Intermittent Fasting: What It Is and What It Is Not!

The first time I heard the words "intermittent fasting" come out of Laith's mouth, I literally looked at him and said, no way! I couldn't go more than a few hours without eating before I started to feel shaky and often times hangry. Intermittent Fasting (IF) conjured up one image, starvation, and that was not something I wanted to try.

Intermittent fasting is a strategy my health coach, Mary, recommended and suggested I try. Given that Laith and I often skipped breakfast, this seemed like a reasonable thing to try.

What is intermittent fasting? I can tell you what it is not, and that is "starving" yourself. IF is time-restricted eating. Meaning, you eat your food within a "feeding" window, then you stop. A typical fasting time is 16:8 and can be easily achieved if you skip breakfast. Fasting for 16 hours and eating window of 8 hours when you can easily consume 2 meals (lunch and dinner). During the fasted state, your body has time to digest the food you ate, and it allows your insulin to drop.

Every time you eat, your body produces insulin to deal with all the energy you just consumed. Insulin is also your body's fat-storing hormone. The more times you eat, including snacks, you spike insulin, causing your body to take the energy to distribute it to the cells and the liver. When your cells and liver can't take any more insulin, it will store the energy as fat. Voila, this is how we gain weight.

Most people do a version of IF, they just don't know it. Unless you are eating 24/7, most people are fasting when they sleep. Have you ever wondered how you don't "starve" while we sleep?

IF has been another game-changer for us. What we have learned is that the more you eat (think 6 small meals a day plus snacks in between), the more you release insulin, which means that your body will never tap into the fat stores for energy. This is one of the reasons why traditional diets don't work and losing weight becomes all but impossible.

There are numerous benefits to intermittent fasting that we look forward to sharing with you in future articles.