They’ve begun. Maria Osmond is on every channel touting the benefits of signing up for the weight loss program that she promotes. Others will follow, preying on those who make their annual resolution to lose weight.
But pause a moment and consider that burning off some stored energy, AKA fat, shouldn’t cost a penny. If you want to lose that fat, why not try fasting? As in Intermittent Fasting.
Intermittent Fasting as you no doubt have read is the cessation of eating for a few hours a day – generally 18 hours and then breaking the fast during a six-hour window. There are other schedules including fasting a day or two a week and then eating normally for the other five.
This essay is not a How-To, but to follow my experience in the hopes that it might be helpful to those who are looking to drop a few pounds of their fat.
I read an article a few years back that made sense to me. The writer pointed out that we have been preached at to eat a wholesome breakfast each morning. The role models for this practice was farmers who eat a hearty breakfast every day. The writer opined that those farmers were generally up before dawn to go out to do their morning chores and then come back after two or three hours to eat that hearty breakfast.
Does that description fit most of us? Hardly. It didn’t fit me, that’s for sure. My evening meal is around 8:00 p.m. with perhaps a glass of wine post dinner. Do I need a hearty breakfast the next morning? No.
After I read that article, I stopped eating breakfast until much later in the morning, and sometimes not until noon. Doing this had worked fairly well for me, but that stored energy would often slowly creep up on me – especially over the winter when I was much less active.
To counteract that weight gain – and let’s face it – that weight gain is fat gain – I explored the Keto eating plan. Keto does work but you first must get into Ketosis and that can take some time while you learn how to balance fat and protein intake. I paid for and tested more than one Keto booster to attain Ketosis.
This past year I began to read about Intermittent Fasting, also known as IF. What I had been doing with my noon time breakfast was unwittingly almost doing IF. What if I carried that delayed meal until later in the day?
I now eat my first meal – and no nibbles – at the earliest at 1:30 p.m. but sometimes at 3:00 p.m. and occasionally later. My evening meal is still around 8:00 p.m., so I have not eaten for a solid 18 hours: 8 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. the following day.
This has worked for me. I dropped nearly 15 pounds. Some of those pounds was new – piling on over last winter, and some had stubbornly refused to leave for a couple of years while I tried to attain the magical Ketosis.
I am now down to what is an acceptable weight for running and racing. It is so easy in fact that I plan to cut back on what I eat during my six hours of permitted eating to drop down a little more to a lighter racing weight.
If this sounds interesting to you, I suggest you do an internet search and read some of the articles about Intermittent Fasting. Try it, you might like it.
Sorry Maria – we don’t need your plan.
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