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Where My Intermittent Fasting Journey Is At Now
When people hear about intermittent fasting, they have many different thoughts about it. They may think that it is nonconventional or untraditional. Some say that it is an extreme method for weight loss. Most think of it as just that, a solution for weight loss. It can be used to lose weight, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be used for that. At first that is exactly what I used it for. All my intentions were to lose weight while I was doing it. It comes to a point where it becomes unhealthy to lose any more weight. I got to that point. I got to the point where I could not lose any more weight. So what I did is I started to work to maintain the weight I was at. I increased the calories I was in taking so that I could just stay at the healthy weight that I was at. The really cool thing about losing, gaining, and maintaining weight is that it is all figured out by a mathematical equation. I didn’t just up my calories and guess what would be my correct daily intake. I sat down and crunched the numbers to figure exactly what I should be eating. Not only did I figure out what I should be doing as far as my intake on calories, I also figured out what my macronutrient intake should look like. I believe that figuring out your macronutrients is the most important part of the whole thing. Macronutrients are your proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. When figuring these things out you do them by percentages. Getting the final numbers helped me figure out exactly what to eat. At first, I ate a very high percentage of protein each day. This kept my body composition very lean with high muscle content. The tough part about maintaining a certain weight is that it is very hard to build muscle and get stronger. Can it be done? Yes. Unfortunately it takes a very long time to actually do. After a while I had decided that I wanted to start getting stronger. When I was in the gym I wasn’t really making a lot of progress. People around me were getting stronger when it seemed like I was just staying at the exact same level. At this point I went back to the drawing board. I knew that I know wanted to start to put on some real muscle mass. That meant that I needed to start to intake more calories. It also meant that I needed to intake a larger amount of carbohydrates. The reason for this is that carbohydrates promote growth. Not only do they promote growth, they give you energy as well. Since I was going to need more energy to lift heavier weights, I needed to get a higher percentage of carbohydrates in my system. I also had to change up the way I was training. When I was maintaining, I was doing workouts that were focused around workouts in a high rep range. I reevaluated and decided that it would be a good idea to do 5x5 workouts. This is a plan from the Dallas Cowboys in the 1990s. The plan was called “bigger, faster, stronger”. What happened to me? I got bigger, faster, and stronger. I have been doing this plan for about 2 years now and the results have been amazing. My body weight has jumped from 170 up to 190. My body fat percentage is a little more but I am so much stronger than I used to be. My one rep bench press max went from 225 to 315. All my other lifts had very similar results. I am very happy with the way my fitness journey has gone. If anyone tries to tell you that intermittent fasting is unhealthy, don’t listen to them. If they try to tell you that it’s only for losing weight, don’t believe them. With intermittent fasting, you can accomplish any fitness goal that you set your mind to.
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Working Out and Fasting
Intermittent fasting was very affective for my weight loss journey but I wouldn’t have gotten the results that I did without working out on top of it. I believe that exercise is such an important part of staying healthy. Not only is it good for your physical health, but your mental health benefits from it as well. Running and the gym is now so integrated into my life that I couldn’t imagine not being a “gym rat”. It wasn’t always like this for me though. I grew up a very active kid and played competitive sports all throughout my life. At 12 I gave up baseball and football to just focus on playing hockey. I would do training drills and a lot of dry land work I just never stayed consistent with lifting weights. For whatever reason the idea of lifting weights or running had little to no appeal for me. After getting out of high school and no longer playing hockey, I picked up some bad health habits. I started eating very poorly. My diet consisted of a lot of fried food, greasy food, and fast food. I also wasn’t getting much physical activity besides what I was doing at my construction job. Now that I was no longer playing hockey I had no desire to stay in shape. The weight started to slowly creep up on me. As time went on, a little bit of weight gain turned into a substantial amount. Before I knew it I was extremely overweight and in a very bad head space. When you are extremely overweight it is hard to imagine being able to make a change. All I wanted to do was lose weight but I had absolutely no idea how to accomplish that. Once I found the gym and started fasting my whole life changed. It’s vital that I look at how hard I worked to get there but remain humble about where I’m at currently. Now I couldn’t imagine spending more than a week away from the gym. My workouts have changed immensely since I started my fitness journey. Initially my workouts were focused around burning as many calories as I could. This usually consisted of a run where I would crush about 5 miles on the treadmill or on the roads. This would happen at least 3 to 5 times a week. Then on the other days I would find myself at the gym lifting weights. Also let me remind you that I was playing club hockey throughout this time so I would have practice twice a week and games on the weekend. Between all of these I would burn a lot of calories throughout the week. When I first started lifting my goal was to do high rep workouts to try and tone my muscles while building them. This worked pretty well for my physical appearance but the amount of strength that I was increasing was very slow. I did this for a while but once I hit my goal weight I decided to reevaluate what I wanted to do. What I really wanted to do was to get as strong as I possibly could. This caused me to completely change what I was doing. When you are training to put on muscle mass, you want to make sure you are in a caloric surplus. Since running burns a lot of calories and I wanted to but muscle on, I quit running. This helped me to get the calories that I needed without burning them up. I also changed the style of lifting that I was doing. Instead of doing low weight and high reps, I was no doing low reps and heavy weight. Pushing my body like that really helped me increase my strength a lot. I did this for about two years and I am now currently trying to do high reps with as much weigh as I can.
