Last Updated on April 12, 2024 by Fasting Planet
For a long time now, you’ve wanted to try fasting. Yet every time you start planning your diet and scheduling when you’ll fast, you don’t get much further than that. You just worry that you’ll go to all that trouble for nothing. Are there any fasting success stories out there that show what the benefits of fasting are and how much weight you could lose?
Indeed, countless fasting success stories abound, including these 6 great ones:
- New mom Courtney Montgomery loses 90 pounds through intermittent fasting
- Martine Etienne-Mesubi, another new mom in her 40s, sheds 80 pounds in a year
- Sumaya Kazi loses 50 pounds and gains her confidence back
- Michael Dolan follows the 16:8 diet for 40 pounds of weight loss
- Janielle Wright, who, over six months, lost 65 pounds and may have saved her own life
- Leanne Robinson, a woman in her 50s, drops 105 pounds by fasting
In this inspiring article, we’ll share all the details of these 6 success stories. These everyday people prove that by caring for your health, big, positive changes can happen in life. By the time you’re done reading, you’ll hopefully feel motivated to go on a successful fast of your own!
6 Fasting Success Stories from Everyday People
Courtney Montgomery – 90 pounds lost
The first success story comes from Courtney Montgomery as reported in Women’s Health Mag in 2018. Montgomery said she had always weighed a bit more than average, likely because her diet consisted of sweet tea and southern cornbread as well as fast food when she was growing up.
Montgomery was also quite active when she was younger, then she got a severe illness that left her unable to walk, as the nerves in her leg were damaged. While she overcame the illness, exercise was out of the question for the foreseeable future.
Through her recovery, Courtney got to do a physical activity she loves–dancing–but she had a few kids in the interim. This left her weighing more than she ever had. As she had gotten older, her dietary habits hadn’t improved. Courtney had followed an outdated food pyramid that says your diet is supposed to be mostly cereals, bread, and rice, aka all carbs.
To get her diet under control, Montgomery stopped her Starbucks runs and quit fast food. She would also no longer buy soda. Instead, she began cooking more at home, especially whole grains, vegetables, and chicken.
Courtney continued modifying her diet as the months went on, omitting both dairy and alcohol. Then she decided to try the 16:8 intermittent fast. She would eat for eight hours every day and then spend the remaining 16 hours in a fasted state.
When she does eat, Courtney says it’s only vegetarian food, but still dairy-free. According to the Women’s Health Mag article, Courtney starts her day with a cup of tea or a glass of water since her fasting window hasn’t yet ended by that time.
Then, when she can eat again, she’ll have avocado toast with poached eggs or a protein smoothie bowl. She typically starts eating at noon. If she needs a snack, Montgomery will eat a hardboiled egg that she sprinkles with Cajun seasoning.
Her second meal will usually include steamed vegetables and a black bean patty. Then, for another snack if necessary, apple slices with peanut butter tide her over.
Courtney mentions that through dancing, cycling, and fasting, her weight loss was gradual. It took her three years to lose the 90 pounds, but it did happen. Besides losing weight, Courtney also created a lifetime of healthy habits that will help her keep the weight off. She began going to the gym more often and even became a personal trainer so she can help others once in her predicament.
Martine Etienne-Mesubi – 80 pounds lost
Another story of a mother who found weight loss through intermittent fasting is the tale of Martine Etienne-Mesubi as told to NBC News BETTER earlier in 2020.
Martine is 43 as of the time of this writing. The Baltimore, Maryland native works as a global health epidemiologist, yet her own health was lacking. According to Etienne-Mesubi, her weight was getting in the way of a lot of things she wanted to accomplish in her life, even simple tasks like playing with her daughter without losing her breath. Martine mentioned how embarrassing it was to have to tell Zoe, her six-year-old child, that her mom had to take a break to breathe.
Etienne-Mesubi weighed 225 pounds at her worst, partially because she had just given birth to a second child named Ava. Martine also admits that when pregnant, she didn’t pay much attention at all to her diet. If she wanted to eat at 10 p.m., she would, including carb-heavy meals like toast or a bowl of cereal. These poor eating habits continued when Martine was nursing as well.
