Hi all,

I introduced myself here http://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/another-one/
and therefore I won’t bother you with that again. This entry just marks the start of sharing my personal IF experiences with you as I find it easier to keep on track when connecting with others.

One of the frist things I have to think about, is not my food on fast days than rather my food on non-fast days. I do not have any problems with staying within my TDEE, not all, but I do struggle with breakfasts on non-fast days. (On fast-days I just eat lunch).

I really embrace diversity. If I have the same stuff for breakfast for too long, I kind of get sick of it, and – as I was able to observe – have difficulties to stick to a mostly healthy way of eating. I personally guess this might be related to a subtle feeling of dissatisfaction rooting in the not-perfect-as-too-onesided-and-monotonous breakfast.

Jepp, I know, doesn’t sound too much of a problem, “vary your breakfast and off you go”. The only “but” is: I am the rolemodel of an “Owl”: I love to stay up long, being able to perfom and concentrate best late into the night, which on the other hand makes crawling out of bed in the morning a challenge. Lucky me, I need to leave home as late as 9am, but nonetheless I am eager to minimize time needed in the morning before being able to leave the house.

So, for sure, early in the morning you won’t meet me peeling and slicing fruits with love in mind, humming along to my favorite song. Rather I am the one you find brushing teeths while simultaneously applying make-up and packing my breifcase, sewaring that I am already late – once again. (On bad days that might end up with having mascara in the hair and tooth paste stains on the freshly washed pair of my, how could it be anything else, favourite trousers)

The solution for this problem therefore is a “grab’n’go”-breakfast. I think preparing a smoothie or a sandwich or else in the night before could solve that darned breakfast issue but more often than not I forget to do so or come in late.

So I would be glad to hear about your experiences or ideas!

Ah, and another thing: I have been on holidays the former week and therefore didn’t fast (I really missed it) but will start again with a 4/3 week followed by a regular 5/2 on Monday/Wednesday/Friday and thereafter Monday/Thursday.
On Monday I also will weigh in and be able to give you some numbers.

Currently I also am devouring the book “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg and I really recommend it to any of you who are interested in psychological and neurological fields. Enriched with numerous practical examples through history, Duhigg explains why and how habits establish during a life, how they help us to survive and even to recover after diseases, how they can be changed and how changing keystone habits revived struggling companies and football teams in times of crisis, how habits are connected with keeping up willpower and many other intresting and useful information. It is easy to understand, eye-opening and kind of a scientific page turner.

Have any of you read this book, too?

Dear sylvestra,

thank you very much for your post. sometimes solutions are so simple!

To be honest, I never thought about breakfast as a habit but rather as integral part of my life, but, well, that’s the thing with habits, isn’t it? Breakfast – or better put: the ongoing confusion and search for a suitable breakfast – over the years became as much part of my daily morning routine as showering.

But after reading your post, it became pretty clear to me, that you are right. I usually do not feel hungry in the morning, be it a fast day or not. Currently I am living in Spain and lunch time here is about 2 – 3pm, much later as what I am used to from Germany. This has two consequences:

1) Dinner is usually about 9 – 10.30 pm. for me, being an owl and all, this of course is a huge advantage as on average people are staying up later here than at home. And when you eat late, you are not in need of food in the morning directly when you get up.

2) on the other hand it is more difficult for me to get through to lunchtime without feeling at least one smaller hunger pang usually around 12. but i am not too sure if that is real hunger or just my “german biological clock” reminding me of the facr lunch time usually would be about to start. but that will be easy to find out and if i really feel hunger around that time, I still can eat a piece of fruit or drink a glass of milk/yogurt, both available for free in my office.

So this week I will definetly try to experiment with that solution. Only exeption: after fast days I really need breakfast. As I am really hungry.

Once again: thank you so much for sharing this idea. That kind of experience was exactly what I had in mind when signing up for this forum!!

Okay, I started this thing to accompany and support my efforts to lose weight and so this is why I am writing down, how things are working for me. If you currently are not motivated and need a cheer-up yourself, I recommend you, to not read any further as it might end up with making things worse.

Today really sucked. I have been in a relationship with my boyfriend for three years now (for someone age 20 that’s like “all my life” ;-)) and since I started cooperative studies we are used to seeing each others only on weekends. Since January I life in Spain (just for three months).Today I brought him back to the airpot after a really happy, great, joyful week of him visiting me and after waving him goodbye at the security check-in, I kind of had a mini emotional – let’s not call it break down but – fall-apart. It is the first time in our relationship we won’t see each other for longer than two and a half weeks. Yeah, I get it, that really sounds hilarious but I have got a hard time dealing with this although I always have been fine on my own and am none of those women only existing to make her better part happy. I am good at keeping myself busy with things I love. I just am afraid he might notice during this month, that life without me is as cheerful as ever but far more easy. Well, that’s a stupid little doubt somewhere in some corner of my head rather than in my heart as I know this won’t happen. But you can’t turn off your mind, can you?

I am telling you that to such a detail so that you can better understand why things happended as they did. Make a painful confession short: I went to the 24/7 airport-store and for 12€ bought sweets, got home, threw in the latest season of my favourite Dramedy-Series and binge-ate all of the bought sweets. You can probably imagine how embarassed and ashamed I felt afterwards.

But let’s not focus on the dark side of events. By now, I am back in the saddle and – being lonely and with “just me” long periods during my childhood – I am pretty good at cheering myself up and getting me on track again. I know fasting is the WOL to embrace and I am reasponsible for making the changes in my life to happen. And I am about to reach my goals. It might take one year or two but at least I didn’t put on 40kg of overweight over-night, did I?

So I wrote something down on a peice of paper that I’ve sticked to my bedroom door and have it with me on my smartphone every minute of the day to read it, if things tend to get worse and I might make another unwise decision about shoveling food inside me instead of dealing with my feelings:

When you feel lonely, ugly and unmotivated, just remind this:
There was a time when you was skinny and successful at the same time. You were ambitious and accomplished everything you wanted to.
You sucked at your first chess tournament but you made second place one year after.
You was just an average pupil with average grades until you made up your mind to do better.
Your hope was fading after not getting the job at Arvato’s but you ended up with an even better job.
You never thought, you will get a boyfriend or David/Simon will ever return your feelings. But you ended up seducing a boy to kisses after one evening althpugh you thought you are too ugly to be attractive to anyone. And you got the two great guys you wanted and with them 5 years (summed up) relationship experience at 20 and a half. That is awesome.
You never thought you would be great at sports but nevertheless you kept going for the 30min jog and scored an A in swimming.
You already had accepted being fat and mocked for the rest of your life but you turned things around in 8th grade.
So why should you at age 15 outsmart and better the same you at age 20? You can get it: you will get slim as you did it before. You will keep things working with Simon. You will have an awesome final term at university, pushing you over the top once more. You will have a job you love after your studies. Everything will turn out great because you know you can. You’ve already proven you are capable of changing things. Now you just need to do it once more. You just need to start right now with THIS decision.

I decided to live the life I want to and nothing is going to keep it from me.

I went highly motivated in today’s fast day and as highly motivated I am about to end it. Fasting is still very easy for me. Only thing I really would love to change is: I always feel cold on fast days, at least at later the day gets. But this is a small price to pay and one that I am more than willing to accept. Does any of you feel especially cold on fast days, too?