First things first:
What is Intermittent Fasting?
We’re all familiar with Breakfast, right? Where you “break your fast” from being asleep. Because fasting just means NOT EATING. And you can’t eat when you’re asleep. (If you can, leave a comment below. I need to hear this! 😁)
Intermittent fasting is simply the concept of NOT EATING, on a regular basis.
Most of us have been taught that everyone needs to eat 3 meals a day, and breakfast is “the most important meal of the day”. Sound familiar?
What’s more, many of us have heard that eating MORE often is actually better. As I mentioned in My Thoughts on “Is Calorie Counting Dead”, I did this myself. I ate 5-6 times a day (essentially every 2 hours while I was awake) and lost 80 pounds doing so.
Although as I’ve come to learn, you NEED to eat ALL THE TIME when you’re not eating much fat, because fat is what activates the satiety response in your body. Or more simply, fat is what makes your body say “I’m good. You don’t need anymore food right now!” So eating a low fat, calorie restricted diet means riding the rollercoaster of blood sugar and insulin spikes, and constantly being either hungry or sleepy.
Fast forward to today, and I eat ONCE A DAY, almost never feel ‘hungry’, and feel and look better than I ever have in my entire life.
So how did I get to this point, and what benefits does it have?
Getting Started with Fasting
Let me start off by saying I started eating a high fat, anti-inflammatory diet before I started fasting. Switching my body, and more importantly my brain, to using fat (ketones) for fuel instead of carbs and sugars (glucose) was critical for being ABLE to go all day without eating. And even then, it took time to expand my fasting window to where it is today.
Once my body became accustomed to utilizing fat for fuel, I naturally noticed that I was not getting hungry at “normal” meal times. And about this same time, I had heard and read about intermittent fasting, and how it was becoming more popular in fitness and nutrition circles. So I decided to give it a shot.
The most common recommendation was to start what is referred to as a 16/8 fast. Where you fast for 16 hours, and eat within an 8 hour window. To my knowledge, this is still the most common fasting schedule out there.
What this equated to was really simple: Skip breakfast, and stop eating a couple hours before bed. Alternatively, for people that love them some breakfast, you could do the same by skipping dinner.
So I decided on a “feeding window” from noon to 8 PM. The first thing I noticed, is that I started feeling VERY ‘hungry’ just before lunch, around 11 AM. I put hungry in quotations because I’ve since come to learn that there is a difference between when my body wants to eat and when my body NEEDS to eat.
But that’s a topic for another day, where I’ll dive into my first 48 hour fast.
As I adapted to fasting in this window, after about a month or two, I noticed that once again I wasn’t feeling ‘hungry’ when it was “time to eat” at noon. So I moved my feeding window from 2-8 PM, so that I would be hungry for lunch, but not interfere with dinner.
Once again, after a couple of months doing this, I realized I wasn’t hungry anymore at 2 PM, either. So I decided that I would move my feeding window from 4-8 PM, because I started getting ‘hungry’ at 4 PM, and just turned the evening into a seamless feeding. I would have a snack towards the end of the day (usually a chicken thigh or two), which would hold me over until dinner.
Finally, it got to the point where I wasn’t hungry at 4 PM. So now I only eat dinner, every day, which is usually around 6 PM.
The Effects of Intermittent Fasting
So what is the point? What does “starving myself” DO that’s worth it? (I know you’re thinking it, even though I said I’m not hungry 😉)
There are more benefits than even I’m aware of, but the ones I know about and have experienced include:
- More consistent energy throughout the day. Like, ENDLESS energy!
- Increased mental sharpness throughout the day
- Better, deeper sleep at night
- Increased physical fitness and endurance
- Body fat reduction, even without strenuous exercise
- Better general productivity
- Better understanding of my body and its natural cues for hunger and thirst
- Eating feels much more ‘utilitarian’ AND satisfying
- More time available in the day, because I don’t stop to eat!
The more “scienc-y” explanations behind these effects essentially come from the evolutionary biology of your body, where we as a species adapted to a nomadic lifestyle, in which periods without food necessitated that your body become STRONGER, so you could hunt food. NOT WEAKER, despite popular opinion that “I feel weak when I don’t eat!” (That’s the blood sugar crash from you not constantly pumping glucose into your fat-starved body!)
As a result, fasting helps better regulate your body’s hormones, clears out weak, damaged, or inferior cells and toxins, and increases your body’s natural production of Human Growth Hormone (HGH).
In my experience, the combination of a ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting is a perfectly complimentary health and nutrition FIRESTORM. I’ve never felt better, and I feel so good, it’s almost addictive.
What do you think of intermittent fasting? Have you heard of it? Think it sounds crazy? Let me know in the comments below!
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