Disclosure: I am not a medical professional. You should always keep in touch with your personal physician to ask in Intermittent Fasting could help you and the exact plan to you plan to follow. Please feel welcome to share this post with your physician when you talk to them!
We all go through different phases of life with ups and downs. I recently shared how I changed my lifestyle through diet and exercise. One of the changes that I made was to use Intermittent Fasting which has helped me to not only lose weight, but also to feel more focused. The concept is simple - you fast during a specific time period and only eat during a chosen time window. In today's post, I'll share some common pitfalls to avoid.
1. Choose an Intermittent Fasting schedule that is realistic.
Personally, my doctor gave me the approval to give it a try with the 16:8 interval. This means that I fast for 16 hours a day and then only eat during an 8 hour window. I felt like this was a plan that I could easily stick with as opposed to some of the more extreme variations where you fast for an entire day at a time or eat as few as 500 or 600 calories on two days of the week.
2. Don't binge during your eating window.
During your eating window, don't binge eat since really, at the end of the day, the Calories-In/Calories-Out notion is still at play. Plus, it's particularly bad for your body to fast and then binge eat.
3. Eat nutritious food.
Make your calories count! It may be tempting to eat anything that you want during your eating window. You may be tempted to think that you just fasted for all of those hours and deserve a treat! You have worked hard, but it's important to give your body the nutrients that it needs. Binging on junk food is bad for your body and overall goals.
One way that I give into my chocolate cravings is to eat a vegan Dark Chocolate protein shake. I absolutely love and look forward to a good OWYN vegan protein shake during my eating window. This brand is fantastic because their plant-based protein shakes taste amazing, but get this, they are also test their products for the 8 top allergens. Their top seller is the Dark Chocolate variety. This is currently Dairy Free, Soy Free, Wheat Free, Peanut Free, Tree Nut Free, Egg Free, Shellfish Free, Fish Free. This nutrient packed drink has quickly become one of my favorite things to eat while also satisfying chocolate cravings. OWYN also offers other delicious varieties such as Cookies n' Cream, Smooth Vanilla, Chai, Strawberry Banana, and Chocolate. My husband loves them too. The Strawberry Banana is his favorite!
4. Track your progress.
I am not perfect, but I continually made progress. I lost 1/2 pound to 2 pounds each week over the past several weeks. The graph below shows just my first 12 weeks. You could say that I am taking it nice and slow. I not-so-secretly hoped that I would lose weight quicker, but I haven't been too hard on myself because I am going for a lifetime of healthy habits. Tracking my progress has been helpful because I am able to see that the large weekly weight loss accomplishments add up quickly!
I hope that these tips and pitfalls to avoid with Intermittent Fasting are helpful! I have found that Intermittent Fasting has worked for me. The results were not drastic. However, the effort wasn't drastic either. Intermittent Fasting turned out to be easy for me to follow for slow and steady weight loss. I'll post in the future to give you more updates!
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