I started Intermittent Fasting when I first moved into my own place. I didn’t have a gas connection, so all my cooking was relegated to whatever I could cook in a small pot on my induction. I wasn’t really a fan of getting into the kitchen at that point in my life, so I figured I might as well give Intermittent Fasting a shot. Wake up, eat some cereal, grab lunch in the college canteen and have a snack once I was home; it seemed like a great plan. My eating window was 9am to 5pm, which basically meant that I was skipping dinner. The first couple of weeks were rough; I’d go to sleep hungry and wake up absolutely ravenous. I got through it mostly on willpower, but after the first fortnight, things started to go downhill. Fast.
I came across the benefits of Intermittent Fasting a few years ago. Intermittent Fasting isn’t really a dietary style like Veganism, Keto or Paleo, rather it dictates certain periods of time designated to eating and fasting. So in that regard, Intermittent Fasting (IF), is better tagged as an eating pattern above anything else. The two most conventional IF patterns are 16:8 and 20:4 (which is also known as the Warrior Diet). The basic idea is that when you’re fasted, your insulin levels dropped to zero, allowing your body to dip into its fat reserves and help you lose weight. It does a lot more like promote the release of growth hormones that benefit your workouts, but I don’t want to get into that right now. In your 16 or 20 hour fasted window, you can mainly drink water, green tea and black coffee; essentially anything that does not result in an insulin response. So on paper, it seems pretty straightforward right? Fasting for 16 or 20 hours and then eating whatever you’d like in your 8 or 4-hour window. Well, it’s really not that cut and dry, and I learned that the hard way.
Regardless of when you eat, two things are of paramount importance; the first being that you eat enough calories to lose fat in a healthy manner. As appealing as it is to eat 800 calories a day and see the fat melt away, it isn’t sustainable or healthy. The second being to get enough protein and fibre in your diet to not only keep your digestive system in top shape, but to stay full for longer as well. I felt I wasn’t eating enough, so I decided to shift my eating window to 1pm to 8pm. No hurried breakfast, but at least I could have a nice, filling dinner, right?
That nice, filling dinner often turned out to be a large pizza or mac and cheese. But it was all good, I’m Intermittent Fasting! But it was in fact, not all good. You see, the thing is that it doesn’t really matter when you eat, what matters is your calorie intake. If you consume more calories than your body can burn off in a day, you gain weight. You could be fasting for 23 hours a day, sitting on your butt, but if you eat 3000+ calories in that 1 hour, you’re going to gain weight. Your fat loss is a balancing act, you can read a little about the role calorie intake plays in it here.
As the months progressed, I continued to score a higher number on the scale, despite thinking I was doing everything right. After a while, I abandoned Intermittent Fasting, delegating it to just another fad. But now the issue was that not only was I eating whenever I wanted, I had adjusted to the larger meals I had been eating during IF. It took me almost a year to break out of that cycle of overeating, but that’s not what this is about.
Intermittent Fasting is fantastic, but only if it is done the right way. Regardless of whether you’re doing 16:8 or 20:4, tracking your calories is extremely important to see results. A reliance on protein and fibre will also help you stay full for longer to get you through those long fasted stretches of time. Consuming Green Tea, or Black Coffee also helps, because they help reduce your appetite without breaking your fast. Black Coffee can even have serious benefits for your workouts, so it’s definitely worth including in your diet. There really isn’t a one-size-fits-all when it comes to eating patterns. Intermittent Fasting is just another option worth trying out. I would highly recommend it to people that struggle with high insulin levels, because this particular eating pattern can help regulate it to a great degree, even showing positive results in people with diabetes. But of course, do so after consult your physician, I’m not a medical practitioner.
If you’re considering altering your eating pattern, we would highly recommend checking out Thomas DeLauer’s YouTube channel. Not only does he cover IF extensively, all of his findings are deeply rooted in scientific research, so you know exactly what’s going on in your body. His videos taught me the right way of Intermittent Fasting and if I ever give it another shot, his videos will be my guide.
Have you tried out different diets or eating patterns in the past? Did they work out better for you than they did for me? Share what you did and how it felt in the comments below!