Countdown to JUNE: creating bodies we will enjoy this summer ALL WELCOME

[loveyouradvice]

Gosh... the sun's coming out, and I even wore a summer dress a couple of days ago, and walked into the garden barefoot.

Let's cherish our bodies and feel powerful in them this summer.

Come and join us!! We’re a friendly group that uses Fasting in one form or another to lose weight or maintain our weight loss. We all have our ups and downs, and welcome insights from others and laughter along the way.... pirates and dachshunds will pop their heads up, we're in awe of those shredding with Jillian and lifting significant weights (beyond our own!) and impressed when we get our steps in.

Fridays are our informal day for weighing-in (optional) and reflecting on the week – often with ideas for self-care and new goals for the coming week.

We cheer each other on, and commiserate when things don't go to plan.
If you’re new to this group, do introduce yourself and share your hopes and plans. Some of us find daily posting helpful for accountability - others just pop in every now and then.

So - how would you like summer to look for you? What are your hopes and dreams? And plans for making them happen?

Looks like he decided that 20-24 hour fasting was fine. He was doing 3 day water only fasts once a month and 7 day water only fasts once a quarter. Which is a bit daft really. Pretty obvious you'd lose muscle doing that.

Why Longevity Doctor Peter Attia Changed His Mind About Fasting

My dinner is getting gradually earlier, with evening meal being more of a snack at teatime. eg a small wrap with lots of shredded lettuce for digestion, or some soup. I’m having dinner in the middle of the afternoon instead.

It gives me lovely long evenings when I don’t slump in front of tv with junk food.

Yeah that definitely sounds a bit excessive @Lemonthyme especially as it doesn’t seem like he needed to lose weight particularly.

@2Early4Breakfast sounds great. i find I get really hungry for dinner an hour or two before dh and want to snack - but we aren’t the best at eating all together anyway (my dc (15,18,20) think it’s cringe to eat together unless at a restaurant 😬) so maybe I should just eat when I am hungry and save leftovers for the next day. My kids all want to eat eat even later than dh, it’s very strange as I always cooked dinner fairly early when we did all eat together!

I have gone back to my Yorkshire roots and now try to ‘have my tea’ around 5pm ideally, but no later than 6pm 😄

Now we are retired we find we go to bed earlier than we used to, not feeling the need to stretch out our evening leisure hours as we no longer have paid work taking up most of our time.

When we were both working dinner was often at 7 or 8pm.

@Clearingaspace yes frustrating but as you say its the way it goes - some weeks up a little, others done a chunk, so unpredictable. Im looking forward to learning about how you feel creatine affects you - I've been considering it, one friend is very keen, but looking at my bloods I already seem to have highish levels, still in normal band.

Interesting @TheNoWord ... I've Yorkshire roots too, both sets of grandparents. And yes, 5pm feels the perfect time to me!!

@Lemonthyme thanks for link... just spent a fascinating 20 mins exploring... yup, intriguing that Peter Attia thinks we should aim for 1g per pound... which would make me aim for 150g pd!!! At mo Im around 100-120g which is a huge step up for me... and Im feeling good on it.

Funnily enough I had my dinner (tea if going with Yorkshire influence -my mum, who is Irish, lived there for a year or two as a child; so stretching things really!) done by 5:30 as we had some leftovers in the fridge … and I finally lost some weight for May this morning! So I will now be cheeky and do a late Friday weigh in!

sw 213 lbs
cw 202.8
gw 149

I went for a pre breakfast walk with dh, so that gives me at least 17 hours fast depending when I eat breakfast. I still have quite bad DOMS from a workout earlier this week so possibly it would be a bigger loss otherwise 🤞

@loveyouradvice there has actually been a slight swing back with protein advice, it’s more around 1lb per lb lean body mass, so 120g is probably a good bet, especially if you feel well there. That’s what I am aiming for, although I am happy to go over. According to my smart scale, my lean body mass is only 111lbs 😱, it also thinks I am metabolically 7 years older than my age! I can find YouTube links if interested about the protein but it would probably steal hours of your life! The main things seem to be:
*having at least 1lb per lb of lean muscle,
*having over 30g at both breakfast and dinner - lunch matters less
*if fasting your body can make use of up to 60g of protein in one meal
*if you eat more protein than your body needs homeostasis will potentially mean your body just adjusts to the higher level
*resistance training is more important than just eating protein and need progressive overload - should be 2 to 4 times a week and rest days are essential
*sleep is also a priority for building muscle not just high protein levels. Lack of sleep causes the body to lay down fat rather than build muscle

Sorry 1g of protein per 1lb!

That is interesting @Clearingaspace

"sleep is also a priority for building muscle not just high protein levels. Lack of sleep causes the body to lay down fat rather than build muscle” as I am definitely flabbier around the middle than I was at exactly the same weight a few months ago, I can tell by the fit of my clothes.

