Episode 451: Nicki Torossian
en
January 30, 2025
TLDR: Nicki Torossian, a sales representative from London, Ontario, shares her lifelong struggle with weight and how she found success with intermittent fasting (IF) after trying various diets like Nutrisystem, gastric bypass surgery, and plant-based diet. She regained weight but lost 35 pounds through IF for a year and continues to maintain her goal range over the past 6 years. Nicki credits IF for transforming her relationship with food.

In Episode 451 of the Intermittent Fasting Stories podcast, host Gin Stevens welcomes Nicki Torossian, a sales representative from London, Ontario, Canada. This episode captures Nicki's inspiring journey through the challenges of weight management, revealing the transformative power of intermittent fasting (IF) and community support.
From Struggle to Success: A Personal Journey
Nicki opens up about her early struggles with weight, starting as a child when she attended Weight Watchers meetings with her mother at just 10 years old. By age 13, she weighed 175 pounds, marking the beginning of her tumultuous relationship with food:
- Nutrisystem Success: Nicki found temporary relief after losing 50 pounds at age 16 through Nutrisystem.
- Gastric Bypass Surgery: After a series of failed diets and reaching a weight of 272 pounds, she underwent gastric bypass surgery, resulting in a quick drop to 135 pounds, but this was followed by regaining some weight after personal challenges, including a divorce.
Discovering Intermittent Fasting
In March 2019, Nicki stumbled upon intermittent fasting after learning about its principles, particularly the importance of timing meals to allow the body to access stored fat. Key concepts that resonated with her included:
- Hunger Hormones: Understanding how hormones affect appetite transformed her relationship with food, allowing her to see food not just as a necessity but as something to enjoy without guilt.
- Clean Fasting: Doing it the right way allowed for genuine control over cravings and ensured sustainable weight loss.
Achievements and Non-Scale Victories
After starting intermittent fasting, Nicki achieved remarkable weight loss results, reclaiming her health and lifestyle:
- Weight Maintenance: She's maintained a weight in the goal range for six years, feeling freer than she ever has before.
- Hormonal Balance: Notable improvements in mood, energy levels, and skin conditions helped her realize the positive effects of intermittent fasting on her body.
- Food Freedom: Nicki mentions that her taste preferences have shifted to enjoy whole, real foods rather than processed ones, emphasizing that one indulgence does not derail her progress.
Living a Balanced Life
Nicki credits her success not just to the mechanics of IF but also to the community aspect. Being part of the Delay, Don't Deny community has provided:
- Supportive Environment: Engaging with fellow intermittent fasters helped reinforce her commitment and provided guidance during challenges.
- Focus on Long-Term Health: By embracing a plant-based diet alongside intermittent fasting, Nicki emphasizes healthy eating without calories being the sole focus.
Advice for New Intermittent Fasters
Nicki's journey highlights vital lessons for those starting their intermittent fasting path:
- Patience: Transformation takes time and effort. Intermittent fasting made her realize that hunger can be managed, ultimately leading to sustainable weight loss.
- Enjoying Food: The enjoyment of food returns when it isn’t categorized as the enemy, allowing for a more balanced lifestyle.
- Community Support: Connecting with others in the fasting community offers motivation, resources, and shared experiences.
Conclusion
Nicki’s story illustrates the profound impact intermittent fasting can have on one’s life, ranging from physical health to emotional well-being. Her transition from struggling with weight and food addiction to finding joy in both fasting and real food is empowering. For anyone considering intermittent fasting, Nicki encourages:
"If I can do it, anyone can do it!"
Her journey showcases the power of understanding your body, the significance of community, and finding a joyful relationship with food.
In the world of intermittent fasting, while the endeavor may appear daunting at first, the rewards of discipline, community, and self-acceptance lead to a more vibrant and fulfilling life.
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Are you ready to take your intermittent fasting lifestyle to the next level? There's nothing better than community to help with that.
In the delay don't deny community, we all embrace the clean fast and there's just the right support for you as you live your intermittent fasting lifestyle. You can connect directly with me in the Ask Gen group and I'll answer all of your questions personally. If you're new to intermittent fasting or recommitting to the intermittent fasting lifestyle, join the 28-day fast start group. After your fast start, join us for support in the first year group.
Need tips for long-term maintenance? We have a place for that. There are many more useful spaces beyond these, and you can interact in as many as you like. Visit ginstevens.com slash community to join us. An annual membership costs just over a dollar a week when you do the math. If you aren't ready to fully commit for a year, join for a month, and you can cancel at any time. If you know you'll want to stay forever, we also have a lifetime membership option available.
IF is free, you don't need to join our community to fast. But if you're looking for support from a community of like-minded intermittent fasters, we're here for you at ginstivans.com slash community. That's ginstivans.com slash community.
In the depths of an Atlanta forest, a clash between activists and authorities ends in tragedy. I'm Matthew Cher, and on my new podcast, we came to the forest. We expose the hidden truths behind a shootout. They left one activist dead and countless lives forever changed. Binge all episodes of We Came to the Forest ad-free on Wondery Plus.
Welcome to intermittent fasting stories. I'm your host, Jen Stevens, author of the New York Times bestseller, Fast Feast Repeat, as well as the book that started it all, Delay Don't Deny. I lost over 80 pounds thanks to intermittent fasting after learning how to delay my eating rather than denying myself the delicious foods I want to eat.
now. Who's ready to hear an inspirational, intermittent fasting story? That's why we're here. So let's get excited to talk to today's guest.
Hi, everybody, and welcome to episode 451 of Intermittent Fasting Stories. Today I'm here with Nikki Tarosian. Nikki lives in London, Ontario, which is in Canada, and she is a sales representative for a Belgian bra and swimwear company. Welcome, Nikki. Thank you, Jen. It's so great to be here. I'm so excited to meet you. Well, it is great to talk to you as well, although we've been already talking for 16 minutes.
We are. I love guests. I love to talk. Just like me. Anyway, you know, I like to start by asking what brought you to intermittent fasting and when was that? Okay. Well, I first started intermittent fasting in March of 2019.
Um, I had heard of it before that. One of my customers mentioned it in passing along with keto and I just quickly brushed it off. I thought, Oh, there's no way I'm doing either of those, but I remember the words intermittent fasting. Um, when I did stumble upon you in 2019, I don't remember how I think it might have been from a different podcast because I do a lot of driving for my job. And so I started to get really tired of listening to music all the time. So I got into podcasts then.
