Week Two: Stead-fast

                                                     

                                                            Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

I made it through week two with flying colors!

I won't say it was all easy (especially when you have a chef for a husband), but I learned a lot about myself and I'm already starting to see changes- most of them good.

My feet are normal size most of the time instead of swollen footballs all the time. My shoes fit better, and I walk better too!

I have more energy and am naturally more active. Sitting still for too long is beginning to bother me, and everyone is happy that I'm not asking them to fetch me food anymore- if I want it, I get it. I'm also eating a lot less than I was before this program, and am now down to two meals a day.

Dietary issues have also been revealed. Beets, though I love them, give me issues. Never noticed that before, but after test tasting them out a few times, they will only help me if the plumbing is clogged. Let's just say the colonoscopy people would be able to use beets as a substitute for that jug of juice they want me to drink. On a positive note, I do fine with higher levels of protein, and fats don't seem to bother me either.

My joints, on the whole, have stopped hurting- unless I overdo it. And of course, since I was feeling good, I overdid it a lot! I need a lot less rest to ease joint pain than I used to, and once I get moving, the pain stops. All the more reason to get off my butt and do more...right? I haven't started outright exercising yet, but when I'm ready, I have all the tools I need to get started- without a gym.

Adapting my window to work ratio isn't as easy when the window is getting shorter and shorter each week. The first week was eight hours- easy enough, it was 11:00am to 7:00pm- but last week I missed a few things by the end of my window (like dessert because the family usually eats dinner between six and seven), so by the weekend, I shifted the time from 12:00pm to 7:00pm and 1:00 to 8:00pm respectively. 

On occasion, I did feel hungrier, especially when my window closed and my husband started baking one of his fabulous desserts after dinner. Food smells (when not in my eating window) hit me like a speeding truck and it made my stomach want food- Right Now. 

I knew it was bad one day when I was out driving for work and got a whiff of fast food- then realized it was McDonald's. If you know me (and most of you do) I wouldn't touch McD's food with a ten-foot fork, not even if I was starving. I knew I had to rein in my sniffer, so I closed the window until the feeling passed.

Next week will be different because my husband was switched from night hours to morning hours for three days, so he'll be home for dinner instead of us depending on leftovers on those days. We both cook, so one of us will be making dinner since everyone will be home. My window is now six hours, and my main concern is being too hungry when at work since I usually eat breakfast right before we leave. 

The plan is to make breakfast portable so I can take it with me to work. Breakfast is always eggs, bacon, and sausage, with a little ham and cheese tossed into the eggs. Don't look at me like that! These foods work for me much better than other breakfast foods like oatmeal or fruit. I might make a breakfast sandwich instead, but not every day. I've found that unless I bake it myself (and eventually I hope to grind my own organic flour instead of using store-bought), bread makes me tired. Not good for working!

Now if I can just resist tasting my breakfast as I make it, I'll be okay. I'm planning my window from 1:00pm to 7:00pm this week since the 7:00pm mark is my best choice whether he is doing morning or night shifts, so I'll have to make my breakfast at 11:30am and pack it until I can eat it at 1:00.

I've started reading the second half of the book, and right now it's mostly information about making better choices and tweaking what works and what doesn't- like the beets. I'm still a little unclear as to the seven days of fasting (two days no food or 500 calories worth- which is the only calorie counting she does in the book- and five days of different sized eating windows), but by the time I've finished, I'll be ready for it.

Two more weeks to go!

Week One: Easy Come, Not So Easy Go

The first week was both very easy and yet, not so easy. Old habits die hard and it was the bad habits that were more of a hindrance than the actual food itself.

Let's start from the beginning. 

The first week I was supposed to be using an 8-hour eating window. Nailed that sucker to the wall! However, after looking at the book Fast, Feat, Repeat mid-week, I'd forgotten something. I was supposed to skip a meal. Oops.

The book says two meals a day, no snacks. Now I'll be honest here; before I started this fasting program, I was basically eating four meals and a snack a day. Breakfast and lunch before work, come home to a half meal and a snack, then dinner. Most times dinner would have second helpings. Now that I see this in print, that's a lot of food, though it didn't seem so when I was eating it.

So at the beginning of the week, I was having breakfast for lunch, having a small snack during my work hours and after work, then have dinner about thirty minutes before my window closed. My eating window was 11:00am to 7:00 pm.

Then I reread the fast requirements. I was still getting really hungry by mid-shift at work, so I trimmed the snack down to one thing, ate it during my shift, then had dinner in the evening. It's still too much food (according to the book), but still much better than the amounts I was eating.

By the end of the week, the bad habits started kicking in, but just for a second or two.

I'd finish my iced tea by the end of the window, but the tiny bit of tea was left around the ice cubes. The cubes would melt, and I'd drink the infused tea water. Big no-no. Not calorie-wise of course, but I'm not supposed to have anything but water or unsweetened drinks (no sweeteners at all) because that sets off my body to think food is coming. By the end of the week, I did this twice accidentally, and now I put the glass in the sink after I eat and get a fresh glass with water to drink until bedtime.

Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay 

Then we had pizza on Friday. A rare treat for us, and though I didn't overindulge, when we were done and my eating window was closed, we were putting away the rest of the pizza and I grabbed a bit of meat and cheese out of the box (my favorite part!) and popped it in my mouth. 

I stopped short, realized what I did, and immediately spat it out into the now empty pizza box. My husband realized why I did that and we both started laughing. He knew I was trying to behave myself. I rinsed out my mouth and got my water for the night.

By the end of the week, I was having two meals, no seconds, and one small snack. Still not quite the book requirements, but I still have another week to work on it before the next gauntlet- one meal and one snack by the fourth week.

