Intermittent Fasting has been practiced around the world, across many religions for centuries. To this day certain cultures fast a day a week and others during holy times. Fasting is almost unheard of in the US and western countries. Food is so abundant hardly a few hours go by without eating. If you get hungry, you just grab a snack, food is nearby! Intermittent fasting is growing in popularity and the reasons are life changing and amazing!
What is Intermittent Fasting and why does it work so well?
“Fasting” is obvious, you don’t eat or consume any calories for a period of time. “Intermittent Fasting” is more of a scheduled fasting every day or certain days of the week.
If you’re not ready to give up eating for a day or more each week, try Intermittent Fasting instead. The goal is to only eat in a 4-6 hour window every day. For me that means eating around 2 or 3pm and then again before 8pm. It depends on your schedule and it will take time to reach the goal but for most people we sleep 8hrs a day so we eat in a 16hr window. The goal is to reduce that by an hour or two a day or week.
Update: It took time for my schedule to evolve but I’m now intermittent fasting till around 4pm every day and I don’t eat again after 8pm or so. I’m eating all my food in a 4-5 hour window every day!
Over time I started skipping breakfast…. yes I’m sure you’ve heard the experts who say breakfast is the most important meal of the day…. and then then next expert says this and that and before you know it you’re eating all the time!
Stop for a moment and think about this.
If you are overweight, struggling with your health, wishing you could lose a few pounds pay close attention. Remember our bodies store fat and excess calories when we eat too much.
You’re supposed to go through periods of time when don’t eat and your body burns the stored calories and fat. You’ve just experienced intermittent fasting!
This is ALSO a time for your organs to flush out and regenerate. If you are constantly sending food to your stomach, intestines, kidneys, liver and bowels…. they too need time to rest and regenerate… this is also a benefit of fasting.
Imagine how much energy it takes to process food and how tired you feel after eating. You can get this energy back with Intermittent Fasting!
I know it’s not going to be easy for everyone. I remember having the hunger pains mid morning, or afternoon or late evening and I just had a “snack” but never realized the harm I was causing. It’s a simple shift of mindset. We have to embrace hunger pains as a sign our body is burning our fat storage and cleansing our organs.
I can hear some people saying, “But I’ve been told to eat to keep my metabolism up.”
Good point but counter productive. If you don’t eat as much and your body burns the internal stored calories, you don’t need your metabolism boosted do you? If you are join a program to vigorously exercise daily, you may need to eat 4-6 small meals a day to boost your metabolism but that’s not what we are talking about here.
Look back hundreds or thousands of years ago. Do you think humans had three meals a day with snacks in between? No they got up each day and walked or ran to find their food and water. They may have a breakfast but no snacks and maybe no food again till dinner. They were active and moving aerobically.
Often times they didn’t eat for days at a time. When they did they ate all they could. The body stored the extra calories for times they didn’t have food. Our body is a perfect system IF we don’t over feed it!
It’s easy to get started with Intermittent Fasting, everyone is already doing it!
When you sleep you are fasting. I do all I can to sleep 8hrs a day but I’ve found it’s easiest to skip breakfast. When you wake you should feel reseted, you energy stores are full and you can go without eating. If you can make it till noon to have lunch then finish dinner and don’t eat after say 9pm, you’ve condensed you're eating time to 9hrs and your Intermittent Fasting time to 15hrs.
Now each day try to condense that eating window down to 4-5 hours so your Intermittent Fasting time is around 19-20hrs.
I promise you’ll feel better, sleep better and have more energy. You’ll feel your stomach and organs feel so much better as they’ve had time to cleanse and clear food from your system.
Intermittent Fasting is NOT a diet but an eating plan
16/8 Protocol is a common Intermittent Fasting plan and a pretty easy one in my opinion. For most you only consume food for the 8hrs from noon till 8pm. When I try to stop eating at 8pm I find myself getting hungry around 10pm so I like to stop around 9pm.
I first started by skipping breakfast and late morning snacks. Then I skipped lunch and waited till 2pm. Over time I was able to wait till 4 or 5pm and my results were even greater!
Get started with Intermittent Fasting Today!
It's easy to get started, just get out your calendar, plan the days/meals you want to skip. Get your mindset right and focus. Know when you feel hungry it will pass, let your body adjust to burning internal calories and gain energy from your fat storage!
Remember there are people who go days without food and do just fine, you can probably skip a meal or two 🙂
Click here to see a list of Intermittent Fasting resources on AmazonI lost 10lbs in a week with the NutriBullet Green Smoothies which could be a compliment to Intermittent Fasting!
Learn more about Intermittent Fasting at Wikipedia
Questions? What are your experiences with Intermittent Fasting? Share your comments below!
