Hello and welcome to the intermittent fasting gems with Jen podcast.

I'm your host Jen, a middle aged Michigan mama, wife and teacher who

in 2021 stumbled upon this crazy cool thing called intermittent fasting.

And before I knew it, I'd lost 46 pounds in four months and

gained an incredible lifestyle filled with complete food freedom.

If you're hungry for unique, no nonsense fasting tips that actually

work, you're in the right place.

So whether you're walking the dog, folding that last load of laundry, or

cruising to your nine to five, let's start fasting our way to freedom together.

Hey there, I'm Jen, the host of this podcast, Intermittent Fasting Gems with

Jen, and I'm super excited to share my intermittent fasting story with you today.

Because, plain and simple, intermittent fasting is amazing, and three years

ago, intermittent fasting completely changed my life for the better.

So as a child and young teenager, I was always very active and fit, I

participated in sports like basketball and volleyball and track, and honestly,

I never struggled with my weight.

Then, um, I went away to college on a track scholarship.

And that is actually the very first time that I was met with diet

mindset and anxiety about my weight.

So as a college athlete, we had to weigh in weekly for the first time ever.

Um, I was asked, or I guess you could say rather told by my college track

coach that I needed to lose three pounds by the next track meet, which

was going to be in less than one week.

So needless to say at that moment I was absolutely crushed and that is

when the dieting and the insecurity surrounding my weight and that

stupid number on the scale, That anxiety started right then and there.

And I was just 18 years old.

So in 2000 at 24 years old, I married my college sweetheart

and the love of my life.

His name is Barry.

And, um, I just graduated from Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan,

go cards, and began my teaching career.

I was teaching third grade then.

And we had our first baby, a daughter named Cambria.

So that was, um, in 2001.

So just over a little, over a year after I had started, teaching

and graduated from college.

So I only gained about 35 pounds with Cammie.

And so my body at that time, my body bounced back fairly quickly.

after giving birth to her.

At that point, I weighed about 140 to 145, um, which was still in the normal

or healthy range on all the charts, especially I'm 5'7 just for reference.

So at that point, I guess you could say, I mean, life was pretty good.

So my husband and I, then we wanted to have another baby.

And that is when life got really, really rough for the next three years.

So long story short, I suffered a few miscarriages.

One of those Uh, ended up being a cancerous molar pregnancy.

, and then I had a very serious bout with severe kidney stones.

So, it was an extremely rough, uh, couple of years.

Somehow though, through it all, and after being told that I wouldn't be

able to, probably wouldn't be able to have another baby, we beat the odds,

I got pregnant, and gave birth to our son, Carson, in January of 2005.

Unfortunately, uh, like, ooh, I was not prepared, but unfortunately I gained 70

plus pounds with that pregnancy and my body did not bounce back well at all after

giving birth to my second child, Carson.

So soon after I decided to take a leave from teaching so that I could

be at home and raise my babies.

And for the next several years as a stay at home mom, uh, and the weight

was still on from my pregnancy, I had tried every single diet on the planet.

I tried fat free and low fat and nasty juice cleanses and detox smoothies.

And calorie shifting diets, slim fast shakes, and tons and tons more.

I even did a diet that was literally called Fat Loss for Idiots.

And every time I would drastically reduce my calorie intake, basically

starving myself, I would lose, uh, 10 to 15 pounds fairly quickly.

However, my results were not good.

We're very, very short term.

And due to the extreme calorie restriction, I always felt

super deprived and unsatisfied.

So of course, within just a few short weeks, uh, the weight would always pile

right back on, and sometimes I'd be worse off than when I started the diet.

So my weight went up and down like a rollercoaster for almost two decades.

So, let's fast forward to the not so magical year, for many of us, of 2020.

And at this point, I had gone back to teaching.

I was in my fourth year of being a full time kindergarten teacher, when

everyone's lives were uprooted and forever changed by the coronavirus pandemic.

I, like so many other people who were sent home to work remotely, became depressed

and unfortunately even more overweight.

I was sitting at home all day doing my very best trying to teach kindergarten

students how to read, write, and do math through Zoom, which at that

point I'd never even heard of Zoom.

So I had to learn that super fast and figure out How I was going to teach all

of that awesome stuff to five year olds.

So I was super stressed because, uh, we also were at that

point struggling financially.

