Down 62 Pounds! Intermittent Fasting & My Fitness Challenge Check in!

Hey guys, here is my weekly accountability check in for myself (most importantly, because I need it) and also for the awesomely motivating fitnesschallenge that @phelimint is doing.

After being stuck right around 190 for almost 3 months, I finally broke my plateau!!!

I finally hit 62 pounds GONE! (and the scale has stayed there for 3-4 days now!

As you can see, I've actually logged in my calories daily for 285 days. I have also weighed daily for that entire time, although I didn't think about the importance of actually logging my weight daily until recently. I would say this is the single most important reasons for my success. Being able to log may foods in, see my calorie intake made me actually think before eating something. I didn't obsess about it, I wasn't trying to eat low calorie, but I DID want to know how much I was eating each day.

Weighing myself daily ALSO helped me see that one dietary slip up was not the end of the world AND more importantly, it allowed me to see that my body has a pattern in weigh gain/loss. The first two weeks of every month I hold onto weight. The last two weeks, assuming I stick it out and keep tracking, I drop weight. This of course didn't hold true over the holidays as much, because I purposefully didn't stick to my calorie count for holiday meals/events, etc. It was more important for me to enjoy the holidays and not obsess and ironically enough, that allowed me to still be moderate in my intake... it was just with more treats and sugar than I normally eat.

Soooo that being said, onto the fasting.

I've been doing intermittent fasting since probably July of last year. I try to stop eating by 7-8:00pm, then start eating again the next day around 11-noon.

After all of the aforementioned sugary foods and lack of protein, by the time January rolled around, I was feeling pretty sluggish.

My body was feeling congested, slow, tired and worn OUT!

I talked with a friend who is a nurse about doing a longer fast. I had heard the term "autophagy" a few times here and there, but it was a hotly debated topic and honestly, what I was already doing was working for me, so I didn't even want to get into it. I did intermittent fasting because it felt better to me and helped me stay in my caloric range easily. Plus, I didn't have to eat breakfast, so that was a bonus for me. I hate eating when I first wake up!

ANYWAY, onto one theory of Autophagy

Talking to my friend, I asked her to explain the concept to me in The Simplest Terms Ever. I am a very visual learner and I get bogged down and distracted by technical and scientific speak, but I trusted her opinion and wanted to hear it 'in my language' so to speak. This is how she explained it to me and it really, really made sense AND resonated with me.

Every cell in the body has phagocytes. Their job is to "eat up" bits and pieces that wear out/die.
So if a mitochondria cell begins to malfunction or a lymph cell dies, phagocytes come along and gobble them up.
So they're constantly working, but they basically have to prioritize. They can't go around gobbling up the cells that are still working at 75% if there are a bunch only working at 50%.
Well, when you stop eating, it allows the body to take the energy that normally goes toward digestion and funnel it to repair and reconstruction. Under those circumstances, the phagocytes proliferate - they start reproducing really quickly and they gobble up everything that isn't working at 90% or more.
So up until 48 hours without food, those phagocytes just explode - there's gobs of them. They gobble up the weak and tired white blood cells, they gobble up the things that just aren't as efficient as they could be, etc. The white blood cells actually don't replace as well as they could once we're over 24 or so.
So now your white count is a little low...
But as soon as you begin to eat again, your body goes, "Oh holy crap! We need white blood cells STAT!" and the white blood cell production goes into high gear. You regenerate your entire white blood cell population.

This not only made sense to me as she explained it, but fit with many things that I'd read over the last couple of decades when I was looking into diet and nutrition. I thought this would be a great way for me to just get out of the habit of eating too much sugar/junk food (because for me, it seems to become a habit and I do better at kick starting those bad habits to the curb completely for a while, so that later I can go back to being... balanced and moderate.

I did an almost 48 hour fast. It was hard at times, it seemed like nothing at times. I've done a couple of 36 hour fasts that weren't a problem, I'd finish eating for the day around 8-9pm and then skip a day of eating and start back up with my regular schedule the next day. This time I took it a little bit further and my biggest problem was that I got overly excited about the idea and didn't pay attention to what I had been doing BEFORE starting the fast.

I had only eaten 700 calories the day that I decided to start fasting and that was a HUGE mistake. I'd definitely suggest eating high protein, and getting plenty of calories in on the day you're going to start fasting. It makes it SO much easier!

SO WHAT HAPPENED???

Well, first off, by not eating enough before starting my fast, I made it SUPER hard on myself.

Secondly? It was exhausting. I was very very glass that I had nothing to do, because I had ZERO energy to do anything. I sat around, laid around and did nothing other than read and write new stuff.

My brain felt foggy and my appetite completely disappeared, even though I was obviously hungry.

When it came time to eat again, I practically had to force myself to eat.

Then I waited for the awesome energy, rejuvenated feelings... whatever.

Nothing...

BUT THENNNNN...

The next day I got up and had what felt like boundless energy. My mood was better than it had been in recent memory (I'm talking MONTHS) and I felt motivated to DO THINGS.

The sluggish, congested feelings were gone. Completely.

I got more things done in that first day than I had in a very very long time. I cleaned, I rearranged furniture. I felt like I was on top of the world...

And STILL. It's been several days, nearly a week and I feel freaking fantastic. My emotional state is a bit sporadic, but that's not unusual for me... in large part, though, it is still so much better than it has been in a long time. I've actually had to hold myself back from some of the mental exhuberance I've been feeling, because it was literally becoming overwhelming to FEEL ALL THE THINGS! all the time!

Physically, I am still feeling really, really good. I am eating enough again, I have energy to do things, I'm moving more. It is fantastic. I feel like I've gotten a restart of sorts.

SLEEP: This is the downer. I was really hoping that this slightly extended fast would have a positive effect on my sleep/insomnia struggles. Especially since I'm actually moving so much more throughout the day. Alas, it is not so. I am suddenly having a lot more dreams, though, so maybe I am sleeping better than I was, but I still wake up feeling a but cranky because I feel tired. That's annoying, but still, overall, I feel awesome and I might do this every month or two.

And my weight finally dropped and has held steady here for 4 days!

There you have it! I'm not sure I'll reach my goal of 170 pounds by the end of next month. I honestly thought I had put 175 as a goal and was really excited that I was going to be able to easily reach it, but I looked back and Grrr I wasn't being realistic! Still, you never know!

Also, my resting heart rate has went down a LOT, so I'm happy about that, too!

And, I am CERTAIN that I will be able to do a full pull up by the end of the competition and that has been my own personal biggest goal so that is AWESOME to me. Not a big deal for most, but I am STOKED :) I've also increased my push ups on my toes to where I can do 8 in one go =... and I couldn't even do ONE when I started this challenge. I can do a minute plank now. It's going well for me, I'd say!

_{Above is my progress photo from November. Below you can see that I'm still making progress and things are firming up!}

So, this was quite the novel, but there you have it!

Next week I'm going to write about my new habit tracking with my bullet journal :)