coconut oil weekly weight tally-week 1

3/22/10 177.4 (start)

3/24/10 177.0 (down .4 lbs)

3/25/10 176.4 (down .6 lbs)

3/26/10 175.4 (down 1 lb)

3/27/10 174.6 (down .8 lbs)

caustiously optimistic

It looks like I'm dropping anywhere from .4 lbs. to 1 lb. a day so far. Yesterday I was 175.4 and today I am 174.6. I weighed last night and I was 175.0 after being 175.4 in the am. OK, that NEVER happens to me-weighing *less* at night after eating all day. It definitely seems like something miraculous is going on here:) I didn't exercise again yesterday. I only had a small amount of time and had to pick between art and exercise...so naturally, I chose art. I sure hope this weight loss continues. Only time will tell if I've finally found the answer. I'm cautiously optimistic. It certainly seems that something different is happening. I feel like I'm doing better than when I ate every other day (alternate day fasting). High metabolism may explain why my husband eats the most fattening stuff he can get his hands on and never gains. I think our bodies need fat too. Not the trans/hydrogenated crap that is in packaged junk food and fast food, but good healthy fats like coconut oil. I did try to eat fats before following Sally Fallon type eating for awhile because it totally made sense. I didn't really lose weight, but now I think the missing link was the thyroid boosting coconut oil and thyroid supplement. Still not sure which one is doing the most or if it's both of them working together. All I know is that I have high hopes of being able to eat like a normal person and not gain 10 extra lbs. every decade.

Coconut Oil!!

Well, I've come to the conclusion that fasting slows my metabolism. I know it works for some people, but I've come to believe that I have an under active thyroid aka hypothyroidism. I have so many of the symptoms. I had my doctor test me and my results came back "normal"***...whatever that means. Well, it means they aren't going to help me and I will have to help myself-same old Western medicine story. That's how I came back to coconut oil. I've known about coconut oil for years. I love it and use it for oil pulling and it's many topical healing properties. I knew it was supposed to help with weight loss but was afraid to start eating 3 tbsp. of oil a day. I just didn't trust that I wouldn't gain weight. After hitting a wall with fasting-it seems like my body just adjusted to the less food and my weight started going up (slowed metabolism), I decided to stop before I was never able to eat again. After quitting fasting and resuming normal eating, my weight bounced up to 177.4. That was horribly depressing and I had fears of my weight climbing out of control to an all time high of 180 or more! I had to find a way that I could eat normally and at least not gain. Here's how my weight looks after starting coconut oil 3x a day:

(I am 5'6")
start (after giving up fasting) 3/22/10 177.4
3/24/10 177.0 (down .4 lbs.)
3/25/10 176.4 (down .6 lbs.)
3/26/10 175.4 (down 1 lb.:) **weird thing here is that I ate salt the night before (sea salt on my popcorn) and I didn't exercise that day...

2 lbs. in 4 days...not bad. Not sure if it's just a fluke or if it will continue. It seems like every time I try something new, I will lose a few lbs. and then it levels off. I guess only time will tell. I have also added 60-90 minutes of biking 3-5 days a week and a thyroid supplement called Thyroid Strength that is supposed to support your thyroid-that could be helping too.

I actually like the coconut oil, so it's not that hard to fit in. In fact, it seems like my body was craving fats because I crave buttered toast etc. I love being able to have fat on my food. In the am I have whole wheat toast with 1 tbsp. coconut oil and 1 tbsp. all natural peanut butter. A little oily, but very satisfying. The coconut oil keeps hunger at bay. Last night I had popcorn with 1 tbsp. of melted coconut oil and sea salt. Pretty good and I actually lost weight the next day-even after the salt!

***I have read that people's thyroid tests come back "normal" even if they are only functioning at 30%. So, people are told their thyroids are fine and are left to suffer with their symptoms.

