Last Day of 19/5 Fast
Today is the last day of two weeks on the 19/5 fasting schedule. We found it much harder than the 23/25 schedule we were following for the preceding two months, and yet Isabel gained weight and I only lost a little. By the end of our two week experiment with this schedule I was exhausted by the end of the day, and ended up sleeping 10 hours a night instead of our usual 8.
We weighed ourselves today. Isabel started this fast at 61.3 kilos two weeks ago, then one week ago she was up to 62.7 kilos, and now today she weighs 62.8. Two weeks ago I weighed 96.9 kilos, and one week ago I was down to 96.0, today I weigh 96.2 kilos. In our first two months on the 23/25 diet Isabel lost 2.5 kilos and I lost 2.2 kilos. Two weeks on this 19/5 diet Isabel gained 1.5 kilos and I lost 0.7 kilo.
We were really expecting better results on the weight-loss from this diet, since we felt hungry and weak so much of the time. We ate normal sized dinners at the start of each five-hour eating window, but less food than we normally would have later in the day, since by the end of the five hours we were not yet hungry again. We felt some pressure to eat anyhow, just because we knew we would be awfully hungry later on — that seems to me a very bad habit to get into (eating when you are not really hungry). Still, I’m sure we had a lot less total food than under the other schedule.
Most diets work at first, then as your body adjusts you either plateau or bounce-back. It may be that our two months on the longer (but less frequent) fasts had us positioned for a bounce-back when we switched to this schedule. In fact, that expectation was one of the driving motivations for changing our diet — in the hope of avoiding any bounce-back. Apparently it didn’t work at all for Isabel, and only slightly for me. Tomorrow we will go back to the 23/25 schedule for it’s health benefits, and see if our weight is affected either way.
