My Experience With Intermittent Fasting
I started IF in August 2018. At the time I weighed around 181, which is acceptable for a 6-foot male. But I’d been 175 for years, and suddenly it seemed I couldn’t control my eating. I didn’t like where my belly was headed.
After about two months, during which my fasting windows varied , I’d lost 10 pounds. Needless to say, I was pleased with that result and became pretty evangelical about IF. My excitement stemmed from not only the weight loss, but also the total lack of hardship. This didn’t feel like a diet it felt like a smart way to live.
In fact, I discovered that I really liked this WOE. When I was feeling a little hungry in the late morning? Just wait a bit longer, I told myself, your window opens soon. Then I’d busy myself with something and forget about it. And if I wanted a snack after 7 p.m.? Too bad, window’s closed for the day — but you can have it tomorrow.
I stuck with it for about 10 months, though I’ll admit I got frustrated at times. For one thing, I’d been hoping to lose another 5-10 pounds, and assuming they’d come off as easily as the first 10, but the scale held firm at 171.
Result: After four months , the scale shows 171. In the interim, I’ve eaten an almost embarrassing amount of food while my window was open. I don’t have a sugar monkey on my back I have a sugar gorilla. Nevertheless: I’m thinner. And I’m going to see if I can hit 165. This lifestyle — not diet, mind you — is a piece of cake. Speaking of which, think I’ll go have one of those.
How Long Does Intermittent Fasting Take To Show Results
You might begin to first notice a difference in your body about 10 days after you begin intermittent fasting. It could take between 2-10 weeks for you to lose significant weight. You might lose up to a pound each week.
Usually, the first sign you will notice that your intermittent fasting is working is less bloating. Your midsection might look trimmer just over your first week of intermittent fasting.
Observing weight loss will take a little longer as your body needs some time to adjust to this new diet.
At about the second week is when most people first notice that they have dropped their first few pounds. If you have still not lost any weight by week two, stay consistent for about four or five more weeks and your results should come in soon enough.
The Ultimate Guide To Intermittent Fasting
Essentially, by restricting your food intake to a shortened time window, you naturally decrease your caloric intake and, in turn, can lose weight. “Not only are you taking in fewer calories, but youre also slowing down your insulin pump, which may boost fat burn,” explains Martin.
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What Is The Best Intermittent Fasting Plan For Weight Loss
Dr Sam Watts, founder of Mind Body Medical , tells Live Science that there are two clear leaders when it comes to intermittent fasting styles. Lots of clinical evidence exists around the potential weight loss benefits of different intermittent fasting plans, he says. For quicker and more profound weight loss, the alternate day fasting plan is arguably the most effective. A less-extreme and thus easier-to-adopt approach is the 16:8 model. This is a time-restricted eating version of intermittent fasting that involves consuming all of your calories in an eight-hour window and fasting for the remaining 16 hours.
This approach has consistently been shown to induce significant and progressive weight loss in an arguably more sustainable model.
Can You Lose Weight Quickly On Intermittent Fasting
When you start any new diet, the initial results are almost always encouraging. How long to see weight loss results with intermittent fasting? It can take anywhere from 24 weeks to show significant results.
The time frame really depends on how well you are able to change your diet during the eating schedule. When hunger strikes, if you eat high-calorie and high carbohydrate foods like cookies or easy-to-access packaged foods, you will not only compromise your nutrition, experience sugar spikes but also sabotage your weight loss goals.
You do have to eat healthy and nutritious food during the eating windows to show results. So you should keep to low-calorie or complex-carbohydrate foods, whole and natural foods to experience the many benefits of intermittent fasting.
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Your Fasting Window Is Too Short
If you want to notice a difference in your body weight, your eating window during your intermittent fasting diet should be significantly less than normal.
If the difference between your eating window before and during intermittent fasting is only an hour or two, you might barely notice significant weight loss.
A 14-hour fasting window with a 10-hour eating window seems like a great place to start. However, if you find the 14 hours to be too long, you could start with a shorter fasting duration and work your way up.
Side Effects Of Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting can have unpleasant side effects. They could include hunger, fatigue, insomnia, irritability, decreased concentration, nausea, constipation and headaches. Most side effects go away within a month.
Sticking with an intermittent fasting routine can be easier for some people rather than trying to watch calories every day. Other people, especially those with busy or variable schedules, have more difficulty maintaining an intermittent fasting routine.
