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.