What is Fasting?
Fasting is defined as willfully abstaining from food, drink or both. More commonly, the term fasting refers to a continuous period of not eating any food that typically extends over multiple days or even weeks in extreme periods of fasting.
Sometimes, fasting is used as a form of protest (e.g. hunger strike) , as a religious or spiritual activity, or even for quick weight loss to fit into your favorite pair of skinny jeans.
Medically, however, fasting is used to help correct mild to serious health conditions as well as improve overall well-being.
What is Intermittent Fasting?
The term ‘intermittent fasting’ refers to a pattern of calorie restriction that is performed on a regular pattern or cycle.
Although there are many variations of intermittent fasting diets, the two most commonly used regimens are as follows:
- Periodic daily fasting – One or more non-continuous days per week when calorie consumption is limited to between 0 – 25% of normal calorie intake (up to 500-600 calories). This is followed by one or more days of ‘regular’ eating. Common methods are the 5:2 diet during which you will eat up to 600 calories on 2 non-consecutive days per week (Monday & Thursday) and eat normally on the other 5 days during the week.
- Time restricted eating – Eating is limited to a regular block of time every day. Most often this involves a limited eating period of 5 to 8 hours and a non eating period of 16 to 19 hours.
What is the Fasting Diet?
Any diet that limits or avoids calorie intake for a prescribed period of time can be considered a fasting diet. Some clinicians reserve the term fasting for zero calorie intake for a minimum of 24 hours. Others will use the term intermittent fasting to refer to time restricted eating.
If we can use the term breakfast to refer to the first meal of the day AND we can understand that the origin of this term is derived from ‘Break the Fast’ after our time of sleeping (non-eating) THEN we can consider any period of non-eating as fasting.
But for our purposes we will limit the use of the term ‘Fasting” to those periods where we do not eat even though we may be expected to eat – breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We will also employ fasting to refer to periods of extended low calorie consumption.
How Does Intermittent Fasting Work?
Intermittent fasting works by creating dynamic daily change. By extending the time between your last meal on day one and the first meal on day two you can create a prolonged fasting time. The rationale is that the historic hunter/gatherer, in order to succeed in the environment of the time, had a primal need to cycle between under-eating during the day (when physical activity and danger were always present), and overeating at night (when able to rest and eat a good daily meal).
Modern humans in a changed environment can therefore restore health and fitness, by returning to that cycle.
Why Does Intermittent Fasting Work?
Understanding why Intermittent Fasting Works does not take a degree in rocket science. It can be explained simply by understanding how your body uses the fuel we call food.
Shortly after beginning to eat, insulin is released. It might only be one or two bites of food, but it will start the digestive process which includes insulin.
Normally, Insulin is a very helpful hormone. Our bodies have a warehouse of fuel reserves, called fat. Insulin makes sure that this warehouse of fuel in our body is always fully stocked.
Insulin also makes sure that it can find raw materials, known as sugar, to make into fuel, or fat for storage. During the time of insulin induced fat storage, the cellular machinery for burning fat cannot start.
This is very helpful if you need to store fuel for times when there isn’t much food. Until the last 500 years or so our ancestors ate in this way way. However, the times in which we live have proven to be too rich for this insulin mediated fat storage system our bodies possess. The frequency that most of us eat causes insulin to be released into the body too soon after the last insulin release. Again, insulin in released shortly after you eat, every time you eat and it takes about 12 hours after you eat for levels to return to normal.
During those 12 hours the body has been in fat storage mode you have not been able to start the fat burning machinery of the cells. Even if you are eating a reduced calorie diet, your body has a hard time burning fat because of the insulin response, which occurs with almost any amount of food eaten within 12 hours of your last meal. The only way to reliably start burning fat for fuel is to lower insulin levels. Intermittent fasting provides that reliability.
After 12 hours of not eating your insulin levels have returned to normal and your fat cells get back to doing their second job – providing fuel for the body. As insulin levels drop the fat burning engines start in every fat cell. This is referred to as your fast time – anything beyond the 12 hours after your last meal. This is the time where you body does its maximal fat burning.
How to Do Intermittent Fasting?
Right now your longest daily fast is probably the time you’re asleep plus a few hours before and after. If you are like most people, you eat a small snack after dinner, possibly at 8 pm, and then eat breakfast at 8 am. This creates a 12 hour fasting window, but moving the breakfast time to 9 am creates a 13 hour fast. Our initial goal is to move the first meal of the day to 1 pm and finish eating by 8 pm. This 7 hour window is called the fed time.
Most people begin slowly by pushing breakfast 15 minutes later for the first day, 30 minutes later the second day, and so forth until breakfast is eventually skipped.
For a couple of weeks after pushing the first meal to 1 pm, you may experience compensatory overeating during the fed time, but that’s no problem.
Many people recommend skipping dinner instead of breakfast for additional health benefits. We recommend skipping breakfast instead for two very simple reasons:
- We eat dinner socially more often than we eat breakfast socially. This way we can still get together with others for dinner.
- No one likes going to bed hungry.
The Intermittent fasting schedule should include a period of eating that lasts from 1 to 8 hours and a non eating time (Fasting Time) of 16 to 23 hours.
Most people prefer an eating schedule of 5 to 7 hours. This creates enough time for 2 meals during the day.
Remember, there’s nothing to count and nothing to measure. There are no tables to remember, no special recipes, and there is no food to avoid. You don’t even have to weigh yourself, but doing so can provide encouraging feedback.
That’s all there is to it. From 10 pm one day to 5 pm the next day, you eat nothing and drink only unsweetened or beverages having negligible calorie content such as water, flavored water, regular or herbal tea, or coffee. No juice, milk, or alcohol-containing drink should be consumed until after 5 pm.
Adjusting to the Intermittent Fasting Diet
A peek behind the magic reveals some sound reasons why the 717 Diet diet works:
Reason 1: Sleeping prepares our bodies for a prolonged absence of food. How often does hunger awaken you from sleep? For most people, it rarely if ever happens, even though the duration of sleep is a longer stretch without food than any other interval between meals.
Reason 2: Once your body is using energy from storage (AKA the fat warehouse) rather than from fresh glucose absorbed from digesting food, it’s easier to keep this steady state than to flip back and forth from fat to glucose and back again. Changing back and forth causes fluctuations in the levels of hunger related hormones (especially insulin). The sensation of hunger may be caused more by the changing levels of these hormones than from lack of food in the stomach or gut.
Reason 3: If you have committed yourself to the 17-hour fast, there is no question about how much food you should be eating during the fasting period. You don’t have to make a moment-by-moment decision on a limit or decide how closely you’ll stick to your diet. When your limit is zero, you don’t have to decide when to stop eating because you don’t get started. There is no judging between a little, a little more, and too much. Zero makes it easy to measure how much you should eat, and it keeps your emotional or limbic hunger from wedging its way into your decision-making and taking control.
Adjusting to the plan, however, is a big step. In the adjustment phase, you are changing from a lifetime pattern of constant carbohydrate availability to a once a day fill-up. Your body adapts during the fasting phase by burning fat as fuel instead of carbohydrates.
Because the adjustment is a huge change, you are likely to experience days when you can’t quite make your goal and you succumb to your eating drive. That is not failure to stick with the diet—it is a predictable slip. If you slip, then just keep taking the little steps that get you to the top of the hill. Some people can make the switch in a day; others may take weeks. Remember to pace yourself and do not expect instant results from the diet or immediate adjustment from your body.
How Much Weight Can You Lose Fasting?
As you stick with the plan, your ability to turn away from food during the day increases, