Our month of intermittent fasting

You guys know I'm not one to jump on bandwagons where fitness trends are concerned.  Every now and then, the Mr would throw out the idea of intermittent fasting and I wasn't really interested.  There are so many different ways to do it and one person tells you to do it this way and someone else says no, it's this way.  Blah blah blah.

When my desperation finally got the better of me as the vacation weight was not budging, I agreed to give it a go.  I figure if Hugh Jackman swears by it, well...I don't really care but still, yeah...let's do this.

We didn't really change what we eat because we're happy with our diet structure.  This was more of an experiment to see if timing played a bigger role than we thought.  Week one was basically eating at 10-11am and being done eating by 6-7pm.  I thought it would be hard to get used to but it actually wasn't.  There are many days I'm doing my busy work in the morning and if I'm not hungry, I don't eat until 10am anyway.  Then the jist is you have 8 hours in which to eat the rest of your food for the day and be done so you can fast for 16 hours.  (7-8 of which you're sleeping so it's not as bad as it sounds.)

What was hardest for me was timing lunch because if I'm eating at 10-11am, then I'm not really hungry by 1pm, my usual lunch time.  If I wait too long to eat lunch, then I'm still full when we workout when the Mr gets home so I'd feel gross and want to barf.  I'm one of those people that just can't exercise with anything in their stomachs.  I know, "workout in the morning before you eat!"  Well, I just can't.  I mean I can but I feel sluggish and I don't want to not workout with the Mr so morning workouts were super rare and were actually more mid-afternoon ones on occasion.  I would workout and then feel the pressure of the clock to get that final meal in before my window closed.  Prep work was absolutely crucial because if I didn't have something prepared ahead of time to a degree, it would cut way too close for my comfort level and I went over my window twice by 20 minutes early on before learning that lesson.  (Not that the sky would fall by 20 minutes but still and then I'd add 20 minutes on the next day before I ate.)

Week one:   I lost 4 lbs.  Holy sh*tballs!  I'll take that!  The Mr lost 3 lbs.  Maybe there's something to this voodoo!  (But I also know my body.  A loss like that will mean the following week I will likely stay the same or gain half of it back.)

Week two:  1 lb gain.  (insert sneer at scale but not surprised.)  The Mr lost 2.  Asshole.  Yay!

Week three:  Lost nothing.  The Mr gained 1 lb.  We'll give it one more week since they claim it takes 3 weeks for your body to adjust.  So I upped my water to help things along.

Week four: 1 lb gain.  The Mr stayed the same.  Okay, eff you fasting, I'm out.

So I lost 2 lbs for the month (I lost more the month before) and the Mr lost 4 lbs for the month so better results for him but only in the beginning.

I should mention this came the same month that I began treatment for my leg issues which is neither here nor there I think because I was still able to exercise even if it wasn't at levels I'm used to.

So this was not the big answer we were looking for.  I also wouldn't deem it a failure necessarily, who knows if we'd kept to it longer or under normal exercise circumstances if the results would be different.  I can't say we'll never do this again because I can see us throwing it in the mix from time to time for a week or so just to throw the body off.  But for me, I already stress out about other crap and having to time manage my food in addition to managing the calories and the macros and all that other BS was just one more thing on my shoulders I didn't need.  If I took a whole day to pre-cook everything like I'm supposed to then yes, it would probably work much better but we all know sometimes other stuff gets in the way of that.  With this, you really have to plan, plan, plan.

I also don't know about calling it intermittent fasting because really it was just more like "eat when you feel actual hunger and from that point on, you've got 8 hours."  I guess it was just that foreboding mental clock that hung a little heavier than anticipated for me.  I'll let the Mr give his perspective in the comments.

If you're in a rut, give it a try.  It may work better for you than it did for us.

Have you ever done intermittent fasting?  Did you see results?

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