MY EXPERIENCE WITH INTERMITTENT, ALTERNATE DAY FASTING

hey everybody it's been a while since I filmed a video like this and then formative video so you guys can kind of see what I've been doing where my progress is and stuff but I thought today would be kind of a special day to film this video since I had my DEXA scan done today which means that I know what my body composition is now after doing alternate day fasting for almost two years it will be two years and three days or September 5th 2019 so that's really exciting so I thought I would come up with a little video here called my experience with alternate day fasting to kinda let you guys know how my journey has been through this entire process because I get questions about it all the time and I figured it would be good to put all the information in one place and let you know what my personal experience has been over the past two years I guess I should start off with a little bit of information on me for those of you who don't follow my channel or haven't been following my journey for very long my name is Rachel I'm 26 years old and I live in Missouri I work a full-time job as a mortgage operations assistant in a local credit union near me so for those of you who know anything about credit unions you know they were very sedentary style job so I was able to lose 108 pounds of fat with a sedentary job working 40 plus hours a week I just want to put this information out there so that you guys know that you can do it if I can do it and I started off at 236 pounds now I am down to 142 pounds and then the best physical shape of my life still working on getting even more physically fit we'll talk more about that later on though so let's get started for those of you who don't know what alternate day fasting is let me do a little explaining for you so you can kind of see what my life has been for the past two years I'll just be honest with you guys I have a notebook full of notes to cover everything on this video because there's gonna be a lot so if you see me looking down just like in my last one the 60 plus pounds one its notes looking so I practice intermittent alternate day fasting which basically means I don't eat every other day intermittent fasting for those of you who don't know is an eating pattern where you cycle between periods of fasting and eating it doesn't say anything about what you should eat but at the times in which you should eat when I started off this journey two years ago I was doing complete intermittent alternate day fasting so I would go every year about 38 to 40 hours without food counting my calories and really just doing that a schedule consisted of eat one day fast the next eat fast eat fast and alternated throughout the month it was a consistent schedule of every other day eating like I said 38 to 40 hours without food what a fasting day would look like for me because I would start fasting the night before typically around 7:30 ish probably I would cycle all the way to 7:30 the next day I'd be 24 hours and then the next morning I would break my fast at about 10:30 so that was about the time that I would go without food and then from 10:30 until 7:30 that night I allowed myself to eat I would count my calories keeping it between my total daily energy exponential or basically the amount of calories you burn per day and my basal metabolic rate or my BMR which is the amount of calories you burn while just resting like if you were laying in bed all day when I first started I would keep my calorie count between these two numbers basically that way it would kind of give me a little extra leeway if I did go over my calorie count a little bit and it feels guilty if I was already eating up to my tdee if I went over does that make sense sure hope so all my fasting days I would just drink coffee and water I would have a cup of black coffee in the morning which I used to despise black coffee I couldn't drink it but I first started fasting I've actually grown quite fond of black coffee so I would drink my coffee in the morning and water throughout the day and then that was it I would try not to do any calories throughout the day for a while there I was doing about the 60 calories sugar free hot chocolate if I needed something and you're also allowed to eat up to 500 calories on your fasting days a neat but I did my best to not eat any calories or drink any calories on my fasting days to get the full benefits of fasting in general because fasting offers so many more benefits than just weight loss and I wanted to benefit from all of them basically so a little backstory why did I choose to do alternate day fasting what was my story well basically growing up I was bullied extremely hard for my body I was very overweight as a I didn't participate in any physical activities outside of school or in school PE was a complete nightmare for me and this was all due to the fact that I was extremely shy as I was very book smart and I didn't have a lot of friends and I kept to myself a lot which kind of shied me away from everybody else I was very clumsy and so me participating in sports I knew I would be extremely embarrassed so I shied away from all of them which eventually resulted in me just gaining weight and not having any way to burn off those calories because I was too afraid to put myself out there of course being overweight resulted in me lacking self confidence and self esteem like I said before I had no friends no boys were interested in me every high school middle school girls worst nightmare basically I was made fun of constantly behind my back and to my face and school in general was just a very hard experience for me to go through I was depressed I hated myself I tried to think of ways that I could lose weight which were not exactly the healthiest I remember in my journal growing up I wrote every time I get hungry I'm going to just read a book because then I don't want to eat anything that was not healthy I had the mindset as a child that I was not good enough and I was not worthy enough of anything and that unfortunately lasted into my adulthood basically after high school I fell into a mentally abusive relationship where all the fears that I had in high school were confirmed I wasn't good enough and I never would be good enough during this time though I did attempt multiple times to try to lose weight to try to feel better about myself