My 16/8 / 18/6 fasting 80 pounds to lose journey

[TarasChoc]

I've just started this Woe last Monday and I'm very happy with how much more naturally this comes to me than anything else I've tried. I fell into it accidentally after starting The fast 800 a few weeks ago. I had a few things on and found the low carb and calories aspect hard to stick to but realised I was still in a decent deficit, eating less sugar and doing a 16/8 without finding it all too hard. I've now fallen into 18/6.
I am tracking calories, I'm only eating two meals and the occasional snack so I don't find calorie tracking hard.

I'm looking at losing 70 pounds so I'll be in this for the long haul. I'm currently doing a lot of research listening to Gin Stephen's podcast and reading Delay, don't Deny , The Obesity Code and Fast, Feast Repeat.
I've been weighing everyday to track the trends but my official weighin day will be Monday.

Hope everyone is having a good week! It's going to be a bit of a start again situation for me next week - I've fallen off the wagon pretty hard over the last few weeks. Think I will be going through another adjustment period in the next few days but determined to get back on it. Hope you're all okay.

Hope it's an easy return for you @AnxieTeapot. Maybe fasting is like learning to ride a bike?

@Stanner1984 congratulations on your baby. I love this way of eating but it's not a quick fix. I do, however, find it sustainable and something I can imagine doing for a long time.
I've lost more than a stone and a half since the end of July and have had lots of other health benefits too. I'd say take it slowly and be patient with yourself.

Thanks @Neeko - I like your thinking - I reckon it is.

Hi all, I'm sorry I've been awol, I found myself in the cleaning/DIY mode the last two weeks and was totally absorbed. It's a great way to work off any anger, which is what kick started me in the first place. Work stress is a pita!
I'm glad I've switched to a monthly update as my muscles are so sore there's not much to report here, hopefully that'll change in a few days.

I'll read through the thread now and catch up with everyone later. I need to start checking in again regularly as I miss the chat when I don't.

Thanks @Neeko for your message last week, I haven't been on here for a few days! Definitely not patronising 🤗 appreciate the support.

I like what you said about the baby steps towards better healthy habits - I'm going to try and work on things like sleep and some gentle exercise and drinking more water, etc.

I think @Neeko gives great advice.
This is a WOE and one that if we just stick with through the good times and the bad will break that cycle of gaining/losing weight. Its not a diet, its fasting.
Through out the year, if weight loss is the goal, there'll be times we'll be better focused and able to drop the pounds and there'll be times we just can't sustain a deficit and maintain. The key difference from other weight loss attempts is we haven't fallen off plan, a few pounds may go back on but the pounds aren't piling on every single week until eventually its back to square one. Learning to maintain alongside how to lose is a massive step for me.

Great advice @TarasChoc - been really struggling to 'get back on it' - I needed to hear this today, thank you. Hope all is going well with you.

Totally agree. I've been maintaining within a few pounds since December and I find it amazing that I'm managing to do this without effort. The fasting part is just a habit now and I am eating food until I'm satisfied plus "treat food" every day. No deprivation here. This isn't a diet and my sleep/skin/mood... are all better too.

My weight isn't changing but my shape is. I've bought the same pair of work trousers 3x now. They keep becoming too big! After decades of yo-yo dieting and disordered eating, I can't yet quite believe that I won't need those bigger clothes again so they are packed away. However, I'm hopeful that in six months time - when I fully trust that I have changed the way I feel about food - they will be winging their way to a charity shop.

Food just doesn't have the same power over me any more which means I don't really binge nor feel guilty. I just wish I could go back and tell 20-year-old me this. I've wasted so much of my life as a slave to the scales.

That's amazing @Neeko and sounds really positive. I'm so glad this method has helped to change your mindset for good 💪 how inspiring.

Thanks @AnxieTeapot. Can't quite believe it myself! 😊

How are you getting on since @AnxieTeapot.? I think one of the beauties about this plan is when you start/restart at first the only thing you need to do is eat within an 8 hour window. I find even when I'm struggling even a few days of 16/8, upping protein and drinking enough water helps ease me into longer fasts.

@Neeko I'm so delighted for you. Its very powerful and freeing to be able to say after decades of disordered eating and yo yo dieting that you are now doing this without effort and with no deprivation.
Isn't it interesting how shape can change without losing weight. When I first heard people talking about this while fasting but not doing weight training I thought they were deluding themselves if I'm honest but in the Facebook group I'm in I've seen lots of pics from people who's weight has changed very little but who's shape is sizes smaller. The benefits of fasting go far beyond the scales.

I'm planning my meals for the next couple of days so will write today's offerings here as maybe it'll be helpful to others.
Lunch will be around 2.pm it'll be an open tuna, low fat mayo and sweetcorn sandwich on a slimster. It's open not to be fancy but so I can fit on lots of tuna 😋 sometimes i have lentil crisps or fruit or even both, will decide later. Dinner around 6 is an Irish stew, if I have snacks it will be a one or two of the following, popcorn/breakfast biscuits/ kind/fiber one bar/crackers with soft cheese and some kind savory chutney/jam/fruit salad/dark chocolate.

