Hello everyone, this is my first time posting, but I’ve really benefitted from reading everyone else’s stories, thank you! I just wrote an in-depth post here http://danielodio.com/life-in-the-fast-lane-my-experiment-with-intermittent-fasting-for-health-and-fitness about trying the 5:2 approach, including some detail about why I’m trying it. Here’s the first couple of paragraphs from the post:

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I’m turning 40 this December, and that’s caused me to deeply re-evaluate my health. In high school I had wrestled at the 152 lb weight level and was a gymnast. In my 20s, I ran two 50 mile ultra-marathons and a half dozen marathons. I had a 33 inch waist and weighed 185 lbs. I could eat whatever I wanted and stay in good shape. But after a decade of doing startups, I found myself in my late 30s in much worse shape. My metabolism hit a wall when I turned 30, and although I didn’t eat terribly, I also found it hard to figure out exactly how to get back to where I was in my 20s. My waist was 38 inches and I weighed 245 lbs; 93 lbs over my wrestling weight. My triglycerides were 33% above where they should’ve been. I’d imagine this happens to many of us as we get older, and I felt helpless as I watched all of this unfold, almost like it was happening according to some script that I wasn’t in control of. Most of all, I was really disappointed in myself for not staying on top of my health, but I couldn’t find the right balance of eating and exercising to change the path I was on. It felt like I was on a slow motion slippery slope as I got older and more out of shape.

When my daughter was born in 2013, I made myself a promise: I would be in as good of shape when I turned 40 as I was when I turned 30. I didn’t want to have a hard time keeping up with her as she grew up. I started doing CrossFit twice a week that year. I signed up and completed a few triathlons. But my weight still wouldn’t budge from 245 lbs, and my triglycerides, although lower, were still 15% above the max recommended range. CrossFit was making me much stronger, but that was only part of the puzzle. I had to figure out the rest, and I hadn’t quite cracked it.

In December of last year, I realized I was running short on time: I’d really have to hump it to get back in shape within the next year, before my 40th birthday in December 2015. By this time I had upped my CrossFit schedule to 3x per week and I started rowing for 15 minutes before CrossFit started in the mornings. But that still wasn’t enough: By April I knew I was going to have to take some much more drastic measures to reach my goal.

This blog is a story of those drastic measures, and how they’re going.

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