As 2018 came to a close and Etienne-Mesubi was done nursing, she realized she had to clean up her eating habits, as she was no longer eating for two. With a family history of hypertension and diabetes, Martine had a reason to do something good for her health sooner than later.
Between her first and second pregnancy, Martine had run in half marathons and followed a firm diet to lose the baby weight. She says this caused her to develop unhealthy obsessions around food, which she didn’t like.
Etienne-Mesubi also recognized her own limitations in getting the weight off this second time. She mentions how she was older and has two kids, which would make some types of exercises hard to commit to. Then she heard of intermittent fasting through Instagram, the social media app.
Using the wealth of materials afforded to her at her job, Martine dug into everything there was to know about intermittent fasting. She was concerned about going so long without food, which she admits she loves, but she decided to give fasting a try.
Martine also followed the 16:8 fast, but modified it to eat over six hours and fast for 18. She says the first two weeks were difficult, but she soon adjusted. Etienne-Mesubi learned to sip tea or water to deal with her hunger pangs. Her fasts would last for 48 to 72 hours, and Martine would fast weekly. She did this for two months and lost 30 pounds.
Then, Martine tried the one meal a day or OMAD diet. Her single meal was dinner, and she ate what she wanted for that one meal only. As she continued fasting, Etienne-Mesubi lost 60 more pounds for a weight loss total of 80 pounds. Being slimmer and healthier also gave her the confidence to hop back into the job market after seven years of being a stay-at-home mom.
Sumaya Kazi – 50 pounds lost
The next fasting success story we want to share is that of Sumaya Kazi as told to Medium in 2016.
Sumaya says her bad eating habits began once she graduated from college. She was overweight and stayed that way for more than five years. It was a combination of going to restaurants a lot, traveling, and not exercising enough, Sumaya mentions. Then, as her career led her to a startup, she traveled more, stayed up later, and eventually became obese and was so for another five years.
Unhappy with herself, Kazi wanted to get her diet under control, but nothing seemed to work. She signed up with Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig, and she was also at the gym up to five times a week. All her meals were prepped ahead of time to prevent overeating or ordering takeout. Yet Sumaya said when she did lose weight, she tended to gain it back.
When she began intermittent fasting, Kazi followed the 4:3 diet. This allows her to fast three days out of the week (not necessarily consecutively) and eat during the remaining four days. On an average week, Sumaya starts on a Sunday by eating until 9 p.m. Then, on Monday, she’d fast, consuming only water, tea, or coffee.
Tuesday would be a day where she could eat again, but Sumaya mentions she’s always tracking her total daily energy expenditure or TDEE. On Wednesdays, she’d fast again, then eat on Thursdays, fast on Fridays, and eat on Saturdays.
According to Kazi, sticking to the 4:3 diet was far easier than the other diets she had tried in the past. She even convinced some of her friends to give it a try, and they all liked it too. Sumaya happily lost 50 pounds through intermittent fasting, a habit she keeps up with to this day (her story was updated in 2020).
Michael Dolan – 40 pounds lost
Women aren’t the only ones to see great results from intermittent fasting. Next, we’ve got Michael Dolan’s story, which was published in Everyday Health in 2019.
Michael contributes his weight gain primarily to being addicted to soda, but also to eating badly and having a job that leaves him sedentary. He weighed 208 pounds at his heaviest, which is more weight than what’s normal on his five-foot, 10-inch frame. He wanted to slim down to 168 pounds, like back in his college days.
First, Dolan stopped eating pasta, bagels, and pizza, then he cut out the soda he was so addicted to. He says that through those dietary choices alone, he was able to lose 20 pounds, reaching 188 pounds. His goal weight of 168 pounds, which was only 20 pounds fewer than where he was now, seemed much more attainable.
Or at least, it did at first. Michael says he hit a wall with his weight at that point. Despite continuing his healthier diet and working out at a boxing gym, nothing was working to burn off more weight. He wasn’t sure what to do, but when he sought help, he was guided towards intermittent fasting.
Michael decided on the 16:8 fast like so many of the successful fasters we’ve discussed have. He’d eat lunch at 11:30 a.m. and then eat until 7 p.m., having dinner then. He’d also give himself permission to snack in between. After 7 p.m., he’d begin fasting.
