Intermittent Fasting

Apart from getting excited with a positive pregnancy test, what comes to mind is that I will be fat again. What if I don't lose the pregnancy weight? I wonder how much weight I will gain. What if I have scars and stretch marks?

Well for the last two, I don't have control over it. So when I don't have control over something, I don't worry about it. I just bought a very good product and it worked. But the pregnancy weight yes, I have the full control. With my first, I lost the weight very quickly, but I was younger and I wasn't that big even at 37 weeks, when I gave birth. I had gained around 10 kilos and was down 11 kilos after the first couple of months.

My second was the worst. I gained the most weight with him, nearly 12 kilos. But after I gave birth, I lost 4 kilos and then another 2 and the rest remained. I was afraid I was gonna keep that weight. So I started the typical "I'll start my diet on Monday" and walked for an hour every morning. But my weight remained the same. I was going crazy. If you know me well, I would have gotten on your nerves for sure, talking about this all the time! And now I can hear you say, "not again!"

One fine sunny day, I was at a party of a friend of ours, and me and my big mouth were talking about my weight and how I am on a "diet" and I am walking one hour every morning, but I can't lose the weight. Our friend's sister told me that she had read something about a fasting diet, that fitness experts were suggesting, but she didn't know much about it. I was very interested, so as soon as I got home I looked up the name she suggested - Intermittent Fasting.

I didn't know what it was, so I subscribed to a site and I started receiving emails with information about it. This guy was super cool and very realistic. I had read that humans were not meant to eat all the time, or every two hours. Humans woke up in the morning, they went hunting for the first few hours of the day, then they cooked their food, and then at around noon they would eat it.

This made me realise that this guy knew what he was talking about. So I read and read, lots of pages. In short some of the positive things I liked were that:

it can help extend life,

it regulates blood sugar,

it controls blood lipids (these are mainly fatty acids and cholesterol),

it reduces the risk of coronary heart disease (what builds up in the artery and narrows it),

it manages body weight,

it reduces the risk of cancer,

and more.

Although these studies are still in their early stages and I was very sceptic about it, I wanted to give it a try. Started seeing the methods of how to do it. There were quite a few. You can do 1 day of fasting a week, 2 days of fasting a week. No not for me. Then there was the 16/8 method. That is you eat for 8 hours, and you fast for 16 hours. To me that was great.

So I did my own way of life. What I do is I start eating at noon, my breakfast - oats, red berries/strawberries, cashews, sunflower/pumpkin seeds, with milk. Sometimes I am so hungry that I need to eat something else, which is usually the thing I can't live without, BREAD! I take this with tomatoes and olive oil. Sometimes instead of one of the above, I take a banana, apple or yogurt. After these I am so full, I don't eat anything else, and I am not even hungry. At 4 pm is my must, tea with biscuits (I take out 5 biscuits from the bag) and enjoy dipping them in my tea with milk, love it. Then I have dinner, this is always healthy and varied (except for the weekends). But I must eat until 8 pm. After dinner I always take one cube of chocolate.

When I started doing Intermittent Fasting, I had started eating at 10.30 am, then at 11 am, then 11.30 am until I was happy to start eating at noon.

After 8 pm, I can drink water, chamomile and tea. Same thing when I wake up in the morning until noon. Normally, I start getting hungry at 11.15 am and by 11.40 am I am constantly looking at the clock. So I started working out at that time. They also advise to workout while fasting. I workout Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday (15 to 30 mins workout/jog at home) and Saturday a class for 1 hour (while kids are doing another class).

I love this way of life coz it doesn't involve anything artificial, not a lot of complicated recipes and waste of time, I can keep doing it everyday of my life. I keep my weight very constant. If you eat healthy you can even lose more weight. After Sam I had then managed to go down to my pre-pregnancy weight. I stayed the same weight until I got pregnant with Aimee. I stopped Intermittent fasting while pregnant and started again immediately after. When she was 3 months old I lost all the pregnancy weight. I love it coz I am always the same weight, I eat what I love and I workout very little.

If I have a party, wedding, dinner in the evening, what I do is I fast a little longer. That way if I start eating at 1 pm I can eat till 10 pm (9 hours instead of 8 won't make a very big difference).

This way of life is not for everyone. If you want to start doing it, I would consult a doctor. I am not giving all the details as you can google all the info. I just gave you my experience as a mummy in a hurry!