Intermittent Fasting Journal – Week 14

 

In this episode, blogger and Daily Intermittent Faster, Donna Reish summarizes her fourteenth week on Daily IF, including her week of carb counting while IF (under 50 net carbs)–and the effect this had on her weight and her enjoyment. She explained how the carb counting took precedence over the control of the eating window–and how she would do that differently if she ever decided to count carbs more often. Then Donna explained the difference between low carb eating and keto eating–and why a person can seldom “sort of keto” with good results. In “Listener Lessons,” Donna dives into the three things factors to consider in determining what to eat in your eating window: a) food that gives you the nutrients you need; b) food that makes you feel good (i.e. no carb comas or brain fog); and c) food you enjoy. Daily IF can meet all of these criteria! Finally, she emphasizes the importance of following something that you can stay on!

 

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Intermittent Fasting Journal – Week 13

 

In Week 13 of the Daily Intermittent Fasting Journal Podcast/Videocast, Donna Reish chronicles her 13th week of Daily IF. She discusses her results of losing just under one pound a week despite being on vacation or holiday one third of the time during these three months! (That has never happened with vacays and holidays!) She teaches about studying what works best for each person—the Study of One as Dr. Bert Herring calls it in Appetite Correction. She talks about applying what you learn about yourself to your fasting hours, opening your eating window, choosing your fasting window length, and more. Donna also discusses how OMAD/3 (One Meal a Day divided into three distinct eating times) and how this helps to bring in boundaries for those who feel that Daily IF without eating restrictions is too loosey-goosey for them. Donna discusses her and her husband’s changes in eating patterns from 9:00 snacks at night to none and the positive effect this has had on their fasting. Finally, she discusses building belief about Daily IF–how we act on what we believe, and in order to make this a lifestyle, we must believe that it leads to the desired results.

 

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Intermittent Fasting Journal – Week 12

 

In Episode 12/Week 12, Donna Reish, blogger, recipe creator, and Daily Intermittent Fasting teacher tells about her twelfth week and her husband’s fifth week of Daily IF. She describes the pattern that she has settled in at 19:5, including OMAD/3–One Meal a Day divided into three parts (see outline). She describes what being fat adaptive means, including the differences between glucose/glycogen store burning and body fat burning. Donna teaches the importance of staying the course, including bringing in eating boundaries and not going off and on and making too many “special occasions.” Finally, she describes several things that affect Fat Adaption each day: number of fasting hours, how much glycogen is being stored/circulating glucose is available to use, how long your eating window is, whether you exercise or not, and how many carbs you are consuming. Subscribe to Donna’s YouTube channel; podcast at iTunes; and here at her blog. Join her FB group where she teaches daily about this way of life.

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Intermittent Fasting Journal – Week 11

 

 

It’s Week 11/Episode 11 of The Intermittent Fasting Journal! New Year’s Week—and Donna’s hubby is on board too! Yay them! In this episode, Donna gives her week eleven findings and results, including losing weight slowly and steadily during holidays and enjoying a traditional New Year’s Day dinner. She reviews the coping mechanisms of self talk, five second rule, having an earlier eating window that ends by seven each day (and how this benefits her), using the app, and more. Donna goes into detail about her lifestyle with her husband, Ray Baby, who has lost ten pounds in three weeks on his IF plan! She describes husbands and wives planning and fasting together and how much she and Ray enjoy eating out together now as empty nesting fasters. She was encouraged by going into a new year with no deadlines and no drastic weight loss plans in place and explains how to make Daily IF a lifestyle rather than a frantic new year weight loss goal. No time limits! Donna then teaches from AC: The Power of Appetite Correction by Bert Herring with the six kinds of hunger: (1) Appestat–real hunger; (2) Somatic hunger–sensation in the belly; (3) Limbic hunger–drive to continue eating once you’re full; (4) Clock hunger–biological clock–hunger striking 23-24 hours from when you ate last; (5) Appetite-driven hunger–when you visualize yourself eating something; (6) Mouth hunger–urge to chew on something when you’re not really hungry. She ends the main section with how she has finally achieved control over areas of her life that had eluded her even when she had 32 years of homeschooling and writing success–food control. Huge win! We can manage every area of our lives when we are successful with Daily Intermittent Fasting!

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5 Areas to Look at When Not Losing Weight on Daily IF

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5 Areas to Look at When Not Losing Weight on Daily IF

#1

Length of Time You’ve Been Practicing IF

During the first month of Daily IF, new fasters often find themselves overeating. This is for three reasons: (1) Appetite Correction (where your body starts telling you to stop eating naturally—it’s super cool!) hasn’t set in yet; (2) People often enjoy the new-found freedom of not having to restrict foods as much, so they eat craving-inducing foods (and too much of them!); (3) They often still have too long of an eating window, which greatly affects the amount of food they consume.

The good news is that you get better and better at Daily IF! It is amazing how skilled you become once all of the incredible benefits are in play. You will become a fat burning machine during your fasting hours (fat adapted). You will not eat everything in sight during your eating window (appetite correction). And you will start losing weight and looking great!

