How To Lose Weight Quick And Get Incredible Intermittent Fasting Results
How To Lose Weight Quick And Get Incredible Intermittent Fasting Results
If you are trying to find out how to lose weight quick you have come to the right place! Read more to learn exactly how I have been able to experience remarkable fitness results with the powerful intermittent fasting diet, and so can you.
Hi, this is Matt Hale. Thank you for visiting our blog OperationAwesomeLife.com. We aim to provide you the most value humanely possible from every blog post we share with you.
I have been a fitness enthusiast for more than half my life. When I was 15 years old, that summer I decided to start working out in my parent’s garage. In a short 3 month period, I was able to add 15 pounds of muscle to my body. That quickly turned what started as a hobby into a lifelong passion.
In the past, I have worked at multiple health clubs and fitness supplement stores. I have spent thousands of hours researching diet and fitness and tried countless programs, supplements, and strategies in an effort to build a more fit, healthy, and energetic body.
The above picture was taken of me in 2003 at the basketball court with my friends. I was in pretty good condition back then. Not sure about exact weight, but I spent nearly every waking hour focusing on building muscle and getting lean. These days life has gotten much busier. And the reality is I can’t afford to spend as much time as I used to on bodybuilding. Back then I used to spend a good part of my day prepping meals. And the other portion designing training routines and in the gym. With that being said I plan on getting in even better shape in the near future. But not following the old school bodybuilding diet and fitness routine.
Through all of my past experiences, studies, and trials and errors I can confidently say I have found the easiest way to lose weight. So if you are interested in how to lose weight quick and easy, and get incredible intermittent fasting results, then I am excited to share with you, my personal experience with the intermittent fasting diet.
How I Found The Intermittent Fasting Diet
A couple of years ago I was trying to find out how to lose weight quick in the easiest way possible. But with that being said, I wanted something that I could turn into a long-term solution. So I began scouring the Internet looking for a different strategy I could follow.
One thing I have learned about myself is I can sometimes have the grass is greener complex. This is a great thing for our readers because I am able to give more information on first-hand experiences, and provide more value from my trials and errors. But more often that naught, it is not a good thing for me.
Let me explain. Sometimes I will be getting good results with something but as a result of my ever growing curiosity, I find myself finding a new way of doing something and know I will just have to try it sooner than later.
If I would just stick with what is working I would find myself having far greater success I know. But just so you know, that is my great struggle!
Ok now, back to how to lose weight quick and easy! So, I found some different videos, and websites of different people talking about their successes with a strategy called intermittent fasting. It peaked my interest and I seriously began to consider the diet.
I had previously been following more of a typical bodybuilding style diet. Which consisted of 6 meals with balanced proteins, carbs, and low fat. But like I said was open to something different, and possibly something that could work better at getting results and also make the fitness lifestyle a little easier.
My Approach To Health And Fitness Has Changed
When I was younger all I cared about was being huge and gaining as much muscle as possible. I would eat massive amounts of food. I also tried a number of supplements. One standard I had for myself back then was that I would not take steroids and was committed to being drug-free.
Today I am still committed to being drug-free. But I have now placed more of my focus on being healthy as well. Because of this, I am very careful what I put into my body. Currently, I don’t take any fat loss pills or supplements to build muscle. I do from time to time take things that I think will benefit both my long-term health and my fitness goals. I just don’t see the need at the moment.
In the future, I will discuss my supplement regimen in more detail. For this blog post, I want to stick to the end goal we have had in mind of getting fast results from the fasting diet.
After listening to others results from intermittent fasting I was convinced I wanted to try it. At that time I had spent the greater part of 15 years eating at least 5-8 times a day. To be honest, I was tired of it.
Eating 5-8 meals per day is a lot of work in preparing the food, not to mention actually eating the food! If you have a busy schedule planning out meals all the time, and prepping them can be difficult. Even eating that many small squirrel-sized meals a day is really tough and can actually make dieting much more work than it needs to be.
Who Decided 6 Meals Per Day Was A Good Idea?
So what gave us humans the idea that eating 6 times per day was a good idea in the first place? And when did it become normal to eat this many times each day?
Through all my research I can’t find any evidence that eating 6 times per day will increase your metabolism or help you burn fat faster. In fact, I have found the exact opposite when researching.
One 8-week study from the University of Ottawa found that people did not have an increase in weight loss at all from increasing meal frequency. You can see the study here.
Another study also found that fasting was good for your health and your heart. The study also said that not only did it help people lose weight, it also lowered their risk of cardiac risk factors. And it lowered triglycerides, and blood sugar levels.
If that wasn’t enough good news, the study also found that HGH levels dramatically increased for both women and men while fasting. During 24-hour fasting periods, HGH was increased by 1300% for women. And HGH also increased by 2000% for men! Increasing HGH can dramatically help you build muscle and also preserve it while dieting. You can see this study here.
As to when the 6 meals per day became a normal regimen to follow in the fitness community, I think it came about from bodybuilders trying to fit as many calories into their body as possible. Let’s face it, when you are eating over 4000 calories in a day it can be hard to fit in 2 or 3 meals.
