Like many of you, I spend a lot of hours each week in front of the keyboard. Working in IT is amazingly enjoyable and challenging, but one of those challenges is maintaining a healthy lifestyle while being productive.
I had managed to develop some unhealthy behaviours and habits over the past few months, eating not when it was necessary, but when I was bored, or the second I felt hungry, I’d respond to that craving.
This resulted in my weight increasing to what is probably the highest it ever has been in my life, 104.5kg, so something had to change. I am someone who is incredibly time-poor, so while I’m not opposed to the gym (have been in the past), the prospect of consuming another hours and hours of time per week, was certainly not appealing.
I happened to be listening to a podcast where they mentioned an app by the name of Zero, by a company called Zero Longevity Science. I immediately downloaded it, it was free, so there was really no barrier to trying it and seeing if it worked for me.
The app is centred around fasting.
This next part of the story is certainly not health advice for your specific situation, but rather just my story and you can take from that what you will.
I am someone who loves data and pressing a couple of buttons in an app takes just seconds and is something I’d be happy to commit to doing to track progress.
The more challenging part of this lifestyle change was to completely rethink what I was eating, and when.
When I had dinner one night, I simply tapped the ‘Start fasting’ button in the app and the timer started. At that moment, I committed to doing this properly, no cheating. For the period of time the fasting timer was running, I wouldn’t eat, drinking is ok, but no eating.
My default was 13 hours, this means skipping breakfast and not eating between dinner around 7 pm and lunch around 12 pm the next day.
Between the 3rd and 25th of March, there are 528 hours, during that period, I fasted for 375 hours, and 51 minutes. This means that I did not eat, 71% of the time during this period.
After a couple of days, something surprising happened. I had to remind myself to eat. The 13 hours wasn’t a struggle, I was regularly hitting 15, 16, and 17 hours between food. My record to date is 18 hours and 33 minutes.
What I think has happened is that my stomach has actually shrunk, so rather than feeling hungry from not eating for protracted periods of time, I actually have to remind myself to eat and now this fasting comes easily.
So now for the results.
Yesterday, I weighed in at 99.4kg. I lost 5.1kg in less than a month.
I can see this being part of my life for a very long time, if not forever and I’m keen to explore how far I can take this. I expect the weight loss to taper off at some point and will report back when I know more (maybe after 3 months, then a year).
What’s better than the number itself is how I feel. I actually feel like I have more energy, I feel lighter and my clothes fit better which always makes you feel good. I can’t promise this will work for everyone, but what I can tell you is this app has helped me.
Just to be incredibly clear, they have not paid me for this post, and I have not paid them for using their service, I’m simply sharing this example of where technology can make our lives better.
