I was at 215 pounds a couple of years ago when the COVID pandemic started. I had become complacent and accepted my weight. I was jolted from my slumber when one of my close friends was diagnosed with heart blockages in 3 of his veins. He had to undergo the stent implantation so that his functions could get back to normal. I had not imagined it happening to someone close, though I fully knew the consequences of my weight. As I had explained in an earlier article where I have shown my journey from 215 to 155 pounds. I did touch on intermittent fasting briefly but this topic deserved its article I felt. I couldn’t have done justice to it fully in that article. Another thing that shook me was my blood test numbers. They were bordering on the higher side.

After I had been running for more than a year my weight had plateaued, at around 190, and no matter how much I exercised, it barely moved. At that time, I came across some videos on YouTube about intermittent fasting. I researched and talked to a few people and devised my plan for it. I don’t know if this is the right thing or if my method was the right one. I am not an expert to talk about it. I just want to highlight my own experience and talk about my plan.

Intermittent fasting -My plan

I started by skipping one meal which was dinner. I did not want to skip breakfast as I find that to be the most important meal. Somehow, I could not come around to the fact to choose my breakfast for skipping. I would have my breakfast around 730–8 am, normal nothing changed so far. My lunch was also at the same time around 12–1230 pm. I would have a light snack at 530 pm with some milk tea, skipping dinner altogether.

The next day breakfast was done at the same time. Thus, I had done a 14-hour fast to start with. I did not want to start with a bigger time difference as that would have been difficult to sustain. A week was completed with this plan. I planned to change one thing for the next week. I wanted to increase the time difference between the meals and increase the fasting period. I did not change my breakfast and lunchtime but changed my snacking time to 430 PM. 15 hours was good for that week I felt. Next week I changed it to 330 PM and increased it to 16 hours. So, at the end of the three weeks, I had been doing a 16-hour fast between my meals across the two days.

Increasing the fasting time to 19 hours.

My next move was to increase my fasting time to 19 hours. This I did by skipping my evening snack. I skipped the snack but had my evening tea with milk at 530 PM. I had a little difficulty that day. Feeling some hunger pangs later in the night. I did not want to give up and drank water to satisfy it. As the week passed, it improved and by the end of the week, I was good with the 19-hour fast. Not feeling hungry at any time in that fasting period. I did look forward to the next day’s breakfast and felt good once I ate something in the morning. I continued with the 19 hours fasting period for two weeks.

My weight had started going down I could see the needle move. The stubborn weight that wasn’t moving with the exercise showed signs of defeat. My weight went down to 180 by the end of the month. Having done the fasting by skipping dinner I felt good and wanted to go to the next stage of increasing it further. I wanted to check my limits more than decreasing my weight at this time. At 180 pounds I was happy with myself.

The next step — 24 hours fast.

I continued with my breakfast but skipped my lunch for that week, dinner anyway was a no-no at this stage. Going to a 24-hour fast wasn’t easy. I felt hungry by evening and had to either take black coffee or tea to fool my body that something was going in. Sipping water also helped. After the initial resistance by the body, I was now comfortable with the 24-hour fast. I did this for a month. At the end of the month, I had lost another 10 pounds. I felt more energetic despite consuming lesser food during the day. This was contrary to what I had heard. I did not feel hungry and my brain was more active. The happenings of those brain fogs had decreased.

Autophagy — the magical process inside the body.

This had given me a lot of confidence and I would hear more about intermittent fasting. I came to know that the fasting period should be a minimum of 24 hours, for autophagy to start in the body. The best results were achieved after 3 days. This was the fasting time when the cells were forced into survival mode. This is when the body uses the old cells and regenerates those cells. It is like recycling the old cell and replacing it with a new cell, optimizing its performance. It also destroys the viruses and bacteria affecting that cell. Something I had not read or heard earlier. No other process regenerates the cell the way intermittent fasting does in the body.

Achieving the ultimate goal — 3 days and 7 days fast.

I wanted to try the 3-day fast having felt good in my 24 days fast for some time. I did not tell my family I was pretty sure I won’t be allowed to even think of such a thing in my head. I started the first day with no issues. I skipped the next day’s breakfast and continued the fast through the day. I did feel hungry, by the evening of day two but again I drank black coffee and water, to help overcome it. I slept well the second day night and woke up feeling hungry. I did have thoughts of leaving it but I did not give up. I had black coffee in the morning and felt satiated for some time. Later that day I was fine and did not feel any hunger. The whole day passed and I was doing fine with no craving for food that day. The next day I woke up with a sense of accomplishment and drank some juice in the morning.

I was now tempted to do the 7-day fast so after a couple of months, I took it up. Surprisingly it was much easier this time. I did not feel the urge at any time to break the fast. Each day I would wake up and be fine with it. At the end of the 7 days, I was in a state where I could have continued for some more days. I did not want to stretch it so I broke my fast with some light soup. As my body had been without food for 7 days, I did not want to shock it with food immediately and eased myself into it.

Though I had soup in the morning I did not feel like overeating. My body was processing it and taking it well. In the afternoon I had some fruit with yogurt. I skipped dinner as usual and felt no need to have anything else that day. After 2 days of light food, I started eating more food like oats in the morning. After 3 days I went to my normal diet. The effect of this intermittent fasting regimen was that my weight went down to 150 pounds. I did gain 5 pounds when I had gone on vacation but feeling comfortable around 155, I did not push too much. Now I am back to my 19-day fasting period with breakfast and lunch. I am not too steadfast about skipping dinner now when my family forces me, I do give in and share the meal with them.

My final thoughts about it

Having done up to a 3-day fast I feel confident that I can do it as needed, I am not thinking about doing a 3-day or a 7-day fast. Maybe if my weight gets out of hand again, I may try that to get the body back into submission. Would I do it again, absolutely? I feel that the positives I got out of it were feeling more energy in my body, a more active brain and weight loss was the icing on the cake. I have scaled back on my runs due to the pain in my knees and rely more on the fasting schedule. I want to verify the final thing which is my health parameters. I have that scheduled for later in the year so must wait for it, my fingers are crossed.