Fatty 1 – Intermittent Fasting Week 9

I didn’t post last week because there wasn’t much to write about, and I was in the crunch of the final weeks of school.  I have lost about another pound bringing me to a total of 12-13 pounds.  I was more lax the past two weeks than I have been, but that’s fine.  I ate more bread products than I have been, but still nothing near what I used too.  I drank a few sodas, during the last two weeks, but I used to drink two a day, so still a lot different than my previous consumption levels.

Seven weeks ago my Crossfit gym had a Spring LEANing contest.  About 70 people signed up to do it.  There was a big cash prize, and so that was motivation for me to go on the paleo diet.  I had been fasting with no particular diet regime, but for this contest you had to pick The Zone Diet, or a Paleo or Primal type diet.  I hate counting and measuring what I eat, so I went paleo.  It’s easier for me to not eat bread than it is to weigh and count things.  I hate it, so I don’t stick with it.

Anyway, the contest lasted seven weeks.  I got a call yesterday from one of the gym owners and she said I had made it to the top five.  Wow, I impressed myself.  I knew I had lost some weight, but out of the 70 people trying I had made it into the top five.  Now I didn’t end up winning, but I feel really good about having done so well in such a short amount of time.  Hopefully I can keep it up.

I’ve finished school this week, so I’m allegedly going to have more time to work out.  I’m hoping that the increase in exercise combined with the eating plan that so far seems to be working for me will help me get down to my goal leaness.

I’ve also thought that this next week I will experiment with the Eat Stop Eat style of intermittent fasting.  That is a 24 hour fast followed by a day of normal eating, two to three times a week.  For example  Sunday night I will stop eating at around five or six o’clock, and then I won’t eat again until five or six on Monday night, then Tuesday I will eat “regular”, which will probably two or three meals that will end by five or six, and then fasting again for 24 hours.

My reason for doing this is just to see how it compares to the daily fasting I have been doing.  I currently fast around 16 hours and then eat the other eight.  Generally, two meals and a snack or two.  So I try to finish eating around 7 or 8  in the evening, and then I fast until about one or two in the afternoon the next day.

I’m just experimenting, to see which way I like better.  I’ll report back next week.

Fatty 3 – Ramblings

This is Fatty 3 here.  Yes, I am the one that is neither maintaining or losing weight.  I am actually gaining weight.  I admire Fatty 1 for her ability to keep at it.  Even when she isn’t on an official eating program, she still manages to maintain her weight.  Fatty 22, may not blog or go on any “official” eating plans, but she is exercising and manages to maintain her weight at a reasonable level very well.  These two are the examples to follow.  I, on the other hand, am the example of how not to lead your life.

I have this belief that we each have our individual basic issues to resolve/deal with in life.  My personal belief system is that I chose this life and my “issues” or “life/karmic lessons” prior to inhabiting this body and that those will always be the core of who I am and what I need to deal with in this lifetime.  On the positive side, I believe that I am intelligent enough to have a pretty damn good sense of humor.  I have empathy for creatures on this earth that are non-human, and I can appreciate beauty and a weed free lawn.  On the negative side, I have addiction issues that range from food (which becomes obvious when you see my pictures on this website) to pull tabs to “reality” TV.  I have battled all my life with depression and have made several feeble attempts at suicide.  As I have gotten older, I have become an isolationist, pessimistic, misanthropic, crank who believes the younger generation has no sense of work ethic and an inability to understand why they can’t drive and text message at the same time (don’t get me started on Twitter and Iphone). 

My question is, when is it time to give up trying to leap the Grand Canyon on your motorcycle?  When you die trying, or when you’ve made 487 attempts and failed?  And if you do quit, then what?  What does quitting mean?  Does it mean quitting and living your life unsatisfied?  Or does it mean, not living life?

What if this life is just paying off the karmic debt that was incurred in previous lifetimes?  That sucks.  Here I am dealing with being ripped off by the general contractor who I hired to remodel my bathroom because I ripped off the guy who I hired in a previous life to build my tomb?  It’s like punishing my dog today for chasing the cat last month.

So, what’s your point you ask.  My point is….when does one say Uncle?  When do you stop trying to lose weight even though you know it will impact your life in so many physical and psychological ways?  When do you stop trying and failing, or worse yet, trying, succeeding and then gaining the weight back?  When do you realize that they just don’t make a size 20 petite?

