Countdown to Easter

[ItRainsItPours]

All welcome!

Supportive thread for setting goals including self care and fasting, and chat in between.

I would start by moving breakfast a little later each day and then drop it. That is what worked for me but I wouldn’t cope with the version where you eat very little on certain days. Everyone is different though.

Breakfast tends to be my main meal of the day, I'll usually have a snack sandwich for tea, but then it's my boredom foods I struggle with! 😩

@loveyouradvice i am definitely going to look into rose scented bath stuff now -,perfect non food treat.

@Spuggz - I am probably not the best to advise as I am a bit of a disaster at the moment! However I am someone who tends to skip dinner rather than breakfast. I think step 1 would be to have a 12 hour gap between dinner and breakfast consistently. Step 2 would probably be to aim for increasing the 12 hour gap a couple of times a week very gradually, but only a couple of times a week so that eventually you skip the sandwich a couple of times a week and are building up a longer fast. Gin Steven’s fast feast repeat is a very popular book to start with if you want to do any reading. Do post on here and keep us updated!

Sorry cross posted with @StealthilyEmbraceTheSilkyBeans

Yes this is what I am hoping for too! I think sometimes we need a break, but my weight gain confirms to me that fasting works for me as I haven’t been fasting at all apart from that 1 18 hour fast last week.

Thanks for all the advice! I'm definitely in the mindset to start so I'm setting Friday as a start date give me a couple of days to sort some better healthier options! I do drink a lot of cordial does this fit in with fasting?

Maybe aim to have the cordial with your meals and water only in your fast if possible.

All my cordials are 'sugar free' is this not the case when it comes to fasting?

Yup, I'm another Gin Stephens fan @Spuggz ... i think she is so sensible about fasting and how different things work for different people

Interestingly when I first started fasting (4 years ago?), I was a start late and finish late person - so typically eating 1 or 2pm to 8 pm or so...

Now my body gets hungry earlier so a normal eating window for me, when not socialising, is from around 8 or 9am to 3 - 5pm... I aim for 6-8 hours

I totally endorse everyone on here saying go for a clean 12 hours to start with... so yes, sadly no cordial: just water, herbal or real tea and black coffee... lots of evidence of how sweeteners trigger weight gain now (although mechanisms not yet fully understood).

And then shrinking it .. an 8 hour window for weight loss is most popular, with some of us doing 24-36 hour fasts occasionally and shorter windows (I'll often do a 1-4 hour eating window, particularly if I've overeaten the day before)

So wonderfully flexible around your lifestyle and goals!

We'll look forward to hearing how you decide to start and how its going - Friday is sort of a loose checking in day for us all, where we celebrate successes of the week, commiserate if things have gone less well and discuss how to nurture ourselves as we move forward...

Hello how’s it going everyone.

@loveyouradvice i am so impressed that you have been fasting for 4 years 💜

Sw 204lbs cw 197.5. I have lost 2lb this week after 2 fast 800 days. Want to see if I can maintain over the weekend but have some wine etc, as maintaining is my main problem.

hope all well

@Clearingaspace yes, it now feels like a way of life, and SO darn flexible... so yes, quite often if with mates I'll eat in a 12 hour window, but usually its 6-8h with some shorter ones thrown in. Especially if things have gone pear-shaped - see below!!

So this week, Friday's figures (yup, I missed the day, more below)

SW: 14.2
CW: 10.13.4
GW: Was 11.2 ... not quite ready to commit to 10.7.....so I am going to go for GW of a consistent 10.12, and then nudge GW down by 2lbs at a time until I get to 10.7... Yes, convoluted, you can hear the fear and hesitation!!!

Quick dissection of an unexpected binge: I thought these days were past:

I was a total emotional mess on Friday - I saw family this week, talked, too much grief and unprocessed trauma.... under slept, disturbing dreams... spent day in bed/on sofa....

