Y’all know Stephanie, our unusually knowledgeable editor and my partner here at Kaplifestyle. You also know she likes to use herself as a science experiment for the benefit of our readers. As we often do, she’ll talk about her learns with intermittent fasting, and I’ll chime in as the supportive (or cynical) voice of the reader.
Four days ago, I officially completed my one month intermittent fasting experiment. I suppose it’s now transitioned from an expedition into the world of trial and error into a true way of life. Even though the experiment is now technically finished, I don’t intend to give it up any time soon. I probably should have marked that for spoilers, since now you don’t have any real reason to finish reading this post.
A way of life after 30 days, huh? Bold statement.
For those of you soldiering on, you may remember that my initial impetus for starting IF was to see additional results in body recomposition. While I try in general to minimize my intake of processed food and refined sugars, I didn’t make many adjustments to my overall diet. The net result was an overall weight loss of around 5 lbs. and 2 inches off my waistline.
Granted, 5 lbs. doesn’t seem like much, but I also made some true gains in terms of replacing body fat with lean muscle. My swim speed and endurance increased, I was able to begin to add in some compound lifts before my swims (squats and bench presses). Subjectively, I noticed an uptick in muscle growth. In fact, I noticed more muscle growth during this month than I noticed in the last few months of the 5×5. Perhaps there’s something to the increase in growth hormone (I’m still not taller).
Your typical American female muses effortlessly on muscle growth, squats and 5 x 5 workouts. This is normal. Onward.
After the first couple of weeks, my body adapted to the new schedule. I very rarely experience any sensations of hunger before around 3-4pm, and then only occasionally. About half the time, I eat a small amount around 5-5:30. The other half, I wait until dinner in the 7pm range.
I’m not consuming significantly more food than normal, and I’ve never experienced a desire to binge or eat everything in sight. I did work slightly to control this – if I’m truly hungry before 5pm, I attempt to ensure that my first decision is an “A” choice. Salads, lean proteins and healthy fats are my go-tos here. I then make sure I let that amount of food digest before eating anything else. Generally, it’s filling enough that I lose any desire to overeat junk.
This is an applicable concept for anyone looking to be healthier, regardless of the method of getting there. Eat the nutritionally dense food first, and you’ll crave the shit less.
I don’t notice any symptoms of irritability, low blood sugar, fatigue, mental “fog” or any of the other traditional associations with skipping meals. After a couple early days of sleep disruption (which may or may not have been related to IF), I sleep soundly and am, hopefully, reaping the hormonal regulation theorized from the animal studies.
That’s daunting, Steph. A few days of sleep disruption is terribly unattractive. Just sayin..
More importantly, I’m becoming much more aware of how often I would eat food without conscious thought. Even when it was ostensibly “healthy” food – grapes, berries, vegetables – I was still mindlessly consuming. I no longer eat out of boredom or because I’m fidgety. Instead, my meals are shared with loved ones and enjoyed.
Mentally, I’m finding a lot of secondary benefits to the intermittent fasting program. I’ve simply stripped out something that I need to think about during the day. When I’m focused on my work, I no longer worrying about looking up, realizing it’s 1:30, and feeling the need to get lunch. I’ve essentially added productive time into my day.
Of course you’re optimizing for efficiency. You’re a robot.
Finally, continuing on with the intermittent fasting program appeals to me because of the ease and simplicity. I work long hours and often on a very odd schedule (the consequence of different time zones). My days and routines aren’t particularly consistent. I don’t have to concern myself with optimal feeding schedules based on my workouts – all my workouts are fasted now. If I were an elite athlete at Gabe’s level or training for competition, perhaps I would need to push to mine for value at the margins. Because I’m only trying to best my previous day, I can spend my mental bandwidth on trying to be more optimal at my job.
Of course, now that I’ve found a successful lifestyle change, I’m now accepting nominations for new trial and error experiments. Any suggestions?
Yes, Steph. Do the exact same thing you’re doing and keep a strict food journal. I dare you.
I’ve been following the IF string and find it really interesting. I’m wondering if eating only breakfast and dinner would yield similar results. I’m thinking that’s enough between meals for my body to “dip” into its reserves. Thoughts??? Thanks! Enjoy your day!
This idea would work well for one reason, but not well for another reason. Let’s talk about both.
First, if your goal is to lose weight, then skipping lunch should help because it decreases the number of calories that you’re eating throughout the day. As I said in my article onlessons learned from 1 year of intermittent fasting, even if you try to eat two large meals instead of three regular meals, it’s hard to get the same number of calories. Even if you want to eat more, you often end up eating less.
So the end result of skipping lunch is that you would probably reduce your overall caloric intake and end up losing weight.
However, one of the primary benefits of intermittent fasting is that it puts you in a fat burning state. In other words, fasting makes it more likely that you’ll burn fat and not muscle.