My cats love me when I am home all day eating.  They don’t mind the crumbs in the bed.  Maybe it’s enough that I make my cats happy……?

Fatty 1 – Week 7

I am down about a half-pound to a pound.  The weight is coming off slow and steady.  I’ve kept up with the fasting pretty well.  My eating window is a little larger.  I was trying to go for the Fast-5 type eating window, which is 19 hours of not eating, and 5 hours of eating. I never really get to that.  I aim for 2pm to 8 pm, which is 6 hours, but it often can be 1pm to 8pm, or 2pm to 9pm.

Sometimes it is even 1pm to 9pm, which is 8 hours of eating and 16 of fasting, which is closer to the Warrior Diet and Leangains programs.  I toy also with switching to the Eat Stop Eat plan, but I haven’t yet.  Maybe when I’m done with school.

In any case, it seems to still be working despite my laxity.  I’ve also pretty much been sticking with the Paleo diet.  I’ve had the odd hamburger bun here and there, and I went to a Godfather movie watching dinner party, where of course we had to have Italian food. I ate pasta with my meatballs, and a few brownies, which I don’t think were Italian, but oh well.

I also tried an experiment this last week.  I ran a 5k fasted. I was about 13 hours into the fast.  It was only my second 5K, so I don’t have a lot of experience to compare running fasted and not.  It was hard running fasted, but not any harder than running having eaten. Running is hard for me because I am a new runner, and let’s face it running is hard. My time was one minute faster running fasted than not, so I can certainly say it didn’t hamper me any.

After the 5K, it ended up being another hour or two until I got to eat.  I wasn’t actually hungry after working out, which I find to be pretty normal. In fact it took about an hour before I got hungry.  Then I did start getting really hungry.  I did have a pancake and half a cinnamon roll, which I felt I deserved after running.  If I was going to have carbs that was the best time to have them.

I’m going to be running another 5K in a couple of weeks.  I will run that fasted again, so I will have another opportunity to compare.

Fatty 1 – Intermittent Fasting Week 6

Well another week down.  Everything is going along fine.  I’m down between a half pound and a pound, so all in all I’ve lost between about ten pounds in the 6 weeks.  I suppose that some people won’t find that fast enough, but I’m quite content with it.  It is slow and steady progress, which is what I was looking for, and I don’t feel miserable.

That last part of the above sentence is all important.  Do I feel hungry?  Yes, sometimes.  Do I feel miserable?  No.  Do I loathe the fact that I’m on this diet, and that I can’t eat what I want, and feel deprived every moment?  No.  Do I resent having to count my calories, or points or whatever? No, because I don’t have to. Do I resent not eating grains and stuff.  Not really, because it’s my choice, and I don’t have to eat that way.  I did the first two weeks of my fasting not eating paleo, I just added it on when my crossfit gym had a leaning out contest. Three more weeks to go.  And honestly I’ve had some wheat and stuff here and there, but nothing like before.  Oh yeah, and I don’t feel guilty about it.

And am I getting results?  So far, so good.

So in a nutshell, I’m happy with my eating.  What is interesting is how other people react when I explain the fasting concept, and the paleo concept.  First of all, I don’t tend to tell that many people, mostly because I don’t want to have to explain it all, but when I do, I generally get the following responses.

The facial expression indicates that I’ve suddenly sprouted two heads, and then joined a tracksuit-wearing cult.  There is the skeptical, that can’t be healthy look.  These are generally followed up with a tentative, well, you know you are supposed to eat six small meals all day. How can you not eat, won’t that slow down your metabolism? Or there is the defensive, I couldn’t do that.  My blood sugar gets low and I turn into a maniac, and am likely to go on a shooting spree.

Then when I add on the paleo part, it’s more of the same.  Oh I couldn’t do that.  Grains are healthy for you.  I try to explain that perhaps not as healthy as we think, given that many of us may not be fully adapted to eating them, since through most of our evolutionary history we didn’t eat them regularly.

More than half the people in my office are diabetic and pre-diabetic, and I see them eat their lowfat , high in sugar foods.  I see them snacking all day, on “healthy” processed foods, like yogurt smoothies in plastic bottles, and Lean Cuisines, and Snackwells.  And I think, it’s not working for you.  I don’t point that out though.

