Rob.c.weiss's Journal, 13 January 2014

WTG, Rob! 

Impressive drop Rob! You are just about to your goal! 

Thanks, @Jass!!! :D I'm loving it. 

Thanks, @Snowman! Actually my real goal is the same as yours: 180. We'll celebrate together! 200 is the last of my major goals before 180, although I have another mini-goal at 190 (150 lbs lost). And I'm not really sure where I need to be to finish, I figure I'll re-assess when I get to 180, if I'm not at the BF% I want to be at (aiming for 16%; which the charts list at the lowest end of "ideal" for my height and age). All indicators right now are kind of pointing at around 170-ish for that... so I'll probably need to adjust it. But I'll worry about that when I get to 180. Right now, 200 is all I'm focused on. :D 

I'm with you there Rob. I set the arbitrary goal of 180 when I started this trip. Now that I'm nearing that goal, I will see what my final number works out to be. FS is only designed with weight as a goal, but my initial goal is to get to 32" waist size trousers, and a body fat percent of 15%. Ultimately, I think that I'd like to shoot for a 13% body fat long-term. I'm getting closer to my initial goal. I can wear 34's now, and tonight my bf was 17.2%. Good luck with your efforts and congrats again! 

woot woot  

You go Rob!!!!!!! You are going to town on this weight loss. Well done! 

Okay...so I'm wanting to try this IF that you've suggested (and everyone seems to be having luck with, which is turning me green with envy :)). My problem is that I'm generally hungry by about 8am and have a light snack, then in the evening I generally eat dinner around 6-6:30pm. So I guess my question would be is this 8-hr window just something that you made yourself do in the beginning and your body became more accustomed to over time? 

Jassifras, Yep. Just keep busy and substitute. I do a hard workout first thing every morning and drink powdered BCAA before and after the workouts (exercise also acts as an appetite suppressant). I drink water, coffee, iced tea, and sugar free sodas in the morning (mostly just coffee, though). Two things to remember about "hunger pains". First, I don't believe that any of us are really feeling true hunger. Its more of a gentle reminder by our body that "this is the time that we usually eat". This is mostly caused by the increased ghrelin in your system. When you don't eat, the feeling of hunger doesn't stay with you constantly or get progressively worse. I rarely feel hungry during the morning, but when I do, I just keep busy and ignore it and it passes. Your body is extremely adaptable. After a few days of not eating breakfast, your body won't expect it and you shouldn't have any problems. By the way, remember, it won't kill you to have breakfast once in a while. If you want to sit down with the family on Sunday to some nice eggs and bacon, by all means, you should.  

Jassifras, I know my opinion differs from a lot of people on this site, but I know what has worked for me. 8 hour stretches without eating are doing nothing but hurting your metabolism. During my entire 6 month transformation (and still today, and forever) I ate a meal every 3 hours on the dot, unless I was working out or sleeping at the 3 hour mark. I set my calorie and macro goal for the day and split everything up into 6-8 meals. Keeps the metabolism strong, prevents hunger pains (once you adjust to the smaller meal sizes) and keeps energy levels up. 

Hey, @Chad, I think you're exactly right. Not everyone fits into the same *box*... I don't think anyone on FS believes there is one method that will work for everyone. I've heard of several people that have had limited or no success with IF (if I'm not mistaken, I think Yolanda was one). Thanks for another great method that has worked wonders for you!!! 

@Jass, for me, I don't get hungry in the morning at all. I never really have. I used to push myself to eat, because I kept reading about how the morning meal is the most important of the day, and blah blah blah. But it never really felt right for me, and I'll be honest, now I truly believe it has been one of the biggest things holding me back all these years. The minute I gave up on that, and didn't bother eating in the mornings, things have been dramatically different (better and far easier) for me. There may be absolutely no science behind what I'm about to say, as it has only been my anecdotal observance (and TXSnowman may object, not sure...) but I notice that the people with the best success on the 16:8 IF seem to be the ones that really aren't hungry in the mornings anyway. But I may be wrong on that. Not sure. Anyway for me, the morning is no struggle at all... after 8PM on the other hand is something I **still struggle with. Being a night-owl, I've always gone into overdrive after 8PM. But for me, one thing I've noticed is that not eating in the AM, somehow makes not eating after 8PM a lot easier (not easy, mind you, but **easier!).  