But somehow the 6 meals per day became popular while dieting as well, I remember talking to other guys at the supplement stores I worked at. During that time we were all convinced that if you ate smaller meals throughout the day it would keep your metabolism revved up. We justified this saying that it was similar to a burning fire that you continue to place new logs on.
Obviously, we didn’t have any science to back it up. But it seemed like a good explanation, and no one was doing it any differently.
My Intermittent Fasting Results The First Time
So I decided to give intermittent fasting a try even though it went against everything I had ever learned about dieting and nutrition. In a matter of only a week I was shocked at the results I was getting! I was already seeing incredible weight loss. I can’t remember the exact numbers now but I know that when I began intermittent fasting the first time I was hovering around 175 lbs. Back then I was having some issues with weight gain because of some injuries I had accumulated that didn’t allow me to work out as much as I would have liked to.
The fact that with intermittent fasting I could focus a lot of my energy on diet was also really appealing to me. What was better, it didn’t matter if I wasn’t able to work out quite as hard.
Over the years of working out I have experienced a decent amount of temporary setbacks and gone through periods in which working out wasn’t an option or I had to take it easy. If you have been in the fitness game for any length of time you probably can relate to what I’m saying. Having an option that allows you to focus on diet even if you can’t workout a ton is really great as well. Even if you love working out as I do, there are times when you can’t do it.
Anyways, after a period of only a few months, I went from roughly 175 to 157 at my lowest. Losing 18 pounds without focusing too much on what I ate, just how much I consumed overall.
Above is an image of my intermittent fasting results, the first time I tried it in 2013. Here I am at about 162. I actually got about 5 pounds leaner than this but unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of it. Below I’m going to give you the exact steps I took to do it!
How I Lost The Weight My First Time With “IF” Diet
Through watching videos, I decided that I would eat twice per day. One meal at around 12:00 noon and another around 5:00 pm.
Tracking is important, so I decided to track my calories on my fitness pal. I wanted to do this so I could have an idea of how my body was responding to the number of calories I was eating. Also, this would tell me if I needed to make adjustments.
The goal for my daily calorie intake was 1500. This equated to about 10 calories per pound of my desired body weight of 155.
I also had a coffee in the morning with my wife before our workout. This was usually in the morning at about 11:00 am. Then after the workout, we would eat our first meal.
Technically, you aren’t supposed to have any calories before the 12:00 p.m. meal. But here’s the interesting thing about it, we actually decided to go ahead and have some flavoring in our coffee that was mostly sugar and equated to about 100 calories. I usually went with about 3 pumps of mocha at Starbucks into my Americano or coffee. And my wife Karen liked the peppermint flavoring.
Now here is where it gets even more interesting, in this period of our lives we didn’t have hardly any time to cook because most of our time was spent working on our business. So we actually went to Chick-fil-a almost every day for our main meal at 12:00 noon.
I’m definitely not suggesting to eat fast food every day for lunch while doing this, but the thing is even doing this we were able to consistently lose fat.
I usually ate a chicken salad sandwich and split a large fries with Karen. She usually ate the original chicken sandwich.
At night many times I also ate chicken nuggets from Wendy’s or something similar for dinner. Now I know this is not a good way to eat at all and I no longer eat this way. It was just for a short busy period in our lives. But I just want to be real with you guys and say even being this relaxed at what we ate was still resulting in good weight loss.
Another place we went to often to eat was Chipotle. Chipotle is obviously a much healthier option. And in fact, we still go to Chipotle today quite often, but try to stay away from other fast food altogether.
My New Upgraded Intermittent Fasting Diet Plan
These days we have decided to make eating cleaner as well a much bigger part of our diet, and to be honest it is way easier this way!
And here is why. When you eat fast food many of the calories come from foods that really don’t fill you up all that much. It’s almost ridiculous how much food you can eat, and how full you feel when you eat better foods when dieting. It also really helps if you can do a little meal planning while intermittent fasting. But the nice thing is you really only need to plan out 2 meals for the whole day.
So, for instance, today instead of eating fast food for lunch here is what I ate. I had to two hamburger patties without buns and with cheese on each of them. I also had 2 servings of sweet potato fries and topped it off with about a cup and a half of steamed broccoli with cheese on top. This whole meal was about 900 calories, but it will keep me full for literally hours and hours. In the past when I ate more fast food and really paid less attention to what foods I was eating for my intermittent fasting plan, I would be hungry within only about an hour and a half after I ate.
Another thing we have decided to do is push our fast out longer. These days we eat our first meal at about 2:00 pm. I have also been incorporating only black coffee in the morning. For my coffee, I usually do ½ decaffeinated and ½ regular because I try to only have as much caffeine as needed. My coffee is 20-ounces. So I am only having about 10 ounces of caffeinated coffee per day. I also try not to have caffeine on days I don’t have to work, or on cheat days, as it’s best to limit caffeine as much as possible. Having my coffee around 11:30 really helps me to get to 2:00 before needing to eat with almost zero effort.
