How I Lost 160 Pounds with Intermittent Fasting and Low Carb / Keto Diet and why I Gained 56 Pounds Back (Part 1).

I can’t believe that I actually lost 160 pounds.

And I can’t believe that I gained 56 pounds of that weight back.

Anyone who has ever really, really struggled with their weight understands deeply the emotional and physical battle, the horrible vicious cycles involving dieting, binging, gaining, losing, as well as the real life consequences of being fat.

And I was fat, REALLY fat!

At 5’2″ I think I topped out at about 307 pounds, though the Trendweight app I started using in 2015 says it was just 300.

I was in rough shape. With bad knees, I was literally waddling instead of walking, and pretty much feeling like being fat was my fate. I worried about taking a plane ride, and was always scoping out whether seats were big enough. I was often the biggest person in the room. I could hardly walk around the block.

But then my husband told me that I could earn $500 by completing health care activities through his employer, so I decided to poke around and see what was available. It was there that I found that I was eligible for the Omada program. That was a 16 week program that was designed to help me lose some weight and improve my health.

I decided to sign up. I mean, what the heck, just by participating I could earn some money, so I enrolled. The next thing I knew, they sent me a wifi scale and put me in a group.

I had been on so many diets that I knew this one wasn’t going to work. But after they sent me the scale I began to feel at least a little obligated to try. Weight loss was tallied for the entire group. I did not want to be an embarrassment.

The Omada program was unique in that they didn’t tell me what I was supposed to eat. That worked out well for me because being told what to eat doesn’t really work for me. I’m kind of stubborn in that way.

Maybe one of the most important things about the Omada program is that they asked us to weigh ourselves EVERY SINGLE DAY! To this day, I know that if I don’t want to weigh myself on a given day, it’s because I fear I strayed so far sideways and won’t be able to undo the damage.

At any rate, I got my start with the Omada program.

I consider the program a key catalyst, but I also see that it was just the start of a long journey that will never be over.

I have an eating disorder.

My appetite control mechanism doesn’t work.

I have tools to control what I eat, but losing control is a reality I face every day.

Phase 1: Calorie Reduction

At the beginning of the Omada program, I just did my best to reduce my calories to around 1200 a day. I was doing okay, but I had some success and got down to under 300 pounds so that was a good start. Going the right direction for the first time in a while!

Phase 2: Low Carb

I had previously lost some weight on a low carb diet, so I thought maybe I should give that another try, so I entered this phase in earnest, tracking my carbs diligently. I was gonna speed this diet up!

I started using the Cronometer app in August to track my food and nutrition. I was very green about low carb and ketogenic diets, and for some reason my goal was stay around less than 40 net carbs.

A ketogenic diet is generally less than 20 carbs, but I usually ate more than this, and still lost weight. Decreasing my carbs did seem to keep the momentum. I was also starting to experiment with eating windows, and at some point switched to eating between the hours of 12:00 pm and 8:00 pm. Using eating windows can help to reduce the amount of calories consumed, and keep insulin levels lower, which can be helpful for those who need to be concerned about their blood sugar levels. My fasting insulin levels have been above 100 which is undesirable, so I was aware that I needed to work at keeping my insulin levels low and do what I can to avoid diabetes.

My results from this phase are below:

Phase III: Intermittent Fasting

By September, 2019, I was having some success. I had lost about 20 pounds, and I just wanted to get this weight off of my body. I starting googling low carb diet and ketogenic diet and started getting deeper into intermittent fasting, and learned about this technique called alternate day fasting.

Don’t eat for a whole day.

WHAAAT?

You’ve got to be kidding.

Isn’t that bad for you?

So I tried it.

I thought if other people can not eat for a day, so can I. At first I just skipped breakfast and lunch. But then I stretched it for an entire day.

My first day of fasting was September 22, 2019.

36 hours with any food.

Just coffee.

I continued to eat every other day very consistently with few exceptions.

I ate every other day from September 22th, 2019 through April 2021 and that’s how I lost 160 pounds.

I tracked my weight, my food, and my carbs during the entire time using Cronometer. Below is just one sample day.

I tried hard not to overeat on my eating days. I also made sure to take magnesium and salt to prevent dehydration. The chart below shows weight loss by four week periods with the exception of the first period which was just three weeks.

So what happened next? Why did I gain some weight back? I’m going to blog about that coming up! Stay tuned for Part II!