Hello all!
Preface:
After going completely cold turkey on cigarettes and alcohol (smoking anywhere between 40-100 cigarettes per day, alongside drinking at least five litres of alcohol a week), I made the decision to take up a new challenge; getting my weight back on track! (182 days sober today!)
Being big for most of my living memory, I am no stranger to YoYo dieting, every sort of ‘long fast’ (13 days being my longest, which put me in hospital), all the way to tedious calorie restriction and ‘potato fasts’.
Having never been able to keep anything up longer than… thirteen days, apart from once, when I had a personal trainer Kim Jong Unning my entire life; I decided to take some time and think about a proper sustainable longe term diet, that I would be able to keep up for months at a time; this is where I found ADF!
Main:
Starting at 115kg, with a goal weight of 80kg, I have calculated that I will need around 200 days of 36:12 fasting before reaching my goal, with no room for ‘leway’ (I have a personality where, if I break the rule once, then I will just come off the diet, so I follow a strict 12pm-12am eating period, then a 36 hour fast, including weekends, in which this week, I lost my Saturday)
The first week, in all honesty, has been a challenge on fasting days, still getting my body used to the nuances of fasting, then eating, then getting back into fasting mode again!
Now on the 7th day, I find myself feeling more relaxed about it all, my body adjusting and my energy not only returning, but being even more superboosted than before!
I have not weighed myself, but I can already feel a loosening of my clothes; nothing significant… but noticable.
Skeptisism
Being somewhat of a skeptic, of everything; I wanted to see whether the, ‘you can’t overeat yourself on a 12 hour fast, unless you actively try’ comment I saw on another forum was true.
Without calorie counting for the day, I ended up having the following junk:
2 Pancakes
1 Avocado
1 M&M Peanut
2* Snicker 40g (80g)
1 White Toblerone
6 Passion Fruits
2 Handfuls of Dal
2 Tonic Waters
1 Kiwi
I then took out a pen and paper at the end of the day, literally at 0:01, and checked how many calories that came to. 2425! So even on my ‘eat yourself large’ day, I could only physically manage to consume so much that I still carried a 75kcal deficit!
This was at the beginning, now I have rejected all shitty food and am on wholefoods, with room for any treats I want as I please, but nothing forced like it was that day!
So there you have it, my first check in on ADF, I will be back with more in… the coming weeks!
I must say… I hope your diet has changed A LOT and you incorporated protein and veggies. Looks like all you were eating was sugar and that definitely would have made your fasting days almost impossible to survive.
As a fellow ADFer, one piece of advice: your eating days are more important to this diet than your fasting days. Thread carefully, and this may be a great way of eating, sustainable and very pleasant (I just got back on ADF but did it for 4 months this year and I had like 2 days when I actually felt like I was dieting; otherwise, it was the best choice I’ve ever made).
Holy heck! That was a heck of a lot of carbs! I couldn’t imagine the next day’s carb cravings.
I mean, I know you said you’ve changed it up, but … the fact that you even ate that way … at all … idk.
So, glad you’re going healthy. Eating healthy on the eating days sets you up for success after you’re done doing ADF.