This is where skipping lunch gets tricky. After you eat a meal, your body spends a few hours processing and digesting that food. Once you digest your food, you enter what is known as the “post–absorptive state.” You remain in this state until 8 to 12 hours after your last meal, and only then do you enter the fasted state.
In other words, you need to have at least 8 to 12 hours off from eating before your body enters the fasted, fat–burning state. This is why you want to squish your meals into a smaller time frame rather than spreading them throughout the day.
While skipping lunch would decrease the overall number of calories and probably help you lose weight in the long run, it would also spread your meals out and make it harder to get past that post–absorptive state and reach the fasted state. If you want the benefits of intermittent fasting, then you need to be fasting for at least 12 hours.
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Took this right off the article:
http://jamesclear.com/reader-mailbag-intermittent-fasting
I have not tried this personally but after reading this and some other articles I am very excited to give it a shot!
Keep us updated on how it goes for you!
Thanks! I think I’ll try the eating window between breakfast and lunch. That should give me enough fasting time… 🙂
It has gone really well! I could/should be more strict with my working out but I’ve definitely noticed the difference in the mirror. I am recruiting friends to join me now and have two other people joining me but I could not be happier with the results so far!
The first few days were tough but after that I realized how simple it makes life. I always struggled to eat a healthy breakfast and now just skipping it and waiting a bit longer for lunch is not that difficult.
If anyone else just started this and has any input please let me know! I would love to hear some more stories.
Kelly’s message aligns with my research.
I suppose it really depends on your hours. Some people have started with a 14/10 split. Now, whether that’s enough for them to be successful at achieving their goals, I don’t know. That would likely allow you to get in both meals while reaping some of the benefits of IF.
It’s mostly about what you want out of the process. What are your reasons for considering it?
I’m considering it for weight loss. I’m 46 and peri menopausal. I eat clean and exercise regularly but my metabolism is like a snail. I need to shake things up with my body so I can take some lbs off. Thanks for your post and input. 🙂
Glad it works for you. I tried it and it took months to recover. My thyroid took a dump…I was exhausted and always cold and my blood sugars went sky high. I’d wake up in the morning and they would go up 5-10 points for every hour I didn’t eat after waking. My body revolts at anything that appears like potential starvation…probably from all those younger years of severe dieting. I wish it had worked for me because I love how it simplifies things, but it just goes to show how individual we all are…what works for one doesn’t always work for another.
Good reason not to continue on with the program. It’s definitely an individual thing.
As a migraine sufferer, no way I’d be able to do this. There are times when I get too busy to eat and I always end up paying for it with hours of pain. As they say, one size doesn’t fit all.
No question, Charlotte. Knowing your body and what works well for you is fundamental.
Steph-
Sorry… Think I missed some prev posts… Can you state again what your eating plan is? When and what do you consume?
Thanks.
Ps- interesting share of your journey. Thanks!
No worries! Happy to re-share. I have limited the times I eat to 5pm-11pm (6 hours “on” and 18 “off”) every single day. This may well shift later (I run close to a nocturnal schedule during the baseball season), but for now, it works well. During the 18 hour window, I consume nothing that has any calories (eating, drinking, etc.), and eat to fullness during the 6 hour “on” window. During those 6 hours, I don’t worry overly much about what I’m eating, as long as I’m not going on a binge.
Hi Stephanie,
I start work very early in the morning, around 5am, and usually make breakfast the night before to bring to work so I don’t have to get up earlier than I need to. Reading your post on intermittent fasting got me thinking about skipping breakfast altogether in the morning to save time, I usually find I’m not that hungry that early in the morning anyway. I know this is especially true if my body gets used to not eating in the morning as I’ve done in the past. We’ve all been told for a long time that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but is it really true? Would skipping breakfast and not eating till around 12pm be a form of intermittent fasting? And would it hurt to do this? If there are benefits to your method of not eating until 5pm after you wake then it shouldn’t hurt not to eat breakfast in the morning right? Curious to know if breakfast really is the “most important” meal of the day, or frankly if you need it at all.
Thanks,
Cody
Cody,
We’ve definitely all been told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but the science doesn’t particularly bear it out. There have been a couple of studies that indicate, as a general rule, that people who eat breakfast keep off more weight than those that don’t – but it’s really generally just a correlation. People who take the time to prepare their own breakfasts usually make healthier choices overall, have a higher socioeconomic status, etc. There isn’t good evidence that breakfast per se is a necessary or optimal choice.
So absolutely, if you finish dinner at 8 pm and don’t eat again until noon the next day, that’s a solid 16 hour fast. I hesitate to say whether it would hurt to do it or not, because it’s such an individual question, but I’ve been happy with my results. Certainly the science we have indicates that there are lots of potential benefits, even if they remain, for now, unproven.