Intermittent Fasting – Challenge Accepted: Day 1

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The first step is always the hardest.

After a night of partying and welcoming in the new year, the first day of 2020 meant my first day of the challenge to basically starve my body of food for the first good part of my day. It also meant that I wasn’t able to eat or drink (except water) anything after 9pm on New Years Eve, so you can assume I had a blast at last night’s party. However, when I woke up this morning refreshed and without a hangover (which could not be said for everyone else), I can say I do not regret my actions from last night. While everyone was still trying to sleep off their post-party hangovers, I decided to take an extra long walk with my dog and greet all my neighbors in the new year to start mine off right.

I woke up around 6 in the morning and was pretty active for the first four and half hours. However, I could feel the claws of hunger slowly scratching at the linings of my stomach as it was getting closer to what would be my lunch time. As I mentioned in my previous article, I have given up my noon meals for this challenge because I would be working and my mind would be off food. However, on that day I did not work and what started out as an awesome New Years Day slowly started transforming into what felt like torture. All I could think about the rest of the afternoon is how awesome my first meal will taste.

As soon as it hit 3, the alarm on my phone rang playing the tune from the game Food Fighter (I set it up to make myself laugh earlier). I walked quickly into the kitchen to put something in my mouth while making a meal. Because I was so hungry, I ended up eating two bananas and a tangerine while making myself a 1/2lb bacon cheeseburger. By the time I sat down with my burger and took my first bite, I was already full. I couldn’t believe it. Just a few days ago I was able to gulp down a ¼ pounder meal and two fish fillet sandwiches with no problem. How can two bananas and a tangerine make me full? Well, it seemed to be one of the magics this challenge was performing for me.

Because I didn’t eat for the past 18 hours, apparently my stomach was emptied out and had shrunk. My first day on this fast, it was a rollercoaster of a day for me, but my first day was definitely a shocker and I am excited to wait for what the coming days will bring.