Famous Last Words

If you’re reading this then apparently I was good enough at convincing you to educate yourself even more on the wonderful world of Intermittent Fasting – woohoo! Welcome! Let me show you around, make yourself at home!

So, here I have listed all of the excuses that I have heard over the past few years (some of them you may even be thinking in your head right now) along with my rebuttals for your viewing pleasure.

“I can’t do it, I need to eat when I feel hungry!”

First of all, nope. You don’t need to eat. You want to eat. You will be surprised at how long you can actually go without eating. We are so used to feeling the slightest bit hungry and then it’s suddenly the end of the world. You let this feeling take over and you end up convincing yourself that you’re hungrier than you actually are! Trust me, I’ve been through this myself many, many times. The hardest part about Intermittent Fasting is learning how to say “no” to both yourself and to others. I’ve gotten to a point where I’ll be at a family gathering when everyone is eating while I’m fasting and someone will say “Hey Aly, do you want-” and I say “no, thank you!” I don’t even let them finish their sentence. Let me tell you, once you’ve conditioned yourself to politely reject food from others, you will feel so empowered and powerful. It’s an amazing feeling.

I’m going to make another blog post about the best way to condition yourself to say “no”. Trust me, if I can, you can.

“I just can’t fast for that long!”

Good news! You don’t have to.

To an extent.

Experts, including myself, recommend starting off with a 12-hour fast. Some people do this without even knowing it! Let’s say you go to bed at 10 PM and you don’t eat until breakfast at 10 AM the next day – there’s your 12-hour fast! See how simple it is?!

In order for your body to get used to fasting for longer periods of time, you need to take it slow. So lets say you’re already fasting for 12-hours, simply stop eating an hour or two before (or eat later the next morning). Take it slow, you will progress at your own pace. There is absolutely no pressure for you to jump right into 18-hour fasts.

Intermittent Fasting works because it is a completely different lifestyle than what we are used to. Start with a 12-hour fast and slowly work your way up to longer fasts. Yeah the first couple of weeks may feel really difficult and you may be tempted to cheat, but that’s normal – but I promise you, it gets easier every day that you do it. Maybe it takes weeks, maybe it takes months! Everybody adjusts to new lifestyles in their own way at their own pace. There is no right or wrong amount of time. The day you realize you can do a 18-hour fast with no problem, you will be so grateful that you stuck it out.

“I can’t stop myself from having a snack at night!”

I struggled so hard with this one. I was so used to coming home from school and having a giant bowl of ice cream with hot fudge and sprinkles around 9 PM every day.

Currently, I end my fast around 6 PM and I don’t eat until 12 PM the next day. So the hours after dinner and before sleep are when I want to splurge and eat something so badly. I’m not going to lie, it is hard. But let me tell you, when you wake up the next day after you said “no” to eating that late-night snack, you will feel invincible – you will feel so thankful. That feeling is what keeps me from rummaging through the pantry at 10 PM when my stomach is rumbling while I’m binging Netflix for hours.

Another key component here is to go to sleep earlier.

A good trick I’ve learned is that the second I start to feel hungry at night, I try to go to sleep right away. That way, I sleep away the hunger! Ah sleep, such an amazing tool.

Alrighty my friends, that is all I have for right now. If I didn’t address your excuse, please feel free to comment below. I will be happy to write an informative and convincing response with a hint of sarcasm.

Alrighty folks, here it is. The story that I get asked about countless times, the story that I will never get bored of sharing!

In case you don’t know me, I am a ballet dancer. I have been a ballerina for my entire life (since I was 3 years old – yes, that counts). As you might know, ballet dancers are placed under a lot of constraints and “rules” when it comes to their body image and weight.

Growing up, I was a chubby kid. I definitely enjoyed my Sunday pasta dinners and couldn’t resist the warm chocolate chip cookies from my Middle School’s cafeteria. I grew up eating what I wanted, when I wanted. That’s all I ever knew – that’s what I thought life was about! And it was. That is, until I started getting older and started to notice that all of my friends in my ballet class had thinner legs than me and that I was the only one wearing a T-shirt over my leotard to hide my belly. I would be constantly reminded by my ballet teacher that I needed to lose weight if I wanted to become a professional ballet dancer. She referred me to nutritionists, weight-loss programs, dietitians, basically anyone who could possibly help me lose weight. She even told me that I couldn’t perform certain roles in our performances because my legs were “too big” and wouldn’t look good on stage in a tutu. I have to admit, this time of my life was rough – I left ballet class every day feeling defeated, unwanted, and an embarrassment. This carried on through high school and until I graduated the ballet academy in 2015.

When I was in ballet, I wasn’t even my heaviest. I was 5’5″ and weighed about 135 pounds (..right now you’re probably thinking, WHAT?! I bet you were picturing something completely different). But it wasn’t until college that I considered myself “fat”.

Throughout college, I gained about 25 pounds over the course of four years. This was the result of not going to ballet every day like I used to in high school, and eating an extremely high amount of unhealthy and high-calorie foods all day, every day.

Here’s a quick run down of what I used to eat on a typical day back in college:

9 AM: egg bagel with scallion cream cheese & large iced coffee with 3 inches of sugar on the bottom of the cup and milk

11 AM: trail mix (M&M’s, raisins, and assorted salted nuts)

1 PM: two slices of pizza, a chocolate chip cookie, and a soda

3 PM: some sort of snack (munchkins from Dunkin, potato chips, granola bar, etc.)

5:30 PM: 3-cheese chicken cavatappi from Applebee’s with boneless wings

9 PM: medium Reese’s/Oreo Sundae Dasher from Carvel

….yeah… it was a lot.

I started to loathe how I looked in pictures and questioned why I looked the way I did. It was during my senior year of college that I decided that I needed to lose weight. I tried almost every diet under the sun, but I just couldn’t stick with any of them long enough to see the results I desired.

The only diet that gave me some results was cutting carbs – I lost about 10 pounds. But I couldn’t stand the side effects. I felt even more hungry throughout the day, fatigued, unmotivated to exercise, and definitely hangry. It was affecting my mood and my mental state! Plus saying “no” to pasta and every other amazingly delicious food that has carbs in it was certified torture. Once I stopped cutting carbs, I gained the weight right back. Which brings me to my next point: if you want to lose weight and keep it off, you need to change your lifestyle. Diets like cutting carbs are great for short-term weight loss, but the second you start to go back to your regular eating habits, you will gain the weight right back!

I was about to give up on my hopes of losing weight. I thought that I had exhausted all of my options and that I couldn’t possibly diet for the rest of my life!

But then a friend of mine told me he recently lost 20 pounds from something called Intermittent Fasting. Little did I know that this conversation would change my life forever (yeah yeah yeah, dramatic, I know). But seriously, I would still be miserable if it wasn’t for him informing me about IF.

He was telling me about how he fasts for 18 hours and only eats for 6 hours during the day. All I could think in my head during this conversation was “are you crazy?! I could never do that! I love eating waay too much!”

Yet here I am today, doing 18-hour fasts for almost 3 consecutive years and enjoying every minute of it! Alright, maybe not every minute – those few minutes before I break my fast are not exactly fun..

If it weren’t for fasting, I wouldn’t have lost any of the weight I gained throughout college. In fact, I was able to lose even more which brings me closer to my goal weight! And here’s the best part: I don’t have to say “no” to Sunday pasta dinners or the occasional warm chocolate chip cookie. If you’re fasting, moderation and consistency will get you a long way.

So, what are you waiting for?!

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