Miami Swim Week 2018, one of the most flashed showcase in America, ended last Tuesday, and it left me worried. The controversial trend that thousands of photographic lenses captured was the adhesive duct tape bathing suits (see pictures.)
Although it doesn’t cross my mind to even try this swimwear, I can’t help but think how painful it must be to take it off. If anything, these bikinis include a free wax treatment!
However, the real sticky business with summer fashion is the stress it triggers for overweight people when planning beach vacations. In real life, the crooked angles and filters from Instagram don’t work to hide those extra pounds.
I used to be part of that group, but this year I have enjoyed the beach and pool without the extra pounds that haunted me for years, and my family and friends have taken notice. How did I do it? I’ll be glad to tell you.
Before I begin, I want to make clear that I am not a nutritionist, endocrinologist, and I am not advertising anything. I simply want to share my experience with my readers, and should they identify with my case, they can read more about it.
Being born in a country in which the daily eating pattern includes not just one but several types of carbohydrates per meal–breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, and dinner–set me up for failure at dieting from the start.
From the moment I was able to hold a spoon in my hand, my first meal was a bowl of Colombian cocoa with floating pieces of cheese bread and pound cake–my Grandmother’s patented recipe.
The devotion for the bakery at breakfast followed me my entire life. There was no chance on earth that I was willing to give up my toast with butter and jelly in the mornings. But last October, one of my best friends told me about Intermittent Fasting, an eating pattern developed by a chiropractor named Dr. Eric Berg.
In a few words, intermittent fasting is not a diet, it doesn’t count calories, nor does it restrict any foods. The premise is changing the times at which we eat during the day.
In theory, it proposes 18 hours of fasting (including the hours of sleep) and 6 hours of feeding. In practice, it proposes to move breakfast until noon and from that moment until 6:00 p.m. eat whatever one wants.
Weight loss occurs by avoiding the insulin spike produced by any food, even if it is healthy, in the morning. Insulin is a powerful hormone that overrides the growth one, which incentivizes cellular regeneration and waste excretion. In other words, insulin causes the storage of fat in the body, especially the gut.
At first, I thought it was demented, yet I decided to try it, with a couple of cheats: I have a black coffee and a corn tortilla with a slice of cheese. 100 calories max and no bread. Then at noon I eat anything I crave for lunch, eat snacks for the rest of the afternoon, even dessert, and I eat dinner at 6:30 p.m. Lastly, I eat a banana before I go to bed.
Around eight weeks later I started shedding the stubborn ten pounds that had made a home in my waistline for years. Today, nine months later, I have kept the weight off and stayed in the same size, something that never happened before when my weight was a yo-yo.
If all extreme diets haven’t done the trick for you, perhaps changing your eating pattern could be the key to success. Needless to say, people with chronic conditions should speak to their doctors before trying any dieting program. God speed and good luck fasting!
Thanks for reading and sharing.
Xiomara Spadafora
This column was sponsored by Zellner Insurance Agency. Many things in life don’t have insurance. For everything else call Zellner (888) 208-8119
Good crazy woman 