Here's what the entire month looks like:

Week one- 8-hour eating window, two meals

Week two- 7-hour eating window, two meals

Week three- 6-hour eating window, two meals or one meal, one snack

Week four- 5-hour eating window, one meal, one snack

Week two will be a window from 11:00am to 6:00 pm if I'm eating leftovers, and 12:00pm to 7:00pm if I'm cooking. Breakfast will have to be made ahead of time and packaged for eating during my shift when I do the latter hours, so some adjustments have to be made. My biggest hurdles will most likely be the snack skipping and eating dinner before the window closes. I still have a lot to do after work, and last week I actually skipped dinner because I was involved and forgot I had to eat by a certain time.

At this point that's probably a good thing!

I'll be looking at the next chapters in the book starting week 3 so I'm ready for the next steps. As for how I'm feeling? I found my energy going up on most days, and though I feel hungry sometimes, it's not that overpowering 'gotta eat now' kind of hunger that leads to binge eating. Being busy helps a lot, and since I have more energy, I've been putting it to good use after I get home. 

I never realized just how much I was eating because I was bored or tired!

All in all I think I did fairly well for my first week. The best part is even if I backslide, I can get right back into it without beating myself up! This is a learning process and it allows a lot of wiggle room to get it right- and I love that!

Lifestyle Restart- Same Body, Different Fast

Image by Lubomír Kasl at Pixabay

I purposely didn't reread this blog in its entirety, simply because I didn't want to get myself into a different mindset. I read the last post I'd made in 2016, and oddly enough, every time I try a new way of losing weight, I get closer and closer to realizing dieting won't work- good eating habits will.

Getting off one's butt will too, but I digress. Soon after my last post, all hell broke loose.

My mother got very ill and died. Two weeks to the hour later, my husband's mother passed away. Within seven months, we lost thirteen people total, most of them being family members. After barely catching our breath, I was told I needed a hysterectomy. I overdid it during recovery, and a six week healing period became twelve weeks. I was flat for so long I lost core muscle and could barely walk. I'd found I'd gained weight again. a lot of weight. 

During that time I quit driving people around due to stress and started looking for other work. I found a job delivering packages that fit within my husbands' work schedule. My last doctor's visit was over two years ago, and I was weighed at a whopping 347 lbs. At the time I had given up on ever being thin. My life would be full of muscle spasms and joint pain, and the weight would still increase no matter what I did- especially after the hysterectomy threw me from a peri-menopausal state into full-blown menopause. I was depressed.

Then COVID-19 hit. I was an essential worker, and my deliveries skyrocketed. By the end of the day, I was a barely functioning individual. Walking was getting harder, and my joints ached even worse. I started watching TV a lot more- and eating a lot more. I had to shock myself out of this funk. How was I going to do it?

I did what I did when I was a borderline hoarder. I watched a show that was the extreme of what I was going through. As a hoarder, I watched Hoarders. As a fat person, I watched My 600 Pound Life.

Both shows helped me see where I was going if I didn't stop. My hoarding is now very well controlled, and after watching several shows of My 600 Pond Life, I was ready to try losing weight again. I had to find a way to eat that would become a lifestyle of eating, not just a diet. Diets never worked for me, and I didn't want a plan that would make me lose too much too fast, then crash and burn and gain even more weight in the end- literally!

I heard of a book called Fast, Feast, Repeat. It gave me hope that I really was on the right track in 2016, but back then the timing was off. I read the book up until the chapter about the first month of fasting. I'm not reading further just yet, because I tend to skip steps- and I really don't want to do that this time around!

The first thing I liked about this book was it made no promises of quick weight loss. In fact it was quite the opposite. a very slow weight loss over years of time. I also liked that the author eases you into a healthier eating lifestyle, rather than throwing you in to the deep end and expecting you to swim. Basically you are spending the first four weeks getting used to eating in a certain time frame of your choosing, then week by week whittling down that time window and eventually eating a little less in a lot less time. 

Right now the food choices are what I usually eat (in fact, she insists that you don't change what you're eating during the first month), but I suspect the next stage will involve tweaking my food choices. We shall see!

First things first- I had to weigh myself. I know I needed a really good scale that would take on a 350-plus-pound person without damage, but I really didn't want to buy one because I'd be too tempted to check myself too often. Those scales are also very expensive. However, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors won't take your just strolling in for a casual weigh-in either. So I had to do the next best thing, that also made me feel worse. I had to use the freight scale at my husband's work. During work hours.

Ugh.

Not only did I have to step onto that gigantic plate embedded in the floor, there might be gawkers. I didn't want anyone else to see me doing it, and worse, seeing the little red arrow spin around like a game of Twister. But I did it during a lull, and saw the number had indeed changed- but not in my favor. I'm now my heaviest weight ever.

To be honest, I didn't want to post my weight. It's embarrassing. But maybe me being open and honest about everything will help you if you're trying to lose weight too. That also includes the other measurements the author wants you to take- you know, those ones that require a big old strip if numbered leather that tailors use- the dreaded measuring tape. I measured things she said had to be measured, and a few others as well, because, apparently, I like to punish myself. So here goes. Brace yourself!

Weight 363 lbs.

Biceps- 23"

Chest- 61-1/2"

Waist- 58"

Hips- 69-1/2"

Thigh- 32"

Neck- 18"

My hourglass has way too much sand in it. Sigh.

This is the last time I will weigh or measure myself for the next 28 days. She said I might not lose weight- I might even gain (though I think this comment was meant for people a lot thinner than I am!) But remeasuring will also tell me if my body is indeed burning fat the way it should. 

Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life. And I'm praying it will be a thinner one!