I heart Kale

I found a way to cook Kale that has made it my new favorite vegetable. I bought some to try and get some leafy greens in my diet besides romaine lettuce. I cut it up, sprinkle olive oil on it and then bake it @ 425 for about 10 minutes, enough to make it a little crunchy but not wilt it. It's really good. It tastes like broccoli but better. I'm so thrilled to have found a way to make Kale delicious because it's has so many health and beauty benefits and is full of nutrition.

Crappy St. Patrick's Day

I feel like crap today:( It never helps how I feel when my weight goes up but it's just an all around feeling of crappiness. I tried to do some art and it was just frustrating-nothing turned out right. I should know better than to try to do artwork when I'm in a bad mood. Some people think that's an outlet...I think it's a recipe for homicide (only kidding;). Hoping writing this out will get this off of my chest and make me feel better. So far...no. Today's a fasting day, it's 4:30 and I'm hungry. That's not why I'm in a bad mood, but it probably isn't helping. I have one more rant to get off of my chest. I HATE FACEBOOK!! Ahhh, that does feel better. I can't tell you how many times I have almost just deleted my fb page. Oh, life before facebook-I miss you. Oh wait, I do feel a little bit better now:)

Official Weigh-In~Week Two

Last weigh in 3/8/10: 172.0
Today's weight 10/17/10: 173.8

So, I'm up 1.8 lbs. :(


I'm kind of freaked out that IF isn't going to work for me now but my other thought is that weight is a funny/cruel thing and that it will bounce around. I know sometimes it takes a long time for losses to show up on the scale. That's kind of what I was expecting in the beginning-slow losses and not much to show up on the scale but then I got down to 171.8 and felt like I was making such progress that it's hard to watch it go back up. Hopefully it's just temporary. It seems like that happens to me a lot. I try something and the first week my weight goes down only to rebound and go back up. I'm not sure if it would go back down because I usually freak out and give up. This time I'm going to stick with it and give it a chance because I believe in IF. I'm getting used to my IF schedule and most of the time it's pretty easy. This kind of setback really brings out the fear in me that nothing will ever work but I'm going to try to keep going and be patient. Maybe I should only weigh once a month? I will think about it. I did do a couple things that might have gotten me off track. Last weekend I switched weekend days around. It should have been eat Saturday and fast Sunday but I wanted to be able to eat with my family Sunday and so I switched the days. That means I had two eating days in a row. I also ate during my fasting period one day. Not much, it was like a couple of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. I don't usually do that but it's life, sometimes it's gonna happen. I hope this doesn't mean I have to give up my half and half. I'll wait and see what happens.

Seventeen Magazine Recipes

I'm at the library waiting for some downloads to finish on my computer. I was reading Seventeen Magazine because it was within arms reach. Wow, pretty interesting. Maybe I have the mentality of a seventeen year old. I found a couple of things I wanted to write down but don't have a pen and don't want to leave my laptop unattended while I go find one, so I'll write it here:)

1. Tropical Drinks

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups pomegranate juice
3 cups lemonade
1 cup seltzer water
4 lemon wedges

preparation:
Pour pomegranate juice into an ice cube tray and freeze overnight. Put three or four pomegranate ice cubes in each glass. Pour lemonade over ice cubes and top with seltzer water. Add lemon wedges to garnish.

Wish you could see the picture. Looks really good. I must be thirsty:)


The second thing is for some homemade hair scrunching spray. I love homemade chemical-free stuff, so I'd like to try it out.

2. Get Beachy Hair Scrunch Spray:

2 tbsp. ground sea salt
8 oz. water
1/2 tsp. scented conditioner
+ spray bottle

Ok, this sounds fun too-Play wet Twister. LOL

Food Log~week two

3/8/10~fasting day
coffee with organic half and half*

6pm dinner
wild Alaskan cod baked with a dab of butter
tartar sauce
homemade mashed potatoes made with butter and low fat milk
grilled veggies with olive oil: carrots, potatoes and broccoli
blood orange Italian soda
1/2 pint org. strawberries with whipping cream
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

evening snack
Trader Joe's blistered peanuts
Wallaby org. yogurt
org. strawberries with whipping cream
****************************************************************************************
3/9/10~eating day

