You remember those days, right?
You go on vacation and throw all semblance of weight management out the window? After all, you are on vacation and you want to enjoy eating out, socializing with family over good food, desserts and snacks…..vacation is NOT the time to diet!
With Intermittent Fasting, that mindset is out the window:
I have loved experimenting with my air fryer! While it “fries” up par-fried, store bought, frozen foods wonderfully, that is not what I’m really after (though it is incredibly convenient for when my sons drop in!). What I really want for everyday fare is to make something lower carb/more healthful AND low fat (if I choose—-with the option to slather something with healthy fats if I feel so inclined). The air fryer has not been disappointing!
Niagara Falls was amazing! My husband, five of “our” kids, and I went there for a long weekend, and I think we saw it from thirteen different spots—on both the American and Canadian side. It was truly breathtaking.
However, I had a little intermittent fasting problem related to the trip—as soon as I returned from five days up north, I was home for two days then was turning around to leave for a business/pleasure trip with my hubby for seven more days.
I have been having so much fun cooking in my air fryer. I am sad that it isn’t super helpful for large families as it is amazingly convenient. (It doesn’t hold much at one time, which is why it is hard to cook for a family in it. It is a quick 12 to 15 minutes for homemade French fries for two or three, but if you need to make that for six or eight or ten, it is extremely time consuming.) However, I would have to say that the air fryer is THE perfect kitchen appliance for empty nesters. Super fast to just toss foods in it and go. Seriously, I LOVE it. I had four roast-an-ears to fix for dinner one night with some bbq beef and stir fried veggies, so I thought I would give it a try in my fryer. Twelve minutes later, after simply brushing them with butter and sprinkling with salt and pepper, I had four perfect ears of corn. They tasted and looked like they had been cooked on the grill. Yum!
“I could never go daytime hours without eating!” “I’m starving if I don’t get to eat breakfast, much less skipping lunch also!” “I hate feeling hungry; makes me feel sick!”
Yep….even die-hard Intermittent Fasters used to say things like that! We couldn’t imagine it either. And yet, here we are…fasting 19, 20, 21 hours a day…eating one snack, one meal, and possibly dessert. And living to tell about it! (And weighing less, feeling amazing, and looking great!)
If you have been following my Grocery Fast over on Character Ink blog, you might be aware that I am trying to empty my freezers, refrigerators, cupboards, and pantries! When you are trying to use up a little of this and a little of that or when you need to go to the store but want to make a meal first, eggs–in the form of omelettes, frittatas, quiches, and “skillets” (what we call loaded scrambled eggs)–are perfect! If you’ve got eggs, anything fresh at all in the fridge (even leftover meats!), canned mushrooms or hot peppers, quite literally any cheese in any form ANYWHERE, and maybe even some little zipper bags of leftover frozen sausage or bacon (or any meats!), then eggs are the perfect go to.
TGIF! Thank God It’s Friday! This mantra is spoken by people everywhere—-those who are tired of school, work, daily grind, and typical schedules. AND….those who are on diets. Yep….dieters everywhere wait for the weekend to relax their diet protocols, eat foods that they haven’t allowed themselves during the week, and yes, even “go off” the diet.
Intermittent Fasters don’t need to do this! We can make this a way of life! We might shorten or lengthen our eating windows based on social situations, family events, etc., but we don’t have to go “off and on”!
You can learn to fast as a lifestyle—check out the video and outline below! May the fast be with you!
So if you’ve been following my Grocery Fast, you know we have HAD to eat steaks. Yep….in order to empty our food stores, we have to eat five years worth of gifted steaks that we didn’t know how to fix! (Who knew that you could spend $25-30 a week for groceries for two months and end up eating steak every week?)
I have been on the hunt for yummy steak recipes, and I found this one from Cafe Delight in a video tutorial on Facebook. I tweaked it for our liking, but the original recipe did come from that mouth-watering video!
Low carb and healthy cooks often have trouble with “crispies.” Sure, you can crisp up some veggies here and there. And if you aren’t low carbing it, you can purchase some healthier crackers and chips here and there. However, low carbers often miss the “crisps” more than anything (especially people who have learned how to make sugar-free treats.
(See my recipe index for some amazing sugar-free treats. My personal favorites are Peanut Butter Bars, Apple Butter, Cinnamon Pecans, and Reishes’ Cups…. 🙂 …) So to combat the “crispy conundrum,” I recently posted an article called “Simple Low Carb Tortilla Chips and Crackers (Savory and Sweet).” (I know that’s a mouthful!) In that post, I describe how to use low carb or healthier lavash, flatbreads, soft tortilla shells, and pitas to “crisp” for crackers and chips.
In this episode, Donna Reish, author of “Fasting Inferno” Youtube parody and Intermittent Fasting blogger, describes her fasting experience five months in with a forty pound weight loss, one jean size reduction, and more. She describes her twenty hour fasting period each day and OMAD/3–One Meal a Day divided into three parts. She happily describes her husband’s four months of IF with an average of 21 fasting hours a day and forty pound loss. Listener Lessons this week focus on “How IF Works WITH Your Body”! Amazing things happen to our body—things that we always wanted to have happen or be able to carry out on our own but were unable to. However, with Daily IF, these things happen naturally. These include fat adaption, forcing the body to release fat each day/going into ketosis through IF. (We go into it 20 fold more frequently with IF!) Human Growth Hormone is released—with tremendous benefits, including vibrancy, energy, balancing cortisol, and more! Insulin sensitivity works in our favor with IF! No energy crashes and no uncontrollable cravings! The hunger hormone, Ghrelin, is brought under control with IF. And finally, Appetite Correction (AC) is achieved—so we are able to control emotional eating, binge eating, overeating, and more. Daily IF does for our bodies what we always wanted to do ourselves but were not able to since these hormones were controlling us negatively. How cool is that?