And I think somebody must have mentioned it. So I started listening to you in March of 2019. And there were two things that immediately were things that I heard you say that I had never heard before in my whole 40 years of dieting history. And I won't say them the way you said them because I can't articulate as well as you. But one of them was along the lines of
If your body is always burning the food you eat, it never gets a chance to burn your stored fat. That whole refrigerator freezer analogy, where if you're always eating the food out of your fridge, you never get to actually access the food in your freezer. And I thought, okay, that is something I've never heard before. And I just want to give credit for that analogy to Jason Fong because, you know,
School teachers like me take from all sources and then when we find something we like we we file that away and that is the very best analogy for understanding Yeah, we've got all this food stored on our bodies all this energy. We want to get to it exactly Yeah, I thought okay that like I have you'll hear in a minute my diet history I've been been through most of them and that is the one thing I hadn't heard before and
The second thing was about hunger hormones and how hormones affect your hunger and insulin being a fat storage hormone. I never would have made the connection between hormones and weight gain, but there was a clue to that in my diet history that you'll hear after I ended up having gastric bypass surgery. And there's a lot of stuff there that has to do with hormones as well. So that rung a bell once I had heard that.
But going back to the diet history, I was always a chubby child. I do remember at the age of 10. I don't know if I actually joined Weight Watchers then. I doubt they let you join at that age, but I must have tagged along with my mother or something because I remember saying to my mom, oh, I had a half a grapefruit and a half a slice of toast today. You know, how proud of you. How proud of me? Are you kind of a thing? So looking back, that was awfully young to be even concerned about, you know, dieting.
Also, I remember at a younger age, I think I was around 12, I was in school starting to play the trumpet, and I had the trumpet case with me on the bus going home, and some rude kid said to me, oh, is that your lunchbox? Because, yes, the trumpet case was so big, and I remember thinking, okay, now I'm getting teased for my weight.
Then at the age of 13, I ended up starting my first job working at a Chinese restaurant. And the guy who owned it, Mr. Lee, his name was, he used to say things like, Oh, Nikki, you're such a fat girl. And I remember thinking, Oh my God, you're an adult and you're making fun of me for my weight. But these little things like made me realize like, I'm not the same as everybody else. Like the weight was definitely an issue. And it wasn't really for anybody else that I knew of that age. You know, my friends were all skinny.
So anyway, then I remember around the age of 1314, I did climb up to about 175 pounds at that stage in my life. And I remember that because I had to get special permission to join a gym. And my mom was like, yeah, well, she
I think she needs to join a gym. It's that weight because the gym had like age requirements. Yeah, you had to be 16 to join. And I think it was about, yeah, 173 pounds at that stage. So definitely was climbing up there. That's when I also started, you know, experimenting with more dieting. I remember at that point joining a neutral system.
And so, NutriSystem, the Atkins diet, my Aunt Jackie, she was also very morbidly obese, and she was joining things and then sharing information with me. I remember there was a diet she joined called the Diet Center, and they gave you supplements, and I remember her sharing the supplements with me.
Not that I don't know what they did, but looking back, I think, oh my God, how weird was that? You know, just give me more than like some kind of like this diet supplements that was supposed to rev up your metabolism that they made you feel crazy. Was it something like that? I don't know. I feel like they might have been just supplements because you weren't eating much, you know? So like vitamins. Yeah. But I never did learn anything about that diet, but here I am taking these supplements. You said your aunt was morbidly obese. Yeah. Did your mother struggle with her weight as well?
Not as much. She would say she struggles with her weight, but I said to her the other day, what's the highest you ever got? And she said, oh, about 185. And I thought, well, I don't think that's as much of a struggle as the average person. So she was working on it. She went to Weight Watchers, took you with her. She was focused, took you to the gym. So she just made me work really, really hard.
And you know what else I remember having a conversation with her and my aunt and the three of us and I must have been maybe 14 years old and the three of us talking about what we wished our bodies looked like and I said I wish that I had a gap between my thighs and my mom said I wish my armpits were hollow and my aunt said I wish what was hers.
Oh, she wanted clavicle bones to be noticeable. And looking back, I can't believe we even had that conversation. But, you know, that just showed that we were all super hyper focused on trying to lose weight all the time. Even if my mom didn't struggle that much, my aunt surely did. And she definitely, well, she passed away from a lot of nutrition related diseases or lifestyle diseases. Yeah. Sorry to hear that. Now I'm like feeling my armpit. Sorry.
Yeah, I know, right? By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By the way. By
Oh my goodness, the things we think about, but you know, it just goes just shy that when we don't feel good in our body, we really do feel it all the time and we noticed it in so many ways. Yeah, it's so true and everybody's feeling their armpits now. Well, and I look back and I think
How sad is it that I had to have those, or I had those conversations and I thought about it so much, you know, when now there's just such freedom, you know, but it was really overwhelming living a life like that, always like hyper focused on weight and trying to lose weight. And that's the biggest thing that.
intermittent fasting has given me is just that freedom. I think you had a guest that talked about a book called Absolute Freedom. And I thought, yep, that's exactly what it does is it gives you the freedom to focus on other things in your life because you don't have this weight hanging over you or the addiction to food hanging over you anymore. That's true. And the book, I bet you're thinking about unbelievable freedom. Yeah, that's the one. But then the reason I clarify this, because I know people be emailing saying, what was that book? I can't find absolute freedom. It was unbelievable freedom.
And it was written by actually guest number one on the intermittent fasting stories, Kim Smith. She and her has been Ryan chronicle their story with intermittent fasting and how they lost weight together. And yeah, it's a great title. It really is a great title. Unbelievable freedom through intermittent fasting. It's true, though, that really describes it. Well, because we've been so focused. I mean, you remember being 10 years old sitting at that weight watchers, weight watchers meeting and then going home and having half a grapefruit and half a beast.
Yeah. Now if I had half a grapefruit and half a piece of toast, I would be so hungry. Starving, yeah. I know. And that's the thing. And that's where the hormones come in, that constant rollercoaster of hormones up and down every time you eat. Now that's just the freedom from that is the biggest blessing for sure. Absolutely. So yeah, it was very overwhelming.
But around that time is when I discovered NutriSystem and joined, and I think I was probably around 16 years old, and I did lose 50 pounds. I went from 183 pounds to 133 pounds. So I was about, how tall are you? Five foot four. Okay. That was a healthy weight for you.
Yeah. Yeah. And that was the first time that I ever had major success with a, with a weight loss before that it was sort of like 10 pounds here and there struggling. But that when I was like, okay, but the food was so terrible. Oh my gosh. I remember going to Christmas dinner with my family and my great grandfather. You know, there's a whole plate, you know, a whole table full of people.
