Why Fasting?

Intermittent fasting has been a part of my life (on and off) basically for as long as I have had a career in fitness, so I have been doing intermittent fasting for about 8 years. Many people use intermittent fasting, or IF, to lose weight. However, when I first started I was trying to gain muscle. The reason why is because I read about the positive effects of intermittent fasting on human growth hormone. Fasting is known to affect the hormones in some pretty positive ways, one of them is human growth hormone. Human growth hormone, or HGH, has plenty of benefits, one is building muscle. But there are also amazing anti-aging benefits as well. I remember I was obsessed with being big and gaining size, so I looked up how to increase human growth hormone naturally and boom — intermittent fasting was one. 

So I started my intermittent fasting journey to gain muscle, but I continued for many different reasons. 

When I talk to people about intermittent fasting, I often hear, “I can’t do intermittent fasting, I love food too much.” And that is one of the number one reasons why I do intermittent fasting! With IF, I typically eat 2 massive meals as opposed to doing 4 to 5 meals throughout the day. I am definitely more on the spectrum of food is fuel than I eat for pleasure, but I gotta say that I thoroughly enjoy eating to the point that I can barely move until I lay down for 20-30 minutes until my food coma is gone. When I went on diets that required a lot of smaller meals, I found myself always wanting more and I quickly realized that I do not have enough self-control to do those diets. If I am going to eat, then I am going to EAT!

Over the past few years as my life gets busier and busier, I have really come to value habit creation. When I think about the habits that I have like my morning and night routine, I have so much peace. Some of this is because almost everything in life is uncontrollable, but to have even just a few moments of your life under control is so damn beautiful. Another reason why habits are important to me is because they become automatic, so it is one less thing to worry about throughout the day. It totally makes sense why Steve Jobs and other tech giants always wore the same clothes. We can only make so many decisions throughout the day and if we are making too many decisions, we can run into something called “decision fatigue”. 

Honestly, I think one of the main reasons why I have a job as a personal trainer and coach is because of decision fatigue. Many of my clients are incredibly successful and inspiring, so much so that I believe one of the last things on their mind is what kind of workout do they need to do or to figure out how to maximize their nutrition. If they had to make all of those other decisions regarding their health on top of their workloads and other projects, then I feel like that those decisions would easily cause more stress than positivity. So thank you decision fatigue. 

Where I am going with this is that when you are eating 3 - 5 meals per day, it can actually take a lot of mental space. Then you also have to figure out the times to eat as well. Back to my thought earlier, give me tons of food really fast and let me take a 20-30 min siesta to rest, recover, and fully enjoy the happiness of a full stomach. 

photo by Cameron Michael

Calorie restriction is not something that I would want for myself. Actually, I would not even want that for my clients. When I first got into fitness, I was following a lot of people in the bodybuilding and physique scene. It was so impressive to see what people would do to achieve the body that they wanted. There were some girls eating less than 1200 calories, while doing an hour of cardio in the morning (burning around 400-600 calories) and then sometimes doing another hour of cardio at night. That is some real dedication, but my stomach eating itself and having dreams about eating a donut does not really sound that pleasant. I feel like donuts are meant to be in your stomach and not your head. For many intermittent fasting programs such as the Fast Diet and Alternate Day Fast, you actually eat more than your normal caloric intake on the days that you are eating. That sounds a lot more fun to me. 

Looking back on our history as hunters and gatherers, famine and feasting was just the way that we did things. And being in the fitness industry for the past 9 years, I rarely saw results with my clients on a calorie restriction type of protocol. But I have one client who started doing intermittent fasting and in about 2 weeks he has already lost around 8 lbs. I don’t think it will always be this fast (pun intended), but I do truly believe that it is no fluke that he is losing weight and that is without much of a change to his diet/lifestyle. 

After reading “The Obesity Code” by Dr. Jason Fung, I realized why calorie restriction does not really work that well. That is because of what he calls the “CRAP Theory”. Calories restriction rarely works because our bodies are really great at keeping us alive. If we restrict our calories, yes we can lose weight initially however your body uses calories for all of your systems. So your body just gets less efficient at some of those systems and you will likely hit a plateau where that weight loss ceases. I’ll touch on this all in the future, but weight loss is more about your hormones than your calories. 

One last note, I do not recommend fasting so you can eat whatever the hell you want. Yes, I talked about donuts earlier and you can have those once in a while but not every single day. I still highly recommend that you eat the most nutritious foods that you can. A good principle to follow is an 80/20 ratio. Eat purely nutritious and healthy foods 80% of the time and then you can have some of the foods you want 20% of the time. So in a day you can have two solid meals with very high nutritious value and maybe having a little bit of a snack that you want after your meal as dessert. Just be smart about your choices because intermittent fasting does not = a free for all. 

If you want to try out intermittent fasting, there are a few ways that I recommend trying out. 

photo by Syh from Unsplash

Probably the most common way is the 16/8 ratio popularized by Martin Berkham of Lean Gains. That would be a 16 hour fast, typically including your sleep time and then an 8-hour eating indoor. If you want better results you can try doing a longer fast. When you are in your fasting period you are increasing your insulin sensitivity and also using more of your fat storage as energy. 

Example Eating Windows:

11 - 7 Pm

12 - 8 Pm

1 - 9 Pm

Another great style to shoot for is the fast-5 diet protocol, which is a 19 hour fast and a 5-hour eating window in which you have one big meal and one or two snacks in the eating window. 

Example Eating Windows:

1 - 6 Pm

2 - 7 Pm

3 - 8 Pm

The protocol that I am currently experiencing with is the 5:2 ratio in a  book called “The Fast Diet”. For two days of the week, I am going to do a 24-hour fast or eat less than 20% of my normal caloric intake. I want to see how lean I can get and if my body will get use to a diet that I will start recommending to some of my clients. 

Monday - Normal Eating Saturday - More than normal

Tuesday - Normal Eating. Sunday - Maybe more than normal lol

Wednesday - 24hr Fast

Thursday - more than normal

Friday - 24 hr Fast

Challenge:

Try it out for the next week. See if you can fast all 7 days this coming week, or even 5 days of intermittent fasting and 2 days eat normally. Eliminate snacks, just have 2-3 well-balanced meals. This will help your blood sugar and digestive hormones. Start off with a 16-hour fast and see if you can push that fast a little bit more. Make sure you do not eat “whatever you want”. Follow an 80/20 principle, 80% of your foods should be good and healthy while 20% can be a little more fun. Maybe a tiny little dessert at night or some fun cream and sugar in your coffee.