Intermittent Fasting Meal Plan

[spoiler title=’Click for video transcript’ style=’default’ collapse_link=’true’] you do intermittent fasting well what’s your meal plan let’s talk about it so a common question I get asked is when I tell people what intermittent fasting is and that’s how it lost weight they say well what’s your meal plan like what are you eating and my answer is really simple I don’t have a meal plan and it’s really as simple as that I don’t restrict what I eat what kinds of foods I eat or even the quantity of food the only meal plan is that I only during a certain part of the day but you can make intermittent fasting as simple or as complex as you want it to there are other people out there who do intermittent fasting and they plan out all their meals and that’s just not me I’m always shooting for absolutely dead simple so the thing is though you might be thinking well yeah but what are you eating during that one meal are you eatin like kale and you know extra virgin olive oil or something like that and I would say no I am doing the more standard American diet type eating I eat everything I probably don’t eat as much like vegetables and healthy food as I should but you know to give you an idea of what my normal eating looks like I’m gonna give like what I ate this past week on the blog post on my website for this video that way you can see I think it would be too boring to list here so I don’t have a meal plan but I can give you some of my observations that I’ve seen with my eating one big thing that I try to do is I try to have some protein or fat in my meal what I’ve found with that is like if I were to only eat say a stack of pancakes and that was my one meal I would feel horrible the next day because I just I burn through that really quickly and I just I don’t feel that great the next day but if I take those same stack of pancakes and I put a bunch of butter on them with you know the syrup and everything and then also maybe have eggs with it and then maybe some turkey bacon also I don’t eat pork that’s the only reason it’d be you know turkey bacon but that I would feel a lot better the next day so I do always try to work in some sort of fat and protein the second thing would be I do not restrict myself so for that one meal that I’m eating a day I sit down and I eat until I’m absolutely satisfied so I don’t try to eat small portions I don’t try to you know say oh well I’m not quite fullest I’ll just leave it at that I really try to sit down and really eat until I’m satisfied what I found is if I really do that if I sit down eat until I’m satisfied then I’m good to go until the next day at suppertime and even though I’m not restricting you know foods or anything I’m still able to lose weight so when I say I don’t restrict I mean like I am eating you know a couple of platefuls of food and this is the size of my plate I don’t use this this size just because I’ve found that if I eat off of this size plate I end up feeling miserable if I just eat to satisfaction so that’s my meal plan for intermittent fasting basically the only plan there is to it is when I eat and again I only eat once a day that’s around 6:30 every day and then on Sunday though I eat all day long whatever I want I don’t restrict any foods ever that’s just my plan and that’s what I’ve had success with so I’m curious if you’re doing intermittent fasting what has been your eating plan do you try to do an eating plan in addition to intermittent fasting ok thanks for watching be sure to LIKE comment and subscribe down below[/spoiler]

In today’s video I talked about my intermittent fasting meal plan, which is simply: I don’t have one. I don’t restrict any foods, and I don’t restrict portions. I eat once a  day, and at that one meal I eat however much I want. But some people might want a glimpse into what foods that I’m actually eating. Rightly so. If I’m eating really low calorie foods all the time like kale and celery, that’s a very different proposition than if I’m eating the Standard American Diet.

Disclaimer: I’m doing this from memory because I knew that if I tried writing down what I was eating every night for a week, I would change my own behavior (also known as the Hawthorne effect). If I knew I was publishing a list of everything I ate, I would have made more of an effort to eat more fruit and veggies, eat less fat, etc. Hence why I did this retrospectively. It may be slightly less accurate, but it is more honest.

General cooking notes: I never use low-fat or “light” anything. If you see me say butter, it means real butter. If you see cheese, it’s the real full fat kind.

Last night (Wednesday)

Man Pleasing Chicken: I had 4 or 5 thighs. I also had a scoop (probably a 1/2 cup) of mashed potatoes laden with butter and cream cheese and salt and pepper. Water to drink.

Tuesday Night

Mini Meatloaves stuffed with cheddar cheese, topped with bbq sauce & Mashed Potatoes made with copious amounts of cream cheese and butter and salt and pepper.  I had 2 mini meatloaves (approximately 1/2 lb ground beef in each one 80/20 lean/fat ratio). Approx 1 cup of mashed potatoes.  Water to drink

Monday Night

Penne pasta with Prego tomato sauce and ground beef (80/20 fat to lean ratio). 3 platefuls. Probably 3 cups worth is my best guess. Water to drink.

Sunday (Cheat Day)

Peanut butter noodles. This is my cheat day go to meal. Boil some spaghetti noodles (I prefer Ramen but didn’t have any on hand). After they’re finished, drain water, reserving some pasta water for thinning sauce. In the hot pan, add 1/2 cup or so of peanut butter, some soy sauce, some sweet chili sauce, and some ginger (all to taste), and toss the noodles in it. I ate approximately a 1/3 lb of noodles.

5 Pieces of no bake chocolate oat bars my son made. Here’s the recipe, which he doubled and made in a 9 x 13 pan. Each piece was approximately 3.5″ by 2.5″ and delicious. Water to drink.

3 Energy Balls (basically raw oatmeal, peanut butter, honey, vanilla, and chocolate chips mixed together and made into balls

1 Can of Tuna with Mayonnaise and Mustard. I love mayo. I used probably a 1/4 cup or more. Water to drink.

Saturday Night

3 slices of cheese pizza, plus the crusts from 2 other pieces from a local pizza joint called Diginos. It was a really big New York style pizza. Water to drink.

Friday Night

This was  different kind of night. It was a game night over at our friends’ house. I started eating at around 7:30 or so, and it was all snacky foods. My window also lasted longer, 3 hours or so. I devoured the following: 3 pieces of chew cake, approximately 6 cheese pizza bagel bites, around 12 or so of these artisan appetizer tarts, and a piece of chocolate candy. Water to drink.

Thursday Night

4 Homemade chocolate chip pancakes with copious amounts of butter (probably about 3 tablespoons worth), maple syrup (probably about a half a cup), 5 pieces of turkey bacon, and about 2 scrambled eggs fried in butter.

Note that every day  I drink 3 cups of coffee with half and half.  Monday through Saturday, I eat only supper. Sunday is cheat day where I eat throughout the day, whenever and whatever I want.

So, there you have it: a snapshot of what my normal eating looks like. Is there room for improvement, nutritionally? You bet! There always will be. Other weeks you would see beef stroganoff, taco night, chicken enchilada soup, chili, roasted chicken with roasted broccoli, hamburgers, fries, etc. Again, I restrict nothing.