What Went Wrong And How I Gained Fat
After this initial experiment with intermittent fasting or as some people like to call it “IF” I did eventually hit a sticking point at about 157. It didn’t matter how low I decreased my calories, or how much extra work I put in at the gym, I couldn’t lose the last layer of fat so that my abs were completely etched out. I was definitely pretty lean. At my lowest body fat, I would say around 8% or so. I needed to get to about 6% if I wanted my abs to be in tip top shape.
Because of this plateau, I made a very bad mistake. I decided to up my calories for a while to about 2200 to reset my metabolism. My hope was that I would be able to ramp up my metabolism again without hopefully gaining too much extra fat. Then once I felt that my metabolism was back on track I would lower the calories back down and drop the remaining layer of fat.
Well, that was a good thought in theory. But it didn’t go that way and here is why. I raised my calories but I didn’t give myself a set amount of time to raise my calories for. This lead to lots of unnecessary time spent eating way too much. Here are the events that took place that actually got me out of shape again after all the successes I had getting down to 157.
First, as I said I raised my calories to about 2200. Another mistake I made was that I didn’t actually track this. I basically just didn’t worry as much about what I was eating, and that was my second big mistake.
A few weeks into the diet I gained back some muscle that had been lost dieting. This made me feel great! Since it seemed to be working well I just kept going!
I kept eating at least 2200, probably more like 2600 or so, for an undefined amount of time. Then without me even noticing too much I started to gain a little more fat than muscle. Little by little I started getting back out of shape over the course of a few months.
This then prompted another bad decision. My buddy Chris and I decided to do a fitness competition among our friends. The competition was based on who lost the most weight. And who made the biggest transformation. This sounds like a good idea, but here’s where it got really bad. I decided I needed to actually gain weight, specifically fat if I was going to win this contest. Now I know this is ridiculous, but one can’t underestimate the competition among friends!
So I proceeded to go on a two-week eating binge before our contest started. This lead to me gaining a massive amount of fat in a very quick amount of time. In theory, this fat should come off just as fast as I put it on, right?
Wrong, this actually backfired big time. And it led to me finding myself in the worst shape I had been in in a very long time. All for the sake of competition among friends!
My increased appetite and choice of food definitely got the better of me. This ended up taking me a long time to lose the weight I had gained prior to the competition. Simply for the sake of winning! As luck would have it I ended up winning the competition with my friends, but I lost the war because I was actually in worst shape than I was when I was at the 157 mark.
Yo-Yo Dieting And Losing The Fitness War
I was tired of dieting after the competition and decided to relax for a while. If this story is starting to sound like the typical cycle of a yo-yo dieter you would be correct. That is exactly what happened to me in this process.
After this wild roller coaster dieting, I have gotten back into a place where I am motivated again. But this time, I am committed to making a few changes and having my success stick for the long haul.
New “IF” Strategies I will Be Following Going Forward
Here are the differences I am going to be incorporating this time around in my intermittent fasting diet.
- Have black coffee in the morning 7 days per week
- I will break my fast at 2:00 pm or later 7 days per week
- Eat about 1700 calories or about 11 calories per pound of desired body weight, in my case 155. (I found I may have lowered my calories a little too much last time).
- Incorporate vegetables, and 1-2 servings of fruit in my daily diet.
- Aim for 900 calories in my first meal, and eat the majority of the rest of the calories around 7:00 pm.
- On Sunday I will allow for cheating. But I will try to stick to the bulk of the diet. I will have limited amounts of cheating and raised calories on that day only.
- If I want to have a couple drinks on Sunday or meeting friends in the week don’t sweat it. I’m in this for the long haul, not a quick fix.
- If I hit a plateau and I can’t lose fat for a period of more than 2 weeks, create a predetermined amount of time to reset my metabolism and stick to counting calories and time frame. Then return to cutting calories to 11 calories per desired weight or lower if needed.
- Enjoy the process and create a new lifestyle instead of a quick fix diet. A diet that I can continue easily and enjoy.
- If life gets in the way and I mess up along the way, don’t be too hard on myself. Instead just pick up where I left off and continue making progress.
On July 25th I re-started this newly reconstructed diet at a weight of 176.4. Unfortunately, I had to get some stitches on my back. So I am unable to start working out until September 1st. Even though I can’t work out yet I don’t want to waste time. So I have decided that I can use this period to get my diet on point.
As of today, August 9, 2016, I have had some great successes already. In the first week, I got down to roughly 170. Then last week my lowest weight was 167. So in only 2 weeks I am down about 9 pounds.
My diet before starting this time around wasn’t good at all. This has likely made it easier at the start for me to lose fat fast. I have lost a little muscle because I haven’t been able to work out for the past 2 weeks. I won’t be able to for another few more. So I will likely lose some more muscle as well as a result.
But, I will gain back the muscle quickly once I can get back in the gym. It also should be a nice boost to the fat loss as well once I start working out again.
I will make sure to post my progress for you guys as I go through this process. This way you guys can see my transformation.
Hope you have found some value in this blog post. If you have I would really appreciate it if you would comment below. Also please share this blog post if you think others would benefit from it.
I look forward to sharing more of my journey with you. And hopefully inspiring some of you to make some positive health and fitness changes in your life.
Take care,
Matt Hale
