yeah I was eating over my TDEE definitely on Tuesday, but I have adjusted accordingly today. I’ve extended my fasting window from 36 to 42 hours, which will allow me to have 2 meals instead of 3+ snacks lol. I am back down 2 lbs today. If the eating days continue to be a problem I will be sure to reach out for help. you’re the best and your support means so much!
Bris Fastmas calendar
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Day 4/30 of my 4:3 challenge!
yesterday was my 2nd fasting day and it went really well. It was pretty uneventful. On the scale this morning I am back down -2 lbs
This morning I am still fasting until around 11:00am my time (central standard) and I plan on having a lunch that I packed and then I have planned my dinner out too! all my food today is already prepared too, which makes it very convenient. For me as a rushed millennial, convenience == compliance.
My mom is doing this challenge with me, and she called me this morning to report she is down to a weight she hasn’t seen in she doesn’t know how long. Fasting is so great.
I got my wrist splints in the mail yesterday and wore them last night. I wish they were a little bit less obtrusive, but they definitely helped me sleep. I might still shop around online for other options and return these if I see something else that might work me. I feel like I look like a boxer that just got taped up, LOL
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I’m so happy you’re doing great and also that your mom is on board with you 
How is work going with your new views? How do you feel overall? Peaceful?
Your splints are so cute, they look badass. Are they flexible or a bit too stiff? Is that why they feel bulky?
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haha thank you <3
Things are pretty well at work. I feel like I am doing well so far with the protocol overall, just anxious to continue to do well.
I think I might try for a shorter brace, they just take up too much of my arm and I think I might like a shorter splint if it still would help with my issues
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DAY 5/30 of the 4:3 challenge
Great news! I feel like I have finally figured out 4:3 because this morning I have lost a little bit more on the scale and it was after an eat day! hooray!!!
things I did different: I extended my fast to 41 hours so I would have lunch for my first meal (thus, I only ate twice yesterday/no snacks!), I counted my calories (I ate up to my TDEE but no more), and I ate low carb (not quite keto) but I calculated it to be a net of 49 carbs total yesterday.
One thing I am particularly proud of is this chocolate keto mug cake with “blackberry jam” (smashed up blackberries with a spoonful of erythritol) I have been iterating on. I’ve got it tasting soooo delicious, i looked forward to having it as my dessert all day yesterday.
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Daaammnn, that looks delish! Congrats on your breakthrough. Bet the “high” is similar to finally figuring out a software bug, right? 
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I hadn’t thought of it exactly that way although I think when I was writing the entry, the phrase “hack dieting” came across my mind! but yes this is soooooo true! I love working on bugs 
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looks delicious!
Day 6/30 4:3 challenge
down -3 lbs this week!
(I am currently +5.6 more than my lowest weight from early December)
broke my fast at 37hour 18 minutes this morning
yesterday I did go off track, so let’s talk about it. I had my crutch earlier in the day, at 2pm instead of what I was planning for, I wanted to push it as far as 6pm or none at all. The trigger this time was definitely due in part to emotional eating. I had an unanticipated bill I had to pay in person yesterday that I thought I would be able to pay online, but it turned out they had some weird rule where you couldn’t pay it online unless you had paid it 3 business days in advance but I had read it as 3 days in advance. I was really upset by this because I had to leave my work and I didn’t know anything about the place I was going and I was feeling low energy in the first place because I was fasting. The thing that really discouraged me then was, I reached out to my mom for support and she acted like I was being silly that this was stressing me out at all. This made things wayyyyy worse, it genuinely hurt my feelings because I look to her as my #1 support system, and she let me down. It makes me feel like I can’t trust her.
Anyway, I got the bill paid and got home and had my crutch early, then later on last night, I had some eggs and cheese. So I ended up having a total of 920 calories yesterday (not supposed to go over 500) which makes me ashamed of myself a bit, but I have also at the same time lost 1.2 from yesterday and 3 lbs total from this time last week! This is what I love about fasting, I have a really big goal but even if I mess up in the process I can hop back into it immediately and I’ve been eating better than if I hadn’t made a plan at all.
Today and tomorrow are eat days, and I will start my next fast tomorrow evening around 6-7:30 pm central time.
This morning I had some eggs and cheese and am still full from them. Later today I am looking forward to trying out these Highkey brand low-carb pancakes. I have never tried these before but everything I have made from the highkey brand has been amazing.
My goal this weekend is not to gain weight although I very much may even if I stick within my TDEE both days. One woman who I pay attention to who has done the 4:3 fasting with much success, Sumaya Kazi, says that if she gains more than 2.5lbs over the weekend then she knows that she has eaten too much over the weekend and then Monday’s fast usually will erase any of the “scale gain” from the weekend. I am going to use that as a marker until I have been doing this long enough to measure my own markers of what success looks like for me after 2 eat days in a row in this program. After all, after my eat day Wednesday I saw a full 1.0 loss the next morning.
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Yes, unexpected stress has derailed a lot of people. It makes sense though because so many of us are habituated to de-stress through food, especially the ones with high caloric content which is the stuff that’s bad for us. Part of the flight or fight syndrome so we are hard-wired for it.
Glad you put it in perspective, learned from it and moved on. Rooting for ya!
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Day 7/30 of 4:3 challenge
I maintained on my first of 2 eat days!
This is exactly what I had hoped for. I followed my plan exactly yesterday and I got exactly the same number on the scale this morning.
