Really Boring Intermittent Fasting Update

Good morning, Readers!

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So, it is now the very beginning of week three of this I.F. experiment I'm running on myself.  While I haven't noticed many changes with my body, and I am yet to weight myself for the second time (it should be the third time, but last Monday was Family Day (a holiday), and I just couldn't be arsed to do it), there have been some pretty obvious changes going on with everything else.  Here are some of the purely positive things that have changed that I have noticed:
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• Better Sleep

Sleep has never really been a big issue for me.  I can rather famously fall asleep anywhere and everywhere.  However, my sleep at night seems to have increased in quality.  Ordinarily, I would be groggy and feeling not particularly well-rested of a morning.  Most mornings, provided that cats haven't been too much of a bother, I have little trouble rolling out of bed.  I often choose to stay in and cuddle the kitties for as long as possible (this is prime Galahad cuddling time), but I am wide awake and alert.  It's a pleasant, if a bit weird, change.

• Energy Increase

​The first week resulted in crazy energy levels.  I was full of beans.  I'm not sure I can attribute this to the I.F. but it's really the only change I've made recently, and was probably related to the better sleep, so it's the only explanation I have.  My energy has since levelled out, however, I'm not getting the 3:00pm crashes in energy levels that I used to.  So, while I'm not bouncing from the walls and ceiling anymore, I'm also not ready to face-plant into the nearest soft surface mid-afternoon, either.​
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• Better Digestion

I'm not going to go into too much detail here, but everything is working so much better than it was before. That's all anyone needs to know about that, I think.

• ​No More Sugar Cravings

This was the first and most immediate thing I noticed.  I would crave something sugary in the afternoon; chocolate or something similar.  This evaporated in the first few days.  There just wasn't room in my belly during my eating window for sugary treats, and more, seeing or smelling them did not provoke the same level of impulse eating that it did before.  Listen, my self control around food, let alone chocolate, was never great.  The fact that it's now so easy to turn it down is new and weird for me.

There is one peculiar thing happening with me that has me scratching my head.  It's not a problem so much as something to definitely keep an eye on, and it's this:

• Loss of Appetite

Anyone who knows me probably has their eyebrows raised to their hairline, and for good reason.  I am... or, I guess, was... always hungry.  Always.  Most everything I did was food motivated.  I would joke that I must have starved to death in one of my past lives, I was so food fixated.

Breakfast isn't a problem.  I feel peckish when I wake up in the morning, and I want to eat when my fasting period ends.  But, despite needing the calories, I often find myself struggling to eat my second meal of the day, let alone my third.  I'm often just not hungry, and, in an unusual turn of events, I don't particularly want to eat.

Oh, don't worry.  I eat.  I make myself eat.  I'm all too aware of the damage severe caloric restriction has done to me, and I'm not willing to sacrifice my health, or my strength.  Even more, I'm eating more calories now than before.  I've upped my intake to roughly two thousand calories a day (though I need to do a quick calorie count this week to make sure that I am still eating enough.  It's a lot of food, and I'm still not sure what, exactly that is supposed to look like).

Before anyone freaks out, this isn't the same as the disordered eating I had before.  I'm not denying myself food when I'm hungry.  I'm just... not hungry.  I don't feel like eating beyond breakfast.

So, there's that.  Happily, though, things seem to be going well.  I'm feeling well, and healthy.  I haven't had to stop martial arts training or weightlifting at all because I don't have the energy for it.  So far, it's been going really well.

Right, I have videos to edit, a couple of books to write and other things that need doing today.  Have yourselves a lovely Monday.

​Ciao!