Hello there, I am still doing 12 hour fasts and have been for 4 days now. It has been great! I currently feel the best I’ve felt in a while. I am going to keep it to about 12 hours, as I don’t find it healthy to do things that are extreme. I have been eating a really big meal at 9 pm, since I usually would eat all throughout the night anyways, and I want it to keep me from getting too hungry until I eat again at 9 am. It was been very easy so far, and my energy and mental clarity feels better already.

I do not have a goal to lose weight, as most people do Intermittent Fasting for that reason, but I severely need to increase my energy levels. I also have Scleroderma, an autoimmune disease, so I am in need of the anti-inflammatory benefits from IF. I have a little belly fat to lose but I see that as being a nice bonus. I no longer change my behavior to try to result in weight loss. Those days are long gone! I operate from an inside out mechanism now. I focus on my feelings and what will make me feel the best. I do not deprive myself of things, I do not force anything when it comes to diet or exercise. It is a very loving, peaceful relationship and I am so thrilled that I’ve made it to this point.

Breaking my fast today I ate an apple and am now having oatmeal! Due to complications from Scleroderma, I get heartburn very easily, and oddly enough I have found that I get heartburn from oatmeal….yes, oatmeal. So I will probably be needing to take a Ranitidine pill soon for that.

**To inform you of my state of being as of lately, I have had little to no energy on a daily basis. I usually feel dead physically, and emotionally, despite my attempts at doing everything right in the way of sleep hygiene, staying at least somewhat active (chronic pain prevents a lot of this), eating healthyish. I feel like I am an empty vessel going through the motions of life when all I want to do lately is lay down. I have had chronic hip pain for 11 years, and had arthroscopic surgery on my hip joint and bone almost 4 years ago. I still have pain in my hip and down my leg almost constantly. In October of 2017 I developed a bulged disc in my neck that was misdiagnosed for 8 months. It was by far the hardest and most painful thing I’d ever experienced. Waking up in the morning was waking up to a nightmare every day. AND I forced myself to work through it the entire time because, well….bills! and Medical bills! It wasn’t until about May of 2018 that I started to feel almost all better from the bulged disc. I currently am not 100% recovered from that, but this past summer I started easing into doing very short yoga routines, and really mindfully inched my way into building strength again. The pain from the bulged disc was so severe and went all the way down my arm that it caused me to stop using my right arm almost entirely for 8 months. To my surprise one day I looked into the mirror and noticed my right arm was significantly smaller than my left! That was really scary to see. I went to numerous doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists, massage therapists, and finally found a physical therapist who did traction. After 1 session of this I was about 95% better. We both were astounded.

I haven’t been able to run in almost 8 years because of hip pain. I used to LOVE exercise and sports and bicycling, but I can hardly do those things anymore. This has led me back to depression, as exercise helped take me out of it years ago. I am now slowly introducing exercises into my life that I can do that don’t exacerbate my arm/back/neck pain, and hip/leg pain. About a month ago I started finding workout videos on YouTube that are very low impact that do moves that don’t hurt my hip. As you can imagine I am very excited about this. I love exercise because it makes me feel energetic, which is something I never feel anymore. At all. Obviously I am taking this very slowly, I am being extremely kind and loving to myself through this process. I am taking the smallest baby steps with this. The low impact cardio videos that I do are about 10 minutes long. I also have physical therapy exercises I do for my hip (haven’t been doing the bulged disc ones lately…). With my severe depression and extreme tiredness, it requires a monumental effort to get myself to do the PT exercises. But I remind myself of my desire to run and be the active person that I believe I can someday be, and I do my hip PT exercises 2 times per week. Maybe some week I’ll do it 3 times!