Over the years, my weight has gone up and down and to be honest, I have lost count of the number of diets I have tried. I think I have had a go at most of them from calorie counting to carb free, meal replacement shakes to points. Some were more successful than others but in the end you come to the realisation that successful dieting and being healthier comes down to lifestyle choices. Diets can be effective in the short term but as soon as you stop, if you don’t commit to the same level of exercise or the same food or calorie intake, the weight soon creeps back on.
About a year ago, I read about the 16:8 diet. It is a distant relative of the 5:2. I had looked at the 5:2 diet a few times but just knew that managing on so few calories for even just two days a week would be really hard. And I have very little willpower.
The 16:8 works on the principle of intermittent fasting. You have an 8 hour window where you eat and for the other 16 hours, you don’t. You can still drink water and drinks without sugar or milk in them. Bearing in mind that you are a sleep for a number of those 16 hours, I did think that this sounded achievable.
There was also a lot of talk abut the positive health benefits of intermittent fasting too. There is a really interesting article here about the science behind it. So, I decided to give it a try.
The first thing to decide is when is your eight hour eating window going to be?
I struggled with this at first. I didn’t want to give up breakfast but if I started eating at 8am, that meant the window would close at 4pm which made for a very long evening.
I tried different approaches and then gave up as I wasn’t losing any weight and I felt frustrated.
After about month, I decided to try again and use some of that non-existent will power. I made the decision to eat between 12pm and 8pm. This meant missing breakfast but the eight hours I chose to eat during seemed more manageable.
I did cheat slightly. I cannot manage without a cup of tea and so I did drink tea in the morning with a splash of milk but apart from a couple of cups, I didn’t eat anything.
I started to lose weight pretty much in the first week and that continued. I lost around a stone in three months and felt so much better.
There were mornings when I really struggled and even some mornings when gave in and had breakfast. But on the whole, I started to get used to it. So much so, I have been doing the 16:8 for nearly a year. It is just normal to me now, part of my routine. I still get up and have tea with a splash of milk (I really can’t stand it without milk) but apart from special occasions, I don’t eat until 12pm.
After couple of months, my weight did plateau and I haven’t lost any more since. That could be the fact that I cheat slightly, it could be that some days I do eat quite a lot in my eight hour slot. But the main thing is that I haven’t put any weight back on which I am really pleased about.
Coupled with doing more exercise over lockdown, I have started to see the scales moving downwards slowly again, but to be honest, I do try not to get too fixated on the numbers, it is more about how I feel. I feel healthier and maybe that has helped me get into exercising again and for me, that is the most important thing. My skin is healthier, my clothes aren’t quite as tight as they were and I have more energy. That has to be a good thing in my opinion.
