I love reading about and listening to podcasts that talk about healthy lifestyle, especially as it concerns food, exercise, and sleep.
So, sometime in July 2023, I was listening to a podcast by a cardiologist, Dr Pradip Jamnadas, that frequently discusses intermittent fasting and healthy lifestyle. In fact, that was the first time I heard about fasting as tool for a good health outside the normal religious obligation to fast.
Before now, I could barely fast for 18 hours for the two I’m obligated to fast during Lent. I was the type that love snacking in-between meals, especially, on chewing gum. I didn’t gain weight while in Nigeria because I was mainly snacking on chewing gums.
However, after relocating to another country where my favorite pastries and chocolates are all over the place and quite enticing, I gained 10 kg in four months because of my frequent indulgence in these foods.
I also developed frequent pain in my ankles due may be to the extra weight I had gain. Four months into the weight gain era, the ankle pain became quite unbearable that I decided to lose some weight. I gave myself one year to shed off the 10 kg I had gained, though I had no idea how that would happen due to the severe ankle pain I had developed.
Fast forward to this day in July 2023 when I heard about intermittent fasting on a podcast as an effective tool to lose weight and achieve other health benefits. The cardiologist was advocating in the podcast for people to stop eating frequently and fast in-between their meals to become metabolically healthy and lose weight.
He mentioned that with a regular intermittent fasting of 16:8, and occasional 24 and 36+ hours people can achieve different health benefits including weight loss, healthy gut, insulin sensitivity, possible reversal of type 2 diabetes, and improvement in chronic inflammation and pain. Doubtfully, knowing my weakness, I couldn’t fathom how to go for those long hours without eating or snacking.
However, the doctor admitted that it would be very difficult, if not impossible for a person who has been engrossed in eating a lot of processed and packaged drinks and foods, filled with sugar, refined vegetable oils and white flour, to embark on intermittent fasting.
So, he advised newbies in intermittent fasting to begin by quitting processed foods and drinks and eat only whole foods rich in proteins and healthy fats, with little carbohydrates.
Two months later, in September 2023, I mustered the courage to take off on a journey of a lifestyle change. First, I stopped buying processed foods/drinks and highly refined seed oils. I take those foods and foods cooked in those oils occasionally. Next, I increased my protein intake and reduced my carbs. Finally, I started the easiest intermittent fasting of 16-hours fasting and 8-hours eating cycles and followed this up with a 72 hour fast after few weeks of adapting to the new lifestyle.
Interestingly, three months into my intermittent fasting and healthy lifestyle journey, I lost 6 kg and the pain in my ankle stopped, too. When the pain stopped, I started thirty minutes daily in-door exercise, and I lost extra 3 kg.
For me to maintain the new weight, I’m keeping up with my daily exercise and intermittent fasting of 14:10, and I sequence my meal properly by eating fiber first, followed by proteins/fats, and finally carbohydrates to prevent insulin spike which has numerous health implications. Once in a month I do one-meal-a-day fast to gain the health benefits that come with that.
This is the short story of my weight gain and weight loss experiences and the remedies that I used, and I’m still using to lose and maintain a long-term healthy weight. Thank you for reading up to this point.
I thought it wise to share my personal experience to encourage someone that might be struggling with weight related problems.
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