Eat-Stop-Eat part 3

Part 3

I am now in week 9 of my TT challenge, which I embarked on when I had already been Turbulence Training for six weeks. In the first week of my challenge I also started incorporating Eat-Stop-Eat, starting with a 20 hour fast from 8pm Friday to 4pm Saturday. As my usual weighing in day is Sunday, this made my first weeks weigh in look quite impressive (1.5lbs for the week). At the start of week six, I switched my weigh-in to Saturday morning, so that I would have a more honest idea of how my weight was tracking, relative to where I started. Shall we do some maths?. By playing around with my nutrition, I have pretty much determined that my TEE (total energy expenditure) on most days is about 1950 calories. My average intake over a week at the moment is around 1750 cals per day, but I’ve had two weeks which were slightly over 2000 on average, you could say those were maintenance weeks. So, say it’s 6.5 weeks at around 200 cals deficit per day for a total of 9100 calories deficit, or about 1.2kg of fat. In real life, according to my scales, I’ve lost exactly 1.2kg in scale weight – I started at 60.3kg and now I’m 59.1kg. It surprises even me that it worked out so exactly. So, my brilliant conclusion is that fatloss happens per calorie deficit, however you get to it. I could bore you by presenting the six weeks before starting my challenge as a comparison, but there have been enough numbers in this post already and you’ll just have to trust me that the real vs. actual fatloss has been the same whether I’m practicing intermittent fasting or a regular daily caloric deficit. In other words, my metabolism does not seem to be staging a protest over the unaccustomed fasting days.

In practice, I started out feeling moderately deprived on a fasting day, but now I’m enjoying them. I’ve been fasting for one or two 20-24 hour periods every week, depending on my schedule and on.. how bored I get at work. The Saturday fasts are a breeze. Last week I went to the library, saw a movie, played with my niece, did some art, prepped food and kept busy with fun stuff. It’s important to keep occupied. I also trained at 22 hours fasted and it was a good workout. I felt fine. I did take my amino mix (creatine, citrulline, arginine, potassium, magnesium) though… it helps me feel in the zone.

Currently, the intermittent fasting is working for me, but I’m also very sure that a year ago it would have been a disaster. The point with Eat-Stop-Eat is that you ‘eat normally’ when you are not fasting. This means that you have to know what eating normally is and you have to be able to do it. If you don’t have healthy regular eating habits then I think that trying to throw fasts into the mix would just get messy and disordered. Also, I discovered myself that you can’t also run a heavy calorie deficit and then try to throw the fasts in as an ‘extra’. I tried that and it backfired with some heavy overeating the day after the fast. I had to get my head around the fact that this was an alternative and more fun way to get my usual calorie deficit. That nice, small deficit that I can stick with long term without turning into a food obsessed nutbar. Actually, my fatloss would have been considerably greater if I had not had those two post-fast overeating days. Another crucial point with Eat-Stop-Eat is that, as I previously mentioned, it functions as a break in your regular eating schedule. If you start thinking ‘ok, I just finished a fast so it’s ok to snarf down an entire super-cheesy pizza with wedges and coke’ then you miss the point.

So, there you go! I hope you readers now have a good idea of how Eat-Stop-Eat works, or at least, how it works for me. I did sign myself up as an affiliate so if you buy the program through any of the click-throughs on my blog then you should know that you are also supporting my protein cookie habit.

This will be my last post for a week because tomorrow morning, at stupid-o-clock in the morning (I think 6am.. I really should check on that) I board a plane for the NZ Pacific Salsa Congress and I’m REALLY looking forward to it *jumps up and down like a demented easter bunny*. Four days of unadulterated Salsa workshops and parties AND a day off work when I get back! Life.. she is beautiful.