My Story – Or, How Did I Change Into This Fat Person I’m Not?
I was once significantly overweight – this would be about three or four years ago. The weight started to creep up just before I got married. I know, most people lost weight before they get married, but not me! 
Anyway, during the first year of my marriage I put on more weight. And yes, I did try to burn it off! Unfortunately I had developed some really bad eating habits, that meant that my efforts went to waste. Nothing seemed to have any impact and I was getting frustrated. I had to buy a new wardrobe consisting of empire line tunics and “flattering” tops. Ugh. (I will upload an old picture of me on my about page soon – then you’ll know what I’m talking about!)
Those who think fat people are fat because they’re lazy are so wrong. I started trying everything. But constrictive diets never worked and exercising just wasn’t having an effect.
I started to consider those pills that attract fat like a magnet – the ads made them seem so attractive! Thankfully I managed to stay sane. A bit of research online helped me jump-start my fitness.
Losing Weight Fast
Visitors to my blog generally want to lose weight fast. If you’ve been overweight for a while and nothing seems to be working, you start to get desperate. You know that all those weight loss shots and pills don’t really work, but you start to wonder if there’s something out there that might help a bit.
For most people who are at a normal weight, recommendations like “eat healthy” or “eat fewer fats” work. Most of the diets out there don’t help you to lost more than a pound or so each week; exercising just burns a pound or so in a month. If you’ve got a significant amount of weight to lose, then this is no help! It’s frustrating to be on a tough diet every day or so, only to see no change in how you look.
How do I know all this? I’ve been there.
My first weight loss success!
My first weight loss success came about through a juice diet. You can read more about it here: juice diets for quick weight loss.
I wasn’t able to stick to that juice diet too long – I lasted almost four days only! I think I would have stuck with it for a bit longer if I had some protein powder to make protein shakes with; I was getting worried that I wasn’t having enough protein.
A juice diet is not really something I would recommend but it really helped me to start feeling more cheerful about my options. I realized that dieting really did work. Prior to this, diets were just things that didn’t work, and I was embarrassed to tell anyone I was dieting.
I decided that instead of trying to lose weight by exercising, which had not been working for me, I would start off by dieting. I know – the ideal would be to do both at once. But if you’ve been in the same boat as me, you know that’s just not practical.
The diet that really worked
Once I lost weight with my juice fast, I started visiting a lot of fitness blogs. I was always interested in personal development and growth and one of my favorite blogs is Zen Habits by Leo Babuata. I was interested to hear him mention intermittent fasting as something that helped him lose weight and he linked to a great blog (Fitness Black Book) that talked about intermittent fasting.
The more I read about intermittent fasting, the more I like what I was hearing. People on Rusty’s blog were commenting about how much weight they’d lost doing it, how much more energy they had, etc. I decided that I would try it too!
Intermittent Fasting: What is It and How Does It Work?
To fast is to not have food and/or drink during a certain time. Intermittent fasting is just fasting at certain times.
Now, most people are instantly worried by the idea of fasting and think that it might be unhealthy. But that’s not true. Certain religions prescribe fasts, and growing up in a fairly religious family, I did a bit of fasting when I was younger. So I knew that it would be ok for me to fast. But I still looked up certain medical studies on fasting and they all found that fasting was definitely not unhealthy and could infact promote good health.
Intermittent fasting can be done in various ways. For instance, you can have a very late breakfast and a very early dinner – so the amount of time you are without food (at night) is longer. Some people fast for a few days in row.
However, the type of intermittent fasting I opted for is the kind described in the program Eat Stop Eat. Basically, you eat a healthy diet on most days, but two (or three, if you’re really in a hurry – I was!) times a week, you go on a fast. If you’re fasting on Friday, your fast would last from after dinner on Thursday to before dinner on Friday. During the fast you can have sugar-free drinks like water, black tea and/or coffee and I think diet soda drinks are allowed, but I didn’t have any.
My experience with this kind of fasting was pretty good overall. I’ll write more about my experience of Eat Stop Eat, since that was really the program I followed. (Update: you can read about it here.)
And you are probably wondering about what my “healthy diet” consisted of. I’ll do a detailed post on this soon, because I can feel that this post is getting too long!
Exercising For Weight Loss
Whooo! Exercise!!
Yeah ok that sounded too enthusiastic but after I started working out regularly I really started to love it! I used to work out just before lunch but I would look forward to my exercise all morning and now I try to do it first thing in the morning. I’ve read a lot about the benefits of fasted workouts, and I’m not too particular about whether I eat before exercise or not.
When I was on the Eat Stop Eat diet and desperately trying to lose weight, I’d do a bit of the turbulence training weight training exercises. They take about 6-10 minutes to do and they made me really shape and tone up.
I have to credit Turbulence Training with really helping me lose weight.
The crazy thing about that workout (at least for me) was that it got me looking really shapely and fit crazy quick! I mean, I took my time to lose weight, but my waist got thinner and my physique improved – as I mentioned in my review, just a week after I started, a girlfriend’s husband thought I had been going to the gym for a while! I know you can’t “spot reduce” and you might not enjoy the same effect, but proper workouts made me look a lot better and I’ll admit that I’m a bit vain 
Unfortunately now I’ve become a bit lazy, so I just do these once in a while to stay fit … plus, I just realized that one of my favorite fitness bloggers, Rusty, has just released a women’s fitness program and I want to start that. I have a lot of respect for Rusty, and this product has gotten a lot of raves. He does have a lot of free information on his blog that helped me and helped me stay motivated when I was starting out, but unfortunately most of that info is catered to guys. Thankfully he has finally listed to his women readers, and now he’s released this… so with any luck, I’ll be starting the program in a few days! Update: You can read my review of this program here.
Anyway, that’s the bulk of what I’m going to write in this post. I’m off to write a post detailing what I eat on my non-fast days, and another reviewing the Eat Stop Eat diet… I think this post has already gotten too long!
Remember to leave a comment for me! I love hearing from readers and let me know if you agree or disagree with me and if you have any questions you’d like me to answer!
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