/8intermittent Fasting Mistakes To Avoid
Whenever you think about losing weight or shedding a certain amount of kilos, you first list down the kind of diets you can follow and the exercises you can perform. Out of all the diet programmes, intermittent fasting is one of the most popular, which is more like a lifestyle rather than a diet.
Several researches have shown that intermittent fasting not only aids your weight loss goals, but also reduces your risk of different health conditions, which is absolutely fantastic! However, following an IF diet is not as simple as it seems. There are many ways it can backfire, which is why you must pay attention to the many mistakes you can make while following such a diet.
You Are Not Fasting Long Enough
If you decide to do a time-restricted eating method and only shorten your eating window by an hour or two, you may not see any tangible weight loss results.
The fix? Try starting with a 10-hour eating window and see how it works for you. From there, you can adjust your plan accordingly as you work toward your weight loss goals.
What Intermittent Fasting Isn’t
One reason why intermittent fasting doesn’t work for many is because they use it as a licence to eat everything they want. If that’s the reason why you’re looking to start intermittent fasting, you’ll run into trouble.
It’s not a “diet” it’s an eating pattern. Keto is a diet . The Zone is a diet .
A “diet” gives you specific food choices or a ratio of nutrients. Intermittent fasting only gives you an eating schedule. And the schedule itself can’t compensate for poor food choices or too much food.
Yes, you can indulge a bit more when using an intermittent fasting approach. But if you turn it into an all-you-can-eat crap-fest, you’ll be in for a world of trouble!
Intermittent fasting can be done with any type of nutrient ratio. You can do keto intermittent fasting, Zone intermittent fasting, high carb intermittent fasting, etc. But what you can’t do if you want to see favorable results is crap-fest intermittent fasting.
First it’ll make you gain fat. You’ll also feel like a bloated turd. But more importantly, it’ll just reinforce bad eating habits and make it even harder to come back to eating clean.
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Not Losing Weight On Intermittent Fasting: During Your Eating Window
#1: You Are Eating Too Much During Your Eating Window
As far as not losing weight on intermittent fasting goes, this is pretty much the holy grail of reasons why it is not working for you. The basic science is simple eat less than your maintenance, exercise regularly and you will lose weight.
However, during their eating window, people can go a little crazy. Not eating for 16 hours will make you hungry. That much is obvious. However, if you are not accountable for what and when you eat, then you are not going to shed any pounds. There are a few ways to make sure you dont eat too much during your eating window:
- Plan ahead: you dont need to meal prep days in advance. However, being mindful of what you are planning to eat, understanding your caloric maintenance and knowing how much protein to eat are key factors in successful fasting. If you wing it and eat unregulated during your window you open yourself up to not losing weight. You end up not knowing what exactly you are eating and how many calories it might have.
#2: Watch Your Portion Sizes
Well.. what a coincidence the old saying too much of a good thing is never a good thing comes to mind here. Lets just say that for whatever reason you are not tracking your food.
Still, a basic understanding of what or how much to eat is still vital in losing weight on intermittent fasting. You can eat the best food possible, but if you are not able to control portions, it can lead to not losing weight or even gaining weight!
Youre Working Out A Ton
“Oftentimes people will start a new eating regimen, like a fasting diet, at the exact same time they decide to start a new exercise plan or boost the current exercise plan theyre on,” says Martin. “Over-exercising or working out too intensively, especially while attempting to reduce food intake, can cause energy levels to drop and hunger levels to skyrocket.” As a result, you may end up eating more calories during your eating windows than youre burning, even with the intense exercise, she notes.
How to fix it: If practicing full-day fasts , be sure to keep exercise light on fasting days. “In general, make sure your exercise regimen is challenging but still doable and enjoyable. If you notice you feel ravenous on the days you exercise, it may mean youre pushing yourself too hard,” says Martin.
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Why Doesnt Intermittent Fasting Work For Everyone
There are a few possible reasons why intermittent fasting isnt working for everyone. The first reason is diet, which will be covered in more detail later on. Another potential reason that intermittent fasting isnt working for you could be time-related. If your schedule doesnt allow you to break your fast, then perhaps intermittent fasting isnt right for you.
One study showed that people who fasted six days per week were less likely to see weight loss benefits than those who only fasted three days per week. In addition, the 6:1 ratio of fasting days: non-fasting days may be too extreme for some people, causing feelings of guilt and frustration when they can’t meet their target number of hours each day.
The Utter Simplicity Of Intermittent Fasting
Most of us eat throughout the day, starting with breakfast when we wake up and perhaps ending with a dessert or snack after dinner. If you have breakfast at 7 a.m. and a final snack at 8 p.m., you’re consuming food for 13 hours that’s your current “eating window.” The idea behind IF is simply to shorten that window — not necessarily to eat less , but to eat less often.
