How did it all start?
I am working from home from about 21 days now because of corona-virus pandemic. These are days of least physical activity, when there is No cycling to work, No climbing 8 floors by steps. Working on computer during the day, only physical activity in life is grocery shopping twice a week.
Preparation
Checked with friends and acquaintances for advice and their experiences with fasting. Heard a lot of experiences about religious fasting for MahaShivaRatri and other Hindu occasions, Ramzan. Started looking for scientific research backed approaches. Read about Intermittent fasting by Dr Fung and read about The 5:2 diet and Alternate daily fasting. A search for “finding a safe and effective method of intermittent fasting” on Google scholar gave me a lot to read. Ketogenic diet also looked like an interesting approach.
Convinced that it can help, decided to start by experiencing a Day of fasting according to Intermittent fasting. I tracked my calorie and water intake on MyFitnessPal. One step at a time.
Testing the waters
On April 8, 2020 I tried a fasting day. I was working from home so not much physical activity.
No breakfast. Felt normal like any day when I skipped breakfast until afternoon.
No Lunch. By 3 PM I had two liters of water already. I really wanted to eat something. Grabbed a handful of salted peanuts.
Dinner@7 PM. I made it Yay! Was hungry but tried to not overeat.
Takeaways
- A fasting day is nor exceedingly difficult
- Drinking enough water is key
- Was working that day and it was normal
- Night’s Sleep is normal
And next
I started with alternate daily fasting. It’s simple, you have all three meals on one day and only last meal on fasting days. Instead of maintaining thought of losing weight. Planned to limit calorie intake to 500 on fasting days and 1500 on days when I am not fasting. Consulted a dietician. She saw no risk with this plan as considering my health condition. Scheduled to review weekly.
Will update you on how it went in a week…
