Never Give Up on Intermittent Fasting
April Palmer
Food for comfort is a tough cycle to break.
When you’ve been overweight as far back as your memory goes, and you learn to turn to food for comfort, you might have a difficult time changing the narrative of your adult life. But I’m here to tell you that it can be done!
My name is April Palmer, and at 41 years old, I finally learned the best way to lose weight once and for all. My intermittent fasting story officially began in March 2019 after getting engaged on Valentine’s Day to the love of my life. While I had already lost some weight slowly by dieting and exercising, I knew there were better options out there for me. I just didn’t know how to find them.
Stats
- Starting weight: 168lbs/76kgs
- Goal weight: 130lbs/59kgs
- Current weight: 145lbs/66kgs
- Highest weight: 219lbs/99kgs
- Height: 5’2/158cm
As a kid on Weight Watchers, fat-free cookies were the standard snack.
My whole weight loss story begins back when I was a child. I remember going to Weight Watchers with my mom when I was as young as second or third grade. She thought it was a good idea for me to attend the meetings with her, and hear all the good tips they would say. Thus, the fat free cookies and snacks became part of our everyday eating.
I’m not sure I ever did anything as a child except gain weight. I went through phases in high school where I would be up or down, and while I was never obese as a teenager, I was definitely overweight. Then I went to college and met the man who would be my first husband, and once we were married, all thoughts of weight loss flew out the window.
My struggle with PCOS and obesity.
Over the next 10 years, we both just kept getting bigger and bigger. It turns out, he had a medical condition that was causing his massive weight gain. Mine was explained as PCOS, but also because I was eating the same amounts as my six-foot-tall husband! The doctors did nothing for my PCOS in terms of weight loss. I was told what it was and sent on my way. Oh, and take these Metformin pills – they might do something.
When my husband and I tried having a baby, the doctor didn’t tell me my weight was an issue. It was all PCOS. Looking back now, I see how these two things are related, but when the doctor tells you nothing of concern, you don’t think much about it. When I look at myself in pictures from those days, I feel like you could pop me with a pin and I would explode. I looked and felt puffy, but honestly looking back, I don’t know that I felt as terrible as I think I would now because I didn’t know any different. I had been overweight most of my life, however, and now I was officially in the obese category. I was letting life pass me right on by.
Divorce, depression, and diets: my struggle with weight gain continues.
When that marriage ended, I did what all newly divorced women do. I hopped on the diet and exercise train and dieted away a few pounds, but I could never maintain it. It would always come back, with more piled on top.
Then in 2014, I found myself married and divorced again, but this time I was eating my way through depression, and weighing my highest at 219 pounds (99kgs). (I am one hundred percent sure I weighed more than that, but it’s the only weight I have on record.) At only 5’2” (158cm), I was feeling every bit of that 219 pounds on me. I was wearing plus size 1X shirts and busting out the top of tight size 18 pants.
No more putting my life on hold, I went searching for an answer to lose weight forever.
Something had to be done. I slowly started incorporating walking and exercise classes at the gym, plus tracking my food in an app. While this worked, and did allow me to find a love for exercise, I knew there was more out there for me. I hit a stall in the 180s in 2016, and again in the 160s in 2018. Knowing that it was taking me four years to lose this weight was beyond frustrating. There has to be a better way to keep going!
After finally meeting the love of my life in 2016, I knew I wanted to be healthy for the rest of my life. I want to be around for future grandchildren and be able to enjoy my life instead of sitting around and waiting. It took me a while to realize that diet and exercise alone weren’t going to get me those lifelong dreams I had. So I turned to Facebook for help.
Gin Stephens’ Delay, Don’t Deny group changed my life.
I don’t remember exactly how I came across Gin Stephens’ name, but somehow fate intervened in March 2019. I started IF after finding her Facebook group Delay, Don’t Deny, which truly changed my life forever. I don’t know that I had ever heard of intermittent fasting, or if I had, I had quickly dismissed it as an unhealthy way to lose weight.
Boy was I wrong! This group turned out to be the best thing I had found on the internet (besides my husband!). Through this group, I discovered several books that helped along my journey: Jason Fung’s The Obesity Code, Life in the Fasting Lane by Eve Mayer, Jason Fung, and Megan Ramos, The Power of Appetite Correction by Bert Herring, and Gin Stephens’ Feast Without Fear and Fast, Feast, Repeat. I was never a reader of nutrition or health books, ever. However, since discovering this way of life, I want to learn more and more.
