Intermittent fasting is not a diet, it's a pattern of eating. This is a set schedule of eating meals, daily so that you limit WHEN you’re eating. The Intermittent Fasting method that I’m going to be using is the 16/8 method: Also called the Leangains protocol. This involves skipping breakfast and restricting your daily eating period to 8 hours (I’m doing 1:30–9:30 p.m.) Then you fast for 16 hours in between. The goal will be to maintain the regular eating habits that I have in my life while limiting the time that I can eat those meals in. When you fast, several things happen in your body on the cellular and molecular level.The body adjusts hormone levels to make stored body fat more accessible while cells also begin repair processes and change the expression of genes. This change in the bodies metabolic and hormonal levels occurs in several areas such as Human Growth Hormone (increases and helps with fat loss and muscle gain), insulin (specifically insulin sensitivity, lowering the levels ), cellular repair (cells initiate cellular repair processes, including autophagy, when fasting), and gene expression (changes that can help gene longevity and protection). For more information, feel free to check out these sources: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/intermittent-fasting-guide#effects; https://jamesclear.com/the-beginners-guide-to-intermittent-fasting; as well as other resources that I will post throughout the challenge.
Day 19:
The hard part about drinking coffee in the morning is that I get a bit anxious and shaky. While I do feel a sense of satisfaction that something (even liquid) is in my stomach, the extra energy boost high can make me feel not as in control. This is especially more difficult when I am not walking around the school and constantly moving to get out the energy. I think it may have come to a point when I have to cut coffee out of my daily intake. After Im able to eat this sense of anxiousness goes away, and I’m sure that my nervousness about teaching yoga classes don’t help.
Day 20:
I cut my coffee intake in half this morning and felt no shaky ness at all. I think this may be where I stay right now because coffee does give me a strong feeling of joy in the morning and am extra boost when feeling groggy. Note to self: while regulating the coffee, understand that a heavy meal breaking the fast takes a long time to digest. This is especially true if doing intense exercise a few hours later. A huge lunch followed by the bending and twisting, plus heat, in Hot Yoga pushes right on the gut and is super uncomfortable. I didn’t feel like I was going to hurl but, nonetheless, don’t want to do that again.
Day 21:
Over the past few weeks, without keeping up with the exercise regimen, I’ve managed to lose another 1.5 lbs of weight. This isn’t drastic, but I like that the progress is slow. Today, because I was at a training, and the only lunch break we got is at 12:00, I ate about an hour earlier than I normally do. My goal, then, became to limit the time that I was eating after this point to 8:00 PM. I’m curious what this will do to my hunger tomorrow when I try to put the schedule back in place. This week I’m going to also try to get back into the exercises I’ve let fall by the wayside and get back into my regular meditation practice. If I’m able to do this, and keep with mindful eating, it will be a completion of all of the goals I’ve had recently.
Day 22:
It seems easier to complete the fast when I’m not expending calories all day. While I was hungry during my in-service training, I didn’t do a lot of moving around. This kept my energy levels pretty high and my mind from dwelling on not eating. The problem occurred much later during hot yoga. Even though I had a good three hour time period between eating and doing this exercise, I could still feel it all the way through. This was especially difficult during any of the compression poses, and I almost felt like I was going to puke. I think what I need to do is just eat less beforehand and then eat a bigger meal after the workout. I’ve gotten back into my meditation practice, and im hoping this will help in helping maintain and dampen the emotions I’ve been feeling as I get closer to breaking the fast.
Day 23:
I broke my fast today while in a training at District headquarters. It's a little awkward to be eating while everyone else is sitting at a table with their computers open. Luckily, I was on the outside of the circular table, and without a seat, so I was able to pay attention, eat, and not disturb anyone on the inside. Still, super awkward.
Day 24:
The school day was super busy all day today. Unfortunately, this was the first time that I had to deal with suspending a student because of a knife. This happened while another student literally collapsed in my arms because he was so sick and didn't have any energy to walk to the nurse (he's lucky I was able to lift him or he could have fallen down the stairs). This meant that I didn't break fast until later in the day and was riding on fumes till the end of the school day. Maybe these extended fasts are also good for the body? I worry about my metabolism experiencing a slow down because my body is trying to compensate for a lack of nutrients.
Easy Peasy Green Chile Stew
Ingredients:
1 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes
1 14 oz can of beef broth
1 14 oz can of vegetable broth
1/4 cup white flour
4 lbs (or about 8-10 pieces) of boneless pork loin chops, diced into cubes
16 oz of Hatch Green Chiles
1 package of frozen veggies
How to cook it up.
This is a recipe that is especially good for those days in which you know it's going to be cold outside and you won't want to cook when you get home.
Simply add all of the above ingredients except the frozen veggies into a crockpot. Set it to cook for 8-10 hours. When you get home, add the frozen veggies and wait another hour. Serve with bread or tortillas.