Substitute Teachers Lounge
Substitute Teachers Lounge
Intermittent Fasting, Substitute Teaching, Stubbornness, and Willpower
This episode explores my personal journey with intermittent fasting, highlighting the successes and challenges I faced while losing weight. It emphasizes the crucial role of willpower and stubbornness in achieving health goals and offers reflections applicable to both weight management and teaching.
• A personal account of starting intermittent fasting in January 2020
• Experience with different methods like OMAD and 18:6 fasting
• Stubbornness affecting adherence to healthy eating guidelines
• Initial success, losing 20 pounds in the first month
• Challenges of willpower and healthy habits
• Lessons learned applicable to teaching and personal goals
• Encouragement for listeners to explore their own fasting journey
Greg Collins. Substitute Teachers Lounge Guys, it is the last day of 2024. Getting ready to party tonight and today you know why not? We're going to talk about intermittent fasting a little bit. We're going to talk about some other things too, but I will tell you that back on March 14, 2020, I interviewed an author named Jen Stevens of the book Fast Feast Repeat. She has other books now who got me going on intermittent fasting, and I will tell you this. I began the journey, and it is a journey for me because right now, there are people laughing at this because they know that later, after I lost weight, I had some issues that have nothing to do with her book, but more to do with stubbornness and willpower. But back in 2020, when I started intermittent fasting January 5th, I weighed 222 pounds. On September of that year, I weighed 175. So, oh and, by the way, that March 14th 2020 episode, it's our second most listened to episode ever. So I felt a little bit nervous about doing it because we weren't really talking about substitute teaching that much, but it was the second most popular ever. So maybe I'll entitle this one Intermittent Fasting Works if Substitute Teachers Loud.
Greg:All right, let's start by just saying I am an extreme type A personality. When I go after something and I've got my mind devoted to it, I usually do a good job. I have dieted before and every diet that I've ever used has worked. I just stick to it. Ever used has worked, I just stick to it. Now I began intermittent fasting 2020. So that means I would have been by the time it was over. I would have been 62. I guess I started when I was 61. And we're going to talk about that a little bit. How I lost all that weight.
Greg:I want you to read that book. Fast Feast Repeat. She's got newer ones if you'd rather read that. I'm even going to tell you how I read the book. First of all, I guess at the end of 2019, friends of mine had talked about losing weight and I said well, what are you doing? They said intermittent fasting and they basically described it as they ate whatever they wanted to, anything they wanted to during a certain time period.
Greg:In this book, it will describe different ways of doing it. You might do an 18-6 system, where you fast for 18 hours every day and then you eat in a six-hour window. You don't eat constantly during that window, of course, but you eat during that window. I used a four-hour window, so I had a 20 slash four and eight during that four-hour window. I started out by using 3 pm to 7 pm, but I could have used anything, and I said, all right, i'm'm going to skip around this book because I just want to see what she says about what I should eat, when I should eat it, all that good stuff.
Greg:I went with a system called OMAD. Omad stands for one meal a day, and that seemed to work for me. And sure enough, I caught myself losing weight. And here's the stubborn part about it. And it actually shocked me, when I lost weight, when I was told that this was not a diet but a lifestyle, and that you could eat anything you wanted to. Well, I'm stubborn. I'm going to say, all right, this is not a diet. That means, then, that I can eat the same amount of calories every day. I just have to eat it during those four-hour windows, because if I reduce my calorie intake, by definition that's a diet right. So now read her book, because none of this is coming from her book. This was me being stubborn.
Greg:Also, she advises you to eat healthy. You can eat what you like, but eat healthy One of the questions I asked her in the last interview. We played a game called Greg you're an idiot and I encourage her, when I said something that's wrong, to say Greg you're an idiot. And here's why One time I said all right, I just came in from walking in my neighborhood five miles, it's five minutes past my four-hour window Is it okay for me to go in and eat a bag of chips? And she said, greg, she should have said Greg you're an idiot, but she was too nice for that. She said if you're hungry, eat, but why don't you try celery and hummus and see if you like that? So she very much advises eating healthy, but you can eat what you want to.
Greg:Let me tell you what I did. Because I was so stubborn that I didn't want to reduce my calorie intake, I would, when my four-hour window opened I've heard her say that think of it as an appetizer when you open your four-hour window, a meal, maybe a couple hours later, and then something sweet as you close your four-hour window. That's kind of the concept. Well, when my window opened, I was eating chips. I was eating maybe some peanut butter on crackers. I did eat a piece of fruit to try to balance everything out. I would eat whatever I wanted to for my meal and then I might eat, if I had room for it, some ice cream. All that in four hours. So there were some pretty good calories in there.
Greg:But yet while I was doing that the first month, I said, man, let's see, I'm going to look at my first month here. My first month I lost 20 pounds. So I said, man, there is something working with this. So I got even more stubborn. There was a. You know I got into the habit of maybe a day out of every two weeks I would drive to Dairy Queen, get a blizzard as my four-hour window opened, drive across the street and while I was in line at Taco Bell getting something to eat later for lunch I would eat that blizzard. So here I'm, going from Dairy Queen to Taco Bell and back home. And so that wasn't the eating pattern she will describe to you. That's the eating pattern that I did because I was stubborn and at that time I had the willpower to do it. And you know that I lost. See what is that? 25 plus almost 50 pounds. I lost 50 pounds in the process. Now I do not weigh 175 anymore. I gained a lot of the weight back.