I tried counting my calories after two weeks that didn't work everybody wants a quick fix I was one of those people at one point in my life two weeks nothing quit doing that I tried doing insanity workout two weeks nothing I went to the doctor and got a prescription diet pill called phentermine and as I was taking that I was going to a gym I went there for three months had only lost 11 pounds my life was starting to fall into shambles so I basically quit doing that and gained everything back plus more by the time that I got out of this mentally abusive ship is in such a state of depression that my weight was growing even more I was 236 pounds the heaviest I had ever been lucky for me though I found somebody who actually didn't see me for my weight or for what I thought people saw me as for anybody who's been overweight before they probably have had that experience or had that thought in their head that people only look at them and see their weight they don't see who they are as a person I was one of those people if somebody was mad at me I constantly had the thought in my head that they're mad at me because I'm overweight or they're looking at me thinking that I'm gross because of my weight it was never because of something that I did it was because of the way that I looked it was a very unhealthy mental mindset for me and something that I struggled with for so long and sometimes I still struggle with today fortunately enough that person I started dating six months after we met and we're talking and my happiness started to soar a little bit more however I was not happy with my body at all still in any way shape or form still hated myself I was still extremely depressed being as heavy as I was I wasn't able to do a lot of the physical things that I wanted to do the thing that changed everything for me is whenever my boyfriend and I went on a hike after a cave exploration down near his college the hike was two miles long hardly any hills or curves and by the end of it my knees hurt I was out of breath my feet hurt I just wanted to go home and I was so incredibly embarrassed because I couldn't walk for two miles without feeling like I was dying and I knew then and there that something needed to change fortunately enough for me my boyfriend at the time was practicing intermittent fasting for his own health reasons just doing the 16-8 method where he would skip breakfast basically and eat lunch and dinner and I had heard a little bit about it but like everybody else during that time before intermittent fasting got really big I was very skeptical on like eating every other day that's not healthy you have to eat you've always had it drilled in your head that you have to eat and I was one of those people well after we got back from this hiking trip the weekend after I did some research and I found a method that I thought would work for me I found an article online by a woman named Maya Kazi called how I dropped 50 pounds I read her article on how she did three fasting meaning that she would fast for three days and eat for four and thought to myself this might work for me for once something sounds like it might actually work for me and something has to work for me this has to be it so the day I read that article was the day that I decided that I was going to start intermittent fasting and that day was going to be my eat day and the next would be my fasting day and that's where everything started first things first I had to determine what my total daily energy expedition was or my tdee and my BMR or my basal metabolic rate this would be the amount of calories that I would be allowed to eat on my eat days kind of like when I told you guys earlier I set my BMR and my TDE up to be basically in between both of those numbers so that way if I did eat a little bit over this number I wouldn't feel bad because I was still between my two numbers the way I found this out was by going to tdee calculator dot net I believe only get down below and you guys can figure out what your tdee is in your BMR after I figure out what that number was I used the loser app and I started counting my calories going forward the first two weeks of intermittent fasting were actually a lot easier for me than I thought that they were gonna be and I think honestly it was because I was so determined and so motivated to have something work for me that I needed it to work and I was not gonna give up this time for sure my first week on my fasting days I allowed myself to eat up to 500 calories on those fasting days typically it was just at dinner time after I got home from work then the next day I would eat my tdee calories and then the next day I would do the 500 and so on so forth the second week I found that it was actually a lot easier for me to make it through a complete fasting day without eating anything at all so from then on that's what I did I would not eat anything on my fasting days unless needed after one month of doing intermittent alternate day fasting and I weighed in on the 5th of October I was down 16 pounds from when I started yeah 16 pounds in one month guys it was such a relief for me because it was like I had finally found something that was working for me something that I knew I could stick to and I had never been more motivated or disciplined or thought I could have such a willpower as I did after starting this method in this journey of alternate day fasting to a healthier lifestyle I continued doing this for seven months of course there were days in there that I did break and I did eat on a fasting day and I would beat myself up over it thinking I was going to lose all my progress and everything but looking back on that now I know that's not true I lost no progress I didn't slow down myself at all there just come sometimes when you gotta eat and that's okay after seven months of intermittent alternate day fasting I had lost 62 pounds of fat from my body without working out and just eating every other day eating carbs eating fats eating whatever I wanted and that's one of the best things about intermittent fasting is you can literally eat anything you want as long as it's under your tdee calories seven months in I did decide though that I was gonna start doing some physical activity into my life I'd never been good at it before like I told you guys before I was boy in high school for it I was so clumsy but I knew I needed to