It’s been 5 Years
I’m back now and ready to take action
In 2016 I had a heart attack and a quadruple heart bypass.
In 2017 I decided to take action to improve my health, primarily loosing weight. I lost 231 pounds. I had weighed 430 pounds, and got down to 199 lb. by the end of 2018. I felt great, and my health had improved so much during that time.
How did I lose the weight?
I fasted. Didn’t eat. I did various lengths of fasts during that time, but my most common fasting length was 5 days. Usually I would start fasting on Sunday after dinner, and I would break my fast on Friday around dinner time. It was very effective, and it was my routine, I was used to it, and it was not very challenging to do, except when I first got started.
In January 2019, I moved back to the USA, after living for 20 years in the Philippines. My wife is Filipino, and she lived in the USA for 10 years after we got married, but I wanted a little adventure, and moving to the Philippines was very appealing to me. It took time to convince my wife to do that, but in time she agreed and we made the move. I had some big personal challenges in 2018 (not related to diet or fasting), and when my wife said she wanted to move back to the USA, my response was:
When are we leaving?
She hit me at just the right time, and we did make the move in January 2019.
I’ve gained some weight back
When we were leaving the Philippines, a lot of close friends there were taking us out to dinner, sort of “wining and dining” us before our departure, and I started gaining a few pounds back.
When we landed back in the States there were so many food temptations everywhere I would look. I would see some kind of food and think to myself “wow, I haven’t eaten any of that for more than 20 years!” I had to have some. That lead to gaining back about 75 of the 231 that I had lost, and I gained all of that back within the first year of our return. Thankfully, after that, I did not regain any more weight, but I also did not lose that weight again.
Until Now
I finally have gotten tired of that re-gained weight on my body, and this week I have started fasting again. As I write this, I am just getting to the end of Day 2 of this planned 5 Day fast. I am feeling great, and I have no doubt I can complete the 5 days of fasting. I am very determined, just as I was in 2017.
Thankfully, I have not experienced any health problems since returning to the States and gaining back some weight. But, lately, I have been experiencing some signs that I might be having some health problems in the future (which would be expected if you are overweight). Because of these “warning signs” I jumped right back into fasting, and I feel good about doing it.
My Plan
I always feel that if something works for you, you should stick with it. That is why I am copying my success in 2017 and 2018 by doing a 5 day fast to start out, and why I plan to continue doing the same as long as I need. For my 5 day fast, I don’t eat anything. If I feel hungry, I will drink a warm drink, like coffee or tea. I find that drinking something hot takes away my hunger for a few hours, and if the hunger comes back at that time, it’s time for another cup of coffee or tea. This is also the way I did it in 2017 and 2018, so it’s a proven winner for me.
On weekends, when I eat, I will follow a Carnivore diet for the most part, eating meat, cheeses and such.
How am I doing so far?
In the 2 days that I have been going so far, I have been doing better than I anticipated. It really has not been much of a challenge at all so far. I think that the reason for the easiness of doing it is because I feel a mental desire to do it, and the warning signs that I have experienced give me a sense of urgency.
Fasting from the Past is Helping
Do you know what Ketosis is?
Ketosis is the state of your body “consuming” and living off of the fat in your body. You are not feeding your body, so it is getting nutrition from the fat that you have been storing on your body. This is how you are losing the weight rapidly, because your body is following the natural method of consuming fat that has been stored for future consumption.
I have been surprised that on day 1 of fasting, about 15 hours into the fast my body went into Ketosis. How do I know that I was in a state of Ketosis? Because when you are in ketosis you get very bad breath, and I know what it smells like. Before, it would take me 24 to 36 hours to enter a state of ketosis, but this time, after not being in ketosis for years, my body shifted in less than a day. To me, it was just a sign that I am doing what my body wants. It’s what my mind wants too!
I will be updating this blog again, several times (or more) per week. Writing about this helps me maintain my new way of eating, because it keeps it on my mind. Also there is an accountability factor. If I am publicly announcing that I am doing this, and then I fail, it is embarrassing, and not something I would want to admit, so I keep going. In all ways possible, I am trying to follow exactly what I did when I lost the weight in 2017/18, and writing about it was one of those things.
So, I’ll keep you updated, and be seeing you regularly here on 430ToFit. At least I’m not starting out at 430 lb. this time around!
Good to hear you’re still healthy and able to do things to insure that health.
You know, Bob, ….. I should get off my “fat behind” and take some more weight off. I had a bad “fat spell” in the Philippines last trip (thank you “ber-months,” birthdays, weddings, fiestas, and all of the other temptations) before fasting my way back down to about 250 lbs. At that milestone came travel time, welcome home parties, relative visits, and all of the Stateside temptations. Luckily, I maintained the weight that I had reached.
I’ll have to brush off the old self-discipline and make & follow solid plans in the fasting department. Planning on a return to the islands in October for our “wintering over” so I’d better get into the routine before the “ber-months” attack.😉
Baket-ko (Asawa-ko) [my Wife] still doesn’t understand my fasting, but she loves the results. Better understanding should accompany this round, though, as she can’t pin those earlier results on anything other than fasting. 😁
Hi Paul, good to hear from you, hope you’re doing well. The thing that I find personally about fasting is that if you’re not in the right mental place, it is seemingly almost impossible to be successful. But if you get yourself in the right mental space, it’s really not very hard at all, at least that’s my experience. Right now, I’m in that place where it’s not very hard to do the fasting, and I’m very happy about that. Weight loss, fasting is a key to many ailments, and just makes you overall more healthy.