I first heard about intermittent fasting in my keto days back in 2017. At the time I thought it was only a tool to be used along with the low carb/high fat lifestyle. It wasn’t until early 2020 that I found Gin Stephens and her Facebook group and started to believe that I could use intermittent fasting alone as a tool to lose weight! I mostly lurked in the groups for a month or so, but didn’t dive in and start fasting right away.

In early February, my family and some friends went to a character dining breakfast at Walt Disney World where they take your picture prior to seating you at your table. When I saw the photo, I was appalled. Surely that was not what I looked like? I knew I was holding onto weight in my belly area (I had an 11 month old baby at the time), but my face was what really shocked me. When people say “I didn’t even recognize myself”, well that’s exactly how I felt. It was sobering. Six days later I began intermittent fasting with a 16:8 protocol (this means I fasted for 16 hours a day and ate only in an 8 hour window, usually lunch and dinner).

The fateful photo that changed everything!

Th first few days were difficult, but I didn’t change what I was eating at all so I would always look forward to opening my window with my favorite delicious foods, which made it easier! I remember specifically counting down the hours to open with chicken strips and french fries from a local restaurant lol. It quickly got easier, and I remember accidentally doing one meal a day one day and being so shocked how effortless this was! And my body was changing so much. My belly was shrinking, inflammation in my face was decreasing, I felt great and my clothes were fitting even better. The infamous shutdown happened one month into my new IF lifestyle, and I kept on fasting. I remember posting a before and after photo on Facebook to a small weight loss group made up of friends that I had found the answer! And I posted it while eating cookie dough for dessert haha.

In May of 2020 we purchased and moved into a new home, and for some reason fasting just no longer became a priority for me. I would think about it as something that I knew was going to be the answer, but it took me a few months to find the motivation to just do it again. Towards the end of the summer, I finally decided to get serious. It was at this time that I created my Instagram account, and vowed to hold myself accountable and stick to fasting. Fasting had worked so well for me earlier in the year without a single thought of dieting or changing what I was eating, but for some reason at this point where I was restarting I got it in my head that I needed to diet along with fasting to speed up my progress. I had previously lost weight with low carb/keto a couple of times in my life, so I thought if I did IF and keto, the weight would just fall off! A few weeks of that though and I gave up and binged on whatever carbs I had been missing. I gained back any weight I had lost, felt horrible, and spent a couple of weeks on that binge. I thought to myself at that point that low carb is not going to work for me, because it just isn’t sustainable, but what if I tried carb cycling?

And so I did, again for just a few weeks. It was working well, I was losing weight, I felt great… until I fell off and went on a binge again. Another couple weeks later and all the weight gained back, I told myself that fasting wasn’t working for me this time. Of course, it had nothing to do with fasting not working- I was yo-yo dieting, I was giving up on fasting when I gave up on the diets, and I was binging all day. Unfortunately though I couldn’t see it, and I couldn’t get back to just focusing on fasting alone for another 10 months. During those 10 months I restricted and binged over and over again, trying every diet in the book. I did WW, attempted a Whole30 a few times, tried low carb again, decided I needed to cut gluten, then dairy, then sugar, then all three. It was exhausting, and I wasn’t getting anywhere. I would lose and gain the same 10lbs again and again.

In May of 2021, I reread Delay Don’t Deny by Gin Stephens, and at the same time I read Breaking Free from Emotional Eating by Geneen Roth. I decided I was going to combine the ideas in both of these books, and I was going to stop dieting forever, eat anything I wanted, and focus on intermittent fasting at the same time. I set out to do one meal a day (OMAD), but found that I usually would only stick to it for about half the week and would end up eating two meals the other days. To my surprise though, I was losing weight consistently when only doing OMAD 3-4 days a week, so thus my hybrid plan was born. I would eat one meal in a short one-hour window 3-4 days a week, and I would eat two meals in a 6-8 hour window the other days. I was eating absolutely anything I wanted, and a very standard American diet. I would eat dessert every single day, and most of my OMAD days I was getting hospital cafeteria food or having take out delivered to work. To my shock, and my coworkers who ate lunch with me everyday lol, the weight fell off quickly! I lost nearly 30lbs by the end of 2021 and I was thrilled!

The before and after is crazy! Looks like so much more than 30lbs.

Aside from just weight loss, I gained unbelievable confidence. And I don’t think the confidence came so much from my new body, but from the fact that I set out to do something and I did it when no one believed it would work. It made me feel incredibly powerful, and it wouldn’t be overstating it to say it changed my whole life. I became more confident at work, more assertive as person, and I found myself again outside from just being someone’s mom or someone’s nurse or someone’s partner.

7 months between these two photos!

The next few years went a bit less smoothly than 2021 in terms of fasting and food choices, but I will continue that story another time!

If you would like to listen to me talk about my story with Gin Stephens on her podcast Intermittent Fasting Stories, you can find the episode here!  https://www.intermittentfastingstories.com/episode-310-ashlee-jones/