My night eating has been improving but still not perfect the way I want it. Mostly it's something DH is eating and I eat some. Sometimes it's because he offers it to me but I admit that sometimes it's just because I want it.

I skipped over the part in the book about bodybuilders and weight lifters. I didn't think that applied to me! LOL Their eating is different than for the rest of us. I am starting on the section about fasting. This is something that really applies to longevity, because by having a longer fasting period, you are naturally eating lower calorie and lower protein than when you eat all day, in most cases. There are probably those who really stuff themselves during their eating window because they know they will not eat during the fasting period. But most people are fasting for health purposes and know that overeating is never healthy. I will post info that seems relevent as I read along.

I am still having some trouble sleeping but got up at 7 today. I'm not sure how I will do when we turn the clocks back. I usually get up when I can see light above the curtains because I don't like to let the dog out until it starts to get light. After we change the clocks, it will be light a little earlier, so that will help me. It will give me a little more quiet time alone before DH gets up. I usually go into the bedroom early and get ready for bed because DH watches things on TV that don't interest me, so I watch in the bedroom, and usually fall asleep. My body will adjust to the time change.

Carol: I also think autophagy is good for our aging bodies, helps us to clear out the "garbage" of dead cells etc. So fasting is the only way to really get there as far as we know. Good for you to avoid the night eating. My DH also tends to do that, hard to discourage him, even though it gives him some reflux.
Trish: the only thing is using half and half that is already opened. They suggest using a fresh carton or container not previously opened, because once opened it can get contaminated with bacteria etc. inadvertently. Thats why we flash pasteurize usually. They said if not fresh packaging to heat as usual, then cool again.
I hope it works out either way, I am enjoying this delicious yogurt.
Did get a short nap in. Planning to make chicken and leek soup tonight and beet borscht tomorrow, thanks for the inspiration Carol!

Mad, I pretty much stopped night eating years ago due to severe reflux but I would still eat some small things occasionally. Now I try not having anything after dinner for the fast. The chapter in the book is now discussing in detail some interesting things that occur in the body during a fast. I will report on that when I finish this chapter.

Mad The 1/2 & 1/2 was what I opened yesterday to make the yogurt that I heated in the microwave. I thought the heavy cream was new too but not sure how new it was. I just ate one serving a little bit ago after it was chilled a couple of hours and it was delicious. I loved the texture. Of course from now own I will keep fresh 1/2 & 1/2 to make it. In fact, I have decided to keep fresh quarts on hand so I can always have fresh batches made. Thanks for sharing this easier method with me.

Carol Sue I am going to skip over to the fasting part of the book as well. I have a difficult time understanding a lot of the technical info although it is interesting info. I'm not sure about the things they say about protein, however, I don't think I over do it any way.

Trish, that is why I had to read the book again ...There was too much I did not understand. It is a little clearer the second time. The way I understood the protein, Americans eat too much protein. We do need some for lean muscle mass, but what we eat in excess gets turned into glucose and excess glucose is stored as fat. We don't start burning fat until glucose is burned so glucose should be kept to a minumum. Also we should get 50% of our protein from animal protein and 50% from plant protein.

This has been a tough week for me. My work is contract based and I had two contracts from the same company. One was cancelled on Wednesday. It was the one I got set up this spring for more security. So much for that and I am really disappointed. I am also really worried about losing my main contract as my primary supporter is leaving the company at the end of the month.

My other issue is I feel so run down. This seems typical of when I finally get on a good path for diet and exercise. I feel awful. It seems if one is eating better and exercising more, one should feel the benefits of it! I had to take a nap today after exercising after work and slept for five hours. Plus my house is a wreck since I cannot seem to follow an exercise program and keep house at the same time.

Lastly, I am in danger of having a gain this week despite my efforts. Fingers crossed that I can white knuckle it through to maintain my trend of loses.

Pipsicle that is a tough week for sure. Living life on contract work is great if the jobs roll in and you have steady work or choices in what you take, but leads to precarious employment for a lot of people. I hope things improve and you get a new contract elsewhere.

I ate a lot yesterday, and now have gotten a scratchy throat and beginning of a cold. So I will not be fasting today. Will likely stick to soups though.
Trish: I am really happy with how my yoghurt is turning out this way. Have you been using your yogurt for starter yet? That is my think today, I plan to make a batch to check that. I found out that if I use a particular square dish, it fits in my yogurt maker, that was made for the 7 little cups. But I can also make one larger dish with this flat dish. Takes less cream too so its good for an experiment.