Initially I ate usual scrummy healthy breakfast, and then three top ups of salmon (easy protein in the freeze) ... and thought/hoped that was it

Mid afternoon - nice crispy cod in the air fryer and peas, tomato ketchup
Still not thinking I was going to binge... but realised I was in no fit state for planned Friday party so decided to hunker on sofa with feelgood Netflix and eat a bit much at home, much as if I was at the party....

Ate:

• three good squirts of tahini
• 4 helpings of yummy cheese and oatcakes (spread through the evening) + a sliced cucumber
• chocolate ganache, cherries, yogourt and nuts
• frozen berries, cream and white chocolate
• 3 chocolates

So: I did NOT have power over food, but to some extent I did, which was interesting and a big step forward from the full on binges of the past

• my first instincts were to overeat the healthy stuff and not vanish down a UPF rabbit hole
• my second instincts were to only eat choc etc once there was food in my stomach to avoid a blood sugar spike
• apart from the squirty tahini (in the kitchen by an open fridge), I managed to put food on plates/ in bowls and take into the sitting room to eat it
• I left the evidence out, so my DH could see what had happened rather than hiding it (I have always hidden evidence in the past)
• I recognised that i ate in a 16hour window and was able to chose to stop at a certain point

So I am going to celebrate these steps forward from the mega binges of the past (copious bags of crisps, chocolate, ice creams on the sofa) AND that with IF, I suspect that just two days of short windows/800 healthy calories will repair most of the damage. My weight soared to 11.4 and is already back to 11.1 after just one day like this.

Thank you for letting me think this through - and celebrate my rather bumpy progress towards having power over food!

I will get there though suspect I will always be vulnerable to emotional eating, while being able to have power in less emotional situations ...like just feeling a bit bored or eating at parties when gorgeous stuff is just saying "eat me".

@Clearingaspace Congrats on those 2.5 pounds... you're doing great and WILL get there!

How is/where is everyone else?

I always assume a silence means people are having a rough few days (like I was)... Do come and chat to us when you can!

Well I seem to be on a plateau, unable to get my weight below what it was on the 28th February, but I am just keeping on keeping on and hoping for a whoosh at some point.

So nothing exciting to report but I'm still here!

Hey @loveyouradvice - it sounds like you did have power over food given all the positives and were still exercising judgments to keep you from going off track while giving yourself what you needed. Sorry to hear you had such a tough day on Friday and the days leading up, I am useless with anything emotional and would 1000 per cent be eating junk whereas what you describe sounds a lot healthier.

I failed a bit on Friday and didn’t log at all and ate a lot more carbs than planned so I definitely need to think ahead a lot more for ‘treat days’ and eat something delicious that I will enjoy rather than grazing on sourdough and lentil chips all day! I have a fluey virus now so not logging but I think my appetite is not super high anyway - hopefully I can do enough this week to be down 3 weeks in a row.

hope all ok

fingers crossed for a whoosh of weight loss soon @IDareSay plateaus suck but often that’s when we suddenly find clothes getting looser.

I’m maintaining at the moment. My stomach pain is back so stopped fasting and guess I need to go back to the doctor. There’s not much more to say which I guess is why I am quiet on here, if I can keep maintaining after losing lots last year I will be happy for now. On the plus side I am keeping up lots of exercise which just wasn’t possible before the weight loss. Now it’s much nicer weather I did quite a hilly walk last week which was reassuringly easy.

@ItRainsItPours so good that you have switched your focus more to exercise while you have your stomach problem, fingers crossed you can maintain while figuring it out.

@StealthilyEmbraceTheSilkyBeans the low carb high protein under 1000 cal thing works magically well for some people. By day 2 I felt my appetite was already resetting, I’m just a bit nervous doing it for too long if I am only going to gain it all back again do doing 5:2 style for now. Very interesting about dairy. Any time I cut it out I find the craving lasts much longer than bread for example, even though initially bread is the thing I crave most. I need to check out more about dopamine.