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My Intermittent Fasting Journey

My progress on Intermittent Fasting will be posted here with updates on my weight being posted daily, and with updates on my waist size and body fat content being posted on a weekly basis on a Monday. My weigh-in day was a Monday but I will now be weighing in every day in order to keep everything on track, and I now fast on a Monday on most weeks (although that will often change depending upon my circumstances at that time). More information about my weight loss background and my goals for the future on intermittent fasting can be found on my first forum posting which can be seen by clicking here.
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74kg Monday Morning Weigh In Hoodoo Finally Smashed

by johncs2013 on 11 Nov 2013, 08:00

When you look at the title of this blog entry, you would think that such a scenario was extremely unlikely as a weekend of binging on carbs on alcohol saw my weight shoot up to 75.5kg, at this time last week. Last week's results did however, mean that I didn't want that to be repeated today and so, last week brought about my first ever taste of 4:3 instead of the usual 5:2 in order to ensure that this was the case.

As my fasting days would be on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, that also brought me my first ever taste of ADF (Alternate Day Fasting) for the weekdays of last week. All of my feeding days would then be 16:8 days where I would only eat between 12 noon and 8pm but the most important thing about the week that has just passed, is that this would be extended over the weekend as well.

My first two fasting days went extremely well, and since I had a small lunch of scrambled eggs and couple of pieces of meat, followed by a small evening meal of a piece of meat with some salad, those would also be eaten within that 8 hour window and so, my fasting days also ended up being 16:8 days as well.

That also meant that since all of my gym and fitness activities are done in the morning and since I never eat before 12 noon now, all of my gym and fitness activities are now done on an empty stomach which meant that my body would now be forced to burn more body fat, as the glycogen stores are more depleted at this point in time.

However, I am now used to working out on an empty stomach and so, my gym performances were unaffected by that. However, the additional determination not to repeat the previous weekend's big weight gain added a lot of adrenalin. That in addition to the increase in cortisol as a result of the extra fasting, caused my cortisol levels to go up even further which meant that my blood pressure went through the roof with a lot of my systolic BP readings shooting up into the 150s, and with one or two of these readings even going above 160.

The week started off well as I got some good news from the dentist who gave me the all clear. This is only the first time that I've had a clean bill of health from the dentist at this time of year, and was a huge relief for me since I had to have a tooth taken out at the same time last year. With that alone, this has shown that the benefits of my current health regime are now paying off for me.

I got some more good news on the following day when my weight had come down to 73.2kg. That was still my highest weight after a fasting day, but that was 2.3kg down on the previous day's weight, which was my biggest weight loss so far from one day to the next by quite a big margin. That means that even at this stage, the pattern for the week ahead was beginning to be set.

That good news continued into the following day when my weight remained unchanged at 73.2kg, despite that coming after the first feeding day after a fasting day. That was also the first time that my weight had not increased on the first feeding day after a fasting day, although this was probably also due to the fact that I was now managing to keep a fairly low carb intake on my feeding days..

My means of achieving that was by conjuring up some sort of stir-fry vegetables with some fish for my evening meal. That is quite easy to make, but that would have been a huge thing for me before which would have been out of my own realms as I was previously never into doing any form of cooking. Making that stir-fry was therefore quite a big achievement for me.

With my second fasting day on Wednesday came some more good news at the following morning's weigh-in as my weight had now dropped to exactly 72kg to set a new all time record for my lowest ever weight so far. My second feeding day on Thursday was then similar to the one on Tuesday except that I replaced the fish along with my stir-fry with some pieces of chicken breast and included that within the stir-fry itself.

With that, my weight increased by the following morning, but only to 72.6kg which set a new record for my lowest ever weight going into a fasting day. That third fasting day of the week came on Friday but by now, the additional stresses of that were beginning to show and not just with my really high blood pressure readings.

The pattern for the day was set first thing in the morning as I came very close to injuring myself after my iron (which fortunately, wasn't in use at that time and was therefore cold) fell on top of my left foot after I had banged against it whilst working in the kitchen. That felt quite sore and then when I went out to do my food shopping, I wasn't able to pay any sort of attention whilst throughout out my household rubbish with the result that I then lost my house keys along with that rubbish.

The result of that was that I then had to get my house keys replaced and the locks changed on my front door. Then after it looked as though things might settle down after that, the old sleeping problems after a fasting day kicked in once again. However, I did manage to set another all time record for my lowest ever weight on the following morning by recording a weight of 71.7kg.

At this stage however, I was beginning to rethink my strategy for this WOL because whilst I have been pleased with the weight loss, the additional stresses and resulting increases in blood pressure can't be healthy. What I was thinking was that since I am at a healthy BMI, I don't really need to lose any more weight, and I certainly don't need to lose anything from my waist. However, the blood pressure issue had to be dealt with since my blood pressure readings were running far too high at this stage.

That lead to thoughts of abandoning any thoughts of losing weight and just focusing on weight maintenance whilst dealing with the blood pressure issue carries by far, the biggest priority. It turned out though that once my third fasting day was out of the way, my blood pressure came down itself anyway as I was now in a more relaxed frame of mind after getting those extra fasts out of the way.