I had a major problem with snacking at night and doing the 16:8 has helped me conquer that as I don't eat after 8pm. We eat a late dinner due to DH getting home at 7:30pm from work most days. Breaking my fast at 12pm has helped me focus more on my food intake for the whole day and not just going through the motions of eating a meal out of habit. 

@Mom and @Isabel!!!! Thank you soooo much! You are both FANTASTIC! 

Rob, I absolutely agree with you. Whatever works for you is the best diet on earth. 

BTW, @Jass... Without realizing it, I was doing the not-eating-before-noon thing even before I heard about IF (since about August). I was also trying to not eat after 8PM throughout that time as well, but I never made either an official requirement for me. I first learned of IF and the 16:8 method at the end of November (roughly), and then I was able to put a name to what I was doing anyway, and kind of formalize it and integrate it into my day-to-day plan. 

Great job, Rob! It feels so good to read your post and to know how much success you've had! It can be done! I can't believe I let myself get this fat. Ugh. I wish it would come off faster. I'm feeling guilty because I couldn't calculate my calories exact and maybe I should have not had the crabmeat in the swai (no stuffing, just fresh crab, but I could have saved the calories). I'm reading your post about mornings and I notice I'm not as hungry in the mornings. On the weekends, I usually don't eat breakfast. During the work week, I tend to make myself eat. Today, I told myself I am not eating until I get really hungry and that was at 11:00. I'm with the same theory--we don't all fit into a "box.".  

So true, @Jill!!! Yeh, you may be a great candidate for this 16:8 IF! Good luck! :D 

Rob C. Weiss what is the 16.8 IF? 

Hey, Deb... Intermittent Fasting (IF) is a fairly new concept in weight loss management. Take a look at TXSnowman's Journal from January 12, 2014, he provides a link to a great article that explains a lot about it. But the long and the short of it is that it doesn't introduce anything groundbreaking in regard to diet itself (good foods, bad foods) as most "diets" do, but rather focuses on the timeframe in which calories in vs calories out occurs. So, for instance, let's say your 1 lb / week RDI (the recommended daily intake of calories for your body to lose one pound a week) is 2,000 calories a day (14,000 calories a week). If you chose to fast one of the seven days of the week, you would actually have more calories per day (14,000 / 6 = 2,333, plus one fast day). So, you would skip eating one day entirely, but have 333 more calories per day that you do eat. This would be called a 6:1 IF plan. The idea being that the day off you take would actually help jar your body from the 2,000 cal / day routine, and stop plateus before they start. But for a lot of people that can be pretty jarring. But you don't have to fast entirely on the fasting day. Let's say instead you chose to "lend" some calories to certain days / "borrowing" from others. This is a very common version of IF -- You might "borrow" 400 calories from each of 5 days, so you only have 1,600 per day to eat (these 5 days would be called your "fasting days", even though you aren't fasting, just eating less). But now you have a "savings" of 5 x 400 calories (2,000 extra). If you *give* those calories to the other two days, you can eat 3,000 calories on each of those two days. A lot of people do this for "splurge" or "indulgence" days -- most often Saturdays and Sundays. This method is most often called a 5:2. A 16:8 isn't talking about days, but rather hours in the day. The principle is simply: fast 16 hours a day, eat during an eight-hour window. Most of the people I've seen doing this (including me) pick the noon to 8PM *eating* window, and fast the remaining time (from 8PM to noon the next day). You would still eat the same RDI calories you're supposed to (2,000 in the example I gave), but you would eat all 2,000 within that eight-hour window. The crux is that all of these Intermittent Fasting (IF) strategies interrupt the plateau cycle of the human body, keeping weight-loss (really, fat loss) optimized and running smoothly. Most of these strategies will work with virtually any existing calorie-count-based diet. I hope that helps... :D