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Why When You Eat Matters According To Scientific Research
In a study published in Obesity Journal, researchers randomized 93 overweight and obese women into two groups who ate the same foods. One group ate half their 1,400 daily calories for breakfast. The other group ate half their calories for dinner. While both groups lost weight, compared with the nighttime calorie group, the morning calorie group lost more weight, reduced their waist circumference by more, and lowered their fasting glucose and insulin levels by more.
Timing is everything when it comes to eating, Peeke says. We now realize that we spent so much time studying how much we eat, we never paid enough attention to when we eat.
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How To Stay Focused
With so many resources pertaining to intermittent fasting, not all the information you find online can be trusted. Poorly informed or false sources can give IF a bad rep, which Krystal felt firsthand.
The biggest challenge is probably other peoples perceptions of fasting and overcoming the idea that not eating is dangerous or an eating disorder, said Krystal. Ive found that having information about why I do what I do helps me stay focused.
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Can You Eat Anything While Fasting
“IF works well on a plant-based diet, which is how people ate for many years in Asia. And they stayed slim. It’s only when you add processed or high-carb foods that you have to watch out. You have to be careful about the types of foods you eat since processed foods like wheat and flour, bread is now so processed. For bread now they take the wheat berry and grind it into a fine dust. So the absorption is super quick, unnaturally quick. If you eat a lot of cakes and cookies and processed bread and donuts, that will spike your insulin. If you’re eating a plant-based diet, make sure to keep it whole-food, plant-based, not processed food.
“So if you’re plant-based and eating beans, legumes, vegetables and whole grains like quinoa that all keeps insulin low. If you look at the simple sugars in cereal like Captain Crunch and chocolate donuts that may be vegan but they’re terrible for you.
Intermittent Fasting: The Positive News Continues
Theres a ton of incredibly promising intermittent fasting research done on fat rats. They lose weight, their blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugars improve but theyre rats. Studies in humans, almost across the board, have shown that IF is safe and effective, but really no more effective than any other diet. In addition, many people find it difficult to fast.
But a growing body of research suggests that the timing of the fast is key, and can make IF a more realistic, sustainable, and effective approach for weight loss, as well as for diabetes prevention.
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Reducing Total Calories May Be More Effective For Weight Loss Than Intermittent Fasting
- Date:
- American Heart Association
- Summary:
- Timing from first meal to last meal was not associated with weight loss in a six-year study: Eating less overall and fewer large meals may be a more effective weight management strategy than restricting meals to a narrow time window, such as intermittent fasting, according to a study that analyzed the electronic health records of about 550 adults who were followed for six years. The time interval from first to last meal was not associated with weight change during the six-year study.
The frequency and size of meals was a stronger determinant of weight loss or gain than the time between first and last meal, according to new research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open access, peer-reviewed journal of the American Heart Association.
According to the senior study author Wendy L. Bennett, M.D., M.P.H., an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, although ‘time-restricted eating patterns’ — known as intermittent fasting — are popular, rigorously designed studies have not yet determined whether limiting the total eating window during the day helps to control weight.
Based on the timing of sleeping and eating each day recorded in the mobile app, researchers were able to measure:
- the time from the first meal to the last meal each day
- the time lapse from waking to first meal and
- the interval from the last meal to sleep.
The data analysis found:
How To Lose Fat And Gain Muscle With Intermittent Fasting
One thing to know before you start: There is a way to do it right, and that will help you lose without “yoyo-ing” in energy or weight gain. It all has to do with fuel systems in your body and training your energy to pull from fat and keep insulin levels low so they never tell your body to “store excess energy as fat.” Once you get the hang of it, you will burn fat as fuel, all day long.
“If you never let your insulin drop then you never tell your body to pull calories from fat. So there is a whole movement among athletes to train in the fasting state. If you train without eating, then you need to pull calories out of storage to get through an intense workout. If you eat in the morning let’s say you have a muffin before your workout then you use up that source and your body never uses calories from fat and your workout was not effective if the reason you’re working out is to lose fat.
Here’s the great news. whether you fast for 12, 14, or 16 hours or longer it is completely flexible you could push it up to 16 hours, and do it a couple of times a week. So you eat in an 8-hour window, from 11 am to 7 pm, and then have 16 hours of fasting. A lot of celebrities have talked about IF and how it helped them, like Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Hugh Jackman. It’s really simple. Counting calories and counting carbs are complicated, but timing is simple.
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You may want to slow down on fasting.
A new study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association has found that intermittent fasting fails to help dieters drop weight, with calorie counting still the most effective way to shed any unwanted pounds.
The Johns Hopkins University research teams findings are likely to shock those spending up to 16 hours a day abstaining from food in their battle against the bulge.
