Many times, especially during the night when we let our thoughts go wild, we fantasize about losing weight, what we want our bodies to look like, and the ideal figure for us. We make plans in our heads, and some of us even write it down, to start a diet the next morning and we even come up with a schedule to get our workouts in throughout the week.

But then the next morning comes, and along with the previous night, that motivation is also gone. You wake up hungry and excited to go have a big, yummy breakfast. You’re so blinded by your desire to eat that you completely forget about the goals you had set probably less than 10 hours ago.

How can you avoid this? How can you stick to the goals you create for yourself the night before?

Here is what I’ve done in the past and what has worked for me. It might sound stupid or dumb, but change your phone lock screen to a picture of your body goal, whether it is a photo of yourself some years ago or someone you know nothing about. Now a days we all check our phones first thing in the morning; This should be enough to remind you that you had a goal last night, and that it’s probably best if you stick to it. Remind yourself that you want to lose some inches off your waist, feel better about yourself, or most importantly improve your health. Chances are you will have a smaller or even healthier breakfast than you would have if you would not have seen that picture as a reminder of what you aspire to look like.

You are done with step 1! Nothing big, nothing too drastic, just the will to start a change and act on it.

I don’t know if this is something that happens for everyone, but it does happen to me and it has held me back from reaching my goals a lot of years in the past. If I don’t quickly see results, I lose motivation. At least at the beginning I need to see changes fast otherwise it makes me feel like eating even worst and I end up putting on a few more pounds. It was not too long ago that I was trying to shed a few pounds but it was impossible to stay motivated since I was not seeing quick results. I even went on a three-day juice cleanse which made me lose about 8 pounds but I had a few days of binging short after I went on a trip a couple of days later and gained a lot of those pounds back, especially because juice cleanses mainly make you lose water weight. But the binging and the juice cleanse is something I can blog about later if you guys are interested.

Finding a solution for myself:

Looking for motivation I looked at a lot of diets online, I looked at more juice cleanses, at fasting for a whole day, but honestly at the moment I didn’t feel like I could keep up with any of those things and would eventually end up binge eating and putting on even more weight. Then finally, I came across Intermittent Fasting! Thank God for that. I had heard about this before, but I did a little more research on it. I read about amazing experiences from people who have done this, read about all the benefits it has aside from helping you lose weight fairly quick, so I said “why not?” and went for it. I remember I decided to do this at night right before bed, which is when I like to do my research on things I’m interested in. The next day I weighed myself just to have a start weight and I didn’t eat until around 2 in the afternoon; only thing I had was my cuban coffee. I distinctly recall this was on a Saturday because I was out with my mom and we went to a restaurant that afternoon. There I told her all about intermittent fasting and how I wanted to give it a try. I was so excited and motivated about this that I decided to eat healthy at the restaurant. We shared a delicious and fairly sized salad, some orange chicken, and a little bit of fried rice because it’s very important to keep a balance. Later on at night I went out with a few friends to a restaurant/bar but since I had just started my IF I decided to respect my eating window and did not have anything after 10pm. I am usually more flexible when I go out but I was just too excited about this new strategy to lose weight that I wanted to stick to it and respect the time.

As you might have or might not have heard, there are different types of intermittent fasting one can do. I decided to go with the 16/8 IF which is where you fast for 16 hours and have an eating window of 8 hours. At the beginning I was not really counting calories, I was simply trying to avoid eating an enormous amount of food in one sitting. Miraculously, I was not starving! Since I love eating sooo much I thought this was going to be a lot harder, but it turns out that it felt very natural to do and I was quickly adapting to it. The second day when I weighed myself, I was down by a pound! Probably all water retention but seeing the scale go down really kept me motivated. I kept this up for the days that followed and I LOVED how quickly I was seeing results, so YES! Intermittent fasting does work, it works quick, and if you’re like me that needs to see a quick change in order to stay motivated then this is your sign to start intermittent fasting.

If you guys would like I can do an in depth blog about IF, and explain all the different types there are and how I’ve been doing it. Of course there has been ups and downs but that is normal when trying to reach a goal. As everything in life, what matters is to get back on your feet when you fall, and oh trust me, I am the queen of falls! But thankfully I am also the queen of getting back on my feet. I am still not at my goal weight but I am so much closer to it, and I can guarantee that intermittent fasting is the main reason why.