In my recent Instagram post I mentioned that I am doing something very exciting throughout the month of February (well at least exciting for me!). Now when February is finally over and it's officially Spring I'm buzzing to share my experience doing intermittent fasting for a month!

Not gonna lie, I did have days when I messed up and cheated on my diet and ate anything I could find in my cupboard. I'm not proud of it, but it is what it is. Life happens, stress happens! Just move on and start fresh the next day. I started intermittent fasting on February 1st and finished it on March 1st. I decided that my eating window would be 8 hours and fasting period of 16 hours (usually done in 8/16 or 10/14 windows). I would usually break my fast at 11 am and start fasting at around 7 pm. Most of the time at least! Some days it could be 10 till 6 or even 9 till 5.

I used body analyzer at my local gym to track my progress. It measures weight, height, B.M.I., body fat and body fat mass. My goal was to see a change in weight and to be exact, a drop in body fat mass. I'm really upset by the fact that I did not take any pictures when I started fasting so I could compare my body composition at the end of the experiment. But to be fair, I did not expect to drop a significant amount of fat to take pictures, so I did not bother, although I do regret it now. I genuinely think pictures show more progress made than numbers will ever do. So take your damn progress pictures! 

I'll start with my own personal experience and then I'll analyze the results I managed to achieve. Let me tell you, the first few days are the hardest. That's the reason I logged the first two days as I  knew that I would keep going If I logged things I was doing and how it made me feel. 

Day 1:

My eating window for today was 9-5 and considering that I had lectures from 10 till 3, it was very challenging as I get hungry really quick, especially for lunch, so theoretically I had breakfast and double dinner. Still didn’t manage to fit in enough calories (good for weight loss). Had a protein shake to feel fuller. After that had a cup of peppermint tea (0 calories) to fill fuller. Went to the gym at 8 and had a normal amount of energy for the upper body training. Started feeling a little hungry at around half 10 just before work. Felt rather ravish by the end of my shift at 2am and it was uncomfortable going to bed with hurting stomach.

I am not the kind of person that can wake up and go do things on an empty stomach. If I don't eat in the morning, my stomach will be growling until I eat something. That's why I started eating at 9 and not at 11 as I was originally planning to. And although I did stop eating at 5 pm, it was too early as I was up till around 3 am because of work. Intermittent fasting is not that challenging if most of the fasting period you are actually sleeping. But in my case, I was at work and went to bed very late.

Day 2:

Woke up feeling okay, but not too hungry which is odd, considering that I went to bed feeling rather starving. Now I’m thinking, that maybe hunger felt more intense before going to bed because of the ‘placebo’ effect and that I convinced myself that I’m hungry although I was probably not. Anyways, breaking 19 hours fast at 12 pm. Went to the gym, felt like had less energy than usual. Stopped eating at 8 pm right after the gym. At the gym, I measured my body fat (picture down below). Let’s see how these numbers change by the end of February! Felt alright while working (probably because didn't have time to think about food) and came back home at around half 2 and didn’t feel hungry. Drank quite a lot of water at work, this might have influenced my low hunger levels as well. So far so good!

These two days pretty much summarize that I do on a day to day basis, which is usually University, gym and then work on some days of the week. I stopped logging after day 4 because I simply forgot doing that, but I also didn't find the need to do so as it was pretty much the same thing over and over again. Around the middle of the month, it got easier, because I started feeling less hungry and crave less sugar between meals, which I found to be extremely beneficial in my case. Craving sugary or salty foods late at night was a problem I had and I was really struggling to cope with that. IF definitely reduced my cravings. 

And although this eating pattern sounds like an overall beneficial for the majority of people, I wouldn't necessarily agree with that. Myself, I found it very difficult to get used to feeling rather hungry at work on night shifts and I don't think it's particularly healthy, to be honest. 

I started noticing small changes in weight quite soon but it was nothing significant. I was very worried that the weight I was starting to lose was my lean/muscle mass. And who would like to lose even a tiny amount of muscle after all the hard work you put at the gym to gain it? Definitely not me. It took a week or so to start seeing a lot less bloating in the abdominal region and my tummy got a lot tighter (abs still deep down under layers of fat but I'm staying patient!). 

Obviously, I'd still watch what I put into my mouth during my eating window. My diet would revolve around greens, fruits, fiber dense, unprocessed and protein-based foods. 

I was both excited and scared to step on a scale on March 1st at the same time. I was afraid that I did not lose fat but rather my muscle mass. I was very happy to see that from the total of 4,3 kg I lost, 3,3kg of it was fat mass, which to be fair is A LOT OF FAT (really hope these scales are at least semi-accurate!) I was over the moon happy to see a drop in my body fat percentage!

I would say my overall experience was a huge success! I'm really happy with the results I got in such a short amount of time. Question is, will I continue it? Definitely yes. It's March 6th when I'm posting this and I did give myself 5 days off and ate whenever and whatever I wanted and didn't really think about it much, but I'm genuinely not happy about myself not having an eating pattern all sorted so I'm getting back on track from today, March 6th, and hopefully I will be able to share even better results a month from now. And YES, this time I'll be taking progress pictures!

If you have any questions, just let me know in the comments section down below or you can always DM me on Instagram or send me an email to v.lyskoit@gmail.com. Until next time!