Sounds yummy @TarasChoc, how have you found your plan to weigh yourself less?

It isn't going great if I am honest - I weighed myself after a few weeks of falling off the wagon and was surprised to have put on a whopping 5 pounds, which has put me in a bad frame of mind as to be honest I wasn't expecting that. I have been reverting to the all or nothing mindset so have started eating a bit earlier each day. You are right though, I'm going to try to focus on the window for the next few days (which is always easier when I'm at work) then will focus on getting the food I'm eating right afterwards. I am quite hard on myself and I'm annoyed that I've let myself slip again after doing so well - I so want this to be the thing that changes my relationship with food.

@Neeko I'm very envious that you don't binge any more!! That's my longterm wish, more than the weight loss. On the whole, I definitely binge less now than I used to before fasting - but every now and then something triggers a session. The last couple of weeks have been really bad and I don't really know why!! 😵

I have come a long way in terms of not fearing foods or attaching morality to them... Having 'allowed' all foods, I no longer scoff things like ice cream that I thought I loved but discover I don't really like at all!!

BUT I do still lean towards things that frankly aren't very nutritious, and are far too easy to overeat... And the more of those things I eat the less I want the good stuff. Ho hum.

Could have written your post @mumlikeaboss - honestly though it sound like you've made some amazing progress with your mindset and it's great that you are having less binges! Do you mind me asking how long you've been doing 16/8? Sorry you've probably already said!

@AnxieTeapot I did my first fast back in November 2020!! Feels a lifetime ago 😆

Haven't done 16:8 all that time, it varies massively day-to-day... Can be anywhere from 12 to 40 hours! But I don't ever push a fast if it feels psychologically difficult, and lately that means I've been doing a lot less than I'd like.

@AnxieTeapot I was really busy the last two weeks so wasn't as committed to remembering to weigh as normal. If I'm honest it would suit me better mentally if I could be like this all the time while actively trying to lose weight.
But I'm obsessed with the scales, will often jump on through out the day too. I've tried to not weight but then I've found I deluded myself and gain!
I've now tried to detach from the figures and just enter the number daily and allow my app to come up with the weekly average. This has helped me not to get too hung up on fluctuations, most of the time ..... but when I'm struggling or having gains after holidays etc it can be very hard not to be affected by bigger increases or when the scales should move but doesn't. I do feel though as I'm working to make fasting my long term way of eating that updating monthly on here is better for me. I think I'll see any loss as a positive, whereas weighing weekly and updating here the weeks I was unwell and not losing I began to feel I was letting people down.
I'll bet your sorry you asked now 😂

As for your 5 pounds most of that will only be water weight. I know its disappointing to see but a lot of it will go again after a few good days.

2.5 years of earthy @mumlikeaboss that's amazing! Have you ever became fed up of it in that time or tempted to try something else?
Has something happened at all in the last couple of weeks? Are you hungry when you binge? When you say binge do you mean sitting down in one go and eating everything in sight or are mindlessly eating through out the day?

I'm only 7 months in and yes I've had weeks here and there not fasting properly and I'll admit to been tempted twice to trying the fast800 again for faster losses but there's just something that feels so right about fasting. It feels normal for me, it takes a lot of the angst around food away. There's no all or nothing.
One of my daughters was trying to bribe me with chocolate the other day and the other pointed out to her I don't eat chocolate any more only the odd bit of dark chocolate. I was sitting there wondering if I did or didn't. I realised she was right. I do eat it but very occasionally. My pallette has always been more savoury based but after developing what I consider a sugar addiction I craved chocolate, biscuits and bars all the time. I didn't even particularly like the sugary taste of most of them but felt driven to snack on them regularly.
@Neeko mentioned before about gut health and how your gut will crave the food you feed it. I would've scoffed before that I would ever craved a salad or the likes but I realised when she said it that that's what had been happening to me while eating less processed foods.

I think for all of us on the thread this whole fasting way of eating is much more than just weight and scales. Obviously there's the health benefits we've spoken about too and also the resetting of our ingrained attitudes towards food, diets, and the scales. That we need to get better familiar with our own bodies, their hormones, stress and any health issues we have and know what fast is better suited to how we currently feel. Sometimes it can be good to push through, other times it's important to know our limits and realise that putting ourselves under duress to fast longer than we are able just adds stress and eventually something will blow!

Sorry for waffling it does help me to get my thoughts down and when I'm struggling it's handy to have a type of diary to look back on.

*fasting not earthy😄

@TarasChoc don't apologise, this is the best place for waffling! Everyone can read through at their leisure, and don't have to pretend to politely listen if they don't feel like it 😆

I started fasting because a friend recommended The Obesity Code to me... and having read that I had a TOTAL mindset shift about diets!! Once I understood why dieting is so flawed, it effectively removed the temptation to 'diet' ever again. Every now and then I might read/hear about people having (temporary) success with Weight Watchers or conventional calorie-counting and I sometimes feel a little nostalgic and tempted to go that route - I never last more than a day because I KNOW in my heart of hearts that it doesn't work, and never did work long-term. (Plus I'm lazy and I really really hate counting things 😂)

So no, I don't feel like I'll ever give up on fasting. I never stuck to any other diet for more than a few weeks / months at the absolute most... It's the only thing that I've done for this long and still feel completely happy to carry on doing.

