Disclosure: This post is sponsored by “Always Eat After 7 PM.” The opinions expressed below are my own.
For the last four weeks, I’ve been following the advice in the book Always Eat After 7 PM: The Revolutionary Rule-Breaking Diet That Lets You Enjoy Huge Dinners, Desserts, and Indulgent Snacks—While Burning Fat Overnight by Joel Marion. My goal was to start losing the weight I put on when I was pregnant with Baby J.
Because I’m still nursing, it wasn’t recommended that I skip breakfast completely. I would drink my lemon water and eat a small portion of something healthy if I woke up feeling especially hungry. Water first thing definitely helped set the tone for the rest of the day.
The idea was to follow the Always Eat After 7 PM diet plan, pay attention to what I ate, and begin working out on a regular basis. Life threw me a big curveball with the pandemic. After the first week of starting this challenge, I had to reassess my plan a couple of times.
RELATED: Why I Chose the Always Eat After 7 PM Diet Plan
Fitness
I wanted to train for a 5K and get back into pole dancing. A new gym opened up that had spin and dance classes that looked like a lot of fun — and it had childcare for Baby J so I could work out while G and L were at school!
But the pandemic put a major damper on those plans. Having my kids home with me all day and gyms closing has made finding the time to exercise harder.
My husband is an essential worker and cannot work from home, so finding the time to go on a run hasn’t happened yet. I’ve gone on a few walks with the kids, but I can only get so far before the older two are whining about being too hot or their legs hurt.
I’m still trying to figure out what at-home workouts I like best and fitting them into our new schedule. I do so much better in a class-type setting so a fitness routine hasn’t really been established (yet).
“Failure is Feedback”
I definitely fell off the wagon more than once this past month. Having gone from over 20 months of eating whatever and little exercise outside of walking to changing my diet and incorporating fitness takes a lot of willpower.
Every time I set myself back, I kept Chapter 6 in mind. This is where Joel talks about adjusting your mindset to be successful with the Always After 7 PM plan. He says:
“If you make a mistake, if you screw up, if you don’t achieve the desired outcome, analyze why it happened and how you can avoid the cause next time.”
One of the biggest challenges I took note of was towards the end of two weeks when our food supply begins to dwindle. This is the time when it’s more challenging to figure out a meal plan, I find that produce hasn’t lasted as long as I anticipated, and I’m just so tired of cooking that ordering a pizza is way easier.
“When things don’t go as planned, don’t get discouraged—get analytical. Figure out the cause, and plan to avoid it in the future. Failure is feedback; listen to it.”
I’ll be sitting down and thinking about what I can do to stick with the plan better. More frozen fruit and veggies and preparing freezer meals will definitely help when we get closer to grocery shopping days. Meal planning was a little tricky because some ingredients were hard to find in my grocery store due to the pandemic, so I’ll be thinking of substitutes to add to the grocery list just in case.
Weight Loss
I started this journey at 153lbs – the heaviest I’ve ever been not pregnant.
By using the Always Eat After 7 PM rules of intermittent fasting, I was able to get down to 145!
I know if I had added workouts the results would have been a little bigger. But I’m pretty happy with my result after one month, considering the ups and downs I’ve had since I started this challenge. I’m going to make changes where I can and continue to get back on that wagon 🙂
Based on surprising science, Always Eat After 7 PM debunks popular diet myths and offers an easy-to-follow diet that accelerates fat-burning and allows you to indulge in your most intense food cravings: Eating the majority of your calories at night.
The Always Eat After 7 PM plan consists of: The 14-day Acceleration Phase to kick-start the program and see rapid results, The Main Phase where you’ll learn exactly which foods to eat when in order to achieve your weight-loss goals, The Lifestyle Phase to keep the weight off for good.
Always Eat After 7 PM: The Revolutionary Rule-Breaking Diet That Lets You Enjoy Huge Dinners, Desserts, and Indulgent Snacks—While Burning Fat Overnight by Joel Marion is now available to purchase. Learn more about the book and how to purchase it here.
Disclosure: In case you missed it, this post is sponsored by “Always Eat After 7 PM.” The opinions expressed below are my own.