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 25:
The daily schedule of needing to handle so many thing immediately and not being able to plan for the time to eat is the hardest part of intermittent fasting. I spent the morning running around the school and driving to Walmart because the students were setting up for their Monster Ball dance. This meant that it was already after 2 PM by the time I had a moment to settle and break the fast. Since I didn’t plan my meals for the weekend, I ended up searching for something delicious I’m the area of town I was in finding Torchy’s Tacos and quickly devouring them before trying to find my next task. I had my dogs with me and didn’t take them into account before stepping into a store to buy something for the party, only to find, upon return to my car, that one of the dogs had pulled my tea out and spilled it all over the front seat. I taught Hot Yoga today and afterwards went to my step sister’s wedding party where I managed to increase my salt levels to danger by devouring unreasonable amounts of fancy meats and cheeses. This was only topped with the gelato that was served later. I mean, what is one to do when you only have a few hours to eat and this is the only thing around you?
Day 26:
Okay, the gluttony that I indulged in yesterday was a bad idea, and I woke up feeling like the blueberry girl from Willy Wonka. I then followed this mistake by making another in ordering a Mango Black Tea, thinking it was herbal, after having my morning coffee. I really hate the shakes I get from an empty stomach and too much caffeine. I think my goal for the next weekend, and going forward, will be to let the intermittent fasting be looser on the weekend and really stick to it throughout the week. This will allow me to keep my calorie count consistent while still finding the benefits of I.F.
Day 27:
I get cravings as I get closer to beginning the next fasting cycle. It’s strange, but I always really want chocolate at around 9:00 PM and, because I have been caving to this, a habit has started to form. It mostly doesn’t matter what chocolate it is (with the exception of dark chocolate with orange), but I just need to eat chocolate. I even took to having Nutella on two slices of bread to satisfy that urge. Noting this, I think a way to manage this craving and not continue to go overboard with it is by selecting the chocolate that I want during the week and then limiting my intake if sweets to the last hour of the night when the craving hits the strongest.
Day 28:
Today we had a pretty big snowstorm in Denver. In spite of the fact that this was worse than the snow the day before, when we had a delayed start, we didn’t receive any delay today. This made going into work a bit difficult. In the end, though, school was released a bit early so that people could get home safely without the extra snow or traffic. I waited to eat until I got home, and then spent the rest of the evening relaxing with my feet up. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to do nothing and not feel obligated to go anywhere since both yoga classes and chemistry class was canceled. While I do feel that my time may have been more productive doing other things, I don’t regret the vegging out I did either.
Day 29:
Since I spent the entire day yesterday relaxing, I felt I needed to be moving today. As I’ve noted in the past, when I don’t move or exercise consistently I begin to get really down and depressed. Sitting on the couch and watching anime can feel nice, but it comes at a price of the mind. As I woke up I could feel the clouds and weight of self doubt and deprecation, so I started with my usual coffee and then starting to fold the clothes. I then cleaned the dishes and putting them away. This lead me to cleaning another set of things, organizing the cabinets, shoveling the snow, and vacuuming the living room. It was in the middle of all of this that I broke my fast. I was so distracted by making progress that I didn’t realize how much time had passed and how hungry I really was. The food, then, offered a small respite between activities and I was even able to go to two hours of yoga because of the progress I had made in the house and the self care I had shown in eating timely and with care.
Day 30:
This was the last official day of this challenge. It’s a bit crazy to me that 30 days has already gone by, but I think I say that every month. In the last day I experienced, yet again, another day when I wasn’t able to eat until 3 PM. I’m lucky, though, because my friend, the school nurse, made sure that I was taken care of and even went to heat my lunch so that I could have the opportunity to eat while going through all of the busy craziness. I think this is probably the biggest lessons in any of the challenges that I’ve done so far, it really is about the relationship you have with the world around you, especially loved ones. I’m so lucky to have a friend like that who would help me meet my goal and take care of myself. I don’t think I could have made it into the evening and taken my chemistry test successfully without her help, and I know that I couldn’t make it through my job every day without the love and support of my colleagues (although I think we all drive each other crazy sometimes).
Conclusions:
The first week or so of Intermittent Fasting was the most challenging and torturous. Shifting to two meals a day while also dealing with the stresses of work meant that about an hour before breaking fast I was shaky and feeling tense. As the weeks went on, I became more accustomed to the time frames of fasting. Coffee was the biggest help and inconvenience in this challenge. While conducting a 'dirty fast' in the morning, by adding a cup of almond milk and a teaspoon of brown sugar (meaning I was still ingesting under 50 calories, but not completely fasting), helped power through the morning and keep me awake at work, it also increased my anxiety and tension before fasting. I also wonder if the fasting didn't have its biggest effects because I was starting my day this way. In the coming months, I think I'm going to cut coffee out of my diet while I fast, and enjoy it only when I already have food in my stomach to balance it out. I'm also worried about my metabolism adjusting to the regular lower calorie count and becoming reduced. In an attempt to counter this, I want to limit my fasting to during the week and then making sure to eat breakfast during the weekends. This means I can drink coffee and have breakfast in the mornings during the weekend! By doing this I will also resolve the final problem that I experienced during this fast, sociability. Often this fast felt very isolating on the weekend when I would have the opportunity to be with others. I would be able to hang out with them while they were eating, but wouldn't be able to enjoy the company of the meal. Most of my social times are during the weekend anyway, so fasting this way will let me continue I.F. and enjoy the communal nature of breakfast.
Linguine Carbonara
Ingredients
1 lb Smoked Bacon diced into cubes
1/2 yellow onion diced into cubes
2 cloves garlic crushed and diced
4 or 5 eggs, yolks only (can be filtered by cracking the egg into your hand and letting the whites drip through your fingers and into a sink or bowl)
1/4 cup salt
1 lb Linguine Pasta
4 Roma Tomatoes cut into 8ths
Parmesan to taste
How to cook it up!
1. Heat a medium sized skillet on high and begin to cook smoked bacon.
2. As the bacon cooks and the fat becomes liquid, heat a large pot filled with water and bring to a boil.
3. Add the salt to the water.
4. Add linguine to water and cook until al dente (follow package for more information on proper cooking).
5. When bacon looks close to being fully cooked, add onion and garlic to skillet and cook for another 2-3 minutes while stirring.
6. When linguine is finished cooking, remove from pot and drain water. Put pasta back into warm pot.
7. Add egg yolks to pasta and stir until yolks have been absorbed by the pasta.
8. Drain excess fat from skillet into a can or a separate container. Wait for it to cool and then throw away.
9. Move ingredients in skillet into the pot. Add Roma Tomatoes. Stir pasta, bacon, onion, garlic, tomatoes and eggs together.
10. Top with parmesan cheese to taste and serve.
Enjoy!