Fear the Rebound

During the summer I made some posts that highlighted the success I was having with a couple of different extended fasting strategies. I used both rolling 72's followed by a 3-week complete water fast to lose a substantial amount of weight. One of the things I have tried to highlight in my posts is some of the struggles I had because I want people to see both the good and the bad of fasting, and that means posting the wins and in this case the losses. The image I have shared here is the graph of the weight I lost during about 6 weeks of fasting, and shows my weight going from 273 to 225, nearly 50 pounds of weight loss in less than 2 months from 2-MAY-2021 till 18-JUNE-2022, an impressive amount of weight loss by any account. While that was highlighted and cheered, what followed over the next 6 weeks and is shown on the graph is a rebound of nearly 31 pounds. After I broke my fast and adjusted to normal food, I wasn't consistent, I went on a very long trip and completely neglected both my diet and exercise. I didn't have an exit strategy and the results show, I have since regained all the weight. I am making this post, not to discourage people from fasting, but to remind them that you need to have an exit strategy. That includes not just planning how to refeed after your fast, but the kind of diet and exercise routine that you want to participate in, as well as can maintain when you are not fasting. Fasting is a great tool, and people like me have used it successfully to lose a lot of weight, but the real mission for many who are fasting is to keep the weight off. This time around using the lessons learned I am implementing some new strategies to help me be more successful, here are a few of them: 1. I am being less strict about the rolling part of my fast, meaning it's a rolling 72 hour MINIMUM, but if I feel good I will keep going. 2. Attempting to limit the window when I do break my fast, no more week long benders. 3. When breaking the fast attempting to break as healthy as possible, meaning trying to eat low carb highly nutritious foods (spinach, vegetables, etc.) or at least incorporating them into the refeed. 4. Increase the amount that I am exercising. 5. I'll be posting here giving regular updates as well as updates on YouTube with the hope that will create some social pressure to keep me honest. I hope that this post gives some real insight into the positives and negatives of fasting. I am a firm believer that fasting can be an important tool for many people's journey, but we should strive to be honest. Many posts talk about people doing 30 day fasts and showing progress pics with extreme weight loss, which is both inspirational and great (keep it up, big fan). Hopefully these posts that I make are both instructional and similarly encouraging for people that are struggling, so that they know they are not alone and even for big weight losers like myself it can be hard. Fasting isn't always easy, don't beat yourself up to much when it doesn't go your way. I'm going to keep on working to lose the weight I have and regain a healthier lifestyle and I hope readers of this post will similarly overcome their struggles and do the same. [Weight in Pounds](https://preview.redd.it/ronzzye9t2ga1.png?width=3578&format=png&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=a090b9c3dd3df6651a08de37230a3067f273b3f4)