About two, maybe three weeks ago I started intermittent fasting. Most days I fail though, but I’m still losing weight.
I’ve been successful in losing and gaining weight. The gaining part I’m not proud of but hey, life happens. I noticed when I’m in a routine, that is when I am the most stable in weight and everything seems to be really easy to maintain and when things get out of whack like anxiety or social life, then I tend to really lose my way.
Once of the things that I’ve noticed really work for me over the years is skipping dinner on most days. In order to have a social life, dinner is a must at least every so often (usually weekends). Another routine that helps me is cooking most of my foods. Since I live alone (or at least used to before writing this post), I could control what food products are in my home. My boyfriend and I are currently on a trial living together period to see if we will drive each other crazy or drive each other passionately wild (thus moving into together). Luckily, he is like me in that he doesn’t want junk food within reach and resists temptation better than me I’d say. He also doesn’t each much at home so this works out well for both of us. So cooking with whatever I have at home is great, I keep healthy stuff at home and that is all I have to work with. Since moving to Seattle, driving to the market is kind of a pain so that helps as well. Living in the city is great, parking not so much… but that is a whole other story.
So I’ve been on and off working out hard and eating well pretty good. I don’t have much of a social life yet in Seattle so I have pretty good habits of eating whatever I make. Every so often, I’ll order a nice little treat for myself. Recently though, my bf and I decided to set some goals and track our progress. He practices intermittent fasting on most days and I was regularly skipping dinner so I figured this would be a good idea to practice for me also. He does a shorter window of eating but I know myself so I decided on the 16/8. Fast for 16 hours and eat in an 8 hour window. The thing is… drinking wine breaks your fast. Yup- so I’ve been fake intermittent fasting all my adult life. Drinking even protein shakes during the fasting window breaks your fast. Anything you put into your body that requires your metabolism to kick and break down your food and all that stuff, fast = broken.
The weather has gotten better and I was paddle boarding on nicer days, practicing shorter amounts of yoga, and still walking on days I felt lazy. My walks are anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour. Last week I decided to incorporate strength training into my routine. The problem with me is, I don’t want to live at the gym or in the fitness center. I need a fast workout that won’t kill me and be done with it for the day. Fridays, we go indoor climbing and we have set progress goals for ourselves there too. Which we are both achieving on a wonderful pace!
Partnering up for goals is great. We do encourage each other to be smarter with food and motivate each other when one of us doesn’t want to work out or be active. Last week or so, I really wanted vanilla bean ice cream, so I got a small pint. I ate quite a bit and I never really buy ice cream so I didn’t feel bad that I splurged. After I was done with what I wanted for the day, I looked over at my bf and said I kind of regretted eating the ice cream. He asked if I should throw the rest away? Without even considering that as an option until then, I went to the sink and dumped the rest into the disposal. If I wanted to keep the rest, it would have been my choice. If he didn’t say anything, I probably would have put the rest in the freezer and ate away at it until it was gone over time. Last Thursday, I really wanted to do some weight training. This is because I chose Tuesdays and Thursdays as my weight training days. I asked my bf if he wanted to go with me and he said yes but he had a really bad migraine so laid in bed for most of the day. I was kind of waiting around for him to feel better to go and finally he said he didn’t feel well enough to go downstairs to our gym to do a workout. I was okay with it since I had become pretty lazy by this time and suggested we at least do push-ups. He got up to do them and we both did our push-ups and both did one more than our previous best. Then Friday, I did weights at home by myself and we went climbing together after. We felt great, we achieved a new milestone in climbing and things are well again.
Back to intermittent fasting. Woops, sorry… went off on a tangent. So I keep failing on intermittent fasting but I’m now eating more carbs during my eating window and not sure why. I’ve been losing weight but there are at least two days in the week where I just eat what I want and when I want. It is unplanned and I don’t know how it happens. So this is my third week I think of trying intermittent fasting (for realz this time) and I’m hoping I’ll be more successful. I think documenting my journey on a day to day level could be a key for me to stick to the accountability part.
I hope to share more meals, apps I’m using and workout plans along the way. I want to drop about 1% of body fat by the end of June. This should be doable because I am on the lower end of my body fat percentage now. Wish me luck.
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