What intermittent fasting has taught me about my relationship with food

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Well, I'm 20 days into my intermittent fasting journey and I've learned a lot about myself and the struggle to find a healthy relationship with food.

Currently, I'm down 14 pounds and holding steady. I'm 65 miles into my 100-mile challenge.

I'm going to try shortening my "eating window" down to six or seven hours a day and see how that works. I'm also working on a few tweaks with my food and recording what I ate and how it made me feel.

For me, intermittent fasting has required a great deal of discipline. I've become very aware of my tendency to eat on impulse during this period. I can't even imagine the number of excess calories I've eaten due to impulse alone.

I've never considered myself an "emotional eater" until I started practicing intermittent fasting. After one long night at work, I wanted nothing more than to come home and eat some sort of large quantity of junk food. But, nope. I had set a challenge for myself and I was sticking to it.

So, instead of eating pizza rolls, I drank some chamomile tea and went to bed.

I've found myself in a number of other situations where I felt I just had to eat something really unhealthy in order to somehow relieve stress or make me feel better emotionally. The truth is, I was using food as a form of "self-medication" for whatever stress was going on in my life.

Honestly, looking back on the two and a half years and 25 pounds I've gained, I can conclude that I basically ate my emotions and slacked on my fitness until I had backed myself into a corner of destructive habits.

I'm not saying you can't have brownies after a long day, but what I am saying is that turning to unhealthy food as a pseudo-solution to stress isn't the best choice. I'm no therapist, but I know what eating my emotions has done to my health and my self-esteem.

Looking forward, I plan to incorporate intermittent fasting into my everyday life. Since starting my job working at night, I've struggled to find the appropriate time to eat. Now, I feel like I have a healthy time frame established. Overall, I feel loads better, my digestion is better and my quality of sleep has improved.

I'm trying to incorporate more protein and more nutrient-dense foods into my diet. I'll try to update this more often. (I'm sorry I haven't posted daily--life is crazy). I also plan to do another weigh-in next week.

Do people care about "what I eat in a day" blogs? Would that be something you were interested in? If you made it this far and have opinions on this, please post your suggestions below.

Comments

  1. Rachel ByrneOctober 7, 2021 at 6:59 AM

    I like your experience which you have shared here with us. I want to read for Upalis Melbourne, please share for it. Foodies will wait for you. Keep it up.

    ReplyDelete

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