coffee with org. half and half

lunch
leftover wild Alaskan cod
tartar sauce
1 Wallaby org. yogurt
1 iced tall nonfat latte @ Starbucks
1 pumpkin bread @ Starbucks
1 mini sparkle donut @ Starbucks

dinner
wild Alaskan cod (what else??)
tartar sauce
Reese's Peanut Butter cups
1 Wallaby org. yogurt
1 org. Fuji apple

after 6 pm
decaf green tea
**************************************************************************************
3/10/10~fasting day

coffee with organic half and half*


6pm
1 wild Alaskan cod fillet baked with a dab of butter
8 organic tater tots
1/2 Trader Joe's chicken Caesar salad with 1/2 the dressing
1 Pepsi
3 Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

(I really wanted homemade mashed potatoes, but we were out of potatoes so I made tater tots. I usually like them, but didn't like them so much tonight.)

evening snack
Pepsi
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
blistered Trader Joe's peanuts
1 organic Wallaby yogurt
1 organic Pink Lady apple
*******************************************************************************
3/11/10~eating day

coffee with organic half and half*

lunch
1 wallaby org. yogurt
Twix, Peppermint Patties
grilled pita with cheese and butter
1 Juice Squeeze drink

dinner
wild Alaskan cod
tartar sauce
grilled veggies in olive oil: carrots, potatoes, corn
homemade mashed potatoes
couple sips Pepsi
1 organic Fuji apple

after 6pm
decaf green tea
***************************************************************************************
3/12/10

coffee with organic half and half*

6pm


*during the fasting period of the Alternate Day Diet people are allowed 500 calories and are believed to still get the benefits of fasting. With this in mind I tried having cream in my coffee. I only have about 120-240 calories worth. So, far I am losing weight even though I am having the cream in my coffee during my fasting period. Hopefully it will stay that way.

fasting day-weight down

Today on my fasting day I weighed 171.6. I was pretty excited about this because I haven't seen that weight for a few months (not since my weight had started to creep up again this winter). My weight went down in spite of the fact that I feared I had eaten too much the day before. I hadn't stuffed myself but I was worried that if I ate a little too much that it would slow or stop my weight loss. I can't wait to see my weight drop below 170 to 169. Only 2.6 lbs. to go.

To make things easier I'm going to call:

the day I fast until 6pm=my *fasting* day
and
the day I eat until 6pm and then fast after 6pm=my *eating* day

My fasting day today seemed pretty painless-except for that near charlie horse. I tend to get crampy legs when losing weight. I will have to make sure I take a multi-vitamin/mineral. I like ALIVE whole food supplements but I'm out right now, so maybe I can take some Emergen-C. I think I'm really getting the hang of this.

Official Weigh-In~Week One

Starting weight 3/1/10: 175.6

Today's weight 3/8/10: 172.0

I weighed today at 3:30 on my fasting until 6pm day. Yay! That's a loss of 3.6 lbs in one week.

Feeling Hungry

It's a little after 3pm on a fasting until 6pm day. The hunger is kicking in! I am ready to eat NOW, but I still have three more hours to go. I'll just try to keep busy until 5pm and then I start preparing dinner. I've read that real hunger is felt in the throat and not the stomach anyway. It was said that the rumbling in the stomach, that we believe to be hunger, is really withdrawal from addictive foods. Interesting stuff. I'll try to find the article or an article on that and put the link under "great info". I remember as a kid, that sometimes I would go without eating for so long that I would have "pain" in my throat from being so hungry. I could barely swallow when I did finally eat. Maybe that was true hunger.