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The Science Behind the Fast
My journey was filled with many different steps. Not only was there different steps but there was different stages of my journey. I give credit to the hard work I applied through each of the steps and stages I went through. The cool part about intermittent fasting is that it is all backed by science. If you follow the science, the results will follow.
Intermittent fasting is one of those things that are considered controversial in the fitness world. Some say that it isn’t “healthy” to not eat for that long. Others have said that it just doesn’t make sense. Yes, it may be a little unconventional when you think about the “traditional” dieting methods but it by no means is unhealthy. I want to start by saying I am not a registered dietician and the information in this blog is strictly based on my unprofessional experience. Also what I did may not work for everyone but it sure as hell worked for me. The concept of fasting is all about two specific windows. First off, you have your fasting window. This is exactly how it sounds, it is the window of time where you do not eat. You then have your eating window which is where you intake all of your daily calories. So the concept itself is very simple. There are periods of time where you take in nothing but water and black coffee. There are then times where you are allowed to eat whatever your little heart desires. I think that is the part that appeals so much to people is that there are no specific foods that you have to eat when you’re doing intermittent fasting. If you want maintenance or slow weight loss you really can eat whatever your little heart desires. It’s all about what happens in between the time you have your meals. Everyone’s “sweet spot” is a little different. What people in the fasting world call a sweet spot is the period of time that is bearable for the person and still allows the body to shed fat. For me I did the 16/8 split. What that means is I would fast for 16 hours and then take all my calories in during that 8 hour window. This was what I found was best for me physically and mentally. I tried other methods like the 20/4 split. This was much harder as far as being hungry goes but I melted off fat like cutting butter with a hot knife. This is a much more extreme fasting method and I wouldn’t recommend this for beginners. The beauties of fasting is that it is a very enjoyable method of dieting and that’s how you should keep it. What really happens during the fasting window intrigues me. After 8 hours your body does what is called metabolic switching. What this means is that after a period of time that your body does not get food, it will even go through all of its sugar stores. After that point, your body will start going to its fat storage and use that to create energy for itself. This is how the fasting method sheds fat. Many people are under the impression that you need to eat every couple of hours. If you think about the days of the caveman, they were never guaranteed a meal. They could go days without food and yet they still survived. This is because their body would go into metabolic switching and feed on their fat storage. The analogy may be a little out of date, but it is so true.
People have the wrong relationship with dieting. They believe that you have to cut out all the foods you love and not enjoy the food that you put into your body. With fasting, it breaks down all of those walls. Metabolic switching is the real science behind it that really makes intermittent fasting so much different and enjoyable.
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The Work Behind The Fast
In my last post I gave so much credit to how fasting impacted my life. That’s exactly what it did. Changed it actually. The only thing is there was a lot of hard work in the gym that was accompanied by the fasting lifestyle. Fasting is a great way to shed weight, but to see fast results like I did; you really need to get the physical side of things into effect.
Now I’d like to say that the whole weight loss process was all sunshine and rainbows, but it was far from that. Truthfully there were many times that I just wanted to give up. There was many times where it absolutely sucked. Many times I almost threw in the towel. I’m just grateful that I stuck it out. There were three things that contributed to building my body composition. First off, cardio, specifically running. Secondly, playing college hockey. Lastly, lifting weights.
The cardio actually came sort of easy for me. I am the type of person that sets their mind to something and makes sure that I accomplish it, no matter what it takes. With this mindset I decided to run the roads. My thought process in this was that I wouldn’t quit once I started. Once I left my house I had to get back, and I sure as hell wasn’t getting an Uber home halfway through my run. So I started with running a mile away from my house. Since I needed to make it back to my house this ended up equating to two mile runs. After doing this every day for about two weeks, I decided I wanted to push my limits and see how far I could push myself. So I ran 2.5 miles away from my house and turned around and made the trek back. This first run was one of the most mentally tough things I’ve ever done. I vividly remember pains in my legs, stomach, and becoming lightheaded. I never stopped though. This now became my routine 4-5 days a week and every run became easier. I eventually got to the point where I was consistently running at under an 8 minute pace. Hockey was also essential to my weight loss. We had at least two practices a week that were high tempo and explosive. We would then have 2-3 games a weekend. I started the season as one of the most out of shape, slowest players on the team. By the end of the season I was one of the most physically fit, explosive, and the fastest player on the ice. The running and hockey did a great job of keeping my legs and back in good shape but I needed to implement weight lifting into my routine to sculpt my upper body. A good friend of mine names Isaiah was always in the gym so I decided to start going with him. He is a very strong guy and really knew what he was doing. His technique was damn near perfect so I emulated what he was doing on every lift he showed me. On top of running and playing hockey, we would lift 4-5 times a week. I started to see progression in my lifts and it became nothing short of addicting. I absolutely loved every second of it. Watching my body transform has been one of the most satisfying things I have ever been a part of. It truly is amazing to see what your body can do when you set your mind to something. If you can push through the pain and be mentally strong, your body will follow.
