Hello Reader,

If you’ve been around a while then you might know my struggles with weight loss and being healthy. I heard about intermittent fasting about 2-2.5 years back but never paid much attention to it because I anyhow don’t eat breakfast so I assumed I was anyhow intermittently fasting. But after watching a few videos of people trying intermittent fasting for a week on Youtube, I decided to read about it in detail. I realized after a little research that only thing I had to change in my lifestyle to actually be intermittently fasting was to have black coffee instead of milk coffee in the morning. This actually turned out to be perfect since I have been trying to go vegan for the past year and not being able to find an alternate milk for my coffee was my biggest deterrent. I also decided to go sugar free for one week as well as stick to my regular healthy eating.

WHAT IS INTERMITTENT FASTING

For those of you who are new to the concept – IF is fixing an eating window during the day (6hr/8hr/10hr) and eating only in that window. The rest of the day is called fasting period through which you can have lemon water, black tea, black coffee and ofcourse, water! You can choose your fasting period as per your eating habits – eg: I skip breakfast so I fast between dinner and lunch. IF is not only beneficial for losing weight but also beneficial for improving your health. I believe that different diets suit different body types – eg: eating small meals through the day suits my sister and helps her stay healthy but that doesn’t work for me. So please do your research and try a couple of things before settling in on one.

MY GOAL FOR THE WEEK

1. Intermittent fasting (16/8)
2. Sugar free
3. Vegan
4. Trying to workout as much as possible

MY WEEK

I started off by downloading an app to keep tabs of the fasting hours and then I charted out a meal plan for the week. The week was interesting.

INTERMITTENT FASTING: Unsurprisingly the fasting bit wasn’t challenging since I usually skip breakfast. Moving to black coffee was extremely easy and now I’m hooked to black coffee. The week went pretty smooth and on most days I was able to fast for 17hrs and eat 7hrs,

VEGAN: Coffee was definitely something that I thought would be a big challenge. What I didn’t factor in was the different cheeses that I use sparingly in my salads. So I did cheat on this 3-4 times in the week but only when I just couldn’t find an appropriate alternate.

SUGAR FREE: Being sugar free was also difficult. On the third day I caved and had millet cookies which used jaggery as opposed to sugar. On day 5 & day 7, I ended up baking rum balls and other desserts so ended up eating sugar then.

WORKING OUT: I worked out for 30mins on an average daily which wasn’t great but I’ll strive to do better this week.

PS: On the 7th day I did go off my healthy eating and binged on some pizza.

RESULTS

WEIGHT LOSS: I lost 2 kgs! I have been trying to lose weight for a while now and this was a pleasant surprise since I didn’t change A LOT in my diet.

My dad was away this past week and upon his return he commented that I was looking thinner. So it was definitely a visible result.

I don’t think I felt excessively healthier but I don’t think that is something you can see in just one week unless you are monitoring some other stats.

TAKEAWAY:

Since it is definitely helping me get closer to my goals – I will definitely try to continue with this for the next 2-3 weeks to see if there are any other visible results. I’ll definitely post about my experiences after a month on here.

Have you heard of intermittent fasting? Have you ever tried it? Did it work for you?

Stay safe, healthy and start working on 2021 goals! ❤

Disclaimer: I am not recommending this diet to anyone. Definitely do your research before trying any diet. I also recommend not trying a diet only to lose weight – the goal should be to be healthy in the long term. I don’t do any short term diets. I do take a break from eating sugar/oily food for a short period to give my body a break. If you are a teenager – please don’t try diets unless something is recommended by a doctor.

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