Day 37, Feast Day #20
Getting calories down on feast days has proved difficult with trips to bars, breweries, and birthday parties with friends. Here are the numbers:
Calories
Week 1: 1,437 kcal or 76% of baseline calories
Week 2: 1,938 kcal or 102% of baseline calories
Week 3: 1,680 kcal or 89% of baseline calories
Week 4: 2,196 kcal or 116% of baseline calories
Week 5: 1,829 kcal or 96% of baseline calories
While ADFing: 1,776 kcal or 94%of baseline calories
Baseline Days: 1,896 kcal
All Feast Days: 2,942 kcal or 155% of baseline calories
All Fast Days*: 473 kcal or 25% of baseline calories
For reference
Week 1: 4 fast days, 3 feast days
Week 2: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
Week 3: 3 fast days*, 4 feast days
Week 4: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
Week 5: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
*Includes faux-fast day that was my mama's birthday dinner.
Obviously, our feast days are still too feasty. As usual, this is due to overindulging when eating out, particularly when it comes to a calorie-packed cocktail or beer. I also discovered this weekend while at a friend's 30th birthday bash that not only is mead (honey wine) incredibly delicious, but it is over 220 calories for a 5 oz. glass. It is a good thing I don't have easy access to mead regularly. Luckily his week's social calendar is looking less hedonistic, so hopefully I can make some progress on the following goals:
- Reduce the sugar I am eating. I was eating 57 grams/day this week. This is below both my original sugar consumption and below the 5-week average of 63 grams. I still would like to cut this down even further since I have a family history of diabetes.
- Reduce overall carbohydrates eaten. My carb gluttony has me at 196 grams of carbs/day this past week. This is still below what I have been averaging, but again the USDA DRV is 130 grams. That is over a 50% reduction I am aiming for, so this could be tough.
- Eat more potassium-rich foods. I am still struggling to get even close to the DRV of potassium. Last week I only ate about 1807 mg/day on average, which is lower than the previous 5 weeks. The daily recommendation is 4700 mg/day, to put things in perspective. We bought some mushrooms this week and are still working on using up a bunch of tomatoes. More of our meals need to revolve around potassium. I think eating more legumes might tackle the potassium deficit plus providing iron, which I have also been running low on (55% of DRV).
Day 8, Feast Day #4
One week of intermittent fasting is complete and I am feeling much more optimistic about ADF being a lifestyle that I can sustain. I mentally handle the idea of being hungry much better now than I was at first. I also am able to get most of the nutrients I need on a low amount of calories from eating mostly vegetables on fast days. I am taking vitamin/mineral supplements now for the rest, and frankly, the amount of vitamins and minerals I have been getting on my feast days compared to my fast days is much lower.
Eating a standard American diet of pancakes, beer, hamburgers, and fried food is giving me a huge amount of calories, sugar, and fat on feast days. But there is only a little vitamin A, iron, calcium, and potassium getting in my body these days. I will admit getting enough calcium is something I usually have to supplement because I am lactose-intolerant (very much so) and it seems like I would have plan my entire diet around potassium in order to get the 4,700 mg that is now recommended. I couldn't even find a supplement for potassium that had more than 3% of the DRV at the health store. I just have to be more conscious about including potassium rich food in my diet (root veggies, tropical fruit, potatoes, avocado, etc), especially since I know my grandmother struggles with low potassium and has been hospitalized for it.
So far my calories by day looks like this:
Fast day average: 433 kcal
Feast day average: 2607 kcal
Total average: 1,520 kcal - So, I am still eating less on average than I would normally.
What I have found interesting is that the amount of calories I have been eating on my fast days has decreased gradually (down to just 347 calories yesterday), while on the other hand my feast day caloric intake has increased gradually. I think the crazy feasting behavior has also been me seeing if I can manage to make up the entire 1,500 calories I missed on my fast days up. The closest I have gotten is still 500 calories short, and that was with eating two breakfasts, a bacon cheeseburger, and a 3-course meal at a sushi restaurant. (It was an epic feast day.)
Again, I woke up with a headache. However, it was not nearly as bad as the headaches have been. I also took Sondra's advice and got a magnesium supplement, took that today with breakfast, and my headache is gone now. Amazing! Studies like this one show a link between low magnesium and headaches and that adding magnesium to the body alleviates headache pain. Thanks again, Sondra.
The best part about starting ADF is how much more aware I am of the types of food I eat and what dietary values they hold. I also really appreciate eating everything. I also had no idea how many calories were in foods. Keeping a food diary has been a huge wake-up call to how I have been eating for years. It reminds a lot of when I first started using Mint to track my spending. After I tracked my income and spending for a month I had a wake up call about how much money I wasted---mostly on food, drinks, and miscellaneous things. This was the impetus for me saving my money and being smarter with finances. I feel tracking what I am eating is giving me that same wake up call and will help me eat healthier.
