The Anti-Dieter & The Grazer | Intermittent Fasting Success

The Anti-Dieter’s Journey

Dieting was never for me – Renee’s story.

My intermittent fasting journey is unique compared to many others in that I did not have a diet history. I was turned off by the idea of dieting in my teenage years. I grew up watching my thin mom, by most standards, diet. She was always interested in trying out the new fad of the time. I just remember, at a fairly early age, thinking to myself that I did not want to do that. If diets worked, why was there always a need to try another one?

Renee’s Stats

Starting weight: 198lbs/90kgs
Goal weight: 155lbs/70kgs
Current weight: 149lbs/68kgs
Highest weight: 200lbs/91kgs
Height: 5’5/165cm
Age: 47

Up and down through the Freshman 15.

I did not have a weight problem as a child. The first time I gained some significant weight was the freshman 15 during my first year at college. This weight actually went away on its own once I had moved into my own apartment. The days of late night pizza in the dorm with my roommates were past me. I was cooking for myself, working a couple of jobs, and more active than my early years of college and my weight normalized again.

Along came the babies and the slow weight gain.

I got married when I was 24 and I weighed 135 pounds (61 kgs). Normal and healthy for my 5’5” (165cm) frame. I had three kids, with each pregnancy two years apart. After each, I had some retained baby weight that I would never lose. I was slowly getting bigger, but never enough to bother me to the point of wanting to do anything about it. I was NOT going to diet! I was against the diet mentality. I was content with how my new body was and carried on that way until age 39-40.

Don’t eat for future hunger.

Getting older was having an impact.

Cue, what I can only guess, was the beginning of peri-menopausal hormone changes. Each year I was gaining 5-10 pounds (2-5 kgs) for no apparent reason. I was not eating more than I had in the past. I was not drinking more. I was not exercising more or less. I was just going about life, the exact same way I always had been. The only difference was that I was getting older. The weight gain was accompanied by chronic left knee pain, poor sleep, and a persistent feeling of dragging throughout each day. I had multiple headaches each week and I was constantly tired. I woke up tired, complained about being tired all day long, and I ended the day exhausted, only to have another terrible night’s sleep.

2021 was the time for change.

It was January of 2021 and I found myself fed up and searching for relief. I googled, “how to regulate your hormones naturally”, and the term intermittent fasting popped up. I had heard this term about a year prior, but in the context of losing weight, which meant “diet” to me, so I didn’t really pay attention to the conversation. But here it was again, and if it was a way I could balance myself out hormonally AND lose some weight, well I was intrigued. Gin Stephen’s book, Delay, Don’t Deny was right there in this Google search. Catchy, clever title! I clicked on the link, ended up downloading the free audiobook version on Audible and listened to it in about two days. It all made perfect sense! I began my IF journey on February 1, 2021.

Don’t make too many changes all at once. Start with one change (IF) and once that is a solidified habit, then add another change you’d like.

Fasting clean and feeling better every day.

I took beginning photos and body measurements and stuck them in the hidden folder within my phone. I joined multiple facebook support groups and began journaling weekly using the journaling prompts Gin provided in the appendix of her book. I became a daily weigher and logged my weights in the Happy Scale app to monitor my progress. Over the course of the next 9-10 months I fasted cleanly every day. I watched my chronic knee pain disappear, my energy return, and my nagging headaches leaving me. My once daily ibuprofen use was history. My sleep began to improve. I could not believe how much better I was feeling! You do not realize how poorly you felt until you aren’t feeling that way any longer. I also lost 52 pounds!!

What brought me to embark on this amazing journey is that it was NOT a diet. A diet is what you eat and this was only when you eat. I did not have to buy anything, eliminate anything, go anywhere, or do anything special. Just eat and drink in this invisible window of time. Brilliant! My anti-diet self was on board for sure!!

The Grazer’s Journey

Not for me! – Matt’s story.

My husband, Matt, was supportive of me right from the start. But when I talked to him about intermittent fasting and all that I was learning, his first response was, “I could NEVER do that!” If I’m being honest, I thought that he probably couldn’t either. Matt was an all-day eater.

Matt’s Stats

Starting weight: 225lbs/102kgs
Goal weight: 200lbs/91kgs
Current weight: 196lbs/89kgs
Highest weight: 200lbs/104kgs
Height: 6’1/185cm
Age: 47

Could a grazer with temptation close by do IF?

Matt has worked from a home office for virtually his entire career. Long before the pandemic made working from home common, he was doing that. Unless he was traveling, he was in his office just steps from the kitchen. He was a person who woke up hungry and was having breakfast right away, and he was a person with a big appetite. He would also get hangry if he went too long between eating. He would typically have breakfast around 7am, go on a long walk with our dog, and then head into the office. By about 10am he would emerge for what I joke as breakfast #2. It might be some leftovers from dinner the night before or a bowl of cereal. Lunch at lunchtime. A snack in the afternoon. Dinner at dinnertime. And then whatever else the evening might bring, ending with his glass or two of red wine while watching the 10pm news. His wine ritual was so important to him that when he decided to begin intermittent fasting he told me that he was not going to open his window until 2pm to be able to include his wine drinking until 10pm (16:8 beginning window).

40’s and weight gain.

Matt also did not have a problem with weight while growing up. He has always been an active, average looking guy. The extra weight started coming on in his 40’s. His arms and legs remained as thin as always, with the weight accumulating in his mid-section and face. Our theory as to why the weight began coming on then is the “getting older” assumption. Things just naturally change over time. Maybe after years of eating so often his body (metabolism) could not keep up like it once had? Despite walking 3-5 miles daily for decades, the weight still came.

You can’t out exercise all day grazing.

The longer you intermittent fast, the more you realize how your body does not need 3 meals a day.

The intermittent fasting journey is always evolving.

His intermittent fasting journey began about three months after mine. He was already a plain, black coffee drinker, so he had that going for him. He started with his eight hour window that went well into the evening to accommodate his red wine, and it was working for him. It’s funny how things evolve and change over time though. What his IF journey looks like now, more than a year later, is completely different from how he began. The all-day eater is who I now refer to as the “King of OMAD” (one meal a day.) Since he has a big appetite and can eat a larger volume of food in a sitting compared to myself, OMAD spread over a few hours. It is a great spot where he has settled. Before he began, if someone would have asked me if Matt could intermittent fast, let alone have a 3 hour eating window, I wouldn’t have believed them.

The snoring has gone – Matt’s better health has been great for both of us!

Not only has Matt lost about 30 pounds (14kgs), but he has been able to celebrate many non-scale victories too. He had been a chronic user of acid reducers for his heartburn. That problem has been eliminated! His years of snoring and keeping me awake are behind us. Yes, he might quietly snore occasionally, but it used to be a troubling problem. One that he underwent a sleep study for and wore a special retainer to keep his bottom jaw more forward to prevent his airway from closing off. The need for the retainer does not exist anymore. Those, along with so many other more common non-scale victories, are the things that will keep us intermittent fasting for life!