New poster with her story - success

Thank you Dr. Herring for writing this little book and getting my attention and helping me on the path to health and weight loss.

My story:
I have always been relatively active (rowing 2 x daily anyone???) . I like unconventional exercise - boxing, versa climber, rowing, etc. But the weight has steadily been climbing on me. I am in my 40's now and there was no end in site to the steady gain. Recently I began exercising like a true demon in an effort to lose weight. By this I mean upwards of 60 to 90 minutes PER DAY of cardio, along with weights every other day, in an effort to lose weight.

I was already low carbing for years (generally less than 30 carbs per day) and always felt good on it (I am prediabetic with family history of diabetes so low carb is very healthy for me naturally). But despite the low carbing, and recording every morsel of food I ate (using a software program called CalorieKing Exercise and Nutrition Manager - works on Mac !) and ensuring my calories never rose above 1500/day, and exercising like above described demon, my weight would not budge. The funny thing is that after months of this, I would sometimes get discouraged and then go on an eating rampage. Strangely, my weight did not really go up too much either (but it did go up - just not in keeping with the amount of food I was then eating and expected to gain.

I began to think about accepting getting inexorably fatter and fatter. I have read Gary TAubes(thank you Gary) and believed in the science behind low carb/insulin/fat connection. But while it worked for me as a younger woman, not really now.

I tried a one month experiment of a PSMF (Protein Sparing Modified FAst). Lost weight but did not enjoy it too much. Then I ran across your book and website. I read everything I could about intermittent fasting (IF) including a lot on PubMed. I thought I had nothing to lose by trying a one month experience of IF ala FAst-5 since I already did the PSMF. I always felt better without breakfast anyway, but conventional wisdom forced me/scared me into eating. I knew skipping lunch would not be hard for me personally.

After a month I lost 10 lbs. Amazing! and I was able to eat nice, normal dinners with my husband, even a glass of wine occasionally.

Because I was afraid of failure, I did not tell my husband what I was doing. He is an MD and I worried he would tell me I was crazy. However, after seeing my success as he could not help but notice my weight loss, he asked me and I told him. He also did some reading and did his own trial of Fast-5.

Yup - the weight started falling off him also. He has now lost about 16 lbs in a month, and I personally have lost a total of 15.5 lbs in about 50 days. Just like you said the weight is falling off gradually but steadily.

The calorieking program I use has a weight tracker and this has been useful. I weigh every day, and while sometimes the weight goes up, which can be discouraging, I use the feature on the program which allows me to see the weight loss over the last week, the last 2 weeks, the last month, etc. Invariably, despite a few days here and there about weight gain, the weight LOST week by week is ALWAYS at least 1.5 lbs.

So my advice to anyone who weighs themselves is to track it in a journal and then look back at the historical figures. It has been motivating to me and everytime I feel bad about any gain (really, it's water folks !) I see that the historical trend is always, always down.

Thank you again Dr. Herring.