The process was very tough, but worth it. Through it my faith helped me immensely. I created a mantra through the process that I still use today, even outside of working out. I say to myself “Lord help me get through this, safely and strongly, for I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me”. Now I know this isn’t for everyone and my beliefs may not align with yours. None the less, this is my honest experience. Until next time.
#intermittentfasting#health & fitness#fasting#diet#diet to lose weight#health#fitness#motivation#cardio#weight loss#gym#gymlover
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The Start of my Fasting Journey
You may have heard of intermittent fasting before. Whether it is from a friend, social media influencer, or some sort of advertisement as you’re scrolling through the internet. When I see things like this online, it is followed by quite a bit of skepticism. There are lots of diets out there that claim to be the quick fix to your life, but they don’t end up being all that they’re cracked up to be. Let me tell you first hand, this isn’t one of those diets that let you down. This really isn’t even a diet… it’s a lifestyle. Intermittent fasting quite literally changed my life.
It was about four years ago that I made the typical New Year’s resolution that most people make every year. I was going to lose weight. I had made this promise to myself before, but after a month or so the motivation always seemed to wear off. This time it ended up being different. At 5’ 8” tall, I was weighing in at 246 pounds. I was at an all-time low. More self-conscious than I had ever been in my life, I knew that I needed to make a change. I think what really did it for me was I took an absolutely unbelievable trip to Australia. The trip was like no other trip I’d ever been. We spent time in the Blue Mountains, went scuba diving in The Great Barrier Reef and saw some of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen in my life. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy those beaches much at all. Usually being on the water, whether on a boat or on the beach, was my happy place. I refused to take my shirt off which was absolutely terrible for my self-esteem. I spent every second on the beach wishing my situation was different. After coming back from that vacation in early January, I knew something needed to be done.
I tried to cut down on my calories and I was having absolutely no luck at all. My weight did nothing but fluctuate up and down. I would lose weight and then put it back on. This was nothing short of deflating. I remember telling my parents “all this work isn’t worth it and I’m just going to be overweight forever”. That was probably the lowest I had ever felt. After throwing myself a pity party for the ages, I got back up on the saddle and continued to put in the work. I had lost a few pounds and was finally feeling a little better but I was nowhere close to where I wanted to be. I was wake surfing on The St. Lawrence River in July of that year when my buddy Austin started talking to me about intermittent fasting. I’d never heard of anything like it. After brushing over the subject over a couple of ice cold beers, I decided to go home and look into it more. That conversation is one that I will never forget, as it completely changed the entire trajectory of my life.
The concept of fasting is very simple. You have a window of time where you are allowed to eat, then a window where you aren’t allowed anything but water and black coffee. Although simple, this takes quite a bit of discipline and can be very trying on your body and mind. I remember the first two weeks vividly. All I wanted to do was EAT EAT EAT. Prior to this, I was the type of guy who loved a nice midnight snack. On top of this breakfast is probably my favorite meal of the day. I mean let’s get real, who doesn’t love pancakes, eggs and bacon? This lifestyle comes with some sacrifices that were very tough in the beginning. Everyone is different when it comes to intermittent fasting. Through my experience, it takes my body about 10-14 days to adjust to it. After that window of time, the whole process was a breeze. My body stopped craving my midnight snack and that breakfast I loved so much. I came to love breakfast for dinner, or brinner as I like to call it. I started to find my “sweet spot” which is the period of time where I had time to eat and fast comfortably. I did the 16/8 split. This consisted of 16 hours of fasting and an 8 hour eating window. Once I was committed and found what was best for me, I started losing weight and actually keeping it off. I built momentum and the process was almost addicting to me. After a little over 15 months, I got to the lowest weight I had seen since early middle school. I was sitting at 166 pounds and at a body fat percentage of about 7%. That kind of body fat percentage is that of a professional athlete. I can’t give intermittent fasting all the credit as it was accompanied by many hours running on the roads and countless gym sessions per week, but we’ll save that conversation for another post.
The progress that I made over that period of time was one of the hardest, most fulfilling things I’ve ever done in my life. In the beginning, I never thought that doing what I had was even remotely possible. I was finally comfortable taking my shirt off. As a matter of fact, I spent most of the time without a shirt on at all. Through the process, I remained humble. As I sit at my computer tonight, I’m not writing this to just toot my own horn. I truly hope that I can open someone’s eyes to the benefits of intermittent fasting. Even if it’s just one person I will be completely satisfied. Trust me, If I can do it, so can you.
#intermittentfasting#health & fitness#fasting#diet#diet to lose weight#health#fitness#motivation#weight loss
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