My sleep has been very disturbed since my op and is only just beginning to get back to anything near my normal.

oh that’s upsetting about your sleep @TheNoWord especially as it’s not like you are staying up partying, but at least it gives hope that as you get your sleep back on track it should help. Actually just to add, apparently creatine can also help with the effects of poor sleep - do you take that at all? Apparently you need to take much higher doses for things like this though and also brain health - over 10g per day. You need to start slowly and build up as some people find it caused gastric upset.

Seriously interesting @Clearingaspace - are you taking creatine now, and what sort of level? What are you hoping for from it?

Interesting re protein - I'm very happy at my 100-130g level so this feels good. I'd not heard that it was lean muscle mass rather than overall weight, though I had heard that it relates more to "healthy weight" rather than current weight. And wow, 60g absorption pre fast - that is fascinating, I've been trying to look into how much the body can absorb from a meal and not getting anything conclusive beyond 35g. And the homeostasis, also very very interesting - presumably this means if one reduces ones protein abruptly, one's body struggles to adapt to the lower level... another good reason for me to stay in the 100g+ camp.

Oh good luck @TheNoWord - so tough and our bodies do take a long time to recover from ops. Claude (who I prefer to chapgpt) has just told me my cheekbone surgery is NOT minor surgery and I'll take up to 6 months to fully recover - the bone and energies probably withing8-12 weeks, but the swelling doesn't fully resolve until 3-6 months. I thought my surgeon was joking when he responded 6 months when I asked him how long it would take for all my swelling to go down! I'd definitely been thinking it was minor surgery given how little pain i've been in!

@loveyouradvice i really hope your recovery will be quick.

Creatine - Stacey simms seems to suggest 1-5g per day and building up the amount slowly. She also recommended a website called creatine for health which looks at studies focused on health aspect. This is the video but I stopped watching after a bit https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0odXU5bQojE&pp=ugUEEgJlbg%3D%3D&ra=m

A study was done on middle age women that used 10g per day which showed cognitive benefits. I don’t think the study is mentioned on these videos and can’t remember which one I originally watched, but Rhonda Patrick says she takes 10g per day on this video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qiogHNvz4kw&pp=ygUXY3JlYXRpbmUgcmhvbmRhIHBhdHJpY2s%3D&ra=m

I started at 7.5g using capsules but I am pretty forgetful, if I am consistent maybe I will aim lower for 5g, or maybe go up to 10g, not sure. But I have no side effects really. Need to take basic creatine mono hydrate as that is what has been studied. Creatine is one of the most studied supplements.

I think we require more protein as we age. I’m trying to up mine along with more green salad. So far, it’s mostly pre-cooked packets of chicken, and bags of shredded lettuce with baby cucumbers. It’s working well.

Porridge and berries in the morning. The trickiest part of the day is the slump I often get in the early afternoon. I think I could do better with two meals instead of three some days. Something to think over.

@2Early4Breakfast it will be interesting to hear if you are less hungry with two meals a day. I am finding myself pretty hungry in the afternoons and evenings.

ok so weirdly I have been taking some old creatine (and also collagen) that was half used in our cupboards for a couple of days now and my weight has gone down,not up 🤪 I felt less hobbley when I got out of bed this morning so maybe something had helped with inflammation? I also did a quick 10 min weights workout yesterday, so this is not what I thought would happen at all! Any way it could just be a scale fluke, but I am so close to 199 if not!

@Clearingaspace Really interesting about the creatine, thank you - and I so get the inconsistency. I seem to be taking a lot of stuff at the moment, and am slightly going with the approach if I manage it 6 days out of 7, that is a win. Good to know you've had no side effects - have you noticed any benefits? What are you hoping for and how long do you think it will take??

Congrats on increasing the protein @2Early4Breakfast . I'm definitely having a very large dollop of greek yogourt with my berries and porridge in the morning to up my protein count. And fab that both your symptoms and weight have gone down!!

And hunger... an interesting one. I definitely feel more satisfied with 2-3 larger meals a day than more smaller ones, which is one of the things that's been suggested considering for my potential POTs/OI (waiting lists sseem to be forever so going to take a while to know for sure). So I'm sticking with 3 larger meals until my bone's healed, and then am likely to have a phase of just 2 to shed a few more pounds.

And Friday weigh-in.

SW: 14.2
CW: 11.1 - up a pound, and I'm okay with that: delicious lunch with friend yesterday
GW: 10.12 for now, and 10.7 by Sept.... with another 5 weeks of maintaining 11.0 as my bone heals

And lunching with old friend yesterday who I hadn't seen for a while and have known since I was 16... her first words were "you skinny minny"... which was deeply satisfying to hear!!

