Intermittent Fasting Lifestyle

Date:   2/28/2015 7:36:41 PM ( 9 y ago)

I've come off a 30-40 day fast where I did a big detox & kick started my lifestyle change with some serious shedding of excess pounds - during that time I subsisted only on liquids - mainly water based drinks with some honey, sugar & dairy - kefir, juice, no smoothies or powders or broths etc - and started taking some small amounts of food around day 30 - slowly weaning back onto food and off the fast which I ended officially at 40 days going on to the Intermittent Diet - a lifestyle in which you eat without restrictions some days of the week and on other days of the week eat only 4-500 calories - these are called your "fast days".
I thought I would just do 1:1 ratio of fast days to normal days, now I'm on my 2nd week of this lifestyle & starting to get the hang of it & see a lot of changes already in my feeling, weight & thinking which is pretty amazing in such a brief time already, really impressed with what it's already doing for me. I probably have less calories on these fast diet days than I'd normally consume even on a liquid fast day - the hardest part for me is that fast days with only 4-500 calories make you want to use the calories you do have for the 2 healthy meals a day you can make that work with it & that leaves very little leftover for cups of tea & the warm drinks I'm so used to having many of per day!
I can manage to work things out so I have 2 or 3 cups of a warm drink with a very small amount of coffee mate or skim milk powder & natural sweetener and the rest of the day stick to herbal teas and soda water. One of these milky drinks will run 20-30 calories, a 30 cal version is more satisfying so some days I might have one of those first thing in the morning & just not really eat until lunch. What this has made me aware of is how many calories I would normally take in daily in just cups of tea, hot choc, a cup or two of coffee - I don't know what the count would be on that, but quite high I'd imagine, especially with a couple of them having half & half. The main thing I've become aware of is how much sugar I'd take in on an average day in drinks alone before even adding on a biscuit or couple pieces of chocolate - things we don't eat a lot of but normally have in the house and have a munch on from time to time.
I had a kind of breakthrough yesterday after going off with my man for a picnic & having our 2nd car die (the first died only the week before so all of a sudden we were living rural with him needing to get to work on Monday - us needing to go to the city next weekend & move a wagon load os stuff out of storage & both our vehicles gone to the great graveyard in the sky pretty much within a week!) Well I stressed out a bit trying to figure out how I was going to go car shopping without another car to drive around & look with etc & where in the hell we'd be able to rent one out here & how much that was going to sting us - in the end we were really blessed with an incredible tow truck driver who hooked us up with some locals who rented us a car for the week really cheap - awesome people, & now we're on the search with a few others helping for the next vehicle.
Anyway, to make a long story short - we ended up tired after a long wait & all this took up most of the day & part of the evening & getting pizza & eating biscuits etc, by the end of the day it had been quite an amazing adventure & things that had seemed like a real disaster had worked out really well, & after having the experience of eating such pure food on the first 2 weeks of "fast days" followed by a day of eating quite a bit of junk food & sugar & how that made me feel it really gave me a eureka moment & this is causing me to deeply review how I have eaten - how much sugar I have taken in without even thinking, how junk foods really make me feel & how much better good healthy food is. Things I've really taken for granted just thinking I eat pretty healthy - seeing now that this has not really been the case & some of the hidden causes of this in all those cups of warm drinks, the way the little sugary treats stack up etc & just really seeing this in a new light after feeling what its like to not have them - and basically not have refined sugar at all during a couple weeks of "fast days" & the difference it makes to how I feel & look & am.
I'm still adjusting to the fast days - it's getting easier with each one. The first one gave me a headache, I'm so unused to not having sugar during the day like that - I didn't get a headache by the 2nd one, it sort of felt like one could manifest but it didn't & this feeling was altogether not present by the 3rd fast day. I have felt tired through the 500 calorie days so far - I've done 4 of them so far - so it's very early days. Already I can see I'm losing weight - which, following on the heels of a long fast is really remarkable as normally I would be putting weight back on during any re-feeding phase. This is certainly a first, to be on a diet that has me continuing with the weight loss. Huge smile there :)
Last weekend I was away & traveling from late Friday night (which was a fast day as I was home at least during the day) to evening Monday - just having started on the diet & being out of home & on the road I wasn't able to do a fast day sat, sun, mon or tues last week because tuesday I had a visit planned with a friend who also lives quite some distance from me, another big driving day & just very tired from all the travel. So I resumed the fast days on weds & friday & now it's the weekend & I've decided to eat normally this weekend with it being the only time I have with my partner who works afternoons & has been gone early every day besides - basically waking up at 12 and gone by 1 and not home till 1 or 2 the whole of the week... because of the car dying and not being home to cook dinner last night I wanted to be able to make & share some nice food with him today at least - it's going to be much healthier & more conscious than yesterdays junk food dinner though!!! So going to do fast days mon, weds & friday this week & going away for another big weekend late friday night again soooo will probably not be home until monday evening & I might try to pack fast day foods for one of those days so I can stick with at least a ratio 3 fast days per week with 4 non restricted days - the main thing I want to achieve besides the 3 fast days now is working towards fixing up what I consume on the non fast days in terms of reducing the sugar & just generally making healthier better feeling choices :) What I'm loving about this new diet is it's making me naturally look at & crave to do this.
I've ordered a big bulk bag of ethyritol, which is a no cal natural sweetener derived from real sugar that tastes more like sugar than any other sweetener I've ever had & is much more palatable than things like stevia & xylitol which I haven't ever really been able to make the switch to with my beverages anyway - they can be good in some things, baking etc. I have this other product called Norbu with is a blend of something called monk fruit & ethyritol which I've been using - it's not as good as straight ethyritol but it's ok - not sure what I'm going to do - on the fast days its pretty much a given that I'll be only using these natural sweeteners in any drinks & again only having a few per day - what I should do is try limiting my normal day drinks now, having one or 2 tsp of my special bee pollen honey in tea over the day and the rest of the day if I'm going to be drinking 5-10 warm drinks especially in the winter having them with the sweetener or having more herbal drinks etc and really becoming aware & conscious of this. Similar with treats - really limiting biscuits and chocolate - just replacing them with other healthy snacks that make me feel better & are much better fuel for me. Making some nut mylk & making a chai with that sweetened with a date for example or making some kind of healthy snack option, baking cookies with stevia etc perhaps or trying things out till I find something I like - having a fruit salad instead, etc - I think this sugar pattern is the next big thing I want to work on & get into a healthy range. Well, enough blogging for today - that's the direction things are going, more to come as I progress into this new lifestyle & learn as I go :) Really happy about this, I've wanted to change and start this lifestyle for quite some time & it took me a while to get there.


 

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