The beginning of I hope is the end of being fat.

      Hi, I'm Martin.
I'm 25, fat as fuck and finally ready to change.
      For a little background, I come from a family that is pretty big. I've always been one of the biggest if not the biggest in school all the way into college. I've played games and ate all my life to honestly cover the sadness that I've felt.
I've always been the emo guy that everyone goes WHY YOU ALWAYS SAD DA FK IS WRONG WITH YOU?! I don't know, I've always thought I was destined for much more than I've accomplished in my life, and to be honest, I feel like my weight has held my self-esteem and a lot. I portray a guy who's always honest, and who doesn't care what people think, but honestly, I care much more than people tend to know. A lot of people make fun of me, and I usually brush it off, but it hurts more than they know, especially people who I hang out with a lot. But aye. Whatever. Diet.
So, about 2 weeks ago, I played League of Legends with ShadyK (@Shady_K) and a couple others and I asked Shady how I should go about losing weight. And he told me I should just starve myself for 16 hours a day and eat whatever I wanted for 8 hours. Honestly, to me it sounded like complete bullshit, but to him, he called it Intermittent Fasting (IF). Through reading about it online, watching a lot of documentaries and YouTube videos, I educated myself on the diet and I felt that it could work, not just as a diet, but as a lifestyle change.
As a gamer, honestly, our eating habits suck. We either snack a lot while gaming, or we don't eat at all. We're focused on playing our games most of the day, especially trying to get to that "pro level" but we neglect our bodies subconsciously without knowing it. I've played games all my life, on the highest level to the shittiest of levels, and I've always rushed chores, errands, and much more just to get back to what I was doing.
So ShadyK and I decided that I would go through with this diet and not let him down. Because I've told him many times in the past that I would diet, I would lose weight, and I'd change the world. I've tried many diets from South Beach Diet, to Atkins Diet, to Detox Diet, etc. And in the end I was never happy and I was always hating whatever I was doing, and really, does anyone ever stick to something they hate? It fucking sucks.
Intermittent Fasting is gaining more and more popularity every day and it's not that bad. There are different ways to do it, like eat normally for five days and then fast for two (not consecutively) throughout the week. The idea is that basically when your body fasts, it actually burns fat and not muscle that we were lead to believe growing up.
I'm going into the 3rd week now of IF, and honestly it's going really well. I feel good when I'm not eating, I don't feel like I'm starving at all, it actually feels better to be fasting than eating. I personally put a limit on myself of 1500 calories a day. And instead of eating whatever I want for 8 hours, I eat once a day, then I fast for 16-30 hours until I really need food again and I'll eat again. I've given up soda completely (maybe a Diet Coke every couple days) and I'll drink water throughout the day, and it helps when I do get hungry too.
To be playing my games right now (League of Legends / FFXIV: ARR), I feel the time passes by REALLY easily anyways and I usually never notice me getting hungry. When I sleep, it already cuts out 6-10 hours of the fast so it's not that bad. When you're into a game, you really don't notice time, and that's why I feel like this diet is perfect for what my lazy ass is doing right now.
Anyways, 2.5 weeks in, and I've lost 13lbs. I feel better about myself. I eat whatever I want (I ate Chipotle the other day, and McDonald's the day before that :x). I don't eat when I'm sad, and I don't eat when I'm happy. Eating is now more of like a chore than anything else. And I'm happy about my progress. I've started wanting to do more, I walk my dog 3 times a day, I'm not getting tired walking up and down stairs, and I park at the end of parking lots to walk up to the entrance if I go somewhere.  I SHOULD be eating more healthy, but fuck it, if I'm eating what I want and losing weight and I'm happy about it, then SMD because we all need some McD (nohomo) in our life once in awhile.
A lot of people are going to say that what I'm doing is horrible for me, but please look up I.F. and then come talk to me after you read more about it than just jumping to conclusions. As long as I feel good about doing it, then I accept whatever side effects it may have, which I haven't seen yet almost three weeks in.
So now I'm just going to conclude this and I'll be updating this blog more to keep myself motivated even though I feel like I don't need it. I'm pretty certain this diet is more of a lifestyle change than diet now. There will be days when I travel where I'll be cheating, but I know in my heart that I'll always come back to it. It's just changed my life in more ways than one.

Marn