To spend time with family and take care of some things in my birth country, Bulgaria. If you feel inspired to post something or comment on posts that are up, please do! That would help keep the community thriving while I’m away. And if you don’t wanna do that, that’s totally fine too! If you need to reach me for any reason, direct message is a great way to do that…I’ll be checking those periodically. Sending you a virtual hug from Eastern Europe!

I was grateful and blessed to spend the day yesterday with a cousin I hadn’t seen in over two years. At one point, she asked me what my fasting strategy is, how much I fast every day. I said something like…it varies day to day. I hadn’t really thought about what my fasting strategy is right now. When I started fasting, I had all sorts of plans and strategies. At first, it was 16:8 that I tried. 16:8 helped me curb nighttime binges and balance my blood sugar. Then, I experimented with 18:6. I extended my fasts to 24 hours, 36, and eventually 48. At some point, I got into a pattern of doing two fasts a week of 42 hours, doing one feasting day with 3 meals or more, and the rest of the time doing 16:8, or something like that. Every 3 months, I would do a 3-5 day fast to get into deeper autophagy. This pattern was ReALLY effective for helping me let go of over 70 pounds of excess weight. Most recently though, my pattern is “I do what I feel like.” The technical term for it is IDWIFL :oP It’s been working pretty well for me. I strive for doing at least one fast of 36-42 hours per week, but it doesn’t always happen. Last week, I had 3 days of one meal a day, and one 36 hour fast. This week, I’ve had 3 days of 3 meals a day. For my birthday in the beginning of May, I did a 5 day fast to gift myself stem cells. Then, I parent chaperoned a trip to Catalina Island and didn’t fast at all for a week. Well ok, I fasted once for 18 hours, but that was it. If I find myself feasting a lot, I make it a point to take more pauses in between eating and lean into fasting. If I find myself fasting a lot, I recognize it’s time to feast and throw in a day or two of feasting. I don’t stress about it at all, just strive for having some sort of balance between fasting and feasting. And it works for me :) What’s your fasting strategy? Do you have one? How about a JOY strategy? I’ll share about my joy strategy in the comments.

EDIT: I had a powerful experience while on a walk after I posted this and it lead me to identifying 2 new types of hunger that have played a powerful impact on my life and I had been confusing it with Emotional Hunger. The reason I wanted to identify each of these is because they 1) each present differently and 2) have different needs that they meet. Some of the solutions may be the same as others but there are distinct differences that I feel are important. DM me if you are interested and I can email you the newest version as I keep making updates as I am learning. Original Post: Wow. This community sure has grown!!! I believe I was the first or second member and I haven't checked in for a while. I spoke with Vasi about a program that I have been working on and she encouraged me to share some information here. I created this brief introduction page to my program. I call it Metabolic Rehab; The Feasting/Fasting Method. I believe that a lot of the problems that people have with food and weight stem back to not recognizing hunger. I started developing a theory years ago that seems to have proven true through my experience and work. I am an addiction counselor and I see similarities with my clients to what I experienced trying to heal my metabolism. Then Dr. Jason Fung published his book The Hunger Code which I read as soon as it came out in March 2026 to see if it validated my experience. He shared his idea that there are 3 types of hunger. My experience identified 6; his first three types seem insufficient to what else I see going on so I started to create my program. This is the briefest introduction to what I plan to cover in my program. I plan to introduce each type, provide strategies to help people identify each type and eliminate some so that they don't have to fight hunger and cravings. After all, if we aren't hungry... it's easy to say no.

We have a winner! @Jenny Rader-Bakos had the most likes and comments, with 12 likes and 22 comments. @Jenny Rader-Bakos explained her amazing health and blood sugar transformation in From Sick and Tired to Rooted and Wild Jenny, you get to be an honorary VIP Thrive member until the end of June! This means, you can come to ALL the live meetings on the calendar. You also get to be an Admin in Thrive, so everyone can see when you make a post. You can also send out emails every 72 hours, and lead Masterclasses in here, that provide value and share your offerings. You can put Master classes on the calendar, just like you would in your own community. So you can cross post your classes in multiple communities, if you'd like :) And you get a one-on-one Thrive Breakthrough session to go over any area of your life and work on transforming it. The only rule is that you provide VALUE for others with your posts and Master classes. If you have any questions, lemme know. Way to go, everyone who participated in Stories of Transformation!! I'll keep the category up for a few weeks so we can continue to share Stories of Transformation. I'd love to hear all of your stories of transformation! YOU can learn more about and upgrade to PREMIUM or VIP ANY TIME, by going here... www.skool.com/releasetheweight/plans Here are all the stories again... @Joshua Haag's wrote the pioneer Story of Transformation, sharing how dedication and showing up day to day helped him drop excess weight and step into greater fitness. @Om Patel talked about becoming leaner and stronger in his Transformation Story!.

I’m about 63.5 hours into my fast now. Here are some of the things I’ve been doing... In the morning, I do relaxation, meditation, in bed, for about 30 minutes. Ok, I do this every morning, not just when fasting, but it feels so much deeper and more profound in a fasted state. I try to do relaxation at night as well too, before I go to bed, it helps me sleep better. Last night, I listened to Relax and Manifest Abundance on @Victoria Gallagher’s awesome Believe App. And I conked out and slept really well, which doesn’t always happen during longer fasts. I sometimes get a flow of inspiring ideas when I do relaxation while fasting, which is fun, and I’m ok with letting lots of them go cuz I can only do so much! Then, I drink a glass of water with half a lemon squeezed into it, and a few dashes of salt, to get an electrolyte boost. This is super energizing for me. Then, I make my tea. I’ve been having herbal/green tea with Pao D Arco to combat candida (which I’m prone to) and stress reducing herbs like lemon balm. Green tea gives me good antioxidants and energy to get through my morning. I drink this before noon so the caffeine doesn’t mess with my sleep. For the rest of the day, I drink water. After my drinks, I do 10 minutes of rebounding to support my body in detoxing. In the evenings, I’m working on dry fasting for at least 10-12 hours. So, no water overnight. This is a change for me cuz in the past, I would often drink lots of water before bed and take sips when I get up to go to the bathroom. I’m noticing that dry fasting helps me sleep better and makes me less cold during these longer fasts. I’m often freezing at night during longer fasts, but that just doesn’t happen when I dry fast for a few hours before bed. Learned from Dr. Mindy Pelz that giving ourselves time to dry fast increases production of Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF), which is like fertilizer for the brain. It’s also really good for bone density and strong bones as we age.