Intermittent fasting and getting it together

As documented in many posts, I am a heavy guy. How heavy? 260 lbs of heavy, which isn’t handy for a guy who is only 5 ft 9” (on a yoga day). I spiraled upwards and finally caught the weight at this point a few months ago and I have been yo-yoing since. Some good days or a week, and then some horror shows. The main aspect currently has been my exercise regime, which has been pretty silly if I am honest. I have ran a bit, but I have ignored the gym and yoga for far too long again and I realise it was a confidence issue, but alas I let it get a hold of me.

Happily I haven’t gained lately and that is because of being a bit more active. My diet though? A bit or a sore point and one that has needed fixing for a little while. So, I did some research and became interested in intermittent fasting. What is intermittent fasting? Well it is a type of lifestyle that involves only eating for a certain amount of hours per day. I am stupidly guilty of getting bad snacks and munching them down ASAP.

How long will I fast and eat for?

Depending on your aims the lifestyle can be flexible to your needs. Want it to be 16 hours fast 8 hours timeslot to eat? Go for it. Prefer 14 hours fasting and a 10 hour window? Not a worry. Personally I am more inclined to go to the 16:8 selection as it gives me plenty of time to get a feed. I feel that I can slot my life into these windows pretty comfortably without being too much of a shock to my system. After a few months of this I may increase the fast, but that isn’t a concern for me at the moment. The only exception for this will be for half marathon plus race days where I will require something to eat in the morning otherwise the race is a wash. I know I will also do this if I go for a morning run that will exceed 13 miles. I do not want to be silly.

Another reason to selecting this, is that I have never really been much of a breakfast person. I mean I wouldn’t say no if some food was presented to me, but I don’t believe I am ever all that hungry until around 11am. Currently my lunch time at work is around 12:30, so that 90 minute wait until I get some food isn’t much of a push and it stops me from trying to buy a tasty croissant for my mid-morning snack (yes that became an issue due to the walk into work)

Will I do this for long?

I hope to do this for about 3 or so months (yes over the summer) as I want to give it a fair go without quitting 4 weeks in. Bit pointless to do that when it is something that probably takes a little bit of time to see progress with. If I feel good after that time then I will keep it going as I don’t really believe it will be that hard to achieve (famous last words). For example, if I know I am eating late one day then I will just adapt the 16 hour window to suit. It might go a little over the 16 hours that day, but it isn’t anything overly difficult to work on.

I hope this will stop me from wanting to snack more, though I do love snacking on fruit and veg. I know that if I want to I can make that into one of my meals as I would like to aim for 2.5 meals a day. So my fruit/veggie snack can be at around 3pm/4pm when in work. Which, with my new role can be accommodated unless I am in a meeting.

Will I not get tired quicker when I am working out?

I shouldn’t, I will hopefully be able to exercise as normal as I found that I feel sharper when I run or go to the gym in the morning without having eaten anything. As if my body is awake and ready for the activity, whereas if I have already had a breakfast, then I feel a little lethargic and not in a good head space for that activity. By removing that issue (other than a long workout day as mentioned) I firmly believe that my runs and workouts will get better and that I will get more from them than before.

Luckily my girlfriend Victoria and I are wanting to get a bit more structure in our workouts, so at one point in the new day or so we are going to structure our workout days as who doesn’t love a bit of structure? Look out for that post on Tuesday when the intermittent fasting starts. (We are going on a little holiday at Baytree B&B because of how much we loved it last time and it would be a shame to not have their breakfast as it is very tasty and that is coming from a non-breakfast guy!)

So come back on Monday to find out what my days will be filled with for the foreseeable. It should be fun!

Have you fasted or intermittent fasted before? How was it? Have you stuck with it? Were there any challenges? Would you recommend it? Let me know down below! Also let me know if you enjoyed this post! If you want to chat more about any of my posts, please follow me on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to also receive updates. Until next time, thanks for reading and I hope to see you again soon!