So in an effort to help out with the family bills, I took on a second

job teaching English to the kids in China from my basement computer.

And because of the pandemic, my son was sent home from high school, and my

daughter was sent home to live after, um, to live at home after her university

shut down, uh, during the pandemic.

So, we were all going a little, I mean, a lot crazy.

So, needless to say, my stress level quickly reached an all time high,

and my health, eating habits, and self care reached an all time high.

Low.

To cope with the stress.

I was.

binging on milk duds and, uh, whoppers with cheese from Burger King, and

at times drinking way, way, way too many glasses of wine in the evening,

sometimes even a whole bottle myself just to survive remote teaching and

to deal with being kind of cooped up at home and, and going stir crazy.

At that point, it was nearing the end of the 2020 school year and I knew I

needed to make some serious life changes.

So I applied for a new teaching position and I got hired to teach

elementary PE or physical education.

At the start of the 2020 2021 school year as the new PE teacher, I was loving my

job but I felt like an absolute hypocrite.

how I was, I was basically how could I be teaching young kids about how important

it is to exercise and be fit and eat healthy foods when I myself was overweight

and living a pretty unhealthy lifestyle.

So I had been avoiding the scale at all costs because I knew it was bad.

But on January 5th of 2021, I'll never forget that date.

At 45 years old, I decided to just do it and get it over with.

I was terrified to look at that number on the bathroom scale.

And when I finally did, I was absolutely blown away.

The numbers 174.

6 stared back at me.

174 pounds, I was in total shock.

I had never before in my life even come close to the 170s.

So I jumped in the shower and I ugly cried for a very long time.

Um, and eventually I, I made it out of the shower and then I just got mad.

I got so mad that I got dressed, drove myself to the store and

bought a giant box of Milk Duds and a Coke from McDonald's, two of my

very favorite things at that time.

Um, I devoured the Milk Duds and I sucked down that Coke.

awesome tasting Coke from McDonald's as I sat and soaked some more in my car.

And, um, then I threw away the evidence so my husband wouldn't

know that I had completely lost it.

And finally drove back home.

And then something inside just shook me.

I can't even explain it.

I have no idea what it was.

But at that moment, I decided.

I ended my pity party and I got to work.

At that point my mind was scrambling and I had remembered that a few years

prior I had heard, um, a little bit about intermittent fasting and that it

might be a good option for weight loss.

At that point, though, I was absolutely clueless about what

intermittent fasting actually was.

I had only heard the number 16 8 in connection to intermittent

fasting, and that is what I thought intermittent fasting was.

I think because the most common method that you hear about, um,

is the 16 8 fasting schedule.

I thought that that was the only option.

Um, and that's just what you were supposed to do.

And anyways, I, I remembered that I had tried 16 hours of fasting and

eight hours of eating a few years back and I'd lost a few pounds.

So I thought, well, I'll just go ahead and let's, let's give it a try.

I started by simply skipping breakfast most days of the week.

And then I cut out all sugar.

I did stop drinking Dr.

Pepper and Coke from McDonald's.

And at first I managed to lose a few pounds.

Um, but then my weight loss stalled and I started to get frustrated again, like

I had with all of those other crazy fad diets, um, that I tried over the years.

But then something super awesome happened.

At this point, the pandemic had settled down a little bit.

So we had been back to in person teaching and learning for a few weeks.

So I'd gone to work at school on a Wednesday in mid January of 2021.

I passed a coworker, um, in the hall that I hadn't seen in several

months and she looked amazing.

I could not believe it in such a short amount of time.

So of course I asked her what she'd been doing and she told me that she'd been

doing intermittent fasting and I was like, Hey, I do intermittent fasting too.

I just started a few weeks ago.

I told her, um, I was doing the 16, eight schedule, but

that I had hit a weight loss.

stall and I was starting to get frustrated.

Anyway, she spent a few minutes telling me that intermittent fasting

is way more than just fasting for 16 hours and eating for eight.

And then she grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and she quickly wrote down the

words, delay, don't deny by Jen Stevens.

She handed me the piece of paper and she said, Jen, just get

this book by Gin Stevens, read it, and you'll be good to go.

So that's exactly what I did.

I was so excited that I basically ran back to my gym office and And instead

of eating lunch at work in the teacher's lounge that day, I jumped on my computer.

