I have been trying to lose weight for the last nine months without much success. From July 2019 until January of this year, I lost 30 pounds, but it wasn’t a healthy way to lose weight.
I lost weight quickly at the end of 2019 because I let my diabetes get out of control. As 2019 came to an end, I hadn’t checked my blood sugar levels in over four months, and I was eating whatever I wanted until it put my body in a crisis. In January 2020, I went to my doctor and found out that my diabetes was out of control, and I was on my way to becoming someone who was going to start needing to take insulin. That day at the doctor’s office, I had a blood sugar of 450, and my A1C was 14. I was told that when you have incredibly high blood sugar, your body goes into a crisis mode, and one way of getting your attention is a rapid weight loss. Well, it now had my attention. I quickly moved to a low glycemic diet and started walking 10,000 steps per day. Within 90 days, I had lowered my average blood sugar to 150 and my A1C to just over 8, but I only lost 2 pounds. I wanted to find a way to not only control my blood sugar but also to lose weight. One day someone told me to look into intermittent fasting.
Thirty days ago, I decided to try intermittent fasting to help with my weight loss and diabetes control.
I didn’t know a lot about intermittent fasting, so I did a lot of searching on google and watched a lot of YouTube videos. This was when I discovered Dr. Jason Fung. Dr. Fung is a Canadian doctor who many consider the leading authority on intermittent fasting and its effects on weight loss and diabetes. There are a lot of videos featuring Dr. Fung. If you are interested in learning the science behind intermittent fasting, I will encourage you to look for videos featuring him.
What is intermittent fasting? Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern in which your body is either in a stage of eating or a stage of fasting. There are many popular intermittent fasting cycles. Some of the most popular are 16:8 in which you fast for 16 hours and eat during an 8-hour window. Others include 20:4, which is similar to 16:8, and 24 hour fast periods, 36 hour fast periods, and multiple days of fasting.
What are the benefits of intermittent fasting? The benefits include lower insulin and blood sugar levels. Increased fat burning and weight loss. Improved mental clarity and concentration. Increased energy. And for me, the most critical is the possible reversal of type 2 diabetes.
As a person with type 2 diabetes, what appeals to me is lower insulin and blood sugar levels and possible reversal of diabetes. How could that be possible? The science says that type 2 diabetes is when the body has a problem processing sugar and may have even developed insulin resistance. Dr. Fung does a great job of comparing the body to an empty glass. I am going to try to paraphrase Dr. Fung, but if you have a chance, look him up. Now, imagine that your body was a glass, and you kept pouring sugar in without stopping. Eventually, that glass would overflow unless you found a way to stop filling the glass or, better yet, found a way to empty the glass. In a healthy body, insulin would represent a lid that you would put on the glass that would keep the sugar from building up, but if you have insulin resistance from type 2 diabetes, it would be like your lid was filled with holes and sugar kept pouring in and filling up the glass—eventually overflowing the glass. When we continually eat all day, we are just filling up the glass more and more without giving it a break and letting it overflow. When you fast intermittently, you are limiting how often you eat. By doing this, you make the cup stop filling and make it even start to empty. For a person with diabetes, this creates lower blood sugar levels and allows your body to start using up the sugar that is already in your blood and allows you to start losing weight. Yes! Losing weight is a good thing for type 2 diabetics.
What I learned:
- I liked to have a 6:00 PM cutoff. This was ideal for me because it allowed me to be able to break my fast around 10:00 AM and be able to have breakfast.
- It got more natural over time. The first week was my hardest as my body adjusted. As time went on, I found it more comfortable and easier to go 16 hours and even to push my fast to 18 hours and beyond.
- I became better hydrated. I found that when I wanted to eat during my fasting periods that I could make that desire go away by drinking a glass or two of water. The side effect of this was better hydration. I noticed my urine go from a yellowish color to almost clear during these 30 days due to all the water I was drinking.
- Late at night was the hardest time to fast. For me, I noticed that after 11:00 PM, I wanted to eat. Part of that may have been habitual since I tended to be a late-night snacker. This is the time of the day that I used to like to have my “fourth meal” of the day, and I would indulge in a big snack or sometimes even an extra full meal.
- I found myself with more energy, not less. Going into this, I thought that by not eating, I would be lethargic, but the opposite happened. I ended up waking up with more energy and ready to start my day. In fact, I was waking up even earlier than before and not feeling as tired throughout the day.
Now, onto my results. When I started intermittent fasting, my 30-day blood sugar level average was 145, and I would usually test anywhere from 125 to 175. That morning I had what I considered to be a good blood sugar level of 126. After 30 days, my blood sugar level in the morning was 89. That was a 37 point drop, and my seven-day average was 99. That is a change from the 30-day average before intermittent fasting of 145. My average was 46 points lower. Lastly, you want to know if I lost weight. Yes! I started at a weight of 295.4, and this morning I weighed in at 284.6. That is a 10.8-pound weight loss. Let’s just round that up and say that I lost 11 pounds. That is great. Over the previous 90 days, I had only lost 2 pounds.
I am delighted with my results from intermittent fasting, and I am going to continue for another 30 days. So keep checking back to see my progress.