Greg:And here's why, and here's my advice to you about stubbornness and willpower. I don't know if my age affects my willpower, but I know, today, for instance, I can sit around and if my window is now 11 am to 3, that's usually what I do Then it's 7 or 8 o'clock at night and I'm thinking you know, I know those little Debbie cakes are sitting in there, they're just sitting in there and before I know it, I catch myself in there getting one. So you have to have willpower for this to be successful, and I'll transfer that over to the classroom here in just a moment. So my willpower is shot. That's one of the reasons. And when I lost the weight and decided, okay, I've had enough.
Greg:Intermittent fasting, I'm still going to do it in concept, but I might eat more than just the four hours a day. But what I was doing, I not only was eating outside those four hours, I was eating just as ferociously as I did before. So I was being stubborn, I was testing willpower and it didn't work out. I say all that to say this If you're looking for a weight loss goal, this is the time Everybody looks for that to get in better shape. I bought a treadmill. I'm on it most every day If I have time. I also walk four miles in better shape. I bought a treadmill. I'm on it most every day If I have time. I also walk four miles in our neighborhood I do all that kind of stuff.
Greg:I'm going on another cruise. I used to blame weight gain on a cruise, but we do a couple of cruises a year. But you know, I have to admit there are all kinds of healthy options on a cruise line. There's nice salads, nice pieces of baked fish. I tried to eat fish for the most part that was blackened and baked and that kind of thing on cruise ships. So I can't really blame it there because there are plenty of healthy options available. I just chose not to do them and then that makes it that much worse. So my stubbornness and my willpower is not what it used to be and that's why I gained a lot of my weight back and I was eating intensely at times.
Greg:Some people would call it gorging. I don't want to call it that because I don't want to admit it. I will say this I'm disappointed in myself. I would never say I was ashamed of myself, because that implies you did something, almost that you did something mean to another person. I'm embarrassed for myself. I will tell you this I still try to do intermittent fasting.
Greg:The most I've been able to do it probably since the summer. I pushed myself for three weeks and did it and you know what I lost. It was somewhere between six and eight pounds in three weeks. It still works. The fact that it still works blows my mind that I can't get it in my willpower. Maybe it is partially my age, because before, when I'd go home, you know, maybe it was better that I ate in the three to seven hour window and I didn't get as hungry before bedtime. Maybe that was part of the reason, but back then I could walk by all that stuff and not eat it because I knew it was not in my four-hour window. Now I'm struggling with that.
Greg:I would encourage you to buy Fast Feast, repeat or whichever of Jen Stevens books you would like to buy. Try this yourself. It does work, as long as you don't stumble across, just like any diet. Whether you call this a diet or not, it will work if you let your willpower control you and your positive willpower. What I was doing was lack of willpower and that worked out for me. I'll mention this.
Greg:We have stubbornness and willpower issues in the classroom too. I mean, I'm stubborn on a lot. When we get so stubborn that we don't want to admit that maybe a student made a good argument about something you told them you couldn't do, do you have the wherewithal within you to not be so stubborn that you can't admit that's a pretty good argument. Let me think about it and get back to you and then maybe give in to what they said. But if it's logical and they told you some things that you weren't really thinking about, don't be so stubborn that you won't give in because you're the big bad teacher and the student it's the itsy-bitsy little student. Okay, same with your willpower Willpower, you know. Usually you think about willpower as a food situation.
Greg:But do you have the willpower to go back and get your education and stay with it and push yourself to the next level? I've been asked why don't you go back and get your full teaching certificate? I'm an MBA, which is not an education degree, but it allows me to. As long as I take their test and get approved and get my background checks, I get what's called an emergency certification every year. That's what allows me to substitute teach and I'm asked all the time why don't you go back? Well, I really don't want to go back to school. If I did start I would have the willpower to finish. I just don't want to start it. I'm happy being a substitute teacher.
Greg:I never thought I would have the willpower to go into elementary school but I did and I loved it and almost prefer it now. I always thought that maybe I was too stubborn to do to go back from long term to short term. Now I actually prefer short term. I prefer a day at a time. But we're all different. Do what you have to do if you. If you think you want to try intermittent fasting, do it the way I read her book.
Greg:I read what to do first and then I went back and read how it works, because when it worked I was fascinated. I didn't even read that part of her book, but it has to do with insulin release, as you may expect, and it's really a fascinating book. So I encourage you to read that. I think we'll call this a day and a year and, I hope, your substitute teaching. I'm already aggravated at myself because there was a week of substitute teaching at an elementary school and I didn't the first week. We're going on a cruise for two weeks after that. I could have had a job for the whole week that first week and didn't pounce on it quickly enough. So here's hoping that I get some of those days, that you get some of those days and we get back at it in january 2025.