Quick check in as I am on my way to collect my repaired hearing aids.

64.7kg this morning, so STS. I blame this entirely on DH for baking irresistible biscuits this week.

Back later...

@TheNoWord yum, what kind of biscuits? We bought a ninja cream this week and honestly I just want to make delicious ice cream - the healthy types so far are not hitting the spot!

@loveyouradvice thats a great non scale victory 😊. With creatine I will just keep taking it - unless I hear something negative about it. Remembering to take all the supplements is the tricky bit! A lot of people put it in their coffee but apparently thats not a good idea.

my amazing weigh in at the beginning of the week was scales being annoying and quickly leapt back up. But 1lb down for the week. Annoyingly slow though and 199 will be weeks at this rate 😩

sw 213, cw 201.6 gw 139

139 sounds unrealistic but I was 133 10 or so years ago when my dc were little after doing blood sugar diet/fast 800. I have been looking at the numbers and to lose 21b a week I would need to be eating around 1000 calories. I am really torn between sustainability and wanting all the weight off asap! I have been setting low carb and calorie goals and not hitting it so I am going to try planning for a higher calorie goal and see if it works out any different for weight loss if I am intentional about it!

Oh wow @Clearingaspace I am loving my Ninja Creami, which I only got at Easter... I'm making lots of yogourt/cottage cheese based icecreams... one was even a pot of Yeo Lemon Curd yogourt which I love with a bit of extra zest, etc... I've just popped a cottage cheese icecream one into the freeze today (with maple syrup, spiced rum, vanilla)... and am about to make a gazpacho sorbet! I'm finding it such fun and loving that it's easy to make healthy delicious ice cream!!.

Oh yes, husbands and irrestible biscuits ... full sympathy (and slight envy) here @TheNoWord

Great approach to the creatine @Clearingaspace I'll look forward to hearing when you think it starts having an impact.

And I so get the frustration of slow loss... I firmly believe you can get to 139 - why not? Yes, it may be slow, but you've been there before and your body knows that. 199 is still very close - just 2 weeks if you're losing a pound a week.

For me, I've found what works best is doing a bit of a mix up, so sometimes I lose fast and sometimes slow... and I know Gin Stephens thinks that keeping your body guessing is one of the keys to continuing to lose weight. So I do find that if I do 500 cals in a 2 hour window twice a week, alongside 8h of around 1200/1400 calories the rest of the time (ie my norm to lose), I do sometimes lose 2lbs and sometimes 1lb. If I do an intense 4 days of 1200 calories in a 4-6h window before returning to the 8hs, I can lose 2lbs in a week.

What do you think might work best for you? And it might well be saying, okay, I'm going to lose 1lb a week for the next six weeks or so, and then have an intense 2-3 weeks when I eat 800-1000 cals a day (ie Fast 800 style).. or it may be something else entirely.

And I've definitely found that assessing where I am mentally and what other demands are being made on me really helps ... do I have the bandwidth for intense dieting now or not? Often the answer is no!!

@loveyouradvice please share any good recipes - I will have to buy the lemon curd yogurt - yum!

Oh really good points about changing things up - I will reread your strategies, thank you! Another advantage is that I get a bit bored doing the same thing so it would give me a chance to try different methods. I imagine if I am going to get to 139 I might need a phase of fast 800 but I might save it for before an event or something with a time pressure.

@loveyouradvice there seems to be a discount for prolon. Haven’t figured it out yet. Have you tried the shakes at all?

Prolon @Clearingaspace - yes so far I've been lucky enough to buy with discounts all the time - the November Black Friday seem to be the best. I've not tried the shakes, I've just used their bog standard 5 day FMD... and have loads of tips I typed up for others on this board a year or two again, if you decide to do it.

I'll be delighted to share recipes... some are super simple, but Im enjoying getting quite geeky about it too! Not yet mastered a good plain frozen yogourt which is one of my ambitions before my DD gets home from uni - it's her fav!!
I'm looking forward to hearing what you make first!!

I have over £200 worth of prolon stuff in my basket (to get a free gift if you spend 199 🤪) but not pressed buy yet… the free gifts not showing iin the basket is making me unsure.

so far my dds have made biscof ice cream which I resisted apart from a teeeny lick. I made a pear sorbet with a bit of skyr added for dh which he liked. I have mixed a ready made protein shake with kefir yogurt and strawberries- it was nice but I almost felt like I would have preferred it served naturally! It does stretch the ingredients out though which is good when trying to eat fewer calories. I will keep experimenting!

oh I have a potential positive with creatine I was really low on steps and finding walks harder at the beginning of April. For the last couple of weeks I have really upped my steps and this week my average was 12900, but a couple of times this week have noticed how much easier it feels. Could be a coincidence or could be energy from creatine I guess? Apparently it takes a month to build up enough creatine though.