On January 25, 2020, I started out on a new journey with intermittent fasting. In recent years after eating and exercising the same way, I found that my older body was slowly putting on unwanted weight. After having been diagnosed with a sluggish thyroid and realizing the impact that hormones have on how your body processes food. A friend introduced me to intermittent fasting and despite thinking there was no way I could do it, I read up on the science behind it.
It turns out that most things we had been taught about nutrition during my lifetime, turned out to be wrong. First it was lowfat everything! Turns out that is unhealthy and does not properly fuel your body and especially your brain. When I was refeeding Ava after anorexia, I learned that fat is necessary for a healthy brain. We were all addicted to artificial sweetners once we realized what Grandpa Morgan always knew "sugar is poison." By avoiding sugar and adding no calories through artificial sweeteners, we though we were tricking the body. Unfortunately we were wrong and it still prompted an insulin release (amongst other problems with artificial sweeteners, like neurological effects).
We were told that good nutrition consisted of 6 small meals a day (essentially "grazing" all day). I read Gin Steven's "Delay, Don't Deny" and learned that when we eat 3 meals a day along with snacks we keep our insulin flowing throughout our bloodstream on a constant basis. This prevents our bodies from tapping into the fat stores to use for fuel since we are giving our bodies a constant stream of "easy energy." When you begin intermittent fasting you are teaching your body to do a brand new thing, converting fat for energy or ketosis. Ketosis makes you feel great and energetic and there's even a lot of science behind fasting for disease prevention. It gives your body an opportunity to attend to cleansing cell waste (autophagy). There is so much energy that goes into digestion that our bodies are constantly tasked with processing that handful of crackers, nuts etc. Gin Stevens says intermittent fasting is a health plan with the side effect of weight loss. I would agree and although it has been slow, I have lost about 18 pounds in 6 months. More than that, I feel hopeful that I can get my body back. I have also lost inches through autophagy. The New England Journal of Medicine had a nobel prize winning study on autophagy where the body takes care of cell waste and shrinks down in the process. Over quarantine, other family members have done some IF for health reasons more than for weight loss. I am hopeful that once the boys' wedding come about, I will look much better in my mother of the grooms attire.