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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.

Weekly Roundup Special - Yet Another False Dawn

by johncs2013 on 04 Nov 2013, 09:27

This week started as one which showed a lot of promise as I started off at 74.1kg, after having celebrated some good results during the previous week for a change. I had my first fasting day last Monday, and the good news rolled on from that, as I then weighed in at 72.4kg to set a new record for my lowest ever weight for during any part of my adult life, going all the way back to the 1980s.

Unlike on previous weeks, I decided not to do a full 36 hour zero calorie fast based around Monday and so, it felt good to be recording a lower weight after a normal fast, than what I was recording after those big zero calorie fasts. By having a normal fast last Monday, that allowed me to do a 16:8 day last Tuesday. The result of that was that my weight on Wednesday morning increased by just 0.4kg to 72.8kg. That is the lowest weight that I've ever been at so far after a feeding day, and is actually no higher than what my weight was after one of my fasting days during the previous week.

Recent results from my weigh-ins were showing that I don't need to have more than two 16:8 days during any week where I am doing 5:2, and I have always been a person who will not do any more than what I have to do. That meant that I could have three days of normal eating without any restrictions. I had already planned to have two of those days at the weekend so that I could have the weekend off. That therefore left just one available day during the week for eating normally and so, I chose Wednesday to be that day.

The result of that is that on Thursday morning's daily weigh-in, my weight had gone up to 73.7kg, an increase of 0.9kg from the previous day. Normally, I would go into my second fasting day on a Thursday, but I had a meeting during that afternoon which meant that last Thursday wouldn't be the most appropriate day for fasting. I did however, have a 16:8 day and the result of that, was that my weight remained unchanged from the previous day at 73.7kg.

That allowed me to go into my later than usual fasting day with a lot of confidence that I could go on to beat my record once again for my lowest ever weight after that fasting day, especially since I was going into that at a lower weight than what I had gone into any of my previous fasting days, and also because this was after three feeding days in a row.

However, the result of that weigh-in on Saturday morning didn't go as well as planned. The result of that weigh-in showed that my weight did go down after that fast, but only to 72.8kg which was a loss of just 0.9kg, my smallest weight loss so far after a fasting day. From there, things were to go from bad to worse, because I then made the mistake of looking ahead to this morning's weekly official weigh-in, and allowing the fact that I have never recorded anything less than 74kg at these weigh-ins to prey on my mind a bit.

That 74kg is my lowest ever weight for a weekly weigh-in, but I have matched that on a couple of occasions without ever being able to actually beat that record. That made me feel that I must be somehow, incapable of beating that record (since that is something which I have never achieved before in my life) and that caused me to choke a bit on that prospect. Psychologically, that is akin to a football (for the sake of those viewers in other countries such as the USA, I am referring to the game of soccer which we refer to here in the UK just as football, and not the game which you would refer to in your own country as football) team who are on a bad run, having not managed to win for quite a number of games.

The longer that such a run goes on for, the harder that it becomes to break out of that because they assume that they just cannot get that elusive victory. That in turn, might even cause them to deliberately lose certain games because it is going through their minds that they are unlikely to win anyway, even though that might not necessarily be the case in practice. In other games, this team might play well in that game for a while until they lose a goal. When they happens, the thoughts of "oh my God, here we go again") go through their minds with the result that very often, they will contrive to lose another goal immediately afterwards with everything falling apart from there.

This is exactly what has happened with me this week over that 74kg weekly weigh-in barrier, as a result of allowing that to fester and create a psychological barrier for me. All of a sudden, all of the advise on this forum about reducing my carb intake went out of the window as I contrived to eat as many carbs as possible over the weekend to make up for what I was missing (that goes back to what I have said in previous posts about it being difficult to go against the grains of my own traditions, and nothing will ever change the fact the fact that I have always, traditionally been a person who has loved my carbs so much that I would never give up on them).

However, it wasn't just the carb intake which went through the roof because on Saturday, I also contrived to drink two full bottles of wine and half a bottle of whisky, making that my biggest ever alcohol blowout for years. In addition to my weight problems, I have also been having issues with my blood pressure, which have consistently been in the 130s or 140s for my systolic blood pressure. Amazingly though, that big drinking binge caused my blood pressure to temporarily plummet to 112/62 which is by far, my lowest ever blood pressure reading so far.

That is actually at the opposite end of the scale from what I am normally used to since that is only a couple of points away from being below the healthy range and therefore, being too low (I believe that this opposite of hypertension is referred to as hypotension, and that is what I came within a whisker of achieving on that one day). However, my weight jumped up as expected, to 73.6kg on Sunday morning and that meant that the pressure was now really on in terms of trying to break that 74kg psychological barrier at this morning's weekly official weigh-in.

This WOL has provided me with the tools for dealing with that situation because this was where I could probably should have stemmed that weight increase by taking a 16:8 day yesterday. However, I had already made up mind that I was going to be taking a complete break over the weekend and so, I was having none of that. Unlike on Saturday, I didn't drink any alcohol yesterday, but the carb feast from Saturday continued through Sunday as well. The result of this is that I have now had my most shocking figures so far for an official weekly weigh-in.

The increase in my weight was greater this morning than what it was yesterday, as my weight shot all the way up to 75.5kg (that is not a typo, as my weight really is 75.5kg just now which is a whole 4 pounds more than what I weighed at this time last week), taking me to just two pounds less than where I started off on this diet back in August before I joined this forum. In addition to that, my blood pressure has shot up from yesterday's really low values, all the way up to 150/83 (those are actually the best figures for today, with one reading being as high as 155/85).

It is really difficult to comprehend a week like that, especially with the manner in everything so badly fell apart over that one weekend, after such a really good and promising start to the week. I've not been getting that many good results lately, and I am probably allowing that to fester a bit, and allowing that to affect my overall belief that this WOL will actually work for me, especially since my blood pressure results are turning out to be no better than what they were before I started this WOL.

That means that whenever I do have a good week of results at an official weekly weigh-in, I am already assuming in my mind that the next week won't be so good whereas I should really be trying to use any good results as a platform to build on for the following week. In addition to that, I am finding that instead of trying to raise hopes for myself, by reading about other people's success stories, my mind has been using those success stories to create an inferior complex that says that whilst other people can be successful with this WOL, I can't and because of that, I'm actually lowering my own confidence levels even further because of that.

So all in all, that leaves quite a lot to ponder over the weeks and months ahead and as the winter approaches (we are already into the darker nights) and it continues to get colder, it is not going to get any easier as that just wants me to eat even more which in turn, wouldn't surprise me if that even led me to not even bother about fasting over time.

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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