Re: Fasting until I reach goal weight

Your fasting binging cycle sounds a lot like mine years ago. Within a year, I doubled in size. This is the kind of stories a lot of fasting people on this forum like to discredit as not normal cases but I feel the amount of people who go silent on this site struggle with the same fate. It is a horrible cycle and you have to be honest with yourself if you can push through the emotional barrier or if you are better off eating better and being physically active instead.

Emotional eating takes a lot of work to fight. You have to face your emotional problems and solve them (fasting alone will not solve these problems). Facing emotional eating only happens when you are eating and focus on consumption when hungry and find other activities.

If you are not already, please start doing some sort of physical activity every day. I suggest something simple like walking a couple miles each day. If that is too hard, build up to walking at least two a day. It will make a huge difference if you keep on gaining or not. The more you gain the harder and worst off you are, believe me on this.

As I mentioned in my last comment, you need to break fast accordingly. Let say you are having trouble keeping on fast, then that means make sure you give yourself healthy options to break fast. Make sure it is something like coconut water. Sometimes a small change like that will do wonders and even give your mind time to decide you want to continue fasting. Or go drink some vegetable broth or eat a salad with homemade dressing. Or a piece of fruit! For example the time you were with family eating pizza. This takes a lot of work but be mindful of your goals hourly. Let’s say you can’t help but want to part take in this social eating, then make sure to get some salad or a piece of fruit. You will mentally and physically feel 100% better. You might still feel a little defeated but at least you know you are not eating something that your body is going to have trouble metabolizing and make you gain weight. Plus this is the proper way to break short fasts.

From my experience, having an ‘emotional journal’ helps with figuring out why we want to eat and solves the actual problem we are facing instead of eating. It is normal to have a ‘crisis’ during a fast that you are faced with dealing with your inner problems and there is no food to distract yourself with. It is important to critically think about your situation and ask yourself why you are doing this and work through the emotion you are facing. Writing and even taking a walk helps. Or you could find some sort of creative outlet. The key is to acknowledge the emotion and let go. Then to practice this same procedure when you do eat by eating only when necessary and making sure to not eat everything that is in front of you.

Maybe you need to build to fasting for seven days? Sometimes seven days is a lot of work when you are starting out. Some do Intermediate fasts which they break with eating. You could fast for three days and then break one day with foods like fruit and salad or even just stick to a light juice like coconut water and then resume for another three days till you can go longer days. The key to this sort of fasting and any fast you do is HOW YOU BREAK FAST. If you break fast with bad food it will make you gain weight and you will feel like garbage. So it is important to always prepare for you breaking fast. Always have a game plan of what you are going to do if you want to eat and don’t want to face your emotional eating problem. My personal favorite is some coconut water. It will still keep you in ketones so if you want you can fast the next day and still not feel like you lost your progress.

You should not feel embarrass about breaking fast. The cycle is not that uncommon. But use this embarrassment to your advantage and tell yourself, “I should keep going because this looks ridiculous to keep going with this cycle, why am I doing this anyway?!” Maybe that can help you focus better on your journey to lose weight.

At the end of the day, the support is within you. You have to be thoughtful of what you are doing and remind yourself the consequence of your actions. Fasting does not make it easier to lose weight and eventually if executed poorly you will only be losing what you had gain post fast.
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