do something to kind of help get my body more fit so I downloaded the C to 5k running app and I started running every other day on my eat days I wasn't always that consistent with it as I should have been probably in the beginning or wanted to be but there were days I retired or I was busy and I didn't feel like doing it and I didn't follow the program exactly like the app suggests like three days you run and then you move on and all that stuff it took me a long time to work up to this but remember I have had no physical activity training at all in my whole life and I was just starting to run for the first time ever one of the most hated cardio exercises out there I feel like and I was starting somewhere and it felt good to say that I was starting somewhere and so that's what I did I started running after seven months and continued to drop weight putting intermittent fasting and running into my lifestyle when I hit one year intermittent alternate day fasting that meant eating on the holidays accidentally breaking or breaking because I was hungry fasting for my 38 to 40 hours or however long it might have been after one year of intermittent alternate day fasting when I weighed in I was down 98 pounds of fat holy cow that's like a whole person when I think back to the day that I weighed myself and saw how much I had I can't tell you guys what a relief that was in that point I never felt better on my body or my health I had accomplished something major and I was proud of myself for the first time ever after losing the 98 pounds on just fasting and running I wanted more so my boyfriend suggested that I start weight lifting and weight training he made me up a four day plan that I could follow pretty easily and I started doing like strength training and exercise that in itself was so weird for me because I never thought that I would ever be a weight lifter in any way shape or form I started lifting weights in October so the month after I weighed myself for the year unfortunately I experienced a little bit of an injury in my chest if you guys follow my blog then you'll probably remember that and I had to lay off of it for like a month and then whenever I was finally able to pick it back up again I started really getting into weightlifting so much so that I actually stopped running and stopped doing the cardio and was just focusing on this strength training in general during this time still alternate day fasting still using that to my benefit as much as I could this time the weight that I was losing was starting to slow down a lot which made me really nervous to be completely honest because once you get closer to your goal weight it seems like that's whenever it doesn't have off anymore and then the scale started going back up but my body was still changing and to me mentally that was one of the biggest mental struggles for me was seeing the scale start to go up a little bit more again but my body was still changing if you take my weight now and compare it to what it was then when I was 142 pounds compared to the hundred forty-two pounds I am now you can tell that I look completely different now I have a lot more muscle mass and a lot less fat I have to keep that in mind when I look at myself in the mirror or whenever I step on the scale something that I tried to avoid as much as possible now because it's all such a strong middle game for me I still struggle from those past painful memories of stepping on the scale and see my weight and hating myself so this has all been a big learning experience for me learning how to look at my body and see how much it changed and the scale doesn't matter it doesn't matter anymore and I have to keep that in mind a lot I want to say after the holidays is whenever I kind of started struggling again with keeping to alternate day fasting mostly because the weekends were such a struggle for me we have a lot of social things that we do with our friends and our family on Saturdays or Sundays so I decided to start switching from doing alternate day fasting every day to do an alternate day fasting throughout the week and then doing a one meal a day on the weekends kind of helped ease the stress off of me a little bit more because I was able to go out and enjoy myself with my friends and things like that I realized whenever I was doing my one meal a day I was eating a lot more than I originally wanted to during that one meal a day so it was almost as if I was eating my whole calorie allotment in that one meal a day and I didn't like that so I decided that what I was going to do was start picking up running again and doing it on my fasting days throughout the week and then on the weekends I will just eat two full days completely so my intermittent alternate day fasting has changed from complete alternate day fasting to the 4:3 method which means I eat on Tuesdays Thursdays Saturdays and Sundays and then Monday Wednesday and Friday I do fasting my running consists of Monday Wednesday and Friday and my weightlifting is Tuesdays Thursdays and Saturdays and then I have a break balm Sunday where I don't have to do anything which is really nice so now my life has gone from completely no physical activity no working out no anything - working out six days a week and if I go a day without it I feel so lost honestly switching from the alternate day fasting to the ultimate day fasting with one meal a day - the alternate day fasting for three schedule has been such a relief for me as much as I've changed and as much as I've gone through the past two years this has been the biggest reward I have a lot of myself to have is to be able to eat both days on the weekends now because I'm enjoying it enjoying myself and I'm not nearly stressed out about it as I used to be which used to be a lot so that sums us up to where we are today two years we'll be on Thursday that I will be doing alternate day fasting two years of this completely new healthy lifestyle and today was the day that I went and got my DEXA scan for my body composition to see where my body is that now compared to where it was two years ago unfortunately I do not have my body fat mass and everything like that all I do have for that time is that I was at 236 pounds at that time of my life and today I measure that 142 pounds I have point three one visceral fat on my body and my body fat mass is at 23% I'm right at ideal I also been calculated