Intermittent Fasting update

I want to keep my brain from thinking about the orange man who is currently THE WORST and DOING NOTHING to stop a virus that has killed over 200,000 people in the US....so I thought that I would give a quick update on how intermittent fasting is going!

I started IF in the last week of January and wrote about it here. It's funny to look back on it now because things have changed! I was consistently doing IF until the pandemic hit in March. Even when I went on a work trip I skipped breakfast, presented all morning long, and didn't eat anything until lunch and was perfectly fine. As soon as I was stuck at home with the kids, working 24/7,  and freaking out over COVID, I started to eat all of my feelings and the 13 pounds that I had lost with IF earlier in the year went right back on my body.

After the July 4th holiday, I realized that I needed to get my sh*t together and started back up with IF. Through some googling, I found the "Delay, Don't Deny: Intermittent Fasting Support" Facebook group and joined. I also download the Delay, Don't Deny audible book and started listening to it on walks around the neighborhood. Turns out the tea that I was drinking back in January/February is on the naughty list and I wasn't truly "clean fasting." So I decided to suck it up and start to drink black coffee in the morning. It's been about two months and as I mentioned during my latest DITL post, black coffee is still gross, but I can tolerate it.

So what do I do these days for IF? Well, I close my eating window (aka stop eating by 7-7:30pm most nights) and I generally don't open my eating window until 2 or 3pm the next day. I'm not woozy, I'm not tired (in fact it is the opposite), I don't have trouble working out before I eat (in fact I prefer it since I don't have food sloshing around in my stomach), and I'm really not that hungry until about 2pm or so. The only thing that I ingest is a cup of black coffee and water until the afternoon. On the weekends I end up eating a bit earlier and only fast 16-17 hours so that I can eat lunch with the kids and CP.

Honestly, it's SO EASY. I don't have to worry about lunch most days because some times I'll have leftovers, sometimes I will just eat snacks (grapes, snap peas, etc), or sometimes I'll make scrambled eggs. Then I look forward to eating a full meal at dinner. 

CP thinks that it is weird and that I am "starving myself" but I truly am not hungry and I'm not eating diet foods...but yet I am still losing weight. So far 7 pounds and this week a friend of mine remarked that I look like I have lost weight (yay!). I can definitely tell in my face! The same author of Delay, Don't Deny has a longer, more recent book that goes into more detail about the science/various studies behind fasting and I have started to read it on walks around the neighborhood. 

I hope to come back with another update in a few months with more weight lost!