I have always believed that cuisine defined culture. So, here I am, almost two years in a new culture. Not a new culture in the sense of traveling to a different country, but definitely not Kansas or even Colorado. I'll probably write about that in another post. But my indulging in New Mexican cuisine and beverages has taken me far from careful eating.
At my last appointment, my PA suggested I try intermittent fasting as a possible means of getting my weight under control. I was, and am, skeptical, but I am giving it a solid try. I jumped in too quickly, without doing any research other than how many hours a day I should fast. And I didn't think things through in terms of scheduling.
I fasted 16 hours (a fairly standard IF is 16:8, meaning fast for 16 hours, eat in an 8 hour window). Oops. I had an appointment across town when I was supposed to break my fast. So I wound up fasting 18 hours. In my ravenous state, I tried to eat a big lunch. Big fail! I ate about a third of the very spicy, very filling meal. By the time I got home, I wasn't sure I'd ever want to eat again. It took me three days to eat that meal.
After my too big lunch, I didn't care about food until about the time my husband was ready for dinner and my eating window was over.
Now, my husband just naturally does something like IF in that he eats breakfast around noon, lunch around 4:00 and dinner around 8:00. But we wake on a different schedule. I wanted to start fasting by 7:00pm. This is a continuing challenge for my IF experience. Another challenge is that I have a medication that I am supposed to take with a meal and at a consistent time. Before IF, I woke at 6:30, had a healthy breakfast and took my medicine. So, it seems like it would be a simple thing to change the medication to 11 am when I break my fast. But, I'm not often breaking fast at 11. It worked when I ate when I got up, but now life isn't conforming to my schedule.
One possibility is to go back to breaking fast around 7:00. That has long been my habit. The challenge is that has me ending the eating window around 3:00. That would not allow my husband and I to have a meal together. And that plays heck with our social life which seems to involve dinners around 7:00. I'm sure I'll work that out somehow.
Beyond scheduling, or maybe because of it, I'm eating about 800-1000 calories a day which is a bit less than the recommended minimum. So the pounds should be falling off, right? Wrong. After almost 6 weeks of this craziness, I've lost 1 pound.
So, I haven't been enjoying the local cuisine I love, I have been stressing about trying to eat within the IF timeframe, and I haven't lost much weight. I'll give it another month and report back.
