I am still 'at it' - as in fasting. This week I had to change around my second fasting cycle from Thursday/Friday to Friday/Saturday due to social commitments, which means I am doing my second 500 calorie day today.
So far I have lost 4.75 pounds. This is actually better than expected and more than I probably would have lost just by calorie counting during the equivalent time period. I am really pleased about it. 2 more pounds and I will be back at my August 2012 weight. I remember feeling physically more comfortable at that weight, which is 165.75.
For me, once I get into the 170s, I feel uncomfortable due to the weight distribution; it is fair to day that bits of me start to touch each other at 170something which from a comfort perspective should not be touching! In bed is the worst... And seeing as I have chronic disease issues that mean I spend a lot of my life in bed, being comfy there is a priority. Suffice to say, I am starting to notice the benefits of getting a slightly more even weight distribution.
Intermittent Fasting has also been more flexible for me than doing 7 days a week of proper calorie counting. I am logging on My Fitness Pal, but approximating more than I would if I were trying to lose weight purely by counting calories. Clearly it is working! I was figuring out my weekly calorie average yesterday and it was hovering around the 1,266 area - that is why it works. I have days where I am eating 1,700 or even 2,000, but over an entire week when added to the 500 days, it all evens out to a weight loss calorie average. I am hoping that if I can keep this up, I shall also be helping myself with the fasting benefits.
One thing that I thought would be interesting is to see if IF helps my TTOTM PMS sugar cravings. These had gotten really bad again - in fact, I can't say they ever went away even when I have been doing very clean eating. Come PMS time, I am like another person - just craving all the bad stuff. So this time, I did eat a little more sweet stuff than the rest of the month, but it was way less than normal and quite controlled. I didn't feel out of control, that's for sure; so I didn't feel any feelings of shame or negativity. I shall be interested to see if this becomes an ongoing pattern. I do think that not feeling deprived, because 5 days of the week I can eat treats sensibly if want, helps to lessen the urge to grab things... And thus minimise the tendency to suddenly go out of control.
When your daily calorie count is 1200 or 1300 or whatever, the tendency to not be able to allow for one piece of cake or other sweet/savoury treat means that when you finally do cave, as you are most likely to do at some point (we are human after all), can lead to falling off the wagon big time. In my case, my own blog is testament to this. I seem to have a 'cracking' point. I can literally be like a saint, doing all the right things for months and then it's as if this urge or resentment builds up in me and boom... I find one piece of cake becomes: 'why the hell am I depriving myself of this?', which becomes an abandonment of 'the plan'; and I find myself 4, 6, or 10 months later back where I started, possibly with some more poundage in addition to the stuff I gained back.
This yo-yo diet cycle is apparently incredibly bad for you. I certainly do not relish it at all. Part of my gaining weight in several cycles has been due to endocrine health issues too, but I know that even if you take that away, my input has been more than my output for a long time. It may be because I tend to be so sedentary and I used to be so active, that my brain has never caught up with the fact that I actually cannot eat as much as I think I can without gaining weight. I still have not found that magic place where input and output are balanced.
This is where I hope that IF comes in and pretty much saves me from the yo-yo diet cycle. The way I see it, Intermittent Fasting is not a diet. It's more of a life choice/a lifestyle. You just add those two cycles into your week and that's it... For life. It's not something you abandon when you reach The Magic Number - as in, the weight you have always wished to be, where life will suddenly be rosy and perfect and all will be well with the world. It just keeps on occurring like clockwork and you surrender to the process, and reprogram your brain, just like you programmed it before to some other way of eating and being.
