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I am still struggling somewhat with fasting consistently. I go so many days with ease, and fasting itself IS easy. At least, I feel like it’s easy for me. For sure, physically, I find fasting easy to do. I can deal with some hunger, and it doesn’t last that long. The struggle is psychological for me. A mental dilemma is more like it.

It may be an hour after eating or 8 hours after eating when I face the dilemma; do I eat again or finish my fast? When it happens, I am not hungry in the least. I don’t entirely know if it is a habit or emotional eating. Sometimes I just want to eat when I don’t need to. I guess that would be a habit. 

I ate whatever I wanted when I was in my 20s, 30s, and halfway through my 40s. And I probably should have figured out how to stop doing that before I turned 40, but I can’t see how I could have. I lacked knowledge, and I had a lot of wrong information.

I could control my weight when I was young by working out. I noticed around age 35 that it was getting harder to stay in shape with that method. I kept trying to eat what I wanted, going to the gym and running, and it was not working. Around 36, I tried to figure out what I should eat. That led me to several fad diets, and the yo-yo dieting began.

I guess I’m kinda slow because I didn’t figure out the high-carb diet wasn’t working until I was 52. That’s when I finally discovered the low-carb connection. The keto diet seemed like a God send. I lost nearly 40 pounds. I regained 20 pounds of that weight, but at least with intermittent fasting, I haven’t regained any more weight.

I didn’t learn how blood glucose and insulin affected the body until I was 56. My doctor at the time kept telling me I was becoming insulin resistant. Maybe she told me what that meant and I missed it because she was not convincing enough. By the time I figured it out, I was a full-blown diabetic and fat as hell. 

The meds for type 2 diabetes are horrendous! The first one they prescribed for me was metformin as a pill. It gave me stomach cramps every time I took it. One morning while out and about and too far from a bathroom, I crapped my pants! Oh, yes, that happened. After that event and my refusal to take any more of the stuff, my doctor prescribed Trulicity. It was a once-weekly medication delivered by injection. It performed the job of keeping my blood sugar in check, but it made me very nauseous. That’s as bad as stomach cramps. I figured it was just a matter of time before I threw up in a public place.

Shortly after that, I decided to give intermittent fasting a try. It was mainly to try to lose weight, but I knew it would also positively affect my blood sugar, and it did. Fasting got my blood glucose levels back to completely normal in a year, and six months later, my A1C was normal again.

If I wasn’t still getting positive results with my A1C, I might have given up by now. However, I do my best each day to stay on the course. Sometimes it is discouraging because I really need to lose weight. Writing these posts helps me to remember why I do what I do. I suppose I will reach my one day. Walking it out, however, is not as easy as believing.