The only thing I have done a few times along the way is incorporated low carb / keto alongside the fasting (no restriction on AMOUNT of food, just type, so don't consider it a diet in the conventional sense!). LCHF is absolute dynamite for weight loss (at least for me, I know it doesn't suit everyone)... But I just find it such a headache, and it always turned into a cycle of doing really well then falling into a vat of cake, behaving like a sugar addict and having to try desperately hard to get off the stuff again, feeling like a failure, rinse and repeat... And every time it just felt harder and harder to gear up for kicking the carbs again.

I'm still a bit frustrated that I can't find a way to make LCHF sustainable for me because I felt physically much better when I was doing it! I think it's just mentally it's such an enormous struggle. My guess is that I'm still a little or a lot insulin-resistant and that's why low carb suited me so well, and why I am struggling to lose any more now.

Sheesh, what a novel. 😆

Sorry didn't answer your questions on the bingeing... It's a difficult one to analyse if I'm honest. I'm just reading through my 'Brain Over Binge' recovery guide (dug it out of the cupboard, forgot I had it stashed away!) and one of the first tasks in there is to define what a binge looks like for me personally... and how it differs from, say, 'just' overeating or being a bit greedy because food is delicious! The lines get very blurred, I find.

I do occasionally have what I would call a 'classic' binge, where I have an uncontrollable urge to buy a vast quantity of incredibly unhealthy food and eat it pretty much in one go... That might be stress- or mood-triggered, and I will do it relatively consciously as a way of zoning out from everything (only of course, always regret it afterwards).

The Brain Over Binge lady explains that these 'urges' are basically just habit, like faulty wiring in the brain, and once you recognise them as such they are relatively easy to ignore. Your animal instinct brain thinks that you 'need' to binge in whatever situation you're in, and gives you strong cravings because it thinks it's literally necessary for your survival. But your 'higher', conscious brain can actually realise it's not and override that instinct, until the habit fades. Or that's the theory!

The harder ones to pin down are where I don't remember having any initial 'urge' to binge... I might start off on any given day just eating ordinary things that I find delicious, sometimes healthy, sometimes not... and somewhere along the line realise that it's turned into a compulsive grazing session where I just can't get enough of anything. I'll be uncomfortably full and aware that I've overeaten but still feel compelled to carry on until I feel horribly ill 😭

It's a horrible head game, and it makes you feel so full of shame and loathing - and fear, because you genuinely feel completely out of control.

Wouldn't wish it on anyone.

I do realise I'm thoroughly monopolising the thread this evening 😅sorry!! Wanted to respond to the gut health / cravings thing...

Yes yes yes! I think gut health is huge, and we don't really realise how huge. I'm very fascinated in it at the moment and have been reading all sorts of interesting things. One thing I do wonder is if I'm struggling more at the moment because I took a lot of high-strength painkillers before Christmas / through January and well into February because of back pain and joint issues. PK's, especially NSAIDs, apparently can have a negative effect on your microbiome.

Was momentarily tempted to do a kind of strict but short-term 'gut reset' diet, where you cut out all sugar and processed / inflammatory foods whilst taking good probiotics etc., in order to get your gut in good shape... But I realised about a day into it that that is not a great idea for someone like me with binge tendencies and an all-or-nothing mindset!!! 🙈

So I'm trying to go the more mundane route of introducing more veg / variety of good foods, and hoping I can gradually crowd out some of the junk and make a difference that way. I'm not very patient though... sigh.

Haven't read all the recent comments properly (will come back later) but @mumlikeaboss I'm sure the recommendation is to aim for 30 different fruits/vegetables/nuts/seeds/pulses in a week to develop the microbiome. If I remember rightly, there's no need to eat a full portion of these: it's the diversity that matters. I think that different herbs and spices count too. Maybe try a sprinkle/pinch of this and that? Using frozen veg and berries helps as it's difficult not to waste stuff with fresh.

@mumlikeaboss you're not monopolising the thread by any means. You are adding to it and it's really interesting to hear other people's perspectives.
I wish I could eat low carb consistently too but its not a way of eating I can stick to long term. I do find when I do it for short periods it helps reset my need for sugar. When I've done it for longer like you I eventually find it too restrictive and go haywire on carbs eventually.
I find it is easier in summer to low carb and I usually fall into it for a few weeks then as I would mainly eat salads for lunch and it's easy to substitute potatoes or rice with extra veg and cauliflower rice.

@Neeko I hadn't realised you only needed a small bit of each food. That will make it easier, I've been trying but having full portions. Do you know if dried herbs would count too?
Where did you learn this information from, you probably already mentioned but it would be handy for me to read up properly instead of firing questions at you all the time.

@TarasChoc I can't remember 😳 but I think something by Tim Spector? I'll see what I can find this weekend.