And I had this little piece of pizza on my plate during Christmas dinner and it was so terrible. It wasn't even good. It was like, you know, like a pita bread with sauce and sprinkled Parmesan, like not even the real Parmesan, but, you know, powdered cheese on it. And I remember he put his fork into it and he flung it across the room.
Chris, what the hell is that? And looking back, I was so scared to eat regular food, because I thought it would throw it off the whole system. And looking back, how ridiculous was it to eat, even eat it, and secondly, bring it to Christmas dinner in front of like 15 other people. Well, you're talking to somebody who took a packaged spaghetti dinner to a family meal, but we now know they're having spaghetti. So I brought my Michelina's 220 calories spaghetti with me. And it's one Christmas.
Yeah, I did let loose on Christmas. But always, I can understand, you know, you finally had success. And you know, at that time, you're like, it's this magical nature system. Yes, it's done it for me. It's the food. If I don't eat this food, then it will all fall apart. I got to eat this food. Yeah.
And that's what's so scary is the littlest thing would throw you off back in the day. And now that's what I love so much today is I can eat really, people always say, can you eat whatever you want? Yes, but like you say, what you want has changed, but you can. You can go ahead and eat some Halloween candy or dessert or whatever, and it doesn't throw you off. And that's just, again, that unbelievable freedom. One day does not make or break anything. Exactly. One good day doesn't get you to do your goal weight.
And one day where you're like a little bit more loosey-goosey doesn't ruin your progress. But you know, it's a string together that matter. It did feel like back in the day, one thing would not just throw off your momentum, but it seemed to actually throw off my weight. Like I would eat one thing that wasn't on the plan. And you know, the next day would be like this increase on the scale. And I remember thinking it's so, like it's just so sensitive, but now it doesn't feel that way anymore. And now that's when you give up.
Yeah. And that's the thing. I mean, no one works harder at weight loss than people, you know, trying to lose weight. And then you just, it goes up and down and up and down and it looks like you're not trying, but you are. You're trying hard every single day. So it's just nice. We all, we all get it. And it just is so if it's defeating and then you're like, well, I give up. I just can't eat another gross little plastic pizza. Yeah. And so.
Forget it. Yeah, exactly. So 50 pounds. How long were you able to hang on by your fingernails to that plan? Not long at all. Right. So at that point, I moved from my mom got married and we moved from one city to another. And I was starting at high school. I was starting my last year of high school, grade 12, which we I know you don't call it that the States. What's the last year? That's senior year. Senior year. Yeah.
So starting my senior year at 133 pounds in a school where nobody knew me before. And I thought, Oh, this is a fresh start. You know, this is going to be awesome. And I also got a job at a drugstore at that point and little by little, you know, once you're not eating the nutrition system food anymore, like I don't know how to eat.
So it started gaining the weight back and I managed to kind of make it probably six months without, you know, gaining too much weight. But at one point I ended up quitting my job at the drugstore because I needed to do to get a new uniform because I was gaining weight. And so instead of asking for a bigger uniform or trying to lose weight again, I quit.
And so that was sort of like the beginning of the major weight gain into university. I think I ended up throughout the four years of university going back up to the 185 pounds. So it did probably take me.
Yeah, probably about four years to get back there. And that was probably the only time in my life, like I think during university, I don't remember trying to lose weight. You know, I spent a year in France and I, you know, I did a lot of walking and there's a lot of hills in the town where I was living. And so I didn't really focus as much about weight loss during university. I guess I was just too busy. Yeah.
But then when I graduated in 1995, when I was 22, that's when I got some money and some freedom and a car in my first apartment, and I started to gain weight a little more. I don't know when I got over the 200-pound mark, but I do remember at that stage when I had my own apartment, that's when I bought my first treadmill.
And I can remember buying all the diet books that in Susan powder, you know, to stop the insanity. Yes. Look, you know, I was on that like fat, that like fat craze back then. I loved Susan powder. Yeah. She was like a guru. She was hilarious. I actually have you can find her stuff on YouTube. Yeah. I want to find that you should literally it's like a blast for the past and yeah, and her giving her little talks about the fat everything. It was hilarious, but you know what? That worked for me.
lost a lot of weight. Yeah. And I don't remember anything really working well for me during that time. Like I kind of wrote down here what else I was reading. I was buying all of Oprah's chef's cookbooks at the time. Yes. I remember that. A few of them, right? And her personal trainer who I actually met once at the Detroit airport that Bob Harper.
Yeah, I remember him. Yeah. And then I was also reading the Mary Lou Hanger book, the Diamonds. Do you remember the Diamonds? They had food for life and they were all about Marilyn and Harvey. Yes. Yes. I called one of my friends. I was one of her recently and I said, you know, I think I'm a diet anthropologist. Yeah.
Like literally, I am a diet anthropologist because I've always been interested even before I was a teenager, but I could tell you, and there are probably so many other diet anthropologists listening, but absolutely. Yeah. But yeah, once you try everything, and I can remember the winners too, by the way.
Yeah, she's actually looks, she looks fabulous too. She gave up gluten and dairy and what else. I want to say she was into food combining maybe too. Maybe. Yeah. With the no fruit with the veg, no fruit with what is it? Meat, no carbs with meat. Like they're so complicated, but you know, whatever that one out because you can eat like that.
Yeah, he's needs a cracker. Exactly. Yeah, that's the thing. And that's why I can't stick to things like low carb because, oh, and then at the time, too, I was, no, no, that came later, the food addict's diet, where at least you could have a cookie or something in the evening with that. Yeah.
Yeah. And so that came later. But I also remember that time I was working at an insurance company in an office environment and they had like a lunchtime tops meeting, which was stood for taking off pounds sensibly. Yeah. So I was joining that. So I mean, you can't say I didn't try, right? That's the thing. Yeah. Everybody who has struggled with their weight for decades has traveled harder than anybody else. Yeah. You know who hasn't struggled with their weight for decades? My husband Chad. Yeah. And has he tried? No.
Yeah. He hasn't tried. He just naturally doesn't. But those of us who have struggled, we have tried. And that's what feels so unfair. Yeah. Because we have tried so hard only to go, yo, up, up, up, up. Yeah. Each morning.
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I remember I had a boss at the time. Actually, that came later, the boss, but she, um, she would say things like, Oh, I forgot to eat today. And I remember thinking, what? Who forgets to eat? And she'd open like a can of green beans for dinner. And I'm like, I don't understand you at all. Like, how do you like not?
