Still losing it

June of 2020 and I'm still losing weight. I'm at 185.6 pounds and it seems to be holding there for several days. My weight sometimes comes off little by little, a few ounces here and there, and sometimes I get a big drop all at once -- 2 pounds. In the past, when I would get lower than 188, I would bounce back. This blog was first called The Final Fifteen because I was trying to get down to 173. Then, gradually my weight creeped back up to 217, 218. That's what I weighed in January of this year (2020). 

With this intermittent fasting, things have begun happening that I thought might not work for me. The main thing is this: I'm not hungry much. 

I get hungry at lunch, but then I go right through dinner time with no food and it's easy.

The hardest part is just staying busy. I get little cravings when my family is all eating food around me, but they aren't monstrous (the cravings I mean). 

Here's what I think has happened. My body is what they call fat adapted. 

Here's what that means (from my study). My body isn't expecting a lot of carbs anymore. So it expects to burn fat. Now if carbs come down the chute, my body will gladly burn them or store them as fat. But when I fast, my body doesn't cry out for more food. My body's mechanism for burning is working efficiently. 

This is why the YouTubers who talk about I.F. suggest a keto diet before fasting. That way the body gets fat adapted more easily.

Still, I don't worry about staying on a keto diet, but I do eat more fats than I used to do. What I did is drop a lot of carbs out of my diet in two ways, added sugar, gone, and grains gone.

Now when I was first fasting several month ago, I would get cravings for sugary things. But those are mainly gone. Then only thing I eat occasionally that has sugars is chocolate. But when I eat it, I always get premium chocolate with over 70% cacao. And I pay attention to the kind of sugar on the label. Here's what I've found: the premium chocolates use good sugars. I found a brand that has 3 ingredients. And the sugar comes from coconut. This is a once a week or so treat.

I am also working on my exercise. I use a high intensity protocol. More on that in a later post. Still working on the details. But the idea is this: I work out in a short high-intensity fashion. I am usually done in about 12 minutes. This is experimental for me right now.