coupland

I decided to try this for a number of reasons: weight loss, health, more energy & convenience.

I work 12-9pm mon-thurs and hate eating late after work as I find it makes me sluggish the next day… so I stopped.
I eat a piece of fruit, some nuts and a coffee for breakfast.
Some fish with steamed veggies or an omelette for lunch
and a bowl of chilli for my break at 4pm
-so my fast is from 4pm to 8am the next day, not much of a fast I know but it still works really well for me if you look at what I get from it:
WEIGHT LOSS:
I’ve lost .5 lb of fat each week so far, while eating (& drinking) whatever I want fri-sun
HEALTH & ENERGY:
I haven’t felt hungry once while doing this and I’ve noticed much more energy and clarity of thought during my working week. Also I’ve had a better mental attitude toward enjoying food at weekends -not having to scrutinize food choices so much but really enjoying my 3 days of regular eating, especially my girlfriend’s Japanese cooking.
CONVENIENCE:
I usually get home around 10pm work days so I tend not to socialize on the days I work but come my days off I don’t want to think about limiting my choices or be weighing up what I can and can’t have… so I don’t. It’s easy, it’s not ideal but it seems pretty ideal for what I want. There’s a Stoic inside me that loves the restricted eating during the week and I actually enjoy getting back into it every monday, helped all the more by enjoying myself at the weekends. I also workout just before I start eating regularly on Friday and I love the feeling of focus I get from training on an empty stomach while feeding the workout afterwards and starting my weekend with a hyped up metabolism.
I wouldn’t claim this is the be all & end all of eating plans but it is very workable and very enjoyable… so far.

I found this off/on approach has worked well financially too. I’ve stopped spending any money mon-thurs and now only spend money on my days off.

Well not quite, work had been driving me crazy these last few months so I arranged a meeting with the owners and told them what I thought, they were all ears but no solutions so I asked for a raise, if I’m going to be unhappy at work I need more pay.
We agreed to have another meeting the following week but in the meantime I had time to think more clearly and realized no pay rise would take the edge off being unhappy and I’m actually doing fine for cash too -I just put aside $6000 these last few months.
So I told them I’d changed my mind and asked to work 4 days instead of 5 for the same pay plus the job of running staff training once a month for extra pay while keeping my 2 months holiday a year
...and they said yes!
last week was my first 4 day week and it’s a holiday here on monday so I’ve got 4 days off -sweet, sweet leisure time how I love thee!

and came across a brilliant free ebook called ‘Everything You Ever Really Needed To Know About Personal Finance On Just One Page’by Trent Hamm:
http://ia301534.us.archive.org/1/items/EverythingYouEverReallyNeededToKnowAboutPersonalFinanceOnJustOne/OnePage.pdf

very good down to earth advice for all aspects of saving with some great links to other resources, it takes a while to download for some reason but it’s well worth it.