I just say, well, the way I’m doing it seems to working good for me. And I point out that I’ve lost x number of pounds, and I don’t crave the foods I used to as much.  I mention that I’ve been on all the big diets, Atkins, Weight Watchers, low carb, low fat meals all day. I’ve done them, and I couldn’t stick to them.  I’ve eating the several small meals (that turned into several not so small meals).  I’ve counted my calories, and my points, and my carbs, and hated doing it.  So far, I’ve been doing this for six weeks, and I don’t mind.  That to me, is the biggest endorsement I can offer.

And maybe if it keeps working for me, and I lose the weight I want to lose, and I keep it off, then maybe, just maybe, people won’t look at me like I have two heads.  And maybe they might think, I could do that, it seems to work.

Fatty 1 – Intermittent Fasting Week 5

So I think this I’m up around week five or six now.  I’m still going, so that’s a good sign.  I’ve been on most of the major diets, Weight Watchers, Atkins, etc. and I always found myself dropping off after a week or so.  Then I’d get back on, then off, then on, then off.  And predictably not stellar results.  I’d find myself resenting being on the diet, which would lead to the ever decreasing commitment.  Then I’d recommit.

So far, I’m not resenting this diet.  I’m not resenting the fasting period, and I’m not really resenting the paleo part either.  Perhaps there is a special alignment of the planets that have made this possible.  There have been days when I haven’t fasted, because I was just really really hungry, or I’ve had a social engagement.  I’ve had days where I’ve eaten something non-paleo.  After such slips, I’ve managed to hop right back on the wagon, and not feel bad about it, and (gasp!) even look forward to getting back on my diet.  How bizarre is that?

The times when I have eaten outside my eating time, it has been because I’ve been super hungry, and I figure my body is telling me something.  These sorts of days have been infrequent, and so not much of an issue.  I eat, I feel better, I get back on the next day.

Other times I’ve had the social engagement. This can lead to eating outside the window, and also eating non-paleo.  So I eat, trying to keep it healthy-ish, and then get back on the next day.  Like I said I kind of oddly look forward to it.

The weight loss results are continuing.  Down another pound and a half or so.  I think I’ve lost about 8 – 9 pounds total.

Fatty 1 – Intermittent Fasting – Week 4

So things are going along fine.  No big surprises, no big changes.  Lost another half pound.  I suspect I might have lost more than that, but my official weigh in day was the day after I ran my first 5K race.  I think my poor inflamed muscles are retaining some water as inflamed muscles like to do.

I finished the race in under 38 minutes.  I didn’t run fasted, but made sure I ate before hand a light meal.  I was worried that it might be hard to run 5K with food (and it was),  and wasn’t confident on how I would feel without eating.

After the race, the sponsors had a continental breakfast.  Lots of high carb fare, which I have been going without the past two weeks since I’ve gone paleo.

They had muffins and bagels cut in half, yogurt, fruit, and cheese, along with an assortment of juices.  I thought I would have some fruit, along with some cheese and yogurt, since those were really the only protein sources.  Then I thought hell, I’ve just run the longest ever, I’m going to treat myself to half a muffin, so I did.

I sat down at my table and took two bites.  It was so sweet tasting I couldn’t eat it.  I ate my cheese stick and my orange slices, and then I thought I’d have some yogurt.  It was your standard low fat strawberry with lots of sugar.  It too was too sweet.  I couldn’t eat it either.

I went back and grabbed half a bagel and smothered it in cream cheese.  That was fine, and I ate it, and it was good.  But the muffin and the yogurt were unpalatable.  My taste buds have adapted that quickly to the lower sugar.

I have been eating vanilla yogurt, but it is whole  milk with cream on top (yum!), and sweetened with maple syrup.  It tastes a little sweet, but not like the low fat stuff.  To make you want to eat it the low fat stuff, they replace the fat they took out with sugar.  When you are used to eating a ton of sugar, you don’t notice. Take two weeks of from sugar, and you’ll notice.

I guess that’s a good sign.  I’m adapting to this paleo thing.  I still miss eating bread buy mostly that’s because I miss eating sandwiches.  I made some paleo bread.  It’s actually not bad, but it is very dense.  I think I’m going to try and add some baking powder or something to lighten it up just a bit and see how that goes.  Maybe reduce the oil by half and add in some almond milk.