No Yo Yo

I think I'm getting into the groove of this. Today is a fasting until 6pm day and I feel fine, not hungry or wanting food at all. Granted I am having cream in my coffee. I am starting to fear that it will have to be pried out of my cold dead hands. Cream in my coffee makes my fasting day so enjoyable. If I continue to see progress, I don't think I will give it up. I have something coming up in April that I would like to lose weight for. That doesn't give me much time. I'd like to be down a lot more than the 5 lbs. more I'm expecting to have lost by then. Patience is the hardest part about losing weight, I think. I just want 20 lbs. gone NOW. I am at 172-173 now and I want to be at 145-155. I would be pretty happy at 155 lbs. and 145 would be ideal or maybe even too thin for me. I start to feel uncomfortable when I get too thin-I guess I don't have to worry about becoming anorexic. So, it looks like I need to lose about 18-28 lbs not counting the 3 I've lost so far. Maybe it's time to start adding exercise. My first small weight loss goal that would really make me happy is to get under 170 lbs. My ultimate goal is to get and stay at a weight I look and feel good at. No more yo yo dieting.

Dinner @ 6pm

Tonight I think I'll have baked fish, mashed potatoes and grilled vegetables with butter for dinner. That's what I've had for the last few 6pm dinner times, but I love it. I'm getting really into fish. I absolutely love cod. Plain cod baked with a dab of butter=happiness for me. My next favorite is Tilapia. I like it plain & cooked the same way as the cod but I only have breaded Tilapia right now. It's still good, especially with a little (or a lot) of tartar sauce. The breaded Tilapia is 280 calories. When it's not breaded it's around 110 calories + butter. Luckily, I don't have to count calories. I'm a little worried about getting Mercury from all of the fish but the cod is Wild Alaskan Cod. The Tilapia package said "made in China" so that's a little scary.

On my fast until 6pm days, I'll start making dinner around 5:15 so it will be ready by six. Close to 6pm I get kind of jittery, not shaky just like a burst of energy. Maybe it's just all that coffee on an empty stomach.

Less Feast and More Famine

I need less feast and more famine. I think that can be safely said about many people these days. Today I am getting some of my famine in. It's almost 4:00 and I'm on a "fasting until 6pm" day. I feel pretty good. A little hungry but I know I'm going to get to eat at 6:00, so it's not that bad. Some people might think that sounds really rough to fast all the way until 6pm. I used to think so before doing the Alternate Day Diet. Some days on ADD, I would skip my 500 calories and do a water fast. It was almost easier to eat no food than have the 500 calories but it was hard for me to miss out on dinner (my favorite meal) and go to bed hungry. I had a hard time sleeping. I think this IF schedule is nice because you never have to go to bed truly hungry. One night you've gotten dinner and probably a snack or two and the next night you've had your last food at 6pm-so it's not that long before going to bed.

I went out and got some things done today and pretty much forgot that I hadn't eaten. I think this will get easier and easier as it becomes routine.

Perks of IF:
~no counting calories
~eat what you want/like (try to make healthy choices of course)
~can eat at restaurants
~can make a lifestyle

Those are just my observations and the things I like about IF. There are studies that show that intermittent fasting has other health benefits like increased insulin sensitivity, reduced inflammation and reduced risk of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

I will be putting links to articles on IF on the right side of my blog under "great info". One great source of information and encouragement is Our Longevity Diet. That's where I first saw this style of IF. I like how they talk about what they eat and fitting it into their lifestyle etc.

I like dinner so much that on my fasting until 6pm day I have dinner and on my no eating until 6pm day I have lunch and dinner instead of breakfast and lunch. It's just semantics anyway and I've never liked breakfast.

Beginning Weight

I decided to fast after my weight hit 175.6 on 3/1/10. In reality, that was probably just water weight, but my water weight has a tendency to turn into real weight...and I didn't want to wait around for that to happen.

3/1/10 175.6

3/6/10 172.6

I'm in the horrible habit of weighing every day. In my experience, weight will fluctuate on IF, going up after the eating until 6pm day and going down after the fasting until 6pm day (if you weigh before you eat at 6pm). I'll do my official weigh in once a week on a "fasting until 6pm day". I have a feeling weight loss might be slow but at least if I can make this my lifestyle, it will be permanent.

