Dear Kayla,
I am overweight. Down 57 pounds…51 to go to my stretch goal. Love OMAD! Do you have a certain eating window on your cheat day? Thank you.
Sharman
Dear Sharman,
Congratulations on your weight loss! Dropping 57 pounds is no small feat! I wish you all success on your weight loss journey with OMAD.
Do I have a certain window on my cheat day? Well, my cheat day looks different these days than it did back when I was in my weight loss phase. Back then, my husband would make homemade chocolate chip pancakes around 8 or 9 on Sunday morning. That was a leisurely sort of meal, where we talked and joked and relaxed as a family. Usually I would want some lunch around noon or so, something like a sandwich. In the afternoon, I would sometimes snack around with popcorn or other food that we had on hand. And then I would have supper, which was usually made up of leftovers from the previous week’s dinners. Sometimes I had a snack before bed. In the early days of fasting, when I was still adjusting to fasting windows, I was diligent about eating right before I went to bed. I did this so that my fasting window would be easier the next day. Back then, my cheat day didn’t have a window at all.
As time marched on, my cheat day has evolved a little due to changing life circumstances. I’ve not changed any of my overarching rules. Sunday is still my cheat day. These days, however, we attend church, and we fast before we take Communion. The service is usually over around 11:45, and then we have coffee hour, where I drink coffee and eat snack foods. Given that I’m done eating around 7 pm on Saturday nights, that means I’m fasting for about 16 hours before I break my fast on Sundays. My eating for the rest of the day depends on how much I ate at coffee hour. I still have the same habit of eating leftovers from the previous week. I try to get in bed by 8 or 9. So when it’s all said and done, you could call my eating window on Sundays a 16:8.
But, you may wonder, what about pancake breakfast? Well, we still have that tradition, which is yet another way that my plan has morphed. These days my husband makes us chocolate chip pancakes on Saturday mornings. For a while, I wasn’t sure how I wanted the rest of my Saturday to go. I considered making that my cheat day instead of Sunday, but in the end I decided Saturdays were now 2MAD days (2MAD = 2 Meals A Day) and Sundays were still cheat days. So far, I’m enjoying it, and I’m still able to maintain in the 140s, which is my maintenance goal. I love how flexible intermittent fasting is!
Sincerely,
Kayla