For years my weight was steady, around 175 lbs. I could eat as much as I wanted--sometimes quite a lot--and my weight stayed the same. Then it crept up. I vaguely remember hitting 200, but if i did, I dropped down fast enough, and I ended up in the 185-192 range.
But I wanted to get back to 175. That was the number that was stuck in my brain. Over a ten year period I made numerous desultory attempts to get my weight down there. No luck.
Then, a few months before my knee operation, I decided to commit to a change: to fast from dinner to breakfast and eat only what I needed at meals. My weight started dropping, slowly but steadily. It took several months, but a few weeks before my surgery my weight was down to 175.
Then came a family weekend on Chebeague Island with lots of food. Then came surgery and a change in locale and daily routine. When we returned after two weeks I was nearly five pounds heavier. That was months ago. I went back to desultory dieting. Nothing happened. Really, why should it?
A little over a week ago I started reading Miles Kimball's blog [Supply Side Liberal](https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/)., He's got a series of posts about diet and fasting and I read a bunch of them. Here's [a recent post in the series](https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2017/9/21/obesity-is-always-and-everywhere-an-insulin-phenomenon) with links at the bottom to others. He recommends fasting, not just for weight loss, but for general health improvement. I'd read other articles about the benefits of calorie-restricted diets and intermittent fasting and had considered fasting. Reading this post convinced me that it was worth trying.
Or at least, worth learning more. So I read some of the other posts in the series and did some research to refresh and increase my understanidng. Finally I said: Why not? I'd been invited to have lunch at a friend's house on Sunday and decided that I'd start my fast after that lunch. So I did. No dinner that night. No breakfast the next day. No lunch. No dinner. I decided to fast until Saturday when my kids and their kids would arrive for Christmas.
To my surprise, it was easy. Far easier than trying to diet. I wasn't hungry. Sometimes I'd find myself in front of the refrigerator or in the pantry closet, looking for something to stick in my mouth. I wasn't hungry. Just bored. Or responding to habit. As soon as I realized it, I'd walk away.
That week I wasn't tired. My energy level seemed normal. We had a couple of snows and I was out shoveling our long driveway with no exhaustion and no desire afterward to stuff my face to make up for the energy that I'd expended.
A couple of times I felt my mind was running a bit slower than usual. But usually things seemed--surprisingly normal.
Fast forward to Saturday. Between Sunday dinner and Saturday Breakfast I'd had three light meals and a few snacks. I'd indulged in a "grazing experience" late one night where I ate a bit of this and a bit of that. That was my habit before my first weight loss. I did another light graze another night, but that was it for the week.
My last weigh-in before the fast was 181.5. This morning, Saturday, I stepped on the scale and my weight was 175.7. So I'd dropped a bit more than 5 lb.
Today I've had two cups of coffee with cream (I'd been off coffee during my fast) and nothing else for breakfast. I had a half bowl of soup and a few pieces of bread for lunch. I had a normal dinner, but with smaller-than usual portions. I graze on some grapes and blueberries and a few tablespoons of creme fraiche, but that was it.
I expect my weight to go up for the holiday as I move to something closer to a normal diet the next few days. But I'll probably keep skipping breakfast. And I'm definitely done with the midnight grazing.
Then once the gang leaves, I'm looking forward to another week of fasting. Actually looking forward to it.
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