Want to constantly eat you know but she just it wasn't in her DNA like she didn't have the i don't know what it is because i, you know you think the hormones alone that when you eat it would you know but if you forget to eat you must not be driving up your blood glucose all the time and you know we all are different you know when i always think back to.
You know, the bell curve, the normal distribution of like characteristics. And so if you think about hunger hormones and the drive to eat, there are people that just draw down on that left side with a very low amount of that. They just don't have the hunger hormones, the drive to eat, I think.
Yeah. Yeah. And lucky them. I don't get it. I would have saved me a lot of time and I was one of them, but I wasn't. So then in 1998, when I turned 25, two very pivotal moments in my life happened. One, I ended up meeting and dating a chef.
It's just like the worst thing for someone who struggles with their weight and he would show his love through food and elaborate dinners and lots of socializing and dinner parties and stuff like that. The other thing that happened in 1998 was that I started working in a job like I have now in sales, sales representation where I'm on the road all the time.
And I have a budget or an expense account for food and I'm alone a lot in hotels. So food became entertainment in the evenings and I could spend, you know, if I wanted to spend, you know, a little bit of extra money on a good dinner, I could do it. So that those two things, you know, kind of, you know, made things go a little more out of control than they had been previously. Two good things came from the marriage though, my two beautiful children.
And also a love and appreciation of higher quality ingredients, herbs and spices and making things like salads taste good. I used to say that to him all the time was like, I've never enjoyed a salad before, but now, you know, when you're using, you know,
different kinds of lettuces and different kinds of nuts on top. Like now, okay, that now tastes good. And that was great because later in life, that really helped me as I transitioned into eating for health instead of weight loss. I was like, okay, now I actually enjoy the healthy, the taste of the healthy food. Whereas before, if you had said that I would ever have enjoyed a salad, I would have thought you were crazy. Well, you know, I think back to it, you had programmed from a very young age that eating for weight loss meant the food was going to be terrible.
Yeah, it's going to be exactly now. It's going to be nature system on a plane. It's going to be a great fruit and dry toast. So we eventually did get married in 2004 when I was 31. And looking back at the wedding photos, I think I weighed probably about 230 pounds at the time.
I did get pregnant on the honeymoon so my daughter was born in 2005 and at that stage I probably was up to the 250 pound mark because the weight gain with the pregnancy. Something really interesting though happened when I was pregnant. I knew that I was becoming at risk for diseases at this point and I remember going to my OBGYN for the pregnancy checkups and there was a sign up in the doctor's office that said something like
I think it might have said something like overweight and pregnant, you know, come join our study to see if you're at risk for gestational diabetes. And I remember thinking, okay, this is a reality here. I better look into this. So I did actually join this study and they did things like they took a little piece of
of muscle from my leg, a muscle biopsy, I guess, and they would test it to see, I guess, how much, I guess I was at risk for diabetes by looking at how much fat accumulation might have been in the cells, I guess. And looking back, I realize now that there's books that I've, or people that I've followed who that's what they believe the cause of diabetes is, is the accumulation of fat in the muscle cells and not being able to accept the insulin to use it.
And so I had no idea at the time that there was a correlation there. But anyway, they had you drink that really sugary orange drink. And then they had me go on a treadmill and walk. And then they would take this muscle biopsy. And I guess they must have tested my blood, blood glucose to see what kind of uptake there was into the cells. That's so interesting.
It was so interesting because at the end of it, so here I am, at the end of it, it must have been nine months pregnant, 250 pounds, and the woman said to me, you are not even at long-term risk for diabetes. I remember thinking, how is that possible at this weight and being pregnant? But I remember thinking, okay, this is good. I may be overweight, but I don't think I'm that unhealthy. I hadn't had any health problems at that point.
That made me feel good at least during the pregnancy that I could get through it, not worry about diabetes. And then two years later, my son came about and that's when I got to my highest all-time weight was my second pregnancy and I got to 272 pounds.
And now going back, back in, I guess it was around 2000, I had started to look into gastric bypass surgery. I remember Carney Wilson had had it at the time. I remember when she had it. Yeah. And I remember her transformation was just amazing. And I remember thinking, yeah, that's what I need. I need a smaller stomach. And I looked into it, but that was like before I even had internet, I think, and I wasn't really able to really look into it. And I also didn't have a family doctor that I
You know, went to regularly. I would just go to a walk-in clinic or something. So I couldn't really look into it, you know, that closely. And at the time, too, I also had a girlfriend who we used to have these conversations, which I look back and find so interesting because we both realized like,
Here we are, educated women. We are not stupid. We have good, you know, educations. We have good jobs. We're in relationships where we're happy. And the one thing in our lives that we can't seem to control is this weight. And we were kind of like super frustrated thinking like, what is it? Why can't we do this?
And after I had my son, I ended up joining this little sorority for newcomers to the town that I was living in. And they called it a sorority. It's just a friendship group kind of a thing. But there was a girl there that I had become friends with. But then I ended up not liking the little sorority thing, so I didn't go back to it. But a couple years later,
I had put an ad on Facebook because I was trying to get rid of a hamster or a guinea pig or something. And she sent me a message and she said, I'll take it. I'll pick it up tonight. Now I hadn't seen her in maybe, I don't know, two or three years. And when I opened the door to let her in, I didn't know who she was. I was like, wow. Oh my God. Like she had gone from, you know, being overweight and sort of like long brown curly hair to super thin.
short, blonde, spiky hair. And I thought, oh, who is this person? And I said to her, whatever you just did, I want in. Like, tell me what you did. And she had told me at the time that she had had gastric bypass surgery. And then I started to really research it. And she actually had a surgery called the duodenal switch, which is a very, very, what's the word, invasive surgery, I guess. It's something that I applied for and actually wasn't... What do they do on that one?
I'm not really sure what the difference is but because I ended up having the gastric bypass called the ruin why which is where they it's the gold standard the normal one but the one she had had was just more invasive and I think they take more of your stomach and she ended up like I think there you have a really hard time absorbing a lot of nutrients.
And I actually do have a hard time absorbing nutrients, but she was like even more so. And that's why they didn't approve me. And by the way, back then, in Canada, the waiting list for gastric bypass surgery was seven years. And so I ended up, luckily, I lived not too far from Michigan. And I ended up having it done in Michigan.
in 2009, and then I didn't have a waiting list. And Mike, it's covered under our provincial insurance plan, and they even pay for it if you go to the States and have it done. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. I never imagined that. Yeah. I just have to share this because this is a coincidence. The episode that came out last week, which I recorded yesterday, the most of my timing.