Getting to goal wasn’t the end of the journey.
I started my IF journey in March 2019 at 168 pounds (76kgs), and I remember weighing myself the day of my wedding on July 13, 2019 at 139 pounds (63kgs). Something was working better for me than my “diet” and exercise! My journey continued, and I hit what I thought was my goal weight of 125 pounds (57 kgs) on November 30, 2019. Wow!
It was awesome to see that number on the scale. But then the numbers crept back up with the holidays. Covid came, my mother was diagnosed with dementia, and our lives changed drastically in 2020. I actually gave up IF because I let other people get into my head. This was also a more stressful time with my mother moving into our house for part of the year, and being fully dependent on us for everything.
Back to dieting proved how wrong it was for me.
During this time, I started the whole “track my food”, eat 5 to 6 times a day, even paying to have someone else tell me what to eat, etc. Yet on this “diet” and through this stressful time, I gained 30 pounds (14kgs)! I continued to stay in the 150s for months. I finally said to myself, “April! What are you doing?? You know IF works.” So I started IF again in the fall of 2022. I ripped the band-aid off, and jumped right back in. Now I’m sticking to it, and my body is responding, thanking me by feeling good once again, and the weight is slowly coming off little by little.
All the things I love about intermittent fasting.
Since I’m a teacher, my daily routine is usually 18:6 to 19:5 during the week because I do like to eat lunch with my coworkers, but my weekends are usually the opposite of everyone else. I find it easier to do one meal a day (OMAD) on the weekends, enjoying my coffee in the mornings and then eating a good meal in the afternoon. One of the lovely things about intermittent fasting is that I don’t worry anymore about hitting a certain macro point or even really calories. Am I conscious of what I eat and make sure I’m not going overboard? Absolutely. But I feel like through intermittent fasting, it has allowed me to want to make better decisions and what I’m putting in my body. I no longer want the cheap desserts. If I’m going to have a dessert, I want it to be a good quality dessert in some way. Somehow, my body has learned to taste the difference.
Freedom and flexibility even on vacation.
My husband and I love to cruise. We were married on a cruise ship, so that has become our favorite vacation every summer. I love that I can be flexible with IF even on a cruise. I usually don’t eat breakfast on the cruise, but if we want brunch one day, I can do that. I don’t have to throw my diet out the window and start over again after returning home. On the other hand, I don’t feel like I have to pick “diet food” as part of any plan. I can eat what I want and eat until satisfied. I don’t have to stuff myself with junk food thinking this is my last meal before a diet kicks in on Monday. I never have to worry about starting a diet on a Monday ever again!
What changes have I made or noticed in my life since starting IF? One big change besides the weight are my clothing sizes. At my highest weight I was wearing a size 18 (super tight), and then with dieting I dropped to a size 14. However, with the body composition that comes along with IF, I can confidently walk into a store and buy a small shirt and size 4-6 pants. I never thought I’d be able to do that!
PCOS and insulin resistance are now history.
Another non-scale victory that comes along with IF is that I don’t get sick like I used to. I took daily allergy pills during seasonal changes of spring and fall, but I haven’t had to take any since 2019. One of the biggest victories of this new way of eating has been a change in how I feel both physically and mentally about myself. I want to shout from the rooftops how good I feel and how much energy I have when I’m not loading myself with food every few hours. The difference is night and day.
When I weighed 219 pounds, or even in the 180s, I couldn’t do much after work. I wanted to go home and take a nap every day. Now that’s my peak time for my workouts, walking, cleaning, playing with my dogs, you name it. I even signed up for a women’s Timber Challenge 5K, which is something I would have NEVER been able to do. Not only was I able to complete obstacles and run the majority of the 5K, I was able to complete it without giving up on myself. There’s no more of that in my future. Finally, through IF, my PCOS and insulin resistance seem to be in the rearview mirror. At my last testing, my fasted insulin results were low, and my fasted glucose level and A1C were both normal.
Feeling healthy and strong is now the goal I maintain.
Instead of a magical number of 125, I think my body would be able to maintain in the 130s, (around 60kgs) and I’m actually okay with that. I feel healthy, and I feel strong. I work out almost every day, finding a true passion with fitness, and I have continued walking as part of my overall fitness journey. While my weight has definitely fluctuated up-and-down since 2020, I feel like I’m in a good space, back in the 140s, and know that IF is here to stay. I will continue to live the IF lifestyle for the rest of my life. There’s no stopping this journey!
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