I Googled all things, gin Stevens and ordered the book off Amazon

prime so that I could get my hands on it as soon as possible.

I got the book in the mail two days later on Friday, stayed up until 1 32 o'clock

in the morning, reading it cover to cover.

in less than four hours.

And can I just say, no exaggeration, that book truly and completely changed my life.

I had the biggest OMG moment.

Everything that Jin had said in the book about metabolic health, And how insulin

is released in spikes every time we eat.

The science of fasting was so fascinating to me.

And I just couldn't, I was just so excited.

And the way that Jen explained it so easily in her book, it made so much sense.

Mostly though, I realized that intermittent fasting is about so much

more than just doing that 16 8 method.

I learned about the flexibility of fasting and about how, um, there are so

many more options for eating and fasting schedules and, and all of that good stuff.

So.

I was reading the book under the covers with a flashlight, so I wouldn't wake up

my husband who was sleeping next to me.

And when I finished the book, I cannot even tell you how excited I was.

I totally related to Jin, especially since she was an

elementary teacher just like me.

My mind was racing.

I did not sleep one minute the whole night long.

The next day was Saturday and my husband and I were sitting around enjoying

our morning coffee when I just started blabbing nonstop to him about all of the

cool things I had learned from the book.

I completely tucked his ear off for like two hours and I'm pretty sure

I, I mean, I know I was driving him crazy, but he's sort of used to that.

When I get excited about something, I just, I do, I, I blab, but I've always

been a dive right in deep kind of girl.

And so that is exactly what I did.

I got really serious.

I started researching everything I could find on intermittent fasting,

podcasts and YouTube and Google.

And then I learned about the importance of fasting clean and how it would have

an effect um, on my I'm possibly having an effect on my weight loss results.

So this is when I took my beloved hazelnut creamer that I loved so,

so much right out of my coffee and started drinking it black.

And, oh man, I'm not going to lie.

That was tough, but I soon learned about some really cool tricks to

make it easier, like adding a pinch of salt and a few other things.

And after a few weeks, I didn't even miss the cream.

However, I'm not gonna lie.

The first eight to ten days of this intermittent fasting journey sucked.

They were really, really hard and I felt pretty awful.

I had terrible headaches.

I was super tired and achy.

Uh, they basically call it the keto flu and I had it bad.

But then, On about the 10th day of pushing through, it was like

a switch flipped inside my body.

And almost overnight, I started to feel incredible.

My headaches were gone.

I had more energy than I knew what to do with.

I seriously felt like the Energizer Bunny.

It was that noticeable.

And that was when I felt like my body had switched over.

From being a sugar burner to a fat burner and It was just a really awesome feeling.

I also quickly realized through my tracking, um, the tracking of my progress

that I needed to bump my fasting time up to at least 18 hours because at 45 years

old, 16 hours just wasn't cutting it.

It wasn't enough fat burning time for me to see real weight loss results.

So I slowly started moving things up and started doing the warrior diet.

Which is 20 hours of fasting and four hours of eating and then sometimes

OMAD or one meal a day Which is where eventually I found my personal fasting

sweet spot Then I soon switched to a low carb diet with a pretty consistent

22 and 2 or a 21 and 3, um, schedule.

I kept researching and learning and adding in things that really started

to catapult my results, like breaking my fast with this really awesome, uh,

7 ingredient apple cider vinegar drink, which I'll leave the link for below.

and ending my fasting window with a healthy fat like coconut

oil so that I could fast much longer and more comfortably

into my next fast the next day.

I stayed consistent.

I added in some light exercise on the treadmill and a few days

of quick kettlebell workouts that I was getting off YouTube.

And before I knew it, I had lost 46 pounds in four months.

at 45 years old.

So I really didn't think that that was possible, if I'm being honest.

At first, in my head, I was thinking my goal was to try and

get down to about 140 pounds.

I had weighed about 135, in high school.

So I thought, oh, let's shoot for that.

140 sounds good.

And then when I got to 140, I was like, Wow, this is really working.

So I just kept doing what I was doing.

And by the end of April, I saw 128 on the scales.

I could not believe it.

And actually, um, At that point, I continued to drop down and got as low

as 123 pounds at one point, which was 12 pounds lower than my high school weight.

Now, let's, let me be clear.

It was not smooth sailing the whole way.

I absolutely hit stalls and plateaus along the way.

