Intermittent Fasting
There is a lot of talk these days about Intermittent Fasting (IF), and like most things diet and lifestyle related, definitions and interpretations abound.
I first heard about IF from Dave Asprey, the Bulletproof Coffee super biohacker. It sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a go. I skipped my early morning breakfast including the delicious artisanal spelt sourdough bread and pushed my first meal of the day to mid-morning or even midday. The results for me were not immediately evident, but slowly over weeks and months I shed weight. The weight loss was almost imperceptible, and when after some months I got on the scales (some serious avoidance of that piece of bathroom equipment) I was overjoyed to see that I was about 4 kilos lighter. I continued to lose weight until my body plateaued at about 56 kg, a reasonable weight for my 162 cm medium frame. I have kept up intermittent fasting for almost two years now, the beauty of it being that it demands no effort.
According to Chris Kresser, intermittent fasting can be defined as anything between 12 (on the low side) and 20 hours of not eating in a 24-hour cycle. For most people that means not eating breakfast and only eating within a 6–8-hour window. Others eat breakfast but stop eating by 2pm in the afternoon (for many a more difficult option).
In order to buy into extending our nightly fast, we have to get our heads around the idea that breakfast is not really the most important meal of the day, especially if it is laden with processed carbohydrates, and that we should only eat if and when we are hungry.
When we keep ourselves well hydrated but do not eat, we are not starving our bodies, we are replacing glucose with fat as our energy source. In addition to weight loss through fat burning, intermittent fasting increases autophagy (clearing of damaged cells) and regeneration, and promotes healthy cells, through positive stress that wakes up the survival and repairing mode of our bodies. When we are not supplying our bodies with a steady stream of glucose, we decrease the production of insulin, a hormone that in many people is far too high and is the cause of much of our modern-day malaise.
Intermittent Fasting is not for everyone, it is especially not recommended if you are underweight, suffer from an eating disorder, are pregnant, breastfeeding or suffer from hormonal or fertility problems.
If you are not in those categories, and have been toying with the idea but have not yet tried IF, why not see if it works for you?
