Hi everyone! I’m Kayla. I’m here because I have struggled with dieting and binging in the past. When I graduated from college, I started to gain weight. I didn’t realize it when it was happening. I felt like I “woke up” and all of a sudden gained 15 pounds (I wasn’t eating well or working out). Since then, I’ve been yo-yo-ing with my weight. I did OMAD last year (pretty consistently), and had great results… until I plateaued and just kept cutting my calories until I was eating around 800-1,000 calories per day. Not good. A year later, I gained most of the weight back because it was too restrictive.
THANKFULLY, I discovered MissFitandNerdy’s YouTube Channel. She talked about reverse dieting, and how it can get you back up to a normal amount of calories before you make another cut. It’s helped with my relationship with food, and I’ve been reverse dieting up until this point, along with working out regularly. I feel like I am FINALLY in a place where I can fast without getting stuck in a “diet culture” mentality.
Originally, I thought that you had to eat a SUPER low amount of calories to lose weight and maintain, but that’s so not true! You just have to get a little creative to “trick” your body into losing fat. The biggest thing I learned from MissFitandNerdy’s YouTube Channel is that the body is an adaptation machine! If you diet too long, your body will adapt to the number of calories you are taking in, and, eventually, your “cut” is no longer a cut–it’s your maintenance calories.
With that in mind… my plan is to fast around 2-3 weeks, refeed, and then move back into my “normal” amount of calories (with less sugar), which is around 2,000 calories a day with moderate exercise 3-5 times a week.
My longterm goal is to completely fix my relationship with food, and lose that last bit of fat that I’ve been trying to get rid of since 2018, all while keeping a healthy mindset. I’m also hoping this fast will help heal my skin (I have severe hormonal acne). I use a combination of internal and external treatments to keep it under control, which helps! But I’m hoping this fast will get me across the finish line. My short-term goal is to complete 3 days of fasting! It’s a mind game for me, so I’m praying that I have the discipline to make it through!
In this moment, I am excited! And… hungry… lol. But it’s fine! It will all be worth it in the end. I am strong, capable, and determined. I can do this!