I interviewed a guest who had had the gastric bypass, lives in America, went to Mexico to have the surgery. Oh, my gosh. But so here we are. Americans are going to Mexico. And Canadians are coming to the United States. That is nuts. But I never would have thought that your insurance would cover it. Yeah, I was really surprised. But I kind of ended up having a chat with the girl, I guess, from we call it OHIP Ontario Health Insurance Plan. And she said, it's quite a transformational
surgery that will save us money in the long term, like health-wise. So that's why they approved it. They figured, you know what, if you're going down that road of diabetes and heart disease and all that stuff, we want to head it off at the past as much as you do. And I thought, you know what, that's good. That's progressive thinking. And they have, I guess, proven that it does really, really help those diseases. So I ended up going down that path, but it was a really interesting moment being in the waiting room.
because I was sitting in the waiting room of this clinic and the chairs were like four feet wide. And I remember thinking, oh my God, how did I get here? How is my life become a four foot wide chair? And it was so sad and depressing, but I couldn't dwell on it. I was there to try to solve this problem. And it did definitely help me solve the problem. So let's see, how did that end up going? I remember the surgeon saying,
gastric bypass surgery is not the be all and end all it's a tool to help you get to where you want to go but it is up to you to make sure that it sticks because it's something that you can manipulate like if you decide that like say you have this smaller stomach you can drink all your calories you can graze all day long and i remember thinking okay like this is going to help me but it isn't going to be
You know, something that I can depend on for the rest of my life. And I think he even threw around a statistic that said something like the first year of your surgery, 80% of your weight loss is because of the surgery. 20% is like what you're doing. And then the second year, it's 50-50 and the third year, it's like nothing. Like the surgery is not really helping you much after the third year because your stomach can stretch. You don't end up having the help from the hormone changes that I'll talk about in a second.
But I remember thinking, okay, this is going to help, but I, this is my one big chance to get down to where I want to be. And then it's up to me. And I think you have to go into it with that attitude because if you go into it thinking I can still do everything that I used to do, you know, you're eventually probably going to gain the weight back. So lucky, luckily enough, you know, I was, I was lucky enough to lose to have all my weight loss. Like I got down to, I think I started at the 272 and I got down to, I think 135. Oh, wow.
And so it did really work for me. But another thing the surgeon had said was he said something to the effect that be careful in your relationships, because when one person in a relationship loses weight and the other one doesn't, it can be very difficult. And I remember saying that to my husband at the time, because he also struggled with his weight and he was very offended. And he said something like, you know, that makes it sound like we're only together because we're both fat. And if you become thin and I'm fat, that our relationship is just built on food. And I said,
Yeah, I get that. So I went into it knowing that the relationship could get strained, but what I didn't realize at the time was that he already was struggling with alcohol addiction, and the weight loss really did send him into a tailspin with the alcohol, because I think he felt very threatened. Yeah, and I get that. That's hard, but it sounds like your surgeon did a wonderful job counseling. Yeah, he did. You had a great surgeon who said here are the pitfalls, so you knew what to expect.
Yeah, I'm sorry about your husband. Thank you. Yeah, we did end up splitting and now I happily married to a wonderful man, but we'll get to that later. But anyway, so one thing that this is where the hormone thing comes in though. I remember going to one of my follow up appointments shortly after the surgery. And so I had to drive to Michigan and come back. And when I came back from my appointment, my husband had made this amazing looking pizza for the kids.
And being a chef, I mean, it wasn't anything store bought. It was like the fresh basil. It was the good cheese. It was amazing. And I walked into the house and I remember smelling it and thinking, oh my God, what a beautiful smell that is. And I went right up to the pizza and I inhaled the smell and it didn't make my mouth water. And that was the first time in my life that I didn't have a physical reaction to smelling something really delicious.
And I remember thinking, what is the deal with that? And I later learned that it's the hormone ghrelin. The ghrelin hormone is what makes your mouth water and it makes your juices start flowing. And so after the surgery, you do get a suppression of that hormone because it's, I guess it's produced in your stomach and your stomach has been altered. So you just don't have that for a while. And that was such a great thing to be able to be around food and not feel like it had that control over me. Well, you know, going back to what was it? Your boss who just didn't.
Think about eating. Like I said, like I said, she just didn't have the same hormonal signal. She's down on that low end of the normal distribution curve. Exactly. Yeah. And she doesn't have to apply willpower. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't want it where the rest of us are like,
Stimulated all the time with our girl right you know what speaking of stimulated all the time like because i was driving a lot for my job i would pass by all the mcdonald's arches and the burger king and. My mouth would literally start to water just looking at the signs and i remember looking at my watch sometimes thinking it can i eat now is it time to eat you know and like the power that even a sign on the highway had over me was so.
Wow. Sad. Like looking back, you know, so that's why that hormone suppression really, really was a godsend because I thought, well, now at least I feel like I had a little more control, even though it wasn't really, it was like physical control, but it wasn't like mental control, you know? I get it. Yeah.
The other thing that happens with the gastric bypass surgery is your reaction to sugar. So you've probably heard people call it dumping, which is where the sugar dumps quickly into your system and you have a physical reaction to it. And I remember nine months after the surgery, I went to a wedding and it was the first time that I thought about having some sugar because you can go for a very long time without cravings after that surgery. But I thought, you know, at some point I got to find out what happens if I do have some sugar. So I went to a wedding. I ate a cupcake.
And I was just waiting. I thought they're waiting for the effects to happen and nothing happened. So I realized, okay, like I can have some sugar and not have a reaction to it. But later I realized if I have too much sugar, my heart starts to race really quickly and I need to lie down and I feel exhausted for about an hour.
And then it passes, I guess the sugar's used in my system and it goes away. But what that does is really make me able to control my desire for sugar because when you have a physical reaction that makes you feel so terrible, it will stop you from having it. So that's been very nice for me because as the gastric bypass surgery thing started to wear off, I still had that, I still do have that reaction to sugar. So that really helped me control it. So then I did end up getting a divorce.
And shortly after the divorce, here I am at my goal weight. I end up meeting somebody that is now my husband who's just a wonderful person. And, you know, it felt like a rebirth. It felt like here I am with like a great guy and I'm in a home, you know, where I'm happy with my two kids. And it's a long distance relationship. It still is.
He lives two and a half hours north of where I live because of his job and my job and my kids and my family and all that. But every weekend we would see each other and the weekends became like the best part of my week. So it would be spent celebrating with food and alcohol.
And Friday night long. And I thought, okay, well, here I am like happy. And he kind of has this running joke that every time he meets a woman, she ends up gaining weight. And I said, I don't know, you could just make people like happy and they want to celebrate when they're with you, you know.
