Monthly Archives: May 2020

I am happy to say that Alternate Day Fasting (ADF) is going very well eleven days in. I’m having no issues or hunger on the fasting days; if a food thought does arise I just drink something like tea or ice water.

I feel a surprising lack of interest in food in general on the fast day, and have had no desire to over-eat on eating days; in fact, I seem to be eating less and feeling full faster.  I’ve been reading ADF posts on Reddit, and the people who struggle are carb eaters; their brains are always in “eat” mode. When you eat a very low carb diet, that just doesn’t happen.

Now approaching the middle of the month, so the time flies; I suspect I will just continue after May is over. This form of Intermittent Fasting (IF) is to my mind easier, and more productive. I’ve had a lot of energy on fast days; less on eating days, and I don’t need to worry about making meals. I make enough food on eating days for my spouse to have meals the next day without my help.

Our anniversary is coming up on a scheduled fasting day so we’ll celebrate the next day. I don’t feel any compunction to break the momentum. With the current covid-19 situation, we won’t be going out to restaurants any time soon, anyway.

ADF is for me a better form of IF. I’d encourage those who have weight still to lose to consider it.

May 5, 2020

It’s been a while since I posted anything. I have been taking more time for myself and not doing as much social media. When I do go into Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook I’m pleasantly surprised to see how far this latest low carb movement has come. With half of our US population overweight/obese, people are finally realizing that sugar, in all it’s forms, it the problem. You are not at fault for the addictive quality of highly processed and fast foods; made that way quite deliberately. Look up “bliss point” to learn how this happened. Prior to the 1970s the portion of the population overweight was far smaller, in fact the obesity rate has more than tripled. So people are desperate to find a solution.You only have to look at how much the no/low-sugar or low-carb movement has come in the last couple years; there has been an explosion in ketogenic diets, carnivore diets, and intermittent fasting.

People who are always struggling with sugar addiction or binge eating soon find that there is only one effective way to deal with the extreme excess of sugars in the modern diet and that’s by eliminating them. The keto/carnivore diets both have next to none (keep in mind even shell fish have a small amount of carbs). My spouse and I have been doing mostly protein-fat foods for the last couple years, though we had been low carb for over a decade, so the transition wasn’t hard.

I’ve learned that with my low thyroid issues that losing weight is always a challenge. It’s quite possible to eat more than your body needs even of the healthy protein-fat foods. I counted calories for years, but that in some ways only made me more focused on eating; intermittent fasting (IF) removes the need to worry about how much by simply narrowing the window of time for eating. Though I had been doing one small meal and a main meal midday in a 4-6 hour window, I still didn’t lose much, so now I’ve started alternate day fasting (ADF), water/black coffee/tea on fasting days, then usually eating two meals on the eating days, avoiding snacking.

ADF is just what it says, eating every other day. I decided to make May 2020 my test month for ADF, and so far it’s been easy to not eat on the fasting days. I weighed at the first of the month, and will again on June 1st to see the results. Males and younger females report about a ten pound loss for a month; I’d be thrilled with that result and happy for anything over five pounds.

Surprisingly, I’m less hungry on my eating days so far, but five days in is not much time. We’ll see how it goes from here. While I do want a bit more weight loss, the most important goal is great health; and great health comes via keeping insulin low. All markers of aging improved when insulin remains low most of the time, and the only way to keep insulin low is to avoid excess carbohydrates.

FYI:

View at Medium.com

Dr. Jason Fung’s The Obesity Code – One of the best sources for information on fasting of all types.