If it works I will post the recipe.

Fatty 22 – Training for the Danskin – My First 5K

I was excited about my first 5k. Not being one for lofty inspirations, my goal was simple: finish. I had been trying to work up to 3.1 miles for the last few weeks and thank goodness I did because my legs would have been inoperable otherwise.

The race was the UW Bothell 5k, put on by students in some sort of Program Management class. The entry fee goes to the scholarship fund for UW Bothell students. Overall, the event was organized well, except someone cruelly put a hill in the first 1/2 mile and again in the last 1/2 mile. That’s just mean. These students will make great CEO’s.

We showed up with plenty of time to check in and get our race numbers and our goody bag. Mine had a razor in it (which I’ll probably never use) as well as energy bars and a transfer guide to UW Bothell. We took our bounty back to the car, which was parked in the parking garage, just in time to watch someone enter the low garage opening with their bike on the roof of their car. Oops! The sign indicating the low clearance was knocked down. The bike was probably a little worse for wear too but I didn’t get a good look at it.

Just before the race started they forewarned us that there were going to be two hills. They forgot to mention that the hills were huge. Jerks. There was an old man, say around late 70’s – early 80’s, who ran past us at the start. Then we passed him, but only after he started walking. Then he would pass us again. Then we would pass him. And so it went until somewhere around mile 2 where we passed him for good. We made the final course turnaround point and headed back toward the final hill. As we rounded the corner, there was the old man. Dammit! How was it that he was right on our tails?

As I rounded the corner before the final hill I was determined not to walk – even though I really wanted to. So I charged up the hill. Ok, I didn’t actually charge up it. As a matter of fact, some of the people who were walking were going as fast as I was. Anyway, I didn’t see the finish line anywhere in sight and that was really disappointing. How much further was I going to have to pretend to run? Though if I had thought about it, how mean would it be to put the finish line halfway up a hill?

Finally, I crest the hill where there is a short flat area. Still no finish line. What the hell? So down the hill I go and I figure the end of the race is near because they are letting cars onto the course. Hello? Safety Officer? Continuing down the hill and turning to the right I see the entrance to the chute to the finish line. Glory be! I’m feeling pretty good at this point so I take longer strides. The crowd, all 20 of them, are clapping. Chest out and heaving I cross the finish line of my first 5k: 37 minutes and 49 seconds.

Fatty 1 – Intermittent Fasting – Week 3

So this was the first week that I did the intermittent fasting combined with the paleo diet.  I was pretty good all week, not eating hardly any grains except for a some rice wrappers around a Vietnamese salad roll, and one chocolate gluten free cookie.

I mostly stayed away from processed sugars, except for a chocolate gelato binge at Olive Garden where I took my mom for Mother’s Day.  Let me tell you sitting at the Olive Garden with loads of breadsticks in front of me took some self control.  I didn’t have any, which is probably why I took it out on the gelato.

So how did all this goodness add up in the weight loss category?  I have dropped about 2 pounds this week.  And if I add up my total for the past 3 1/2 weeks I am at between 5 – 6 pounds.  Not to shabby.

The thing that excites me is that I am at my lowest weight in a long time, definitely since before I started this blog over a year ago.  I have managed to stay between 176 and 170 pounds, never managing to crack the 170 barrier.  But yesterday when I stepped on the scale I made it over.  And when I weighed myself again this morning I was still on the good side of 170.  Yeah.

I’m feeling a little sluggish this morning, but I think I’m learning that the fasting doesn’t work as well for me energetically when I am sleep deprived, which I always am on Mondays, since I have class late on Sunday nights. Normally I’m not tired when fasting, but I only get about 6 hours sleep on Sunday night.  I only have school for 7 more weeks, so it’s only for a little while.  I will try and ride it out.

Fatty 1 – Intermittent Fasting – Week 2

So it’s been another week.  I weighed myself again this Sunday and I was down another pound.  Three all in total in 16 days.  That’s not too shabby considering I haven’t really changed my eating, other than condensing the feeding period from all day to 6 hours or so.  So far I’m satisfied and plan on continuing.

I seem to be adapting to the not eating period pretty well.  I don’t get as hungry as I did in the beginning, although there are still periods of hunger, but very manageable.  I feel less sleepy during the day overall and I seem to have more energy.  It’s not like I’m bouncing off the walls, but I’m just less tired than normal through the day.  I seem to be sleeping a little deeper at night too, so that’s good.

