Mid-October I decided that I wanted to lose some weight because since I've been on the work and travel program I gained twenty pounds. I believe eating McDonald's and pizza every opportunity I got was what led to my weight gain. Honestly, the weight didn't matter much to me until almost everyone I knew told me I had gotten fat.
Since I was in highschool my problem area was my stomach, my dream was to have a flat stomach, that was all. I would do ab workouts as often as I could but nothing would change. I did the same thing in university; I went on YouTube and found ab workouts and I would do them daily, yet still my pouch was not going anywhere. Around my second year in university I found out after doing some research that for me to lose my belly weight I could not only do ab workouts but a full body workout. So I started jogging, and again I was not seeing any results.
So let's fast forward to near the end of 2017 where I had gained so much I decided to do a full workout routine everyday. I found the Jillian Michael's 30 day thread and was super excited after seeing the testimonies of those who had completed the workout. The workout was divided into 3 levels and I was required to do each level for 10 days; each level harder than the 1 before. I worked so hard and sweated like never before. The workouts were for 20minutes, not including the warm up and cool down. I did it everyday for 20 days but got demotivated when I heard Jillian say "If you've been doing this workout and following our meal plan, by this time you should be seeing those abs coming in." During the workout I couldn't stop thinking about what she said, "...by this time you should see your abs coming in", it kept replaying in m head and I felt bad because I didn't have any abs coming in. I must have lost 1/2 an inch the most from my waist and the scale showed that I was basically at the same place I started. After the workout I was so sad. "What could I have done wrong?" I thought. That's when it came back to "If you've been doing this workout AND following our meal plan". All that time I was eating what I want, when I want; I didn't know my diet was so important. I had been sweating so much, burning calories daily, I thought that would've been enough.
That's when I realized that when losing weight my diet is more important than exercise. Then I discovered intermittent fasting. It has been a month since I started intermittent fasting and I have lost 7 pounds. After exams are finished I will start exercising while doing the intermittent fasting and see if I get better results. However, the fact that I could lose weight by just intermittent fasting alone made me realize how big of an impact my eating habits had on my body.
Here is how I did my fasting:
I ate whatever I wanted between the hours of 12pm-8pm. Then I wouldn't eat until 12pm the next day. Therefore it is 12 hours of fasting and 8 hours allowed to eat. Usually, because I only have an 8hr eating period I was end up eating just 2 meals, no snacks for the day because that's all I had time for. My appetite would not increase during 8 hour period but I would get hungry during my fasting period.
If you would like to read more about the benefits and science behind intermittent fasting here are two articles that I found helpful.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3680567/
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/10-health-benefits-of-intermittent-fasting
I do not want to only do intermittent fasting. Eventually I hope to start eating more healthy food and eat less carbs in combination with intermittent fasting until I reach my goal.
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