Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Update / Intermittent Fasting for Weight Loss

I'm sorry, I'm sorry...I'm awful at consistently blogging! But lucky for you..my life is fairly boring so it won't be hard to get you up to speed. On September twenty-seventh, "J" and I celebrated three years together! It's a weird, contradictory feeling....I feel like our first date was not that long ago, but at the same time it seems like I've been with him forever. In honor of the special day, we took a weekend trip to San Antonio! This is a really big deal for us because we've lived in Texas for well over a year and had never visited any city besides Houston.

Me & "J" - Picture from Oct 2010

San Antonio was aahhhhh-mazing! To be honest, we only took our "trip" there because of SeaWorld; Neither one of us thought we would fall in love with the city. We immediately noticed that it was a much different place than bustling Houston. Everyone is so much friendlier, it has a much nicer "vibe", and is actually really pretty. Unlike the bayou city, San Antonio actually has hills :o :o which makes for really pretty scenery! SeaWorld was a lot of fun (I got to feed and pet a dolphin), our hotel was awesome, and visiting the River Walk was really neat. As soon as we got home, we started looking at apartments and homes in SA. I think we are honestly going to move there as soon as I graduate.


Diet wise...I'll be honest, I haven't been making strides. The only thing I've been doing is taking Alli and trying to be slightly more conscious about what I'm eating. I've lost a couple of pounds, but it's been verrrryyy slow and nothing to be excited over. However, my doctor put me on prednisone last week and warned me that it can increase appetite and bloating. Perfect! Also, I don't think it'd be a good idea to take Alli with prednisone because it could decrease absorption. Lastly, my arthritis has been pretty bad recently and I don't see me being able to comfortably work out in the near future. For all of these reasons, I decided to get really serious about finding a weight loss plan that will work for me.

My sister told me about an intermittent fasting plan called the 5:2 diet. To put it simply, you choose two days out of the week that you will fast. On your "fasting days", you can eat up to 500 calories for women or 600 calories for men. On the other five days of the week, you can eat as your normally would. Weight loss from this diet plan is typically 1-3 lbs per week. It seemed like a really do-able plan for me because it is flexible and doesn't feel as "permanent" as a normal diet. What I mean by that is that you don't have to look at a cookie and think "Oh my God...I'll never be able to eat that on this diet". Instead, you can think "I can have that cookie tomorrow." Because of this, you're a lot less likely to cheat. I don't want what I just said to be misunderstood, so let me add this disclaimer...you are not supposed to binge on your regular days. Just eat your normal amount!

I've done one fasting day and one regular day so far. I ended up going over my calories slightly because I didn't plan appropriately. I ended up at 530 calories for the day. Although I was really disappointed in myself for going over, I was still insanely proud of myself that I could eat so little and still be fine. I've struggled to get down to 1200 calories a day for such a long time, so 530 calories is like a landslide victory!!! My next fast day is tomorrow and it should be a lot more successful since I've planned out exactly what to eat. Let me know if you guys are interested in this, and I'll keep you updated!