to be physically fit and fifty percent less body fat than most people in my age and this blows my mind getting the scan today really proved to me how much I've changed and how everything I've done wasn't for nothing after all the hiccups I've had and all the little eight days here and there that I ate whenever it was a fasting day none of that matters because I've still changed and I probably defer person today my results prove that and I worked hard to get where I am and I can't tell you guys how many times almost cried today thinking about it because it's like I finally accomplished what I wanted and I finally made it with all this being said there are always a couple questions that people ask me whenever I tell them about intermittent fasting or what I do basically people always ask me do I count my macros no I don't count my macros I just recently kind of discovered what they were though and whenever I did that I recalculated my new TDE and BMR for what I do since I do workout six times a week that is considered heavily active which means I can eat a lot of calories if I really wanted to but I try not to I tried to keep my maximum calories at like 20 208 day when technically I could be eating up to 3,100 any day don't want to do that though that's one important thing I want to tell you guys if you do want to consider doing intermittent alternate day fasting and this does work for you don't forget to recalculate your calories every time you lose weight you cannot continue to eat the same amount of calories that you did at a higher weight and still continue to lose weight you always need to adjust it through the process like I have done over the past two years another question I always get is did you do keto and no I did not do keto I still ate so many carbs and I still have prefer to eat carbs carbs are not bad for you they provide fuel for your body and I believe that heavily I feel like I'm kind of proof of that in a way because I've never really watched the carb intake that I have taken I have a little bit more conscious of that now but that's just because I kind of understand the macro aspect a little bit better and so I do try to make sure that I do eat a lot more protein in my body and not so much at the empty calories three of my biggest tips for you guys if you want to follow this method is to stay distracted there's nothing better than staying distracted and thinking about food one of my biggest things to stay distractive funnily enough though is to actually bake and cook things in meal prep for the next day I highly recommend a meal prepping your meals ahead of time so that way you're not eating something that you're just reaching for that isn't going to be as nutritious for you as if you make your own meals my whole everything has changed my whole lifestyle and eating and everything has changed because I have definitely gone a lot more healthier than I used to be watching the calorie intake on things that I do take in and such has definitely been big life-changing habit that I have picked up during this whole journey my second tip is to be remember why you started if you're doing this because you really want to lose weight then this should be relatively easy for you to stick with there have been days for me where I felt like I wanted to give up but I remembered this is why I started I started so that I can be healthy and be the best me that I can be if I wasn't ready to be the best me I could be I wouldn't have been ready to put in the hard work that I have over the past two years when you're ready you'll know and you'll be able to stick to whatever plan you choose to do rather be intermittent fasting or counting calories or keto or whatnot I think if you are ready and you're determined you should be able to stick to whatever you want to do and not give up and the third tip as to how to get through my fasting days is drink lots and lots of water or zero calorie drinks I prefer water super sparkling ice waters or zero calorie day rates or power aids those are problems my favorite drinks to go to whenever I'm trying to get through a fasting day but that's my biggest tip as to how I get through my days and like I said 500 calories if needed you need less than that as well make sure that you're drinking fiber rich foods like vegetables fruits things like that that will fill you out fuller than just eating something that's empty calories basically like a candy bar or something make sure you're eating something that you know what actually helpful you up and isn't just a snack in other words well guys I think that is the end of this video though this has been my personal experience with alternate day fasting I know you guys probably have lots and lots of questions out there please feel free to check out my website my ADF lifestyle wordpress.com you can follow any of my blogs go back and see any of those I post on snapchat everyday Instagram and of course YouTube on Monday and Thursdays I also have a email address that you guys can reach out to me below if you have any additional questions if you know anything I try to get to those in a timely manner so please be patient with me thank you so much guys though for stopping by watching this video I really hope that this helps you kind of see my insight on intimate alternate day fasting and I hope you guys give it a try and you have great success with it as well please don't forget to subscribe if you'd like to see me being me on all my vlogs and everything that and I really appreciate you guys stopping by thank you so much and see you next time [Music]

Channel: Rachel Sharp

Views: 2,840,818

Rating: 4.9371386 out of 5

Keywords: My experience with intermittent alternate day fasting, Intermittent fasting, Alternate day fasting, Intermittent alternate day fasting, ADF, IF, Fasting, Omad, 4:3, Dexa scan, Weight loss, Weight loss motivation, Weight loss transformation, Weight loss journey, Extreme weight loss, Healthy, Healthy lifestyle, Lifestyle change, Lifestyle choice, Lifestyle, Fitness, Fitness motivation, Fitness transformation, 50 pounds down, 50 pounds lost, 100 pounds down, 100 pounds lost, Vlogger, Vlog

Id: dMCwpU-mas0

Length: 23min 14sec (1394 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 04 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Hilomh]

Fantastic progress!

[u/Mujah]

Holy shit, that’s amazing! Super inspiring! 💜