Over four months ago, at the end of August, I began doing intermittent fasting. This involved a significant but quite manageable adjustment to my eating schedule. Instead of eating at all hours of the day or night, I control when I eat. Usually, it means eating later in the morning, and stopping earlier at night. I have fasted for as long as thirty six hours, but most of the time, my fasting period has ranged from sixteen to twenty hours, with a four- to eight-hour eating window during the day. Many days, for example, I have started eating at 10am, and stopped at 6pm until the next morning.
This process has been greatly rewarding. First of all, I have achieved the primary goal, which was to lose weight, about 25 lbs as of this writing. I was tipping over the 200 lb. range a few months back, even though I had been a regular runner for many years. I did not understand why I wasn’t losing weight, was slowly gaining weight in fact, despite all my physical activity. When I found through some internet research that I was actually considered overweight for my height, something in me snapped. Soon after this, I found intermittent fasting, and haven’t looked back.
Since then, I have seen steady and satisfying progress. In fact, I have often marveled at how uncannily easy and quick progress has occurred. I tracked my weight and fasting durations every day. Pretty soon, I was amazed to have lost 10 pounds. Then 15 pounds. By Halloween, only a couple months after starting, I was nearing my original “shoot-for-the-moon” goal of 180. I passed that, and have been near 175 for several weeks now.
I have definitely been enjoying the benefits of this success. First, I am running faster with greater ease, more like what I was doing a couple of years ago (This is surely going to help for future races: next up, the Shamrock’n Half Marathon in March 2019). Secondly, as a man, I admit it, I feel better in my body. I am proud of how I look. Thirdly, I am pleased as punch with how easily I manifested my goal, and then surpassed it.
I have attempted many different things in life, and I hardly remember a time when I set my mind to something, found a solution, and so quickly manifested astounding and completely satisfying results. I have been thinking a lot about this, as I am intensely interested in alignment, and in all things related to the Law of Attraction.
I know that I have always had a very healthy (pun not intended) attitude about health. I have always excelled in all things health- and exercise-related once I set my mind to it. I have a lot of confidence in this area, and a very strong sense of well-being and security. I am sure that this helped me manifest a solution, which I adopted with a minimum of resistance.
As I wrote before, I had been dissatisfied for several years in the area of my body, despite being an active athlete, before I attracted the solution. So it’s not as if it just happened over night. In fact, the solution only manifested once I stopped making myself wrong for being concerned about this issue. Once I basically owned my own vanity and said, “Yes, this bothers me and I want to do something about,” the solution was quick to manifest. And I was able to implement it and stick to it rather easily because I had total belief in the process and did not have inner struggle or turmoil clouding up my efforts.
This is why I appreciate so much seeing the results from intermittent fasting. These days, I am a big believer in seeing what is working and what comes easily, and looking for clues that I can use in other areas of my life.
Another way in which this process has benefited me is that now I am much more conscious of what I eat, and much less likely to chow down on sugars and carbs than I used to be. I also have the confidence that I can go without those things — although I have continued eating some such goodies (such as enjoying rolls and apple cider over Christmas dinner, and having the occasional bowl of cereal) 🙂 I feel as though I have awakened from the Matrix, and truly understand what it means to eat fully-satisfying, enriching food.
Not to mention, giving myself a clear, time-limited eating window makes the experience of eating all that richer and more satisfying. Nowadays, I generally feel truly grateful for every meal, and I eat with greater consciousness. It feels all the better knowing that I have a regime that allows me to eat well knowing I’m staying healthy.
Long live intermittent fasting!