I’ve wanted to loose weight for several years now for health reasons. I’ve tried a lot of stuff already and the only diet system that worked was when I took a Chinese herbal medicine product. I think I moved about 2 or 3 notches in my belt. The product is great because you don’t feel hungry at all, and it suppresses your appetite. The problem is, I could not sleep. Fearing that I will go insane, I stopped drinking the stuff.
I tried eating regularly but exercising a lot, it still didn’t work. Incorporating a lot of fruits and vegetables into my diet didn’t work either because I was still gorging on too much carbohydrate. I even tried eating slowly by chewing my food 20 times before swallowing it, but it did not work because I grew tired of counting. I tried Atikins for a while, no carbohydrate just protein. It worked for a while, but I went back to my old eating habits. Then recently I tried a cross between South beach and Atkins, that is no carbohydrates but more on vegetables and lean meat. I did this for 3 months by I lost a measly 7 kilos and after several weeks it seems that my weight has plateaued for a while. (At least I maintained it at that level) There’s got to be a way to break the monotony! So I read some books and I came across a diet they said will really work and that is the Fast 5 diet.
The Fast-5 Diet is a diet system conjured by medical doctor Bert Herring. The diet system is so simple as it only consist of one rule and that is your eating window should be limited to only 5 consecutive hours each day.
Now this really caught my attention. I prefer a simple diet system. I consider calorie counting or watching out for carbohydrates as somewhat complicated because you don’t know if you have violated the rule as some stuff you eat you thought does not contain carbohydrates might contain some. Fast 5 simply requires you to count 19 hours of continuous non-eating and then follow it up with continuous 5 hours window wherein you are allowed to eat. (When I wrote this post I wrote “5 hours of continuous eating hehehehe 🙂 , that is not required just a 5 hours window wherein you are allowed to eat)
I’ve read that fasting is very beneficial for health reasons, so I was convinced of the diet. The 5 hour window where you are allowed to eat could be at any time. It could be from 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. or 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. or even 6 p.m. to 11 p.m.
According to Wikipedia, the Fast-5 diet was developed based on the personal results of medical doctor, Dr. Bert Herring. His basis for the diet is the eating schedule of ancient hunter-gatherer humans who ate without benefit of food storage or refrigeration. His scientific basis for the Fast-5 Diet is that “. . . adipose tissue (fat cells) cannot burn fat as fuel at the same time it is storing fuel produced by digestion of food. The restriction of calorie consumption to the five-hour window is intended to increase the time when the digestive tract is empty so no fuel is being provided by digestion. In this fasting phase, insulin is at low (nadir) levels and the body is dependent on the release of stored fat and glycogen for energy. . . ”
The 5 hour window is not a license to gorge, although at first you might be tempted to compensate for that considering the 19 hours of continuous non-eating. But if you do gorge based on what I read online you need not to worry because your body will adjust to it and you will soon eat regularly.
So does the Fast 5 diet really work? Did it work for me? Well, it remains to be seen as I am on my second week of doing it.
The first week especially the first day was really hard because my body had to adjust to the 19 hours of continuous non eating. During the first week I decided to place my 5 hour eating windows from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. To stave off my hunger I drank lots of fluids. I drank wheat grass and put regularly placed it in my family initial drink coaster. Wheat grass is alkaline based. This counters the acidic grinding of my stomach which will prevent me from getting ulcer. I didn’t feel any stomach ache but I felt light headed, no headaches though. I don’t recommend this diet to anybody who has ulcer or a stomach problem. Drinking several glasses of wheat grass while on fasting mode also helps cleanse and detoxify my body. On next days I sort of have adjusted already, however during the first week, there was really a temptation to gorge during the 5 hour eating window.
A week has passed and I stepped up the weighing scale. There was no weight loss. This is normal because generally based on my research online the rapid weight loss comes after 3 weeks. Some people though loss some weight even before 3 weeks. While most lost about a pound or more per week after 3 weeks. The average weight loss is about 20 lbs in 3 months time.
Somebody held a party on the eighth day during lunch time, so I had to adjust my eating window from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m, and this is what I’ve been following for the past 4 days now. My wife says this is so much better because I’d been doing a sort of after 6 diet without the breakfast as opposed to gorging in the evening. On the second week, I started loosing a kilo. Now I’m down 3 kilos. My eating during the 5 hour window has become regular. I hope this continuous. At the end of the third week I’ll give an update you if the fast 5 diet really works.
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