Tag: fasting

In the beginning, it was simple…

I had become accustomed to fasting. I was narrowing my window of eating down to the preliminary starting point of 12pm for breakfast while eating many smaller meals until 8pm.

This was the priming; I had to acclimate myself to growing hungry, operating hungry, and even sleeping hungry.

However tough it seemed, this made the reward all that much sweeter; When the fast was finally broken, food tasted amazing, it was satisfying, and I was full….for a while.

This was when I realized that my diet still lacked structure.

The content of what I was eating had improved but I was filling up on the first few meals and would quit because I felt hungry until later when I would have that notable reoccurring hunger that is famous for ruining diets;

It was then I realized that for this diet to work, it wasn’t just the fasted moments which had to be a sacrifice but there were plenty of sacrificed within the eating window.

First, I had to start eating when my body needed it, not because I was hungry—that was difficult.

We grow up with the idea that we eat when were hungry and drink when were thirsty and in spite of this level of impulse, we still use words like “Breakfast” which literally imply a fast–but does the body reach a fasted state in just the small hours that were sleeping, consensus is no.

It takes roughly 12 hours to reach a fasted state and in the “normal” western pattern diet, even less time is allotted to time without food; people will often eat up until the point of going to sleep, maybe wake up for a snack, and after sleep, eat breakfast while they wait for lunch. Not enough does the average person experience prolonged hunger; and that constant stimulation is almost painful to break.

My solution was simple, eat to survive, not for pleasure.

The Plan: I would give myself the appropriate time without food and when time to break the fast, shove a healthy selection of meal into my face at reasonable intervals with a new found bias for larger portions over many meals—continuing to eat when feeling full.

My mentality was simple: Recognizing how food would not be available and that I needed to put it away while it was available and the beauty was, I would have a lot of time to digest–which my IBSD stomach loved.

The first few months of Keto, I was already fasting and my meals were simple;

Poached eggs over spinach with seasoning and sriracha, Venison sandwich on rye with fresh spinach tomato and sriracha mayo, and in the beginning, Keto oatmeal with peanut butter—yes, it exists.

Quickly, I added an egg protein shake with Almond Milk to the mix and I had 4 solid meals to eat within 12pm-8pm.

Somewhere along, food became a tool that I would build with and my diet as a system started to make sense: crap management, crap result.

In the first month, I shed a surprising amount of weight (25lbs) with little exercise. I was still in that glut of minimum motivation that I had been in before the diet. It was exciting and after years of many different diets—some costing a lot of money—I had found something that worked like I had only dreamed. What I didn’t realize was that this was water weight and the benefits were only diminishing from here—it wouldn’t be all sunshine and roses but it was one hell of a start. I would have to readjust course and even begin working out. Also, what I didn’t realize was that in order to call my diet Keto compliant, I would have to reach full Ketosis. 

However, I just was reaching “Semi-Ketosis” but this was surprisingly a good thing because it allowed me many of the benefits without incurring the dreaded “keto flu”.

Official diet: “Semi-Keto” with Intermittent fasting—8hr window to start, 4 meals per day.

At the current moment, I’ve gone from a total of 95lbs lost, down to 70lbs lost—I plan to document the next steps of recovery from my dietary relapse in 2021. At some point, I got complacent and assumed that I had reached maximum weight loss in addition to feeling like I can get rid of any weight that I put on. In 2021, I started to eat the worst garbage imaginable and gained an extra 26lbs that I’ve been just “regulating”.

Also, I plateaued at 95lbs lost and knew there was another 30lbs left to lose which now would require a serious effort to exercise. I actually like exercise but the pain from my back feels like hell and I gave up after at least doing the regimen for some months.

Going forward, my exercises will be more core focused to strengthen my back muscles and less on my upper body which after working hard, now is suitable enough–one goal met.

I’m not proud of myself for destroying a good thing–it may take the whole year to get this together; but the important thing is always getting back up after a failure.

-M