I love food. I love to eat. I’ve got a friend who sometimes forgets to eat. I remember Erma Bombeck once saying, “it takes a special kinda stupid to forget to eat.” I couldn’t agree more! I’ve never forgotten to eat in my whole life. Pizza, pasta, potatoes almost any way you want to make them, fresh-from-the-garden tomatoes and cucumbers, pinto beans and cornbread, creamed spinach, French toast, fresh green salads, vegan hot dogs, vegan sausages, vegan burgers (I’m vegetarian, most of the time vegan, but that’s another subject), cornbread and plant milk, frozen blueberries in oatmeal, Poke Bowls, burritos, tacos, chiles rellenos, southern-style biscuits, garlic and oil sauce, buffalo sauce, green chile sauce, balsamic fig oil…(sorry, is that my stomach growling?) Honestly, there is only a handful of foods I don’t like. I like almost everything.

You’d think I’d weigh a lot more than I do, the way I love to eat. And I do eat kind of a lot. Always have. Must be the southern upbringing with MaMaw always in the background, “You hain’t got nothin’ on yor plate, git you somethin’ else, now.” Meanwhile, the plate groans under the weight of the food piled on it.

Luckily, I’m blessed with a high enough metabolism and a 5’8” frame to offset some of that. But not all of it. In early high school in Germany, I got up to nearly 140 and that was pretty chunky for a high school kid. But did you know that in the ‘70s, you could get actual amphetamines from the German pharmacy without a prescription? Well, guess what? In the summer of ’75, my mom’s house was spotless and I lost 20 pounds! I didn’t get a lot of sleep, however…

I stayed at about 120 – 125 pounds (around 55 kilos) well into my twenties, when my weight inched up to about 145, and I lost a few pounds with Weight Watchers. I managed to stay under 150 (about 68 kilos) until I quit teaching for a while to sell real estate and discovered appletinis and cosmopolitans; ethanol is delicious when you put enough sugar in it! That was when I hit my highest at 181 (82 kilos!) but of course, who notices when you’re half sloshed? I lost most of those extra pounds when the real estate firm I worked for did a “biggest loser” contest and my real estate partner and I took the grand prizes for most weight lost and most fat lost, respectively; nothing like 500 dollars in prize money to get me motivated!  Got pretty fat again when I moved to Belgium and “HELLOOOO, Belgian beer and chocolate!” Not to mention FRITES! Nearly hit my record high again but managed to get down to 160 (72 kilos) and kept it off for a while. I felt like I couldn’t go any lower, and I probably can’t go much below that at my age NOW – I turn 60 next week. But 160 on my frame isn’t bad, really, and a few extra ounces in my face is actually a plus! (You ladies of a certain age will surely understand what I mean.)

But my weight still tends to inch up, because, FOOD. YUM. (See introductory paragraph for details.) And presto! COVID-19 happened and I was back up near 170 again. I know I can lose weight if I cut out all carbs except for one meal a day, but in the words of one of my oldest friends, life is not worth living without bread. Especially in Europe, where bread is DELICIOUS: baguettes, schwartzbrot, croissants, fitness bread, panini, ciabatta, Swedish crisp bread… sorry, I digress.

So I started reading about Intermittent Fasting. This is simply giving yourself a window to eat and fasting on water and unsweetened coffee or tea during the other hours. There are a lot of eating patterns that involve fasting intermittently, but the most common ones are fasting for 16 hours and eating two to three meals during the other eight or fasting for 18 hours and eating two meals during the other six. Apparently the body the body undergoes some interesting changes when you fast for 15 to 24 hours:

1. Insulin sensitivity changes makes your stored body fat more easily accessible as energy.
2. Human Growth Hormone levels go up, making fat loss and muscle gain more likely.
3. Cells begin repair processes.
4. Blood pressure tends to improve.
5. Thinking and memory tend to improve.

I was more interested in numbers one and two, but hey, I’ll take the other three for sure.

One of my friends mentioned to me that I tend to snack a lot. Now, bear in mind this is the same friend who sometimes forgets to eat, but in spite of that, she is actually pretty smart. At first, I went, “no, I don’t, not any more than anyone else.” But she insisted. I still resisted but it ate at me a bit, so I took a look at myself and it seems that yes, I do snack a little more than some people. Okay, maybe more than a little more. Okay, OKAY, a LOT more than MOST people. Geez, I can’t get away with anything! Anyway, one of the things I learned in doing my research on IF (Intermittent Fasting) is that when you eat three meals a day and snack from time to time, your body is always using your recent calories as energy and the stored fat inside your body is never converted to energy. Never. Converted. to Energy.

WELL THAT EXPLAINS A LOT!!!!

So I decided to give it a try. Two weeks ago I was at 167 pounds after having put on the quarantine seven. I jumped right in to IF with the 18:6. Most days it isn’t too hard to do an 18:6 fast; finish dinner by 7 p.m., no snacking before bed, then rise and shine, black coffee, water, and no food until 1 p.m. Sort of like just skipping breakfast. It got a little tougher when I couldn’t have dinner until later, but I just do a 16:8 fast on those days, and once I did a 15:9, which interestingly is said to be optimum for some women. I eat pretty normally although I’m trying to choose healthy foods, with lots of vegetables and whole grains, aiming for 55% carbs, 30% protein and 15% fats. My calorie count tends to stay below 1500 most days; I track it using the free app My Fitness Pal. On the weekends it is higher because I usually eat out at least once and I don’t deprive myself for that meal except for skipping dessert. This past weekend it was a pizza and a plate of pasta split with a friend, so you can see, that is not deprivation at all. I even have a glass of wine a few times a week. The good news is I’m nearly never hungry except near the end of my fasting period, the last hour or so, maybe, and if I stay busy, it isn’t a big deal at all.

I weigh myself nearly every day so that I can see trends, and my weight is consistently inching down. Today I am down to just under 162 pounds (73.5 kilos). Might not seem like much but bear in mind I am post-menopausal and it is notoriously hard for women like me to lose weight. So five pounds in just under two weeks is GREAT. I’m going to keep it up and see if I can get to 155 and keep myself there for a while. I’ll let you know!

References:

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/intermittent-fasting-guide#effects

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/intermittent-fasting-what-is-it-and-how-does-it-work

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/6-ways-to-do-intermittent-fasting#section2