Intermittent fasting has become one of the hottest diet trends in recent years, with proponents of the practice including super-slim celebs Jennifer Aniston and Gisele Bündchen.
But the researchers cast doubt on the trends benefits, bluntly stating: Our findings did not support the use of timerestricted eating as a strategy for longterm weight loss in a general medical population.
Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting: Reduced Oxidative Stress And Inflammation
Oxidative stress occurs as potentially harmful reactive oxygen species build up within the cells of your body that are metabolically active. Reactive oxygen species are, as their name suggests, reactive. They can react with and cause harm to your proteins and even your DNA. If a cell in your body cant counteract this damage quickly enough, it might become senescent, spew out inflammation, or even die.
Intermittent fasting forces muscle, brain and other tissues to become more efficient in their breakdown of metabolites and production of energy. This can help reduce ROS and levels of inflammation. Fasting also triggers the body to produce more antioxidants that help clean up ROS.
A study with prediabetic men who shortened their eating window to 6 hours a day for 5 weeks showed that this fasting regimen reduced plasma levels of the oxidative stress marker 8-isoprostane, in addition to improving insulin sensitivity and blood pressure. Alternate day fasting has been shown to increase the expression of superoxide dismutase and catalase, two powerful antioxidant enzymes that can clean up ROS in your cells. Another way to increase antioxidant enzymes is through exercise! Physical activity increases the levels of superoxide dismutase, which has a lot of benefits for all of the organs in your body.
Starting your fast earlier in the evening is also associated with lower breast cancer recurrence.
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How To Reduce Intermittent Fasting Side Effects
Easing into an intermittent fasting plan can help your body adjust, according to McManus. “Slowly reduce the time window for eating, over a period of several months,” she advises.
You should also:
- Continue your medication regimen as recommended by your doctor
- Stay hydrated with calorie-free beverages, such as water and black coffee
- Choose a modified fasting plan approved by your doctor if you need to take medication with food.
Image: erdikocak/Getty Images
Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting: Greater Insulin Sensitivity
Insulin sensitivity describes how sensitive various tissues in your body are to the effects of insulin. Insulin sensitivity can depend on our level of physical activity, our sleep patterns, what we eat and even when we eat.
Alternate day fasting seems to be more effective at improving insulin sensitivity and reducing fasting insulin compared to caloric restriction.
Time-restricted eating is another approach to intermittent fasting that may target processes and pathways associated with our circadian rhythms, including insulin sensitivity. Did you know that your metabolism changes throughout the day, as regulated by your internal biological clock as well as external factors such as exposure to bright light and food intake? For example, you are naturally more insulin resistant in the evening as your body prepares to burn fat as you sleep. Courtney Peterson and colleagues published a study in Cell Metabolism in 2018 showing that early time-restricted feeding, or eating within a 6-hour feeding period every day with breakfast around 8 am and dinner before 3 pm, improved insulin sensitivity, blood pressure, oxidative stress and appetite in men with prediabetes. These health benefits occurred even in the absence of weight loss.
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The Unexpected Benefit No One Talks About
Lost amid the talk of IF’s various health benefits is a very real secondary perk: saving money. When you cut your diet down to one or two meals per day, your food costs drop accordingly. It’s impossible to say exactly how much you stand to save, because it depends on how often you dine out, what you buy at the grocery store and so on.
But even if your total food expenses drop by just 25%, that’s a huge difference. Suppose you typically spend, say, $100 per week on food. If you subtract the cost of seven meals per week, that might realistically lower your expense to $70. Over the course of one month, you’d save $120. Over one year, $1,440.
That’s a vacation. A down payment on a new car. And there’s a bigger-picture benefit as well: You’re lowering your impact on the planet. Imagine if entire populations switched to two meals a day from three. We could get by on fewer crops and animals, which in turn would reduce overall water consumption. Maybe that’s a bit of pie-in-the-sky thinking, but there’s truth to it.
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I mention all this because after I started IF, I noticed I was spending less on food. And then I started thinking about the external benefits of less food consumption, and that made me feel even better about it. Eat less, help the planet. Win-win!
More recently, I realized it also means fewer trips to the grocery store and carry-out restaurants, meaning less chance of exposure to the coronavirus.
Youre Not Fasting Long Enough
If you decide on a time-restricted feeding approach and you only shorten your eating window by an hour or so a day, you likely wont see much, if any, weight loss, says Martin. You’re just not changing enough from your normal eating routine, tbh.
How to fix it: Most women find success with about a 10-hour eating window, meaning a 14-hour fast,” says Martin. “You can always start with a longer eating window and work your way down if your usual eating window is much longer than this, she suggests.
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