Update to earlier post about not being able to lose weight, no matter what I did!

Y’all! I am so excited! I posted a little more than a month ago. I had been steadily gaining weight despite cutting calories for YEARS. I tried IF for a month, and I loved IF but after the first month, my weight would still go up if I ate poorly even ONCE. And it wasn’t water weight. It was sticking around. Everyone was so nice and had some suggestions… and it turns out…

It was the decaf coffee!

It should have been obvious but I guess I was still stuck in CICO. I’ve been using coffee and decaf coffee to skip meals for YEARS. And those years are exactly the same years that I have been steadily gaining weight even though I keep eating less and less. You would think that eating and exercising the same would mean that I would lose weight if I just replaced some of my usual calories with coffee. But apparently that’s not how it works - and I had cut my calories down SO FAR.

I don’t know why this happens. But someone told me to cut out the coffee. Now I’m still doing 20:4 IF. I’m still eating pretty much the same as I was before (about 1200 calories a day). But finally, finally, finally I am losing weight consistently! I’m down at least six pounds from where I was when I posted before. That doesn’t sound like a lot for a month of effort, but it’s the first time my efforts have really paid off (including the summer I gave up all sugar, and the three months I ate only “whole foods” - didn’t lose a pound either time and immediately gained weight when I started eating more normally).

My best guess is that somehow the coffee was canceling out the fasting benefits? It must have taken me out of a fasted state. I don’t know. I’m just so excited that finally my bodyweight seems to be at least somewhat connected to my diet. I’ll probably cut calories more later to lose a little bit faster, but for now I’m just enjoying the slow, steady progress :)