Everything worked pretty well for the first 7 months or so but I was having a lot of new health problems: I was cold all the time, I was having horrible heart palpitations, my anxiety was the worst it had been in a long time, I was losing hair more than usual and I found out I was anemic. I just assumed all of this was weight loss related. I found out later it definitely was but it had more to do about the way I lost weight.
After 8 months of losing weight pretty consistently, I plateaued. I was eating around 1100 calories a day (I cross tracked with My Fitness Pal to see where I was at) and I was doing hard core exercise every day. The scale wouldn't budge. The advice I got was to switch things up by calorie cycling and carb cycling. I was told to do more cardio... I was told it will eventually break but it didn't. But now I was more frustrated, more exhausted and I felt like it was all my fault.
Fast forward to June when my friend suggested I read a book called The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss
by Dr. Jason Fung. I am always happy to read health related books. I love learning different ideas when it comes to figuring out how to be the healthiest version of me.I started reading the book that night and stayed up until 2am reading it. I was relieved, pissed, excited and validated.... The most important take away - the reason I got fat was NOT my fault. It was because of insulin resistance. It was a hormonal issue and no amount of exercise and calorie restricting was going to keep the weight off. I had to address the insulin issue.
The second take away... The A-HA moment if you will... my anemia, anxiety, hair loss, palpitations, etc. were all due to having restricted my calories so much. When your body is used to having a certain amount of fuel and then all of a sudden is deprived of that same amount of fuel, it has to turn down your metabolism so you don't die. What does that mean... well my hair couldn't grow the same, my heart wasn't pumping the same, I was cold because my body didn't have enough energy to keep itself warm, I wasn't making the same amount of red blood cells, and so on. My metabolism was shot hence the plateau and all the other issues.
The third take away, intermittent fasting allows your insulin to go down and helps to reverse insulin resistance. I had heard of the F word for about three years via podcasts like The Fat Burning Man and The Chalene Show. It was something I just dabbled in a few times a week but never really talked about much. Did you know people freak out when you say you aren't eating? Yeah, they lose their shit. And don't even suggest that they should think about fasting. That really gets people out with pitchforks... It's not pretty.
But here's the thing. Fasting is OLD news. Jesus, Buddha, so many others... all the biggies talked about fasting because they knew of its benefits: clarity, energy, euphoria... They wanted their followers to do it because they knew it was essential to health and well being.
You know what's a NEW fad? Eating every two hours, nibbling on processed garbage. That's only about 50 years old. And when did humans who ate this way started getting fat? Yup. Right around that same time. Humans were not meant to eat all the time! In hunter/gatherer societies, food wasn't always available but when it was, it was time to feast. But feast was always followed by fast because there wasn't always food available. But the human body is a marvel. It takes energy in the form of glucose and stores it as fat so when we don't have food, it burns the STORED FAT by turning it into glucose or energy. See? But now that people are constantly eating, their body just burns the easiest available glucose which comes in all day long through food. We don't have opportunities to burn that stored fat. UNLESS WE FAST.
After reading the book, I immediately started intermittent fasting and eating a low carb high fat diet. It had been drilled into my head (although I never bought it) that healthy fats should be avoided because they were SO high in calories. Now that I've changed my diet to incorporate less processed garbage and more healthy fats... I don't get hungry. I don't binge eat and I feel less bloated.
But for me, the magic happens in my fasting. As a compulsive overeater, when I was calorie restricting for weight loss, I was hungry all the time, I would binge eat multiple times a week and I felt constant guilt for being such a failure when I did binge. It was no way to live but I didn't have a choice because these were the only options available to you when you wanted to lose weight: exercise lots and eat less.
Fasting has given me power over food. I started by omitting breakfast a few more times a week and then eventually switched over to 20 hour fasts every few days. (Essentially just skipping breakfast and lunch every second day.) Not eating is so much easier than eating in moderation for me. I was never very good at moderation especially with carbs. I was an addict and I just couldn't stop. As another reader of The Obesity Code said: "Food used to be my master but now it is my servant." This. It's exactly this. And I can't believe I can say that after 30 years of struggling with my weight.
After one month of a low carb high fat diet and intermittent fasting, I lost just over 8 lbs, broke my plateau, started feeling healthier again, my anxiety improved and I felt like for the first time in my life, I had found the key to tackling my food addiction. And I had no more guilt when I ate. When you have skipped two meals, you don't feel bad for enjoying a large, healthy meal. It is well deserved and it's brought enjoyment back to eating. No guilt, no counting, no obsessing... FREEDOM.
I don't talk to most people about my new healthy lifestyle because many people are scared of this fasting idea. I get it! Our first instinct as a human is to find food and eat it. It's one of our primary instincts. So when you tell someone not to eat - it freaks them out! In ancient cultures, when you found food, you ate a lot of it because you didn't know when it would be coming around again. But the problem is that we are still thinking this way but we have access to food 24 hours a day. We can't eat all day long. Because.... pssstttt... it's making us all fat! We need to take breaks from eating. Somewhere in the late 70s people started eating snacks every few hours. Before that, people just ate their 3 squares a day. Heck - even that's fasting! If people could even just do that it would likely help with some of the obesity issue.
I've since learned that there is some very promising research to suggest that a 7 day water fast once a year could potentially reduce your cancer risk and there is some talk that the autophagy process could even help prevent diseases like Alzheimers. I get so excited by this kind of info!
At the end of the day, food companies, diet companies and the pharmaceutical industry don't like fasting. Why? Because it doesn't make money!!!! People not eating, getting healthier and losing weight doesn't put cash in the pockets of these three HUGE money making industries. So they'll tell you all day long that it is bad for you, it doesn't work, it's a FAD. But luckily, you have the opportunity to do research for yourself. Read books, listen to podcasts, see how it works for others. That last one is a biggie! I follow many Facebook pages about this subject and what I'm seeing is absolutely amazing. People getting off meds, doctors completely shocked by changes in their patients, weight loss, clarity, skin tags disappearing, skin tightening... the list goes on.
I share my journey in hopes that I can help other people see their options so they can make an informed decision for themselves. Don't believe everything you hear. On any side of the story! Maybe dieting works for you. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe fasting works for you. Maybe it doesn't. But don't ever give up the fight and keep looking for the right fit for you. Maybe it's a little of column A and a little of column B.
For the first time in my life, I feel like I finally found my fit.
