Last year, just after my 39th birthday I decided I had had enough of being overweight, unfit, tired and generally pretty fed up with my body and how I felt about myself. I even wrote a poem about it! I’ve been writing various updates about my ‘Fit by 40’ mission for the last year, and so with just 23 days until the big 4-0 I thought I’d give you another little update about where I’m at just now.

In my last post back in January I wrote about how I had just started intermittent fasting, and all the wonderful benefits of this way of eating. Well, I am still going with IF, and in fact I now fast for around 20 hours in every 24, sometimes it’s a bit more, sometimes it’s a bit less but that’s my average.

Have I lost a huge amount of weight? Well no. In fact I only weigh 3 lbs less now than I did back in January but do you know what? I’m fine with that. Because what I’ve discovered in my research of intermittent fasting is that my years of yo-yo dieting, of calorie restriction, and more recently of very low calorie meal replacements, have really messed up my metabolism. And my body needs to heal before it can start shedding the last remaining excess pounds – and to be fair, there isn’t a huge amount more weight that I need to lose.

Something is definitely happening though. I may not be losing weight but I am experiencing plenty of other benefits of IF. I don’t find fasting particularly difficult – I certainly don’t feel hungry for most of the day. I eat what I want, without guilt. As long as it is during my eating window then I am not restricting anything. And after literally a lifetime of food related guilt I can’t tell you how liberating that is. There are other, physical, changes too – my nails are growing faster and stronger than they ever have before, I haven’t had an eczema flair up in months, my hay fever symptoms have get to show themselves when normally I’d be taking daily antihistamines at this time of year. My skin feels less dry and smoother. I’m sleeping better, of course it helps that Gabe isn’t waking me up in the night anymore but I don’t think it’s just that. The pain that I’ve had in my hip on and off for the last few years has virtually gone completely.

So you can see, intermittent fasting is definitely doing something, even if it isn’t giving me the weight loss I’d hoped for… yet.

I’ve not being doing my yoga so much recently, I keep saying I’m going to do it but then somehow I just don’t make time for it when it comes to it. I did a fab yoga session when I was away at the Flea Retreat a few weeks ago though. The session was run by a lovely lady called Rachel and I really enjoyed doing an actual class rather than just following YouTube videos at home  – I am going to continue my search to find a local class that is at a time I can actually get to!

Other than that I’ve still been walking the boys to school and preschool most of the time, and I’m enjoying using my FitBit to keep track of my progress. I definitely feel fitter and stronger than I did a year ago.

So anyway, with less than a month until my birthday I may not quite have achieved all my goals but I’m very pleased with the progress I have made. I’ll be back with another update around my birthday (and I might finally brave some before and after pictures!) and you can see what my health and fitness goals are for the next year. Because life doesn’t stop at 40. Apparently it’s just the beginning!

In the meantime you can read the rest of my Fit by 40 posts here and if you’ve ever tried, or are following an intermittent fasting plan then I’d love to hear more about it so do please leave me a comment below.