As part of my awakening I have been doing intermittent fasting. I actually started about 3 years ago when Michael Mosley was promoting his 5 and 2 diet. I started to look into the research and gave it a try. It was hard but I felt better and my arthritis seemed to improve. But with a busy work schedule and family it was hard to maintain.
At the beginning of 2018 I starting doing 16:8 during the week and eating 3 meals with the family on the weekend and then that evolved into 20:4 during the week and finally OMAD (one meal a day).
I found online links to Dr Jason Fung's books, bought them and was particularly taken with the
Obesity Code. As a science student and teacher it made so much sense and I angry that I had been lead astray all these years. I knew the science but never made the connections with weight gain and loss. I slowly started to lose weight with out much effort.
My husband read the book
The Complete Guide to Fasting by Dr Jason Fung and did a 12 day water fast and then did Keto and hight protein shakes for the remainder of the month. He lost 25 kgs. I realised that if he could survive fasting I certainly could and then I began experimenting with 24hr, 48 hr and eventually 5 day fasts. As you can see from the graph from about August you can see I lost about 15kgs. At Christmas I put it back on and I have just completed a 3 day fast to try and pull in the weight I gained over Christmas. This now a way of life and will continue to be probably till the day I die.
What lead me to this? I was always the chunky girl at school despite being active. I road my bike everywhere, swam nearly everyday, walked everywhere. I put on a lot of weight (got up to about 120kg) when I moved to a regional area when I first began teaching, probably due to stress and not really eating right. I then moved from a regional city to a small country town. There was no junk food - it was and hour away. Fast food was steak and veg at the pub. I walked everywhere, swam whenever the pool was open, did ballroom dancing, took up squash, road my bike on country roads for kilometres. I lost some weight at my smallest I was 85kgs. I then came back to city and my now husband and I had a very nice DINK (double income, no kids) lifestyle. We went out, ate at restaurants, got home delivery and our waist measurements grew and grew. We were happy, healthy and fat. But both of us had always been happy, healthy and fat since childhood. I think I went to about 115kgs.
When we decided to finally get married I was about 105kgs. We had been doing Atkins and had seen some improvement but carbs called us all the time. I was pregnant with our son when my husband was diagnosed with Coeliac Disease. He stopped the Aktins diet and decided to have feed of Weetbix and was in the toilet for a week - this was the starting point of all our issues really. Trying to find substitutes for wheat products lead us to carbs that were even worse in quality and more highly refined. I was diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes (borderline- had I have been in the US or UK the reading would not have considered high enough but in Australia the diagnosis parameters are lower and I was 0.01 over the cut off). Whenever we ate gluten free bread, biscuits or pizza my glucose would go way out of control.
My Gyn/Obs sent me to a dietitian who supposedly was trained in prenatal diet and diabetes. She recommended grainy breads and low fat and told me to eat every 3 hours during the day. I tried what she said even though I didn't like her advice, she was the expert after all. My blood glucose was consistently high and I was eating when I wasn't even hungry. I began to put on more weight than the Gyn/Obs wanted. If you are obese and pregnant they usually want you to not put on weight - minimal weight gain. I abandoned her advice and ate only when I was hungry and stopped eating any gluten free products. As a result my blood sugars remained stable until about 1 month before I was due and I was having large fasting readings in the morning and the Gyn/Obs put me on a low dose of Metformin. After I had my son, the nasty placenta was gone and I no longer was diabetic and he didn't have any sugar issues. But did my weigh sky rocket in the next few months.
A little over 1 month old.
My son would not latch and I was eating all these different foods to improve my milk supply (which was minimal). The only part of me growing was my waist rather than my ability to make milk. I got up to 125kg. It was then recommended I join the WENDY program at the hospital. They were researching insulin resistance in post gestational diabetic women and guess what, I was insulin resistant. They got me doing a walking program (10 000 steps) and assigned me a dietitian. The walking was great and it largely improved my insulin resistance before any dietary modifications were made. The dietitian was great, she was 'normal' size rather than the anaemic specimen who told me to eat continually. She told me to reduce plate sizes, portion control and to enjoy food just don't eat crap food.
She said, '
if there is a morning tea at work - have something. Enjoy a piece of cake that someone has taken the care and time to make. You don't need to eat the Tim Tam or store bought donuts, be selective. Don't eat because someone wants you to finish the plate so they can take it home. They can throw to item in the bin or put it on another plate.'
I have tried to live by the those words. I soon became pregnant with our daughter and had no gestation diabetes and actually lost weight during the pregnancy by not putting any on. I still ate normally but just not for two! But two weeks after my daughter was born I was having milk issues as I did with my son but I was also in unbearable pain - it turned out the pregnancy had induced Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). I was no longer breast feeding because I was immediately put on steroids and pain relief and my weight fluctuated between 95-100 over the year after.
2 weeks old
Twelve months later I went back to work with RA and two small children and the weigh slowly crept on again. Exhausted, stressed, sick with RA and eating for survival not health - lots of takeaway and convenience foods my weight eventually got up to 122kgs in January 2018 - time to make changes.
My mother died of Diabetes (type 2) related issues when she was 60. My father died of cancer when he was 72 but when he was 70 he was diagnosed with Diabetes. My maternal grandmother had Diabetes. My sisters both had Gestational Diabetes and one now is Pre Diabetic and the other is Diabetic. My husbands father has had Diabetes since his early fifties- late forties and was nearly on insulin. I am not becoming them without a fight - fasting is my way to avoid Diabetes.