For example, most experts agree that you can start to experience IF benefits with an eight-hour eating window, meaning a 16-hour fast. So you could have lunch at noon and still finish your snack by 8 p.m. That’s it. If you can stick to that, it may be enough to produce results.
But, wait: Isn’t that just skipping breakfast? And haven’t we heard for years that skipping breakfast actually leads to weight gain? Yes and yes. However, IF requires a “clean” fast to be effective , and once you get accustomed to it, your appetite should correct so that you no longer overeat once your window opens.
Here’s what I love about this: It costs nothing. It requires nothing. You don’t have to buy books or gear or supplements or meals. You just adapt yourself to a slightly different way of eating and that’s it. The simplicity — and affordability — of IF is what drew me to it.
Read more:How to do intermittent fasting safely
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You Skip Meals When You Should Be Eating
This one seems obvious, but its an easy mistake to make. If your fasting window falls in a time of day when food is typically served, thats going to be especially problematic. We tend to consume more calories from food later in the day and so if you skip meals during that time, its possible that youll end up consuming excess calorie. It is probably the reason why skipping breakfast isnt recommended. Remember, you need to eat enough calories while intermittent fasting or else there will be too much restriction on your body’s metabolism.
Beginning To Heal My Relationship With Food
After a few months of intermittent fasting, I found that NOT restricting calories or specific foods led me to naturally make healthier food choices. Which ultimately helped me start the process of healing my relationship with food.
And after more than 2 decades of dieting and chasing the thin ideal, my relationship with food needed some serious work.
I realized that in allowing all foodsinstead of bingeing on all the previously forbidden foodsI naturally started to tune into what foods made me feel my best.
It naturally led me to healthier food choices and gradually changing habits about food. And I started to tune into my true hunger signalssomething dieting encourages you to actively ignore.
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Intermittent Fasting Can Help Weight Loss
IF makes intuitive sense. The food we eat is broken down by enzymes in our gut and eventually ends up as molecules in our bloodstream. Carbohydrates, particularly sugars and refined grains , are quickly broken down into sugar, which our cells use for energy. If our cells dont use it all, we store it in our fat cells as, well, fat. But sugar can only enter our cells with insulin, a hormone made in the pancreas. Insulin brings sugar into the fat cells and keeps it there.
Between meals, as long as we dont snack, our insulin levels will go down and our fat cells can then release their stored sugar, to be used as energy. We lose weight if we let our insulin levels go down. The entire idea of IF is to allow the insulin levels to go down far enough and for long enough that we burn off our fat.
The Evidence On Intermittent Fasting Shows That It Doesnt Work For Weight Loss
People make all kinds of claims about the benefits of intermittent fasting. They say that it leads to effortless weight loss. That it increases muscle mass and improves muscle recovery. There are claims that it helps with insulin sensitivity and thus lowers your risk of type 2 diabetes.
But the actual research tells a different story. One recent 2021 study , found that fasting actually led to less short-term weight loss than just eating less. Another 12-week 2020 study found that theres nothing about intermittent fasting when it comes to weight loss people are just as likely to lose weight in the short-term by simply eating less.
And yet, so many people continue to promote fasting as THE WAY to better health. Celebrity self-help maestro Tony Robbins advocates it. Countless celebrities claim that they use it to get in shape for movie roles. And you probably know several people in your own life who have tried it or swear by it.
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Maybe You Are Losing Fat But Dont Realize
Maybe you are burning fat weight. For example, body weight tends to fluctuate if you are measuring it every day. You may actually be gaining muscle while losing fat. So instead of just standing on the scales, you can measure your waist circumference, body fat percentage once a month, and see how your clothes fit.
Taking progress photosare also helpful in spotting the difference in your intermittent fastingjourney.
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Intermittent Fasting Promises Better Health And Longer Life But Does It Work
The obesity epidemic has spawned a cottage industry of weight-loss schemes. Currently in vogue is intermittent fasting, which involves alternating intervals of extreme calorie reduction with periods of normal eating. Proponents of an intermittent fasting regimen claim that it helps shed pounds faster than traditional diets, as well as reduce inflammation and other heart disease risks.
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When Should I Fast
Intermittent fasting, or IF, is a diet regimen that uses a schedule where people fast from one meal to the next, usually for most of the day. Intermittent fasting is a great option for people who want to lose weight or who struggle with dieting. Since it doesnt involve counting calories or other such strict dietary constraints, its an appealing option for busy people who dont have the time to plan their meals. But there are many questions surrounding intermittent fasting, including when should people fast and how long should they fast.
Youre Not Hydrated Enough
Not drinking enough water during your fast may not only leave you dehydrated, but by not drinking enough, youre also missing out on water’s benefits when it comes to quelling hunger.
