nothing. It actually costs LESS because my food consumption has gone down.

So for me, IF is a yay. And a BIG YAY because I am consistently losing weight. Yes, it may take another year from now to get where I want to be, but slower weight loss is known to last because the dieter, me or YOU, is learning new lifestyle habits to maintain over the long haul — the rest of our lives. And I’m okay with that. I want a long-term fix, not a bandaid. Bandaids eventually fall off and then I’m back to square one, at an unhealthy weight and starting all over again.

Originally published at https://ljaustin.com on March 3, 2022.