Carol: enjoy the reading. It felt good to do my 42 hour fast, and I will do more next week again. For now, will try to rein in my appetite.
Have a lovely day everyone

Pipsicle I am so sorry for your struggle this week. I think the mental strain from work along with diet and exercise is just a real trial this week. I pray things begin to come together for you with the job so some of the stress will let up. The nap was probably a good thing that you needed. Fingers crossed for you not to gain.

Mad I'm curious to see how the flat dish works making the yogurt. I looked on Amazon to see if I could find a machine to make it in bulk but nothing has a really good rating. I also thought about making it with 2% milk, but I read that it wasn't as creamy or thick as it is with full fat. So I decided that since I'm not really doing low fat, not to change what I am doing especially since this new way makes it so much easier to make.

Carol Sue Hope you got a good nights sleep.

Headed out to beauty shop this morning and then by the store before coming home. The high today is going to be 55 and is 46 right now. Chili is in the crockpot at this moment. DS son and DGS is coming in tomorrow and they want us to go to a museum with them tomorrow afternoon so she and I are taking our walkers and get a lot of walking done if they really come. They don't always show up just because her DS says they are coming.

Weight up 2.4 lbs and FBG 129. I really have to stop this eating at night. Got to get my head on straight if I intend to lose any weight.

Y'all have a great day Everybody!

Trish< this is just a glass dish that I already have, I just went through what I had until I found one that worked. I wonder if you took your yoghurt maker to goodwill if they would let you try out some glass dishes to find one that would work.
I was able to do about 2.5 cups in my dish. I am trying out using my own yoghurt from the other day as my started this time. If it doesn't work I guess I will have a mess.

I was in the grocery store when I remembered you asking me about making the yogurt from ready made. Yes, I have taken a jar and used it as the starter of the new batch. I heard on YouTube that you can do that about 3 or 4 times. However, I have only used it 2x. I really want to know I have a good quality batch. I hope your larger batch comes out great. I couldn't do that if I even had a container to use because DH would want the little jars, I'm sure. LOL

Carol Sue Are you okay? I wonder about you when we don't hear from you. I pray you are feeling all right.

I'm ok. I thought I posted this morning. I slept until 10 am but that's because I tossed and turned. I usually take Tylenol Arthritis to help with sleep. Well, today I found one on the bed so I guess I only took 1 last night.

Pipsicle, I'm sorry to hear of the work worries. I hope it works out favorably.

When I made yogurt I would buy a small commercial plain Greek yogurt to use as starter. DH didn't like me making it. He didn't think it was safe even though we talked to the nutritionist from the hospital who told us not only is it safe but it's preferrable. So I stopped. It sounds really good when the 2 of you talk about it, but I buy Cabot Greek and really like it.

I didn't get much reading done today. Hopefully tomorrow.

Carol Sue So glad you are okay. I always wonder if you don't post at least once. You aren't sleeping well and when I go to bed, I sleep good but then I wake up at 7:30 am ready to get up. DS said she did the same thing this morning. We can only hope the time change will straighten things out.

DS bought me 3 blouses and a pair of jeans. She loves to shop. I just opened them and they are really nice. I don't think I can wear the jeans yet but gives me an incentive to get the weight moving. The shirts especially the 2 sweat shirts are beautiful. I think I can wear them now. I plan to wear one of them when we meet DS and her family at the Mammoth Site tomorrow. I must have spent over an hour walking in the store today and will walk that place tomorrow with my walker. That will give me 2 days of good walking exercises.

I decided to eat a little jar of yogurt with strawberries or blueberries each night as a snack and make that my last meal until I break my fast the next day at 11ish am. Started today with 2MAD & 1Snack.

Goodnight.

Thank you for being concerned, Trish. I feel the same concern when you don't post daily, too, because you and I usually post daily. Mad is on the go more than we are but usually mentions when she is going to be gone and Pipsicle told us she reads but updates on Sunday. If something happened to one of us we would not know. That is the nature of internet friendships. I always wonder about those who have dropped off, like Rennie and Bonnie, Shannon, and some others. People move on with their lives. I hope they are doing well.

I couldn't sleep again so got up early. I hate to lay there awake. I think this is because my blood sugar has not been going as low overnight. I have been eating more carbs. Note to self to work on that.

