Corona Lock down Diaries – Intermittent fasting and calorie deficit.

The ongoing saga of the right old state our doors were in…

I know were not still strictly locked down but I figured I’d carry on with this anyway. Last post I wrote on this is here if you want to catch up first.

So after 2 months I about 16kg/35 Lbs down. Roughly back where I was when I last did the Whole30 thing, so whilst a real boost it is rather annoying that I have just lost weight I already lost previously and then put back on. But if you’ve ever been overweight then you will be familiar with this cycle. Losing it can be easy but maintaining it often seems to be the difficult part.

This time round I have tried calorie deficit combined with intermittent fasting. I really like cooking, and I love eating and I just don’t think it is possible for me to not enjoy the things I love to eat so I have endeavoured to simply have what I want – just less of it. Looking at a calorie deficit of around 500 and you’ll lose about one pound a week, but I have probably ran a little more than that and I do tend to lose weight really fast when I start getting things under control. Apart from the last week where I have pretty much maintained my weight because I could not stop eating bourbon biscuits and jammy dodgers! I have a real problem with them…

So in addition to the calorie deficit I started intermittent fasting and broadly eat in a 5 hour window between noon and 5pm. This really helps me to focus and helps me with the discipline I usually do not have. I know there are all sorts of actual benefits of intermittent fasting and there are great sites out there that will extoll those but for me – it mostly stops me eating about 11 meals a day at all hours. Simple really.

To help me keep track of what I am doing I use two apps each day. Fastic helps me to track my fasting hours and I use MyFitnessPal to track my calorie intake. The former does have the ability to track calories but I prefer the latter as it has all the foods from most stores in its database so I can be more accurate with it.

There have been hiccups and blips along the way, and I have struggled at times like you do when youre trying to fix something that has been a problem your whole life but this time I do feel different about what I am trying to achieve. Perhaps it is because I am 50 next year and know I cannot carry on like I have been. That pending sense of mortality can be a real awakener.

Oh there is one more thing I have been doing. Drinking a lot of water. I have a glass that takes 500ML and drink about 6 of these a day. There are studies out there that show drinking more water helps with weight loss and it does seem to have helped me – perhaps I just feel fuller I don’t know -there will be science to it. Mostly though it just feels like a useful part of the routine I am developing.

The one thing I haven’t really done yet is exercise. I’ve barely been out during the last 4 months and my step counter on my watch struggles to get to 5000 most days. I will be remedying that though over the next few weeks when our building project completes. We’ve put in a small home gym and I will have a cross trainer, static bike, treadmill and rowing machine.

So there you go, you’re up to speed with what I have been doing on that front. Here’s my head 2 months apart and some of the food I have been making…

Author: Michael

Husband, dad,(ex)programmer, comic collector and proud Yorkshireman. I have no idea why im here or why im writing but i rather enjoy it. no great fan of punctuation;

18 thoughts on “Corona Lock down Diaries – Intermittent fasting and calorie deficit.”

  2. That has been one of the most difficult things for me I have 2 teenage boys who love to eat and my wife is vegetarian so some days I have to make 3 different meals and every 1 of them needs to be tasted and checked that it’s not pousoned and and sampled for deliciousness

    Liked by 1 person

  9. If all this good-looking food was being prepared by me and eaten by me, I’d have to give up trying to diet too. I agree with you Michael that having smaller portions that taste like something is better, because if all you’ve got to look forward to is bland, tasteless food – what purpose does that serve? My mom had a good friend and she constantly was into the yo-yo dieting … we’d go to visit her about once a year during one of our visits to Canada, and we would wonder as we pulled into the driveway what size Mrs. Gibbs would be this time? She said she had two wardrobes for her fluctating weight and that was before the expression “fat pants” was in vogue. Over the course of many years of dieting, her face sagged and she had so many wrinkles she looked like a Shar-Pei. 🙂

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  13. Yes, and all those little tastes here and there added up as she was cooking for a large family. I used to be a big sweet eater, but since I don’t bake or make sweets, if I don’t buy them, they are not here to tempt me. I think a lot has to do with the smell too because I could not turn down a freshly baked cookie or brownie – the smell would drive me to consume an entire plateful of them – no holds barred!

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  16. Bro I feel you on the Yo-Yo’ing weight… I was down to 250 ish last year, put on weight over the winter that I’m not working hard to lose again… It’s a war, with battles that we win and lose a long the way…
    Food is amazing and I love to cook, as does my boyfriend (he ought to, he’s a chef and damn good at it)… I’m also doing the intermittent fasting and I drink about a Gallon or more (not sure at this time what that is in liters or ml sorry my brain is dumb, just got back from a 5 mile walk) a day and typically try to eat between noon and 7p (I can’t always guarantee when I’ll have dinner on any given day, but I know I wont’ eat after 7:30).
    You look great! As does your food 🙂 Keep it up 🙂

    Like

  18. Cheers! Sounds like were on A similar journey! Never understood gallons ill be honest. I think a gallon equals 97 hamsters which equates to 28 shoes and thats equivalent to 2 skateboards which is roughly 5 litres…so a good 6 squirrels more than my 3 litres.

    Liked by 1 person

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