#2

Length of Your Daily Fasting Window and Eating Window

Many people cannot lose weight with a medium-long fasting window (16, 17, or 18 hours) and a long eating window of six, seven, or eight hours. The fasting window is not long enough for someone on a moderate or high carb eating pattern to burn through their glycogen stores and circulating glucose and really get into body fat burning mode. The eating window might be too long for us, allowing us to eat more than we need for the weight we desire. Also, appetite correction is challenging with long eating windows because you are “getting full” twice rather than once in a seven or eight hour period of time.

It would be unusual for someone who doesn’t count calories or carbohydrates to lose down to their ideal weight with two meals a day and a snack or two (eating anything in any amounts). If you’re not getting the benefits of body fat burning from a long eating window, you’re not getting some of the IF benefits. Then you are relying on eating fewer calories to cause you to lose weight. Bottom line: You might need a longer fasting window and a shorter eating window if you’re not controlling your calories and carbohydrates via another protocol at the same time.

#3

What You’re Eating During Your Eating Window

Many Daily IF teachers (myself included) do not impose a certain eating plan on their students. So many of us have “been there, done that” for many years with a myriad of diet protocols. Daily IF is our ticket out of the rat race of dieting. We can finally enjoy pizza night, birthday parties, banquets, Mexican restaurants, and more without worry. Appetite Correction during a short eating window ensures that we stop eating in time to keep us losing or maintaining our weight. However….if you’ve been doing Daily IF CONSISTENTLY (not off and on!) for a period of time, your body is a fat burning machine each day, appetite correction is in place and works for you, but you are still not losing weight, you will want to examine some other things.

Here are some questions to consider: (1) Are you opening your window with something low carb/healthful? Many people have better weight loss when they do so. (2) Are you eating too many processed foods or junk foods? Appetite correction responds better to real foods (and a real meal as opposed to just a series of junk food throughout your eating window). (3) Are you having more than one dessert or treat in your eating window? I teach an OMAD/3 approach to the eating window–OMAD (One Meal a Day) in three parts—a. Appetizer/salad/snack to open the window; b. Entree or meal an hour or two later; c. Dessert or snack before closing window if still hungry.

#4

How Much Weight You Have to Lose

Daily Intermittent Fasting is like any other weight loss plan when it comes to getting close to your goal weight. The body’s weight loss slows down as it gets close to its goal. While you don’t have to “starve yourself” down to your goal weight like you do when you do calorie restriction, you will be tweaking and perfecting your fasting and eating windows as you get near the end of the weight loss portion.

If you have only ten or twenty pounds remaining to lose, your weight loss will not likely be fast (unless you’re doing an extreme keto at the same time as Daily IF). But it will be steady. This is the beauty of IF–weight loss is not fast and furious, but it keeps going–consistently. If we do not stop Daily IF and we have a lengthy fasting window and short eating window, we will eventually weigh what we want to weigh. And…..at that point, we will maintain that weight (and continue to trim up and lose body fat!) when we using Daily IF for maintenance as well.

#5

 Other Non-Scale Victories

Of course, Daily IF yields many other NSV (non-scale victories) besides weight loss and a great physique. As a matter of fact, there are many IF’ers who do not weigh at all–they rely on their next “goal jeans” to tell them how they’re doing. They don’t care what they weigh as long as they wear the size clothes and look the way they want to look.

So be sure that, even if you are just getting started, you look for the first NSV–inflammation going down (face thinner; less “fluffiness”); less hunger during the fasting period as you move into fat adaption; empowerment that comes through living this lifestyle; a consistency on weekends and for many days in a row that you were never able to achieve with other weight loss protocols; feeling amazing without being bogged down with carbs and food during the day; time freedom of not having to buy, shop, and prepare so much food; no packed lunches and snacks; financial freedoms as you spend less money on food and drinks; and so much more!

Resources

1) Length of Time You’ve Been Practicing IF: IF Journal Podcast

2) Length of Your Daily Fasting Window and Eating Window: 5 Ways IF Can Seem Upside Down

3) What You’re Eating During Your Eating Window: IF Journal Podcast

4) How Much Weight You Have to Lose: Feast Without Fear 
by Gin Stephens

5) Other Non-Scale Victories: Complete Book of Fasting by Jason Fung

Find ME–and Find Out More About Daily Intermittent Fasting!

(1) FB Group for Support and Daily Help

(2) Blog with all videos, articles, 5 Top Tips for IF Slideshow, and more.

(3) IF Journal Podcast at iTunes

(4) YouTube channel

(5) Donna Reish Blogger FB Page

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5 Tips for Daily IF Slideshow

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Intermittent Fasting Journal – Week 10

 

Week 10/Episode 10–Christmas Week! Donna Reish, blogger at Donna Reish.com, author of “Fasting Inferno” parody, and teacher at The Intermittent Fasting Journal podcast/FB Group, describes her amazing Christmas week with Daily Intermittent Fasting and all of the incredible lessons she learned. She explains how she ate what she loved on the truly “special days” but did not extend the special days on and on. She describes the importance of starting rituals and ending rituals during special occasions as well as how to rearrange the fasting schedule during holidays and vacations. Donna explains her husband’s new IF protocol and success as of three weeks ago. In Listener Lessons, Donna teaches signs of fat adaptation that occur after three or four weeks, including no longer having extreme hunger/feelings of starvation, losing the food/carbohydrate preoccupation, having sustained energy, enjoying good sleep, and having clear thinking. She then reviews coping, distraction, and self-soothing techniques from Episodes 7, 8, and 9 for during the fasting window.

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