During this time, Dolan was also exercising a lot, but he found that even when he was not eating as much, he wasn’t starving during his workout. After exercising, he’d eat a healthy meal such as chicken and broccoli with a bottle of Gatorade or shoulder steak with sweet potato, a taco bowl, or pepper and beef stir-fry.
He would munch on almonds as a snack for satiety, and for dessert, a banana shake with whey protein and almond milk. Michael said he was able to weed out his emotional eating habits through intermittent fasting. He also reached 154 pounds, which is more than 10 pounds past his goal weight!
Janielle Wright – 65 pounds lost
Next, we have Janielle Wright, an intermittent faster whose story was also published on NBC News BETTER in 2018.
As a beauty and health influencer, Wright wasn’t necessarily following the advice she preached. She had reached a dangerously high weight of 337 pounds, and she had rightful fears about her own mortality. Janielle often experienced breathing troubles, especially in the evening, and she’d have pain throughout the day.
Wright was only 28 years old at the time, and she didn’t want to leave her young daughter Novah motherless. In 2018, Janielle decided to take control of her health by going on an intermittent fast. She’s yet another faster who followed the 16:8 method.
For Wright, she stopped eating breakfast and consumed only lunch and dinner. Lunchtime was always noon and dinnertime no later than 8 p.m. She stuck to mostly low-carb snacks and meals, tracking her calories and ensuring they didn’t surpass 2,000 calories on any given day.
After five months, Janielle swapped out the 16:8 diet for the 20:4 diet. With this type of intermittent fast, she ate for only four hours each day and then spent the next 20 hours fasting. It’s a more extreme type of intermittent fast, but Wright says she was ready for big changes.
Through her 20:4 diet and exercising six times each week, over the course of six months, Janielle was able to lose 65 pounds. Wright’s overall goal is to drop 100 pounds, of which she’s well on her way to doing.
Leanne Robinson – 105 pounds lost
We saved a particularly good success story for last. Not only did Leanne Robinson lose a lot of weight–more than 100 pounds–through intermittent fasting, but she’s also a lot older than most of the other fasters we’ve discussed at 58 years old. Her story was published on Life in the Fasting Lane in early 2020.
The North Dakota native was 315 pounds at the time she decided she needed to make a change in her life. According to Robinson, she overate all the time as a kid, as she had a hard time recognizing when she was full. This led to her becoming overweight. Her first experience with weight loss was only at the tender age of 14, when Leanne used Weight Watchers.
Robinson says that she did successfully lose some weight and blended in well with the other kids rather than being teased for her weight like she used to be. She also had no problem keeping the weight off, but she does say she was always hungry. By the time she turned 19, she began gaining weight back. When she had a child, Leanne piled more weight on, becoming heavier than ever.
After relying on her past weight loss measures again, Robinson was upset when the weight didn’t come off. She actually began using drugs to slim down, something we’d never, ever advocate for on this blog and which Leanne doesn’t either. At the time, she was 23 years old, and she was slim, but her life was also a mess.
Leanne then shifted to another dangerous means of weight loss, Dexatrim, which we again would not suggest. The weight never stayed off though, and Robinson still couldn’t control her hunger cues or her never-ending appetite. She had several more children in the years between and tried as many diets as she could, but she never stuck with any of them for long.
Eventually, Leanne came across the keto diet in early 2019. She lost five pounds in a week on keto even when she couldn’t quite control the carbs she was eating. Then, Robinson decided to take her diet more seriously, removing processed foods from her home. She also began fasting through Dr. Jason Fung’s guidance three months after beginning her keto diet.
Leanne says she fasts for 42 hours three times every other week. Sometimes, her fasts go as long as 72 hours. She also follows the 18:6 diet and sometimes goes on five-day fasts too, twice a month. Through Dr. Fung’s guidance, Robinson even did a 10-day fast successfully.
In about a year, she lost 105 pounds, although she still wants to drop about 53 more pounds.
Conclusion
Those were our 6 stories of intermittent fasting success. The people detailed in these stories share almost nothing in common except for the type of fast they decided to go on. They come from all walks of life, some healthier than others, yet they all lost the weight they wanted through fasting, sometimes even more weight than the target goal.
Intermittent fasting is admittedly not always easy, but if you’re patient with yourself and–above all–consistent, you could see some serious weight loss results like the ones in these success stories. Best of luck with your fast.