Am I skinny yet?
Today I remained faithful to the Paleo plan I began on Monday. In addition to this, I have remained faithful to another plan that I didn’t even realize was a diet trend. I mentioned on Monday that I am counting calories and skipping dinner. Apparently this is a method associated with one of the world’s most popular health and fitness trends — Intermittent Fasting (IF). Here is what I’ve learned:
- The Leangains protocol is a period of fasting daily that begins with skipping breakfast and then restricting food intake to a period of 8 hours, for example noon – 8 PM. Then begins the fast for 16 hours. I have not learned why skipping breakfast is supposedly ideal, but I know that skipping dinner and evening snacking is definitely beneficial.
- The Eat-Stop-Eat method involves fasting for a full 24 hours weekly.
- The 5:2 method involves restricting caloric intake to 500 twice a week, non-consecutive days. You are free to eat normally the other 5 days of the week.
Have you tried IF? I have had success in the past by eating normal meals during the day and then “closing the kitchen” at 4 PM. If you have less than ten pounds to lose and can do this for a few days, it will result in a much happier bathroom scale.
I’m looking forward to seeing what my bathroom scale has to say to me by the end of this week! Until then…
Today my pants were extremely tight, but I wore them anyway to remind me that I need to keep my fingers out of the mixed nuts!
