I Tried Intermittent Fasting for 30 Days

Let's get to the point. All those diets out there don't work for me. I can't stand the rules for dieting because I feel like everything is restrictive.

Then as I was watching some YouTube videos, I found Intermittent Fasting (IF) which I heard about and was intrigued. It was simple. You fast for at least 16 hours depending on different times. I chose to have my eating window from 12pm to 8pm daily. This meant no breakfast which I had been accustomed to my ENTIRE life. I downloaded the android app Body Fast but you can search in Google Play or Itunes for Intermittent Fasting .

Backup. Why the diet? Well there's a wedding this fall and I had somehow gained at least 15 lbs over the past year. I had maintained such good habits but somehow along the way life started to change. School came into the picture. Then a dramatic change in my career forced me to see things differently. But enough of the excuses.

I was going to do this because it was simple. Eat anything in the window form 12pm to 8pm EVERY DAY for the next 30 days.

This is what happened.

The first day I tried this my stomach grumbled, and roared in my first Monday morning meeting, almost talking over my own voice in the meeting. I drank like a camel that morning as hunger pains struck already at 8am. In that moment, even though people tell you, you have eaten breakfast every day of your life, you will push past through it. I was ready to call the BS card and run to the nearest fast food to grab breakfast.

But I didn't, I chugged my water, cranked the music, and kept ploughing through. With crankiness coming in, and my mind thinking food all the time. 12pm was like some kind of New Year's countdown. Only 20 more mins. Only 10 more mins, as I grabbed the water aggressively and threw it back.

When 12pm came, I chewed slowly on my food. The flavors were pronounced, strong, tasting almost more intense than I remembered. When did spinach taste so fresh and when did that vinaigrette feel tart but savory?

After the first few days, my body started to get used to it. I kept myself busy and then when 12pm came by, lunch became like some sort of special ritual where I would sit at my desk smell the food, take one bite and sit there as the flavors did the May pole dance on my tongue.

I didn't lose a significant ton of weight. In actuality, I didn't start losing weight until the second week. The waiting till 12pm subsided. My face started to get less round and more oval. The third week, my stomach started getting more flat. My clothes used to be tight and started giving me room to grove. Finally, the fourth week, I was down at least 5 lbs. Nothing dramatic, but here are few tips that I learned if you would like to try this.

What's the science? Are there really benefits or is this just another fad:

Intermittent Fasting Changes The Function of Cells, Genes and Hormones. "According to a 2014 review of the scientific literature, intermittent fasting can cause weight loss of 3-8% over 3-24 weeks. The people also lost 4-7% of their waist circumference, which indicates that they lost lots of belly fast,the harmful fat in the abdominal cavity that causes disease." *More information in references below.

8 Tips for Intermittent Fasting

1) Drink ginger, and lemon water first thing in the morning. Boil some ginger in a sauce pan, cut up an inch of ginger, let it steep, let it cool, then place in a pitcher for the following morning. Squeeze lemon juice before you drink it. So this helped me to debloat and it actually cleared up my face, and acne. I was so surprised.

2) If you can't absolutely make it till your next open window of eating, grab a handful of almonds. This is srt of the crutch to help you to not eat.

3) Keep yourself busy, busy, busy. Your mind will feel like a non-stop thinking-about-eating-machine. If you can be active, move around, it will help with the hunger pains.

4) If you eat past your window, just adjust it. I had dinner with friends and we didn't finish eating until 8:30pm. Simply, I would just adjust the next day until about 12:30pm and then begin eating.

5) If you love breakfast, but perhaps you hardly eat dinner consider changing the hours from 8am-4pm and don't eat after 4pm.

6) Add a HIIT (high intensity interval training) workout to help increase weight loss. Although it does increase metabolism, which initially made me even more hungry.

7) Try at least 3 weeks to 1 month to start seeing results.

8) Try not to over indulge, over eat. Sit, enjoy the food, and use some mindfulness as you eat the food. I promise the food tastes even better. Some people limit their window to 4 hours. Or have two small meals and skip a few hours in between.

References:

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/10-health-benefits-of-intermittent-fasting