From that point onwards, my systolic blood pressure readings have mostly come within the 130s which whilst still within the prehypertension area, are a huge improvement on what I had been getting throughout last week. However, there was still the 74kg Monday morning weigh-in hoodoo to tackle and that made for quite a nervous weekend as I relaxed things a bit over the weekend.

Unlike on previous weekends, there was no alcohol intake this time. However, my carb intake went up by quite a bit, and I also ate quite a bit of chocolate and a few biscuits over the weekend. With that, my weight went up to 72.6kg yesterday morning which was an increase of 0.9kg from the previous day. At this stage, I knew that as long as I didn't then gain a further 1.4kg by this morning, I would break that 74kg jinx.

Looking back over my records though, I had noticed that I had some daily increases that were bigger than that going into a Monday morning and since I wasn't thinking about the fact that I wasn't doing 16:8 on any of those occasions, I got a bit nervous about that. That even affected my blood pressure a little bit but this time, not so much in terms of my systolic blood pressure.

This time, it was my diastolic blood pressure that was being affected because now, I was no longer getting those nice readings in the 70s that I was getting for that beforehand. The readings that I am getting for that are still not all that bad, but all of these readings are now into the 80s and in the prehypertension area. In a way, that might not be such a bad thing because it means that my pulse pressure has narrowed a bit. However, last night's sleeping pattern wasn't that great as I continued to worry about this morning's weigh-in.

In the end, my weight has gone gone up this morning, but not by anywhere near enough to generate anything that I should be worried about. Instead, my weight has gone up by just 0.6kg since yesterday, to 73.2kg. That is of course, my lowest ever weight for when I am normally at my heaviest weight of the week, and it means that I have now finally got that 74kg monkey off my back.

That is exactly 11 and half stone which is also the target weight for where I wanted to be as a maximum at this time of the week. That in turn means that I am now just about ready to stop thinking about any further weight loss and focus on weight maintenance instead. That is particularly important since it is important to try to reduce the stress levels as much as possible in order to try to minimise my blood pressure.

Because of that, I am hoping that I never have to go through that 4:3 experiment again, although I know that I have that in the bag should I never need to use that strategy in future. That means that from this week, I will be back to doing 5:2 with just two fasting days this week which will be today and Thursday. In addition to that, every feeding day will continue to be a 16:8 day to ensure that I don't have any more massive daily weight gains, and that should help quite a bit as well.

Of course, that will bring quite a big test for the week ahead because it now means that I will have a period during this week where I will have three feeding days in a row. However, I will be trying to reduce my carb intake by as much as possible during this period and with that, there is still the possibility that I could eventually switch to 6:1 if everything goes well.

That would further reduce the stresses and resulting increases in cortisol that fasting provides, which will be very important in terms of trying to keep the blood pressure down. That means that a switch to 6:1 couldn't actually come soon enough, although this will not happen until I come to the appropriate time for that.

Finally, I can also add that I have lost another 0.5 inches from my waist since this time last week. My current waist size is now 30.9 inches which has set a new all time record for my lowest ever waist size. These are certainly, some great results to savour.

Height: 5ft 8in

Lower Trend Weight Limit: 70.0kg (11 stone 0 pounds)
Upper Trend Weight Limit: 73.0kg (11 stone 7 pounds)

Last Weigh-in Date: 1 Mar 2014

Actual Weight: 74.3kg (11 stone 9.8 pounds)
Trend Weight: 72.6kg (11 stone 6.0 pounds)

Body Mass Index: 24.83 (actual) / 24.26 (trend)

Current Method: No Fasting
Low Calorie Days: As Required


Trend weights calculated from Libra Android App
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Comments

Wow! You finally broke the jinx. Well done. Sounds like you had quite a week too!
I have noticed that there are some members of this forum who do daily blogs and so since my weekly blogs are becoming a bit long (I'm finding that I always have more to share than what I am realising), that is something that I might also look into doing from now on. I also realised that this blog post was also my 100th post on this forum since I joined it, and that this now gives the rank of 5:2 for life. That to me is something else to celebrate. In fact, my weight on a weekly Monday weigh-in had actually got as low as 74.3kg as long ago as 28 January 2013, and that was just with the traditional methods of calorie restriction.

My weight then went up a bit before getting down to 74.5kg on 25 March 2013 before shooting upwards and then reaching a peak of 80.4kg on 8 April 2013. After that, I was never quite able to get my weight back down to that sort of level again until I started the 5:2 diet on 19 August 2013 and instead, I was having to settle for maintaining a weight of around 76kg or 12 stone.

Even after starting the 5:2 diet, you will see from my progress tracker that there were a couple of times where my weight would get down to 74kg or just slightly above that, only for my weight to then go up again on the following week. From that, you can see that this was quite a jinx, and I'm glad that I can now put that behind me once and for all without ever having to scared of the number on the scales.

Of course, last week also gave me an overall weight loss of 5 pounds which not only meant that I had cancelled out the previous week's big 4 pound weight gain, but also meant that I had lost another pound on top of that. Furthermore, I had gone from 75.5kg on Monday to 71.7kg on Saturday, and that is a weight loss of a massive 8 pounds within the space of just a few days.

That should therefore act as a lesson that even a large weight gain that is caused by water retention, will be lost just as quickly as it was gained in the first place.
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