So, I have made a new plan today of very low carb meals to get me ready for my first 36 hour fast of my 2nd week.
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For accountability’s sake I would like to highlight my added goals for next week’s 4:3 week schedule, in the interest of being more successful with sticking to the overall protocol and weaning myself off from needing a crutch:
1. I want to eat only keto/low carb foods if I feel the need to use my < 500 calorie crutch. I will be checking my blood ketone levels before and the morning after the crutch to check whether or not it knocked me out of ketosis
2. I will only use my crutch after 20 hours into my 36 hour fast, if at all
3. I will only use one crutch per fasting period, if at all.
One thing I realized this past week, week 1, of my 4:3 protocol is that my 36:12 schedule is something I actually want to make look more like a 42:6 schedule or 41:7 schedule. I want to only be eating lunch and dinner on my eating days so I can have big meals both of the times. Being able to skip breakfast in general was a huge hurdle for me to get over last year, and I want to continue to not crave breakfast at breakfast time. The thing though with doing the 4:3 protocol is that this means I will have to extend my 36 hour fast to something closer to the 41/42 hours in a fasted state.
This caused some issues for me because I went into this dramatic change hoping not to use a crutch at all but not anticipating I would actually be shooting for more than 40 hours of fasting instead of 36. After I realized this I am now more OK with the idea of using the crutch and then weaning off of it over some time.
After my 30 day challenge, depending on how I feel at that time, I may do a 30 maintenance challenge of doing some kind of combination of 18:6/OMAD in order to get my grelin levels to go down during the night into the afternoon. Night time snacking, which I know a lot of people deal with, has surprisingly not been really ever been a problem for me – a friend mentioned to me this is probably because I am a morning person. maybe thats right. 
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Day 8/30 of 4:3 challenge
I LOST after my 2nd of two eating days
-4.2 lbs since last Monday (1 week ago)
+4.4 lbs from my lowest weight
THATS what I’m talkin about !
Thrilled!
Lets go week 2!!!
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end of my day 8/30
just wanted to say today felt like a break-through. I felt good all day today at work and I fasted right through lunch without a problem. A mental trick that has been working and perhaps is now being more deeply held in my subconscious is to think of my work day as just 8 hours instead of the whole day, which is kinda how I used to think of it.
Whatever it is, Im going to hold on to this feeling and do everything I can to reproduce the results from last week. The best part of it though is the feeling of control I am really starting to have!
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day 9/30 of 4:3 challenge
I am up +0.4 today after my fasting day
I owe the gain from drinking fluids during the night (I have covered here my insomnia so sometimes I need some water during the night) but also perhaps an accidental lactic acid build up from climbing the stairs at work yesterday.
I made it to the 21st floor yesterday from the first floor… by then I was building up a nice sweat, lol, and thats not a good look IMO for work… so I took the elevator back up to my floor. I am definitely a bit sore this morning, but like I said last night, my fast yesterday going into late this morning has been my “strongest” in the sense that it was just kind of something I am used to doing and didn’t have any naughty thoughts of snacks or stopping my fast or anything.
Not too worried about the slight weight gain, and actually according to myfitnesspal I am down over 5 lbs from last week because last Tuesday, my first upday/ eating day, I was really hangry and irresponsible with the calories so I ended up gaining like 3 lbs over night which I’ve since gotten rid of plus some.
my fitness tracker from iPhone for yesterday 
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day 10/30 of 4:3 challenge
I gained 1.6 lbs from yesterday (an eat day) which is expected, but I don’t like the fact that the fast day before it made me gain .4, so I’m up 2.0 lbs --(total lost now is -2.2) I feel sad about it because I do feel like I am doing better than last week, but I do have a lot of options for improvements to make.
so today, I pledge to make another step in the right direction and cut my crutch in half. I am going to wait until 6:00 pm to have anything as well.
One obstacle I have today is we have a working lunch meeting with some leadership today. It will be catered and I am fasting through work so I am going to have to possibly turn down food or answer to social pressure. Luckily, because of my article that made the press/newspapers, I was able to share and get a lot of positive feedback about me fasting, so a lot of my coworkers already know I fast some days.
I will persevere!
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You should call the newspaper for a copy, clip out the article and have it framed in your office. Whenever anybody has questions you can just point to the article.
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Haha great idea Alipio!
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Day 12/30
Today is a fasting day and I am attempting my first non-crutch 41 hour fast. The only thing with calories I will allow is cream for my coffee.
Another struggle I have been working through this month is my sleeping habits. I downloaded a simple app where I can record my sleep diary. One thing I am doing that seems to help is NOT taking naps and NOT going to sleep before a planned time.
Last night I went to bed around 9pm and only woke up once. Since tonight is Friday night I am going to try not going to sleep until 11pm. We’ll see what happens
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day 13/30
wow so I am nearly half way along with my challenge!
yesterdays fast was my best yet. I was able to make it til about hour 25 before needing any kind of crutch. I attempted crutch-free, but Im glad I used the crutch because it made me feel a lot better. Its too early to weigh myself, I haven’t gotten out of bed yet.
I have a meditation workshop this morning and all I can think about is I hope my stomach doesn’t growl since I will be about 40 hours into my fast by then. LOL. I am really being mindful about going without breakfast in the morning, but I will probably have some creamer and coffee to stave off my stomach mumbling haha
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