This article was originally published on Jan. 2, 2019.
So much was happening, it was hard to take it all in.
Just over a year ago, Alex Allen moved across the country to San Francisco. He’d landed a job as a software engineer, achieving his dream of working in a city at the center of the tech industry. The 24-year-old loved the area’s open culture and mild, consistent weather. He wanted to make the most of his adopted city.
But socializing inevitably posed a problem. Sometimes, dinner with new friends meant he sipped water as he watched them chow down.
In the last couple of years, he’d started a fasting diet — 16 hours of fasting and then eating within an eight-hour window each day. It had been a wake-up call for his body. In his late teens and early 20s, he lifted weights regularly, but he also packed on a lot of fat. He was over 200 pounds, and he was tired of it.
