Days 13 & 14

Some Days are Better Than Others

Oh Easter! You got the better of me with chocolates hanging around the house. Most of my fast day was great and then in the evening I started getting into the mini eggs. Damn mini eggs. I probably had 15 of them. I had a shake so that I wouldn't snack and I ate them anyway.

I had the best intention of eating really well on my feasting day but I am a chronic stress eater so when I found out our car needed more work than just the break I had a piece of cake.

Days 11 & 12

Easter and the Alternate-Day Fast

I made it through Easter! Fortunately, my Feasting Day corresponded with Easter Sunday. My sister had a big meal at her place and I made a fancy cake. It was an Easter Pinata Cake inspired by Sarah Barnes of the Blog Taming Twins. Her Easter Ombre Pinata Cake is truly beautiful. I have much to learn about cake decorating but I think mine turned out pretty good for an amateur. Unfortunately, It was not gluten-free. I have yet to master the gluten-free white cake batter, but when I do I will post a recipe.

Days 8 to 10 - Adding Almased to my Alternate-Day Fast

This is how I broke my fast on Day 8! The eating days are great. The fasting days are getting much easier. I am finding that I only get hunger pangs about 45 minutes before I normally eat my meal on fasting days and then again when I wake up the morning after fasting. I made one change to my regime to that is really helping with getting through fasting days - I started using a meal replacement shake on Day 9 (fasting Day 5). I did this for 2 reasons a) to help control my hunger and b) to make sure I am getting enough vitamins and minerals. I also decided to pick up a multivitamin and a magnesium supplement to alleviate the muscle cramps I was experiencing. 

The meal replacement shake I have is Almased. I had some leftover from when I thought I could do the Almased diet. This diet is like most other meal replacement diets - 2 shakes a day plus a meal consisting of broth for the reset phase. I did if for 3 days then I said screw it. I didn't even make it to phase two where you get 2 shakes plus a meal. I like to eat and I found it was really hard not eating when I was living in a house with  9 people and there was always a kid with food in their hand. Like most other meal replacement shakes its tastes chalky and it seemed expensive to buy. You get 500 g in a container, there are 50 g in a serving and it costs between $34.48 and $42.63 (including tax) depending on where you purchase it. I just picked up a new can of it from Walmart for $29.99 plus tax ($34.48). This makes it $3.45 per serving. Definitely steeper in price than some of the other supplements.  

So why I am choosing Almased as my meal replacement if its the most expensive one? Simple - The Ingredients. Soy protein, honey, skim milk yogurt powder, and a host of vitamins and minerals. There are a few other things in it like maltodextrin and corn starch but compared to some of the other supplements I looked at its by far the healthiest. Importantly to me its gluten free. Don't worry Almased is not paying me to write about their product. I blog only gets about 10 views per post.

The reason I tried Almased in the first place is because it is made in Germany. Almased been around since the 80's and I remembered seeing ads for it when I lived in Munich. I have a strong love of Germany and all things German. It was there I found out about my thyroid disorder and lost weight for the first time in my life. I have nothing but praise for the medical system there. Silly reason to decide to try something but hey.

I have been tracking my calories with Calorie Count at the end of each fast and feast day just to make sure they are in line with protocol. My fasting days I range between 750 and 800 calories. This is about 200 calories higher than recommended for my body weight on the Every Other Day Diet. I should be shooting for 625 calories. This will come down as I lose more weight with alternate-day fasting to 500 calories once I am closer to my goal weight of 175 lbs. 

My hope is that by using a meal replacement during my fast day that I can get the calories down from 750 or 800 to between 500 and 625. If I have a shake and a small meal of fish and vegetable I should be able to do this. The Almased keeps me really full for hours when I drink it and should work better with that Alternate-Day fasting regime than just drinking shakes all day with no food for a week.