Intermittent Fasting

May 20th, 2019

Intermittent fasting is all the rage these days -- and with good reason.  It has been shown to help with weight loss, improve insulin sensitivity, reduce your risk of disease and even promote better brain function.

For those of you who don't know what intermittent fasting is, it's basically just not eating for a short period of time.  That may sound horrifying at first, but they key word here is SHORT, which makes intermittent fasting easier than it sounds.  If you don't eat after dinner, you might be doing a basic version of intermittent fasting already, as compressing your eating hours to between 7am and 7pm automatically gives you a 12-hour fast.  A commonly-used extension of this involves just skipping breakfast or dinner, so that your meals are all eaten in an 8-hour window and you get a 16-hour fast.  If you prefer to eat 3 meals, you can just squish those 3 meals into that 8-hour window, say between 11am and 7pm.  Water and coffee or tea (without sugar) are allowed during the fasting time to help curb your hunger.

It makes sense to me that intermittent fasting would be good for us -- after all, we didn't always have regular access to food.  There were often times of food scarcity and the human body is inherently able to adapt to those times and even benefit from them.

I will let Chris Kresser explain how intermittent fasting works:  "When you fast, your body burns fat instead of sugar for energy, which leads to fat loss and gives your brain a boost.  Like a car, your body needs fuel to function; food is that fuel.  During digestion, the stomach breaks down carbohydrates into sugar that your cells use for energy —to “gas up,” so to speak.  If your cells don’t use all the available glucose, it ultimately gets stored as, you guessed it, fat.  During a fast, your cells switch from using glucose as their primary fuel source to using fat.  Thus, your fat stores, chiefly triglycerides, get burned up for energy."  And you burn fat without losing muscle mass.

Intermittent fasting is not a great eating style for a pregnant or nursing mother, but could be beneficial for almost all of the rest of us.  Personally, I love having one fewer meal to prepare for myself.  Read more on intermittent fasting here and let me know if you try it!