I read over the section on fasting. It amazes me how we were always told to never skip a meal and to always have snacks. When we fast our body does not shut down but metabolism and adrenaline increase to give our bodies energy. Our bodies start to burn fat once it uses up stored glucose. If we don't fast we keep getting glucose from food and never start to burn fat. The reason we have this fat is because we eat more food than we need and the body stores it for times when food is scarce. In developed countries food is plentiful. Eating for reasons other than hunger has caused obesity. Family celebrations, social eating . As long as we have excess fat our bodies will burn that during fasting instead of lean tissue. Fasting may not be as beneficial to a lean person who does not have excess fat. Fasting also causes autophagy which is the breakdown of old cells. After you break the fast the body uses the food energy to build new proteins to replace the ones that were broken down. This process fights age related diseases such as altzeimers and some cancers. Fasting contributes to the lower calories and lower protein that slows aging. Because we are not eating during the fasting period we are naturally eating less. But we need to be sure that the food we do eat is high in nutrition. This is my interpretation of what I'm reading in the book.

The next section of The book is about the health benefits of tea, wine and coffee. Dr Fung has some discussions about tea on his website and even has a particular tea he recommends. Tea has health and longevity promoting compounds such as polyphenols and catechins. The beneficial effects are antiviral, anticancer and cholesterol lowering. Tea also reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and hypertension. Black or green tea are both good but green is berrer. Unfortunately adding milk to it blocks the absorption of flavenoids. The more tea you drink the more health benefits you derive.

That is not true with wine. Moderate red wine consumption is healthful but not heavy consumption. It is only the red wine that has these benefits because it is made including the skin and seeds of the grapes. White wine does not contain the skins. It is the reversatrol that provides the benefits not the alcohol, so you don't get the same effect from beer or spirits. Wine drinkers are known to live longer and have better health than non wine drinkers and the benefits are greater when the wine is included with a meal, the way the French do.

Coffee also has health benefits. It contains over 1000 beneficial compounds. As with tea, the more coffee you drink the more benefits you receive. The caffeine can cause sleep disturbances plus adding sweeteners can be harmful but honey is acceptable. ( I want to add that black coffee only can be consumed during a fast. Although the addition of honey is considered to be healthy It will break your fast and disrupt autophagy.). Coffee also has adverse side effects. Increased urination and thirst, dehydration, loss of calcium, sodium and chloride and can cause bone loss in the elderly. I'm thinking it might be beneficial for me to switch
from coffee to tea after the first cup in the morning to wake me up.

The book goes into greater details of the health benefits of tea, coffee and red wine above what I have listed here.

Carol Sue I feel the same way about you when you don't post. I also wonder what happened to those who have passed through here throughout the years. Example I wondered about Bonnie when SC had all that flooding down where she lived when she was a part of our group.

I am enjoying your synopsis of the book. I checked my bs after my coffee this morning and my body is making some changes. My FBG was 118 but after one cup of coffee with just the SF French Vanilla creamer w/o Stevia it was up to 139. So I'm beginning to think I need to drink it black. I also need to switch to green tea and get some black tea. There was a time when I only drank tea and need to get back to that. I can drink my tea without sweetener. It seems that my body is changing on me so I am going to have to make some changes. My weight is up again today to 215.4. So definitely time to make some changes.

Now that it is getting cold here, I am ready for soups so I bought some foods to make some. I am also going back to counting calories. There seems to be something going on with MFP as they are always down for maintenance and I can't set my own percentage of carbs, protein and fat. They have the carbs at 150, protein 60 and fat 40 and my calories at 1200. However, I believe that I need to use it any way just to be sure I'm staying within some type of guideline. It is better than not counting at all. I've got a small crockpot of homemade vegetable soup cooking now so I can have it as a small meal in the evening instead of a snack. Bird's Eye has a frozen steamable veggies called Southwest Style Protein blend I took some of it and some of 2 other kind of stir-fry blends to make me some homemade soup to keep on hand so I can have a cup of it to satisfy hunger so that I don't end up snacking on junk. This will get help me stay hydrated this winter and get my veggies in at the same time. I refuse to gain any more weight. I will give myself another week and if things don't change, I will go to the bariatric clinic and get the shots. One way or the other, I'm going to lose this weight.

DS son and grandson are coming tomorrow instead of today so we aren't going to the Mammoth museum. DH and I will go see Daddy today instead of tomorrow and may go to Walmart before coming home to get our meds. DS and her family will go see him tomorrow. I'm going to try to start going to see him on the weekend instead of during the week.