My New Promising IF Schedule

The new schedule I've been trying out for a few days now is a 6pm to 6 pm schedule that goes like this:

day 1: eat until 6pm and then fast
day 2: continue fasting until 6pm in the evening and then eat
day 3: eat until 6pm and then fast
day 4: continue to fast until 6pm in the evening and then eat
day 5: OK, you get the idea

Simple, and more importantly, doable for me. Strangely, I find the eating all day and then fasting after 6pm more of a challenge than the next day of fasting until 6pm and then eating. I think it's because of my emotional eating habit. IF is getting me in touch with the fact that I'm not hungry but want to eat after dinner during those TV snacking hours. Just getting rid of those mindless eating hours should make a dent in my weight, I would think. During the fasting hours you are supposed to only have zero calorie liquids like coffee, tea and water. I have been having half and half in my coffee on my fasting until 6pm day. A little cheat that I plan to give up when I get more used to the schedule. It seems to be working even with the cream in my coffee though. One of the perks of fasting is that food tastes amazing after not eating all day. The first day that I fasted until 6pm, I couldn't believe how great my dinner tasted. I had Tilapia, potatoes and grilled broccoli, carrots and corn in olive oil and I felt like I was eating the best food I'd ever tasted. Ever notice how the more you eat, the less you taste the food? I am also trying to eat whole foods as close to their natural state as possible, superfoods and raw foods. I care about being healthy too, not just losing weight.

What IF this works? :)

I have been searching to the solution to a weight problem for 9 + years. I'm 5'6" and weighed 175.6 the day I decided to go back to intermittent fasting on March 1, 2010. I know some people have a lot more weight to lose, I probably would too-but I've been fighting it every step of the way with limited results. I usually lose most of it due to swimming and eating less during the summer only to gain it all back +some in the winter. It seems like the older I get, the more my weight creeps up. I promised myself I would have this figured out by the time I'm 40. I will turn 40 in August of this year. I hope that I have finally found the solution to my weight problem.

I have experimented with many different forms of intermittent fasting over the years. I like IF, the only problem was finding a schedule that I could stick to for life. I had much success on the Alternate Day Diet, where you eat normally one day and then eat 500 calories the next day-until I would get burned out, usually after about 6 weeks. My down days, as they are called, became down days in ways I didn't expect. I started to dread them and "down day" became more of a description of my mood than of how much I was eating. I began to feel like I was losing quality of life on those days. I did lose 6-10 lbs. on the various times I was able to do it, but just like anything you try and then stop doing, the weight will of course creep back on.

I've tried Fast 5, a form of intermittent fasting where you fast for 19 hours a day and then only eat in a five hour period called a window. It seemed easier in the sense that you got to eat every day. I liked that. I did a 3-8 window for months. I did lose a small amount of weight, but found that no matter what window I picked, it seemed incompatible with my life. There was something unsettling about trying to fit your eating into a 5 hour window that made me obsess about food and not missing my opportunity to eat each day. I ended up going to bed very hungry many nights.

Then I came upon a schedule that sounded pretty darn good. It allows you to eat each day, which I liked. You eat breakfast and lunch one day and dinner the next. The time I experimented with was eating until 2 pm one day and then fasting from 2 pm that day until 2 pm the next day. It was by far the best IF schedule I had tried but I had my times off. The 2pm wasn't working for me. It wasn't too hard to fast until 2pm but it was hard to fast after 2pm the next day. So, I gave it up and tried various other things. If I had only worked with the times, I could have been on my way sooner. Before I found my new IF schedule, I tried eating four 400 calorie meals a day. That seemed promising, but like most things where you are counting/limiting calories, there would come those times where I would just say "screw it" and eat anything and everything I wanted which would frustrate me interfere with my progress. Where was my will power? I have really strong will power when it worked, but sometimes it failed me. I needed a lifestyle change-I knew that, but couldn't seem to find one that I could maintain. I had lost weight, or parts of, it many times, but could not seem to keep it off. Story of many people's lives. I have come back to intermittent fasting and believe that I have finally found the right schedule that will help me make this a permanent change-a lifestyle.