I chose the so-called golden mean – at least that’s what I thought. I didn’t crave sweets or salty snacks, I ate healthy meals (without meat), but without any special restrictions. For breakfast, after 16 hours of fasting, I wanted to eat nutritious oatmeal with fruit and flaxseed, and I also had a sandwich with egg or cheese.
Dinner is usually soup, roasted vegetables and lettuce with feta cheese. I had a hearty dinner – the prospect of another sixteen hours without eating made me try to eat a little more. So something warm, for example, vegetable goulash, hummus, good bread, baked tomatoes with mozzarella and olive oil and similar delicacies. Finally, a piece of chocolate or some sweets. But then enough eating!
And how did it all work?
Well, the first few nights weren’t easy. After eating at 8pm, by 11pm I started to feel like eating. I cheated by making myself a lot of tea or drinking water. And I started going to bed earlier and earlier so that I wouldn’t stay up all night hungry – it was a completely unexpected and very positive effect of fasting.
Previously, I would go to bed at 1 or even 2 in the morning, and after a few weeks of fasting, I would be in bed by midnight. In the first week, hunger would wake me up at night, but then I started sleeping much better than before I started fasting.
I started getting up in the morning around eight and these four hours after getting up proved to be a great challenge, to my surprise, because it always seemed to me that it was easier to abstain from eating in the morning than in the evening.
I quickly noticed that during the feeding window I stopped craving food, my appetite normalized, I didn’t have hunger pangs, I ate smaller portions than before – this is a sign of normalization of blood glucose and insulin levels.
I started my day with bitter coffee. I had to give it up because I really don’t like coffee without sugar, but I found a way – I started buying good quality artisanal coffees. It turns out that drinking it even without sugar or sweetener is a pleasure. To make the time until breakfast pass faster, I started taking a half-hour break at work around 11 am to exercise or go for a run – another fantastic change in my daily schedule!
Effects? After the first week of intermittent fasting I lost 2.5 kg, and after a month I lost 5 kg, but in the second month the weight loss stopped and I lost only one kilo – a total of 6 kilos in two months. My results also started to improve – I took tests after a month of intermittent fasting and found that my blood glucose level dropped to 94.
Why did I say goodbye to intermittent fasting?
Although I started fasting right away and saw great results with this nutritional plan, I was unable to stick to it for more than two months. Of course, this was mostly due to my innate lack of willpower, but there were also several things about intermittent fasting that were particularly difficult for me.
First, experts on intermittent fasting, including Prof. Mark P. Mattson, a neurologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore and author of the book “The Intermittent Fasting Revolution,” with whom I spoke while preparing my article, assure me that after a week or two at most, the body gets used to the new daily schedule and meals. Then hunger disappears during the fasting hours. Unfortunately, this did not happen to me.
For two whole months I felt hungry at night and in the morning, I think I got used to this feeling and learned to suppress it with various activities (for example, running, drinking tea, etc.). But I was hungry and a large part of my mornings consisted of waiting for that magical hour of 12 pm and the opportunity to eat something.
At some point, it stopped being a new and exciting challenge and became a grind, and weight loss slowed significantly. Oh, those eating crises…
Second, it turns out that intermittent fasting is not an easy nutritional plan to follow on a daily basis. I was very wrong about that. It turns out that fasting requires a very regimented lifestyle, with the same wake-up times, activities, and nighttime routine every day.
“Worth it”
In my case, intermittent fasting clashed with the demands of my professional life, business trips, when I had to wake up at dawn and it was very difficult to go without eating for not four, but six hours. This way of eating was also completely incompatible with my nighttime social life.
The first month I pretty much gave up so as not to be “tempted”, but then I missed dinners with friends, going out for drinks, etc. on those special occasions, but you know – the more deviations, the harder it is to get back on track.
Despite these difficulties, I think it was worth trying to see if it really works. And to see where our weaknesses are, even if it is to try to eliminate them in the future. I think I will try the intermittent fasting adventure again.
Maybe this time, to increase my chances of success, I will decide on a slightly shorter fasting time, i.e. the 14:10 version. The only question is whether to choose a later dinner (at 10 pm) or an earlier breakfast (for example, at 10 am)? I still have to think about it.