So the weight did slowly start to come back on again and I ended up gaining, I think, around 40 pounds after those gastric bypass. And I remember thinking of the time, oh my God, what more could I possibly do? You know, I've had surgery to rearrange my organs and now I'm gaining weight again.
So then I ended up watching the film Forks Over Knives, the documentary. And I remember watching it thinking, oh, OK, well, that's different. Like this obsession we have in our culture with meat and that kind of stuff. And so I started looking into that. And it didn't really stick. I watched the film. I thought, oh, I should go plant-based. And then I couldn't do it. I was like, no, this is too restrictive.
But I think a few years later, I watched it again. And then Instagram was around and Twitter, and I started following the doctors that were featured in those documentaries. And that's, I think, actually what ended up making me find you because I was listening to a podcast about plant-based foods. And I think somebody on that is what mentioned intermittent fasting. And that's, I think, eventually how mastering diabetes, the guys that write mastering diabetes, they do intermittent fasting plus whole food plant-based.
Yeah, exactly. And there's a podcast I listened to called the exam room and it's I'm familiar with that one. Yeah. And it's Dr. Barnard is and is on that actually eventually met Dr. Barnard. He came to Toronto to to speak and I met him and long story short, I ended up meeting a lot of the plant based people's people in those films, but it really started making me focus on eating for health instead of eating for weight loss, because I thought to myself, well, now I have
as I'm getting older, I have more of a focus on aging, healthy, healthfully. And that's what the plant-based side of things helped me with. But at the end of the day, it wasn't helped me really lose weight because I really enjoyed the foods I was eating when I was eating whole or plant-based. And I still do eat plant-based, but back then I was more into the fake meats and the fake cheeses. And now I'm like, okay, those aren't good for us either. So it put a focus more on health, but it wasn't really helping with the weight loss.
So that makes a lot of sense because there's a lot of junk food that is labeled, especially now. You know how back in the Susan powder loafat days, everything got the loafat or fat free label, but it was just pure junk. Well, the same thing now is happening with plant based, you know. Exactly. And the keto stuff too. I mean, there's so many products ending the gluten free stuff. Like there's just so much crap. And so now I do just put more of a focus on whole foods in general.
And if I have cheese every now and then, or if I have chicken or turkey at Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever, that's, again, that freedom of knowing. Okay, even if those meat foods aren't maybe the best for me, well, if I'm only doing it a couple of times a year, that's not going to kill me, right? Exactly. Absolutely. So also that plant-based community is just so nice.
They're kind, they're nice. I just, they're the ones I've met, you know, the zoey people in the course, Zoey is not 100% plant-based. They prioritize plants, but they're all just such good people. Cyrus and Buddha, they're just so nice in the eye.
And I ended up reading a lot of books that those physicians have read or have written as well and listening to a lot of podcasts. And I think for a few years there, I was probably very, very like plant-based, plant-based, plant-based. And then with Zoe, I thought, OK, let's follow the scientists. Like, what is the science saying? And so that's where I've become a little bit more open. It's kind of like how you say you know you feel better when you eat whole food plant-based, but you can still eat other foods every now and then it's not going to kill you.
And I'm definitely not plant based, but I feel better when I eat more plants. Yeah. And I think that the food, the freedom of being able to do that is what I think I was very resistant to the freedom of that because of the fact that in the past, when I was really strict about something and went off of it, I gained 50 pounds.
So I was a little scared to go off of a plant-based diet. And so now I feel like I'm about 95% plant-based. And the rest of it is just like, you know, situations that are a little bit out of control. You know, like last week I went to somebody's house who served me lunch. I didn't know I was going to be served lunch and she served salmon. And I was like, OK, well, I'll eat the salmon. I'm not going to make a federal case out of it. And it was fine. And it was also lunchtime, which I don't normally eat.
So I was like bending all my rules, but it was okay because I knew that it wasn't really going to affect anything health-wise or weight-wise. So you had already started with the plant-based and then you heard intermittent fasting and you thought, I'm going to give that a tra. Yeah. Well, because the vegan thing or the plant-based thing really didn't help with the weight loss and I had gained the 40 pounds. So I was still then looking for like, how am I going to sustain this or lose this last 30, 40 pounds and sustain it?
And that was the thing that I was realizing is that the weight loss surgery wasn't sustaining my weight loss. So anyway, so March 2019, that's when I found you and I started listening to the podcast, but I must have had a week there where I didn't know about clean fasting. And I have a very distinct memory of driving and driving and driving for like four or five hours.
literally white knuckling it through the morning because I was trying to get to noon without, you know, food. And I had some tea, but I think I put milk and Stevia in it. And I was, it was torture getting to noon. Like looking back now, I can, I laugh at that, but at the time it was very tough for me.
And then I think a week later, I discovered, oh, if I hadn't put that milk and stevia in it, I would not be so hungry. I also really tried to pack a lot into that first window of 12. I was doing 12 to eight, so an eight-hour window of eating and the rest of it fasting. And I was packing a lot in. And it was plant-based. It was a lot of bean burritos and things like that.
But it wasn't really conducive to losing weight quickly. So it took me a while. It probably took me about a year to finally get to where I lost that 35 pounds that I had gained. But the main thing is, is that it wasn't a struggle anymore. It was like I had control.
I didn't have to exercise ridiculously to try to get down to that weight. I was just living my normal life, enjoying my food, not having hunger, not having cravings, and enjoying life. It was the first time that I felt like that freedom of, I can do this and it's sustainable.
This was also right before COVID. So 2019 was when I found you. And of course, a year later, COVID hits and COVID actually did help me with the keeping the weight off because I wasn't traveling anymore. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah. So I didn't have the restaurant food.
which I think is the main reason that I probably didn't lose as quickly as I wanted to at the very beginning. But I had time to exercise. I had time to plan the meals. I was, you know, because I had been laid off for a few months. I was conscious of spending as well. So I was like, okay, we're not ordering in. We're not drinking very much. Like we're just kind of cutting everything down.
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I also had planned to be married. I think our first wedding date was May 30th, 2020, and we postponed it to May 15th, 2021. And eventually the wedding actually happened August 6th, 2022. So yeah, there was a lot of that. So yeah, you lost the way that you had gained and because you were mostly plant based, but with the intermittent fasting and focusing on real foods more so than the plant based other stuff, because there's a lot of other stuff out there.