How to fix it: Drink up! And you can get fancy with your water. Intermittent fasting-approved drinks include: hot tea, black coffee, seltzer water, iced tea, tea or coffee with Stevia.
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Changes In Weight Werent Significant
Fasting has a long history as a part of religious or political practices, but it became popular as a health and weight loss strategy within the last decade. There are a wide variety of kinds of fasts, from eating only between certain hours to taking several days off normal eating patterns. U.K. doctor Michael Mosley helped popularize the idea in the early 2010s with the 5:2 diet , which involves a cycle of eating normally for five days and then restricting calories to just 500 to 600 for two days.
How Long Does It Take To Start Losing Weight When You’re Doing Intermittent Fasting
There are a lot of factors that can contribute to how long it may take for the weight to start coming off. “Rate of weight loss will vary greatly from person to person depending on several factors, including: starting weight, the intermittent fasting approach used, the types of food consumed during the eating windows, and more,” says Martin.
If you end up reducing your overall caloric intake right away and you consistently eat fewer calories than you expend, then you should start losing weight immediately. “However, you likely wont notice any weight loss results for at least a couple of weeks,” notes Martin, adding that some weight loss in the beginning will “likely be water weight.”
Intermittent Fasting Success Stories
Depending on the calorie amount you consume while intermittent fasting, you could experience an approximate one- to two- pound weight loss per week, which would mean it could take upwards of eight to 10 weeks to notice significant weight loss, says Kristen Smith, MS, RD, spokesperson for Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
If youre losing more than that? It could be a red flag. If you notice yourself losing a noticeable amount of weight during the first few weeks of following an intermittent fasting plan, you should likely re-evaluate your calorie intake to ensure you are consuming adequate nutrition to meet your bodys needs, says Smith.
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Restricting Food Can Be Self
Restricting food groups or demonizing things like sugar can lead to feelings of deprivation that often manifest as overeating or bingeing farther down the line, registered nutritionist Laura Thomas told Shape . Its really self-defeating. Thats the reason somewhere between 80 and 95 per cent of people who diet end up gaining all the weight back and sometimes even more, because of the changes to their metabolic system.
/8you’re Eating Too Much During Your Eating Window
Once you’re committed and have chosen a plan, you must pertain to the rules of the plan. However, just because you have been fasting for 24 hours or 16 hours, doesn’t mean you indulge in excess eating during your eating window. Do not try and cover up for the time you were fasting, rather practice mindful eating.
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Reason : Not Drinking Enough Water
I cannot stress enough how important it is to drink LOTS of water when youre fasting.
When your body is in a fasting state, its working hard to burn fat and detox the body.
The fasting state is when autophagy happens. Autophagy is the cellular self-cleaning process that breaks down and recycles damaged cells.
Think of it as your bodys way of cleaning house. So you need to make sure youre drinking even more water than you usually do.
If youre working out, you need more water. If you live in a hot climate, you need more water. Do I sound like a broken record yet?
So drink more water than you think you need while intermittent fasting.
As a minimum guideline, try to drink about 2/3 of your body weight in ounces each day.
So a 200-pound person would drink about 133 ounces a day .
If youre not up for the math, heres a handy water intake calculator you can use to get a ballpark idea of how much water you should be drinking.
For some yummy ideas for infused waters, check out my favorite detox water recipes.
Do whatever you have to do, but drink enough water.
Lessons Learned From 4 Years Of Intermittent Fasting: The Good And Bad
Its a scientific fact that you need to eat breakfast every morning to lose weight.
You shouldnt skip meals, its not healthy. You have to eat six small meals every day.
These were some of the objections I raised to a nutritionist, who prescribed a three month intermittent fasting protocol, during a consultation over four years ago.
The nutritionist was adamant that intermittent fasting would solve the main problems I battled with at the timeweight gain, an unhealthy diet, constant tiredness and poor concentration, to name a few.
Even though I was skeptical, after thirty minutes of listening to the nutritionist preach about the benefits of intermittent fasting, I decided to self-experiment and give it a go.
The next day I skipped breakfast, broke my fast at 12 p.m and ate my last meal at 7 p.m. For next three months, I would adhere to this protocol like a trooper.
On the final day of the prescribed three month period, I walked into a local gym, took off my shoes and placed my two feet on a white weight scale.
I had little to no expectation for results . Then, I watched the numbers on the scale go up and up and up, then it stopped. And I was stunned.
I had lost 22 pounds of weight.
Needless to say, I was elated and immediately set out to complete another three months of intermittent fasting. Those three months turned to one year, then two years and today, after four years of intermittent fasting, Id say it has been one of the best decisions of my life.
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