Intermittent Fasting for Slackers
By: Michele Gill
Tags: Work From Home, Weight Loss, Diet, Intermittent Fasting, Pandemic

Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash

I love to eat. I like the way food fills me, comforts me, grounds me. When I’m hungry, I feel lighter than air, and I can’t seem to focus. When full, I’m so grounded I sink into myself; I can finally be still and relax.

I also don’t have much time. I work full-time, am a mom to two boys, and have significant community obligations. Plus, I spend time with my widowed mom, go to church, and keep the household running. I barely have time for a walk most days, and I plop into bed bleary-eyed around 10 pm or whenever I can peel my fingers from my smartphone.

Given both these facts, I’ve given up on more diets than I can remember. Weight Watchers, veganism, plant-based, Paleo, calorie counting, intuitive eating, celebrity best-seller diets, no sugar, Overeaters Anonymous, nutrition coaching, health coaching, detoxing…none has made much dent against the encroaching weight gain that started accelerating in my mid 40s. In desperation, I tried 5:2 intermittent fasting, and I began to lose a little weight. But it was unsustainable for me. Two days per week, I was supposed to eat only 500 calories. That’s just not much food for an Italian food-lover! For the first week or two, I was fine, but then I began to dread Tuesdays and Fridays, the fasting days. I’d be grumpy with my kids and husband and short of attention at work. I finally gave up fasting altogether because I valued my family and well-being over losing a few more pounds. I bought larger clothes and tried to find peace with my larger-sized body.

But when COVID-19 arrived, and I was cooped up on Zoom for 8–10 hours a day, the pounds started adding up faster on the scale. I didn’t want to buy more clothes, and I was feeling uncomfortable in my body, so I knew I had to do something. I had recently read about a mild version of Intermittent Fasting that Lesley Jane Seymour of CoveyClub posted about in her blog. She said that she began stopping eating after dinner and not eating again until she did some kind of movement in the morning. I don’t even think she called it intermittent fasting. She ate normally otherwise and didn’t give up any of her favorite foods. I do remember that she said it helped her shed some stubborn pounds. Well, this plan sounded simple enough to me — no complicated counting or schedules or apps or additional Zoom meetings, and I still got to eat as much as I wanted as long as I did some kind of morning movement.

I resolved to stop eating after dinner and not eat again until after I took a short morning walk. Being me and trying to find the easy way to do this (hence the “slackers” in the title), I decided I only had to walk a few blocks to “earn” my breakfast. I wanted to find something so simple that I wouldn’t have an excuse not to do it. Otherwise, I kept my meals the same. Instead of eating a snack or dessert later in the evening, I just added it to my evening meal. When I felt like I was missing out at night, I’d have a cup of herbal tea. Not super satisfying, but it did allow me to give myself something when my husband was fixing a late night snack or the boys were eating popcorn with a Netflix movie.

Within a few weeks, I noticed I had lost a pound. A month or so later, it was another pound. I hadn’t been able to consistently lose weight in years, so this was amazing progress to me. I kept at it, and after a few more pounds, my weight stabilized. I allowed myself breaks for holidays and weekends, and I didn’t restrict what I was eating. If I’m too strict about what I can and cannot eat, I get rebellious and then eat all the things.

So far, this way of eating has been sustainable. It feels much less intense than “real” intermittent fasting as I can eat breakfast as soon as I do my morning walk. And I don’t have to give up dinner with my family. Nor do I have to do it every single day. I am more lax on the weekends, allowing a late night drink or snack and an early morning breakfast with the boys most Saturdays. By Sunday night, I’m back to stopping the eating train after dinner.

This is working for me with much less pain and suffering than other programs, and it seems like something I can continue doing. Am I thin? Nope, but my BMI no longer teeters on the edge of being overweight. Could what I eat be improved? For sure. I still eat junk food and not enough veggies, but I’m doing what I can to survive working from home and parenting two boys during a pandemic. I know there are folks with a lot more serious issues than weight gain during the pandemic, but I’m a big believer in the serenity prayer — focusing on what I CAN do and letting go of that which is outside my control. I can control, to some degree, my food intake, and I’m a nicer person when I’m neither starving nor overfed. I’m grateful that I’ve lost some of my COVID-belly and am healthy enough to have energy to play with the kids at night after work. Losing weight hasn’t solved our problems, the pandemic still rages, work is still difficult, my kids are still struggling, but it’s nice to feel a bit better in my body, and so I’ll take the small win, and dessert too.