Yeah. And you know what else it really did help me do is just really look forward to the meals that I was going to eat. Like, instead of, oh, that's the other thing. When I started going plant-based, I was doing breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack, and I was hungry every time I ate. That's the thing. That's what intermittent fasting really gave me was like,
You know, I realized if I just didn't have that first meal in the morning, even if it was a healthy meal, even if it was oatmeal with, you know, blueberries and some walnuts, I was still hungry by 10 and having, you know, some fruit and, you know, something else. And then I'm hungry again at noon. And I thought, why am I hungry all the time? Like my stomachs should be tiny at this point. You know, but that's where those hunger hormones and the spiking, the blood sugar and all that kind of stuff came into.
So that's what really, really helped me with being able to enjoy my food is I thought if I can just go to work and not think about food all day and finally get to the end of my day and really enjoy the foods that I'm eating and can be able to eat whatever I want. Like that's all I want in life. Like I just don't want to be thinking about food all the time and weight loss and stuff.
And so that's really helped, but it's too bad. It took 40 years to, you know, to finally get over the cravings and the hunger and just really be able to enjoy food. You appreciate it now, right? Yeah. From all of our struggles and the challenges and how hard it has been, we can look back and you can appreciate where you are so much.
Yeah, exactly. And you also are probably more just like accepting of your body now. Oh, yeah. If you'd always been like a perfect size, then you're going through menopause and your body changes and you're like, you could beat yourself up over it. But instead, here you are and you're like, I've been 270 pounds.
Yeah, I am so grateful for the body that I have now and my armpits and my clavicles. Yes. And looking back to that conversation with my friend who we were talking about how we couldn't, we would just couldn't get it under control. I remember also saying to her, I would be so happy if I could just maintain a size 14.
You know, and now I'm wearing, you know, I have a pair of pants. It's a two and I have a few fours and sixes. I'm happiest in an eight because, you know, with all the vanity sizing, everything's different. But I remember thinking, wow, I used to be, I used to think that I would have been grateful to be a size 14. And now here I am maintaining an eight or a six for the last six years. Basically, when this podcast airs, it'll be almost six years that I've been doing the intermittent fasting.
And that's been six years of control and being under 145 pounds. So I'm just thrilled for that. Well, that's the key. You couldn't stick to any diet. Then you had the surgery and your weight started to climb back up because that's just what happens in the body. But now you've been maintaining for six years and you've got the tools.
Yeah, and you know what else to listening to you over the last six years and reading all your books. You know, you've really opened my eyes to other things like I started to examine my relationship with alcohol. And so I read, you know, the book that you recommended this naked mind and it really made me question why I drink.
You know, going back to meeting my second husband and having those, you know, moments on the weekends where we would have lots of wine and using it as entertainment and using it as a crutch to say, oh, I had a rough week. I deserve this. I need to relax. Like it made me examine all of that stuff too. And so, you know, for the last year, I've also cut out the alcohol and I realized like I just I was using it as a tool.
I didn't use it because I really enjoyed it. I was using it. It was also a bit of a habit. I watched my mom enjoy her wine all her lifetime. It's so ingrained in our culture to celebrate or if you've had a bad day to use it. I thought to myself, this is another area of my life that I need to examine.
that's kind of the nice thing about getting older is that you start to question everything you know you're questioning everything in your life and do i need this and why do i do this anyway you know and it was funny my brother he um he lives out in whistler and he came to visit well he came for the wedding and we had a conversation and he said something like you know i'm really glad you've gotten your weight under control all these years you finally matured into it and i'm
I remember thinking, I don't think it's about maturity because if that were the case, any woman over the age of 55 or 60 would not have a weight problem. It's not about maturity. It's about having control over your hormones and other things that I just felt like I didn't have control over. You found the answer. You finally found the answer. And the secret was not eating multiple small meals all throughout the day. I imagine that.
Yeah. And it's also not the food, you know, when we're like, it's the magical food, going plant-based will solve all my problems. Natural system food will solve all my problems. Food is important, don't get me wrong. Food matters a lot. But intermittent fasting plus food. Yeah. And my son, he said something, he's 17, so he thinks he knows everything. He said something like, well, all intermittent fasting does is make you eat less calories. And I said, well,
Even if that were true, even if that were the only reason, it still works. But at the end of the day, it allows me to not eat so frequently, which does cut down on the calories, but he doesn't understand autophagy, he doesn't understand ketosis. And those are the things that make you be able to have that control that I was missing so much.
The hormonal changes, the hormonal changes that intermittent fasting gives us so that we're not constantly thinking about food. Exactly. It's the next meal, all of that. Yeah. And if you had told me at 272 pounds that I would not be hungry if I didn't eat in the morning and lunch, I would have thought you were crazy. Because to me, that just sounds so counterintuitive to be less hungry when you don't eat as frequently. That doesn't make any sense, but it really is the only thing that makes me not hungry.
Even when I break my fast at four o'clock in the afternoon, I'm not doing it out of hunger. I'm doing it because I figure I better eat something, you know, for nutrition purposes. Some people actually ask that. I'm glad you said that because some people are like, well, do I just wait till I get hungry or you'll be waiting until it is. Sometimes people feel guilty because they're like, well, I always open my window at four because that's what I do, but I'm not really hungry should I eat. And so the thing is, like you just said, we have such great
appetite correction because we're running on the store fuel that's already on our body. If you wait until you get hungry, it might be like two more days. And so we eat because it's time to eat now. And this is where the eating opportunity is. And this is when our day is winding down.
And so, you know, if you look at a restaurant menu, they have a section called appetizer. It wakes up your appetite, right? So eating wakes up your appetite. So everybody listening, you do not have to wait until you get hungry to eat or feel guilty because you're opening because it's time.
Yeah. And that's the thing. Once I do open my window, it's a lot of eating. Yeah. And because it's true, that first bite of food, like, oh my gosh, if you have been fasting all night and most of the day, that first bite of food tastes so incredible. And that's when I eat things like, you know, hummus and veggies, whereas before it would have been like crackers in hummus because vegetables didn't taste good to me. Well, now they taste so good.
crisp and juicy and olives taste amazing like foods that I never craved back in the day taste really good kale even with garlic sauce on it and all sorts of things that make you know now that I think about it you know makes my mouth water but I'm not I'm not craving it out of a hunger point of view I'm craving it because it's a it's just a food I enjoy you know
That's been something that's really changed as my palate. And I don't know if it's partly because of the gastric bypass and not eating as much sugar, meaning I, so that like I, when you eat less of something, you, you seem to crave it less too, but the foods just taste so much better now. And, uh, you know, I really enjoy foods that I never would have enjoyed in the past. So that's another nice. So you right now, your window is about you. I've been around four every day or just on the workday.