My Crossfit gym is having a 7 week Spring Leaning contest, which I’ve decided to do.  The rules are you have to follow a paleo type diet or a paleo-Zone mix diet.  I’ve opted for the plain old paleo diet since you have to weigh and count things with the Zone Diet.  For those who don’t know the paleo diet is a diet composed of foods we humans would have eaten in pre-agricultural times.  The idea being that since the advent of agriculture and widespread consumption of grains and legumes our human health as a whole has gone downhill, especially in the last 100 years or so since the industrial revolution brought us increasing amounts of processed sugars, high carb, and unnatural foods.

I could write about it but there are million websites that have more information than I care to think about.  In a nutshell (an appropriate paleo metaphor) you eat the following foods: meats, seafood, eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds.  No grains, no legumes, no processed sugars, no processed food.  No grains means no wheat, no rice, corn, barley, oats, etc.  No legumes means no beans and no peanuts.

Now paleo diet aficionados fall on a spectrum.  If you’re hardcore you limit your foods to those mentioned above.  But some people will allow dairy if you are tolerant of it. Apparently 70% of the world is lactose intolerant, but as far as I can tell I don’t appear to be one of them, so I’m keeping the dairy for now, but I’m minimizing it. Some people are more flexible and they will eat some legumes or a slice of bread on occasion, but are predominantly paleo.  Sort of like the vegetarian who occasional has a hamburger.

For the period of the contest I’m allowing myself to have dairy, and keeping the legumes to the hummus I eat with my carrot sticks.  We will see how that goes.

Did I mention the prize for winning the contest is $2100?  Cha-ching.  I can not eat wheat and beans for  7 weeks for that amount of moola.  They took before and will take after photos, so it will be interesting to see the differences.  I’m going to continue my intermittent fasting too for the week and see how the paleo and fasting combine.  I’m naturally going to be cutting out a lot of carbs by not eating grains, so I may go back to feeling kind of sluggish for a few days.

Let the adventure begin.

P.S. Some paleo links of interest that I’ve used

http://www.thepaleodiet.com – barebones format but a lot of info

http://www.paleodiet.com -  Loren Cordain’s site, one of the main paleo guru’s

http://robbwolf.com – Robb Wolf’s site, a paleo, Crossfit, and Zone guru and the inspiration for my gym for the contest.  Also a fasting resource.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com – Mark Sisson’s site, another take on the paleo (he calls it Primal) diet. Also a fasting resource.

Fatty 1 – Weighing in.

So I finally weighed myself. It was nine days of intermittent fasting with an average of a 7 hour feeding window, generally from 2pm to 9pm. I lost two pounds. Now that might seem like not very much of a weight loss compared to some diets in the first week, and I have to say I was hoping for more (who wouldn’t), but I am happy with it.

After all I got to eat whatever I wanted, and as much as I felt like without measuring or counting points, or not having certain foods. It was relatively easy compared to other eating plans I’ve tried. I mentally resist having to measure and count things, when it comes to restricting what I eat. Although come to think it I never did like math class either.

Now when I say I ate whatever I wanted I tried to keep it mostly healthy foods, eating the veggies, fruits, and lean meats, and the like. In fact I always tried to break my fast with a healthy meal, generally turkey and some veggies and fruit. But after that whatever I wanted I ate. A few cookies, chocolate candies, some ice cream made it past my lips.

I didn’t feel bad about it. The point of this experiment in the first place was to test if I would lose weight while eating “normally” except in a compressed time window. So I would have to say that the answer is yes, the experiment is a success.

I was sort of worried I might binge eat. I definitely ate a larger meal as my break- fast meal than I would have without fasting, but after that I found I didn’t really feel like eating any more than I normally would. Of course I’ve never been a binge eater (I’m an all day grazer by trade), but a lot of people on various bulletin boards I’d read had expressed concern that not eating 6 meals a day would lead to binging.

I didn’t feel the need to suck down a box of ding-dongs just because it was technically within the rules for me to do so. I found it fairly easy to have a treat of some kind and that was that. I think because I could have it, it lost a lot of its allure that comes from obsessing about what you can’t have. Oh, that funny human psyche.

So I’m going to continue for another week and see how that goes.