Almost a year and a half ago, Ryan was 370 pounds, even having difficulty in walking around Universal Studios.
My first step towards a new me was from an ordinary morning.
I stood in front of the mirror, looking into it, and told myself “You should never find excuses anymore. You have a 5-year-old kid, a wife, a house, a job and they’re all worth your changing.”
“It’s never too late to change and make yourself better,” Maria, my daughter encouraged me.
But how?
First, I should dig out the real reason for my overall weight gain: long-term overeating, an irregular lifestyle, unhealthy diet habit, etc. It’s quite easy to start to lose weight and it’s similarly easy to give it up.
Then, I picked up a weight loss method. There are so many weight loss plans and solutions and I finally selected intermittent fasting that is recommended by my doctor.
Everything goes smooth at the beginning.
I had a honeymoon with intermittent fasting at the first 3 days. I could stick to the fasting plan and beat my hunger. After 3 days, however, my body started to drag me back to my old days when I overate and led an irregular life. During the fasting window, I felt so boring that I wanted to eat anything I like. There seemed to be no ways to stop me distracting from food and drinks.
Later, my wife Lynn recommended me an app on mobile, called Soon. I hadn’t known I had been doing wrong until I began to use Soon. Soon provides me a custom intermittent fasting plan based on my lifestyle and habits. Daily tasks are provided on the app one by one and I’m quite clear what to do every day. They even provide me as many as 25 fasting drink recipes to make me feel more fulfilled easily and interestingly.
Whenever I want to give up or embrace difficulties in the process of fasting, I can talk with coach at once to get answers as quickly as possible. She’s professional and is able to figure out all the possible setbacks I’ll possibly meet during the next couple of hours. It feels like I have supports all the time and I’m not alone. I should never be blamed for my extra weight. It’s a good journey to restart with your body, life and habits.
It’s comfortable for me to start with 14:10, then 16:8 and 18:6 and by now I’ve cut 146lbs from 370lbs. That’s a huge effort for me.
With Soon, I begin to learn to identify hunger. it’s quite important and useful. Coach tells me most overeating results from the unclear identification between physical hunger and emotional hunger. The truth is that you don’t need to eat, most of times. The fact that you think you need to eat possibly results from your craving. As you realize the difference, you’ll realize your life shouldn’t be filled with food alone. Your time can and should be spent on other meaningful things. All your consumed food won’t bring you anything but weight gain.
As food goes into your mouth and stomach, it takes at least 4 hours to get completely digested and even though you feel extremely hungry, your body can also power up with all the stored energy, that is, fat burning and autophagy. That’s how intermittent fasting works for weight loss and body health.