Well, that's the other thing I got into a little pitfall of not fasting at all on the weekends when I would see my husband. And so I would be like, okay, well, Monday through Thursday, I'll do a four hour eating window, Friday, I'll still start at four, but I'll go later because we're having our wine and our nuts and our chips and stuff. And then weekends are a free for all, but I was still eating somewhat healthy. But then over time, I thought, you know what, like, if this is gonna be something that I'm gonna sustain when he and I eventually live together and are retired,
I have to not look at him as the fun guy that I get to eat all the time with. I have to like get him involved. And so I said to him, I need you to help me a little bit because I think I'm going to run into trouble one day when I'm not working because I feel like fasting is so easy for me now when I'm working all day and I'm busy and I'm just got my water, my green tea. And oh, by the way, I never was a coffee drinker ever my whole life until fasting.
I was kind of looking for something to have during that fasting time, and I was doing the green tea and the water, but I thought, oh, you know what, I'm going to try coffee again. And now I actually can drink, like I went from like not even liking coffee with like milk and sweetener in it to drinking it black. So if that doesn't show a palette change, I don't know what would.
I really think the black coffee is what I've been up my palate. Our taste buds do change. When you are able to tolerate the bitter flavors of the coffee, then suddenly, you're like, there's no bother you anymore. Then you notice the other flavors in the kale. Exactly. They're not to come off from it.
Yeah, those flavors just take, they sit differently now. Whereas I think back in the day when I was overweight, nothing healthy tasted good to me. And now so many things just taste different. And that's what I really wished that I could have experienced at a younger age was the appreciation for how real food that is fresh and in season, how it actually tastes and experiencing all those benefits, you know? So tell us some of your non-scale victories.
So, non-scale victories, I think the biggest one is probably softness of my skin. Like, whatever my husband gives me a hug, he's like, I can't get over how soft your skin is. And that might be partly because of the plant base, but I think it's also part of the intermittent fasting.
the calmness. I don't get as worked up as I used to. I don't get as angry as I used to. You know, even just being in traffic, I used to be like frustrated all the time. I think that I don't have the roller coaster of emotions. And I think, you know, that's partly because of the hormones fluctuating, you know, or being stable during the day. I'm not as tired during the day. I
I have toyed with the idea of having like a morning window and doing alternate daily fasting and I have tried them both. But at the end of the day, I have more energy if I don't eat. So I want my energy time while I'm working during the day. There are people who do great with the morning window and I know who y'all are and I get it. It works well for you, but I'm like you Nikki.
Yeah, bring on the clearheadedness and the energy and the focus. And I actually have to rain it back a little bit sometimes because I get so excited during the day with all this energy. But some of my customers are not having a good day or tired or whatever. And I'm just like, yeah, let's go. And I think, OK, you've got to calm down a little bit.
But yeah, having that energy has been really, really nice. Being able to focus on wellness and health instead of always counting calories, that's probably a pretty big one. Of course, freedom from hunger, those are the other ones. But I never really did develop a lot of health issues despite being overweight for so long.
You know, everything's good as far as health goes, except for like I mentioned earlier, the nutrients, I have a hard time absorbing iron because of the gastric bypass surgery. So I am probably going to go for an iron infusion. Shortly, I've been really trying for years to get it under control with supplements. But now my doctor's finally saying, you know what, they're not working, you're not absorbing it. Same with B12, I have to give myself a B12 injection.
because I can't the sublingual thing it just my body doesn't absorb it as well so those are the two things that I probably struggle with but there's something that nothing really can change that's because of the configuration of my stomach but yeah those are probably the biggest non-scale victories
One thing I just wanted to mention too is that I don't get sick very often. I remember before I started both plant-based and intermittent fasting, getting cold all the time and saying to my doctor, like, what can I possibly do to stop getting colds because I was sick constantly? And she just mentioned vitamin D. So I started doing that as well. But at the end of the day, since intermittent fasting and plant-based and vitamin D,
I've only been, I can't even, I don't even know if I've had a cold in the last, you know, six or seven years, except for COVID, I did, you know, come down with COVID once, but even then it was, it felt like allergies. It felt like a sinus head cold where it was stuffy and watery eyes, but it wasn't chest congestion, like coughing. It wasn't that bad of an experience. Our immune systems really can function better when we're not eating all day. And that's just what I've realized over time. So we are all most out of time.
I knew what this would happen. I could talk literally to you for like three hours. Yeah, same.
So what would you tell someone just starting out with intermittent fasting or what do you wish you knew when you first started? I guess I wish I knew that it was physically possible to go for longer periods of time without being hungry and not having cravings. And for somebody new, I would say, like, don't think you can't do it because you enjoy food. I mean, that is the biggest benefit that comes out of it is the more enjoyment of your food. And you know, you can do it. Like you can definitely, if I can do it, anybody can do it.
That's exactly right. And then we get to enjoy our food more as intermittent faster than when we were trying to restrict and die at all. You don't get to eat as frequently, but you do still eat every single day. So you can eat what you want every single day. And so you'll enjoy that. If you're only eating foods you enjoy, that's what keeps you going and thinking, oh, I can do this again tomorrow. It gives us the freedom to be foodies.
Exactly. Yeah. Yes. I'm very picky now. I'm like, well, that white bread isn't going to cut it. So I would definitely not want to eat. I used to love white bread. Yeah. A life of white bread and I would not buy it. Eat it. Want it.
No, I still have to, I still buy stuff like that for my kids, but I don't, I don't feel any need for it. And like a, you know, a big bucket of Halloween candy now can sit for days. I don't care about it anymore. Like that to me was unfathomable back in the 272 pound days. That's amazing. So you're cruising along, you're maintaining your weight loss and you feel great. And what more is there in life? Yeah, exactly.
Thank you so much for sharing your story today, Nikki. Oh, thank you so much, Jen. It was such a pleasure meeting you. And thank you for all you've done.
That's G-I-N at intermittentfastingstories.com. The world wants to hear your story. That's it for today. Remember, I may have a doctorate, but I'm not a medical doctor. So don't use anything you hear on this podcast as a substitute for medical advice.
Please always check with your doctor or health care provider if you have medical questions. I'll talk to you next week fasting family where we will hear another inspiring story. Have a great week and fast on!
intermittent fasting stories is edited, mixed, and mastered by resonate recordings. To learn more, visit them at resonate recordings.com or email them at hello at resonate recordings.com. Intermittent fasting stories listeners will receive a free offer if you mentioned that you heard it on the podcast.
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