But I didn't let them get me down like they had in the past.

I focused on all of the incredible health improvements and the non scale victories

that I was experiencing, um, and forgot about kind of the scale at that time.

that kind of stalled out time.

And then within just a little bit of time, I'd start seeing the scale

move in the right direction again.

So I just kept trying new things and tracking my progress until

I eventually landed on routines and tips that totally worked.

Um, And honestly, it really has been about so much more than the weight loss.

Intermittent fasting has boosted my energy levels beyond belief, and I have

experienced so many health benefits including better sleep, no more headaches,

and tons and tons more really cool stuff.

So, That all happened in 2021.

It's 2024 now, and I'm coming up on my 49th birthday next month.

And I have been able to maintain my weight loss for the last three and a half years.

And to me, that is so freeing.

I bounce back and forth now between about 132 and 136 pounds, which

is a very comfortable spot for me to be where I don't feel deprived.

And instead I feel free.

Free with food and with my daily routine I've even gone

on multiple cruise vacations.

We love to cruise My husband and I we fell in love with it.

We got engaged on a cruise back in 1998 That's a long story.

So I'll keep moving on but we've gone on multiple cruises and even an anniversary

trip for our I think it was like our 21st anniversary a few years ago.

It was, we went to Hawaii and it was right after I'd hit my goal weight.

So a few cruises, Hawaii trip, and through all of those vacations,

I've been able to easily maintain my weight loss, which is something.

I was never able to do before when I would go on vacation.

And now I am much less strict, uh, now with my fasting schedule

and food choices than I was when I was losing the weight, but I

seriously can't shout it loud enough.

I absolutely love intermittent fasting.

I haven't counted a single calorie in almost four years now.

And best of all, I never ever feel deprived or like I'm missing out.

It's the most incredible and freeing lifestyle.

And I just feel beyond blessed to, to have found it.

Um, I am very thankful for my friend and co worker Lori and to Jen Stephens

for sharing and teaching me about the power of intermittent fasting

and this really awesome lifestyle.

It's been three and a half years and I am still just as excited,

maybe even more, about intermittent fasting as I was when I first started

when I first learned all about it.

So that's the basic gist of my story.

However, there are many more fun details that have been added since then.

Um, in the last three years I've made it my mission to and share

the power of intermittent fasting with as many people as I can.

I am a teacher by trade, so I love to teach and I love to learn.

And I love to share.

And since, reaching my.

My goal weight in 2021.

I had the honor and privilege of being a guest on gin stevens intermittent

fasting success stories podcast.

That was super fun Uh, i've also started an intermittent fasting

website and blog as well as an intermittent fasting facebook support

group That has so many amazing and fun and, positive people in that group.

So I'll leave the links to all of those resources and the show notes below.

And finally, now with this new podcast, I am so excited to share what I've

learned about fasting with all of you.

I'll have solo episodes where I'll share the unique gems or tips, tricks, recipes

that worked for me along my journey.

And I'll also share what didn't work for me.

So maybe it can help save you some time and frustration along your own journey.

I'll also have episodes where I'll chat with men and women of all ages

who have also found health and weight loss success with intermittent fasting.

And, uh, these men and women will be able to share the intermittent

fasting gems that worked, so well for them with all of you.

So I'm hoping to build a community of support and success together because

intermittent fasting Truly can be life changing, and the way I look at it, we all

should be living our best lives right now.

Hey, thank you so much for choosing to spend part of your day listening

to this episode of the intermittent fasting gems with Jen podcast.

If you think these tips could help a friend or a family member, please

consider sharing this episode with them.

And if you really enjoyed the show, taking a minute or two to leave a positive review

Would be so appreciated tune in for new 15 to 25 minute episodes released on

the 10th, 20th, and 30th of each month episodes will feature solo shows filled

with IF hacks that have worked for me, as well as episodes where I get to chat with.

fun folks of all ages who've experienced incredible success

with intermittent fasting.

If you have questions or want more unique intermittent fasting health

and weight loss tips, tricks, and recipes, please visit my website

and blog at sowhatifwithjen.

com.

Finally, we'd love to welcome you into our free intermittent fasting program.

Fasting Facebook support group.

So what if with Jen?

Find all of these links in the show notes below.

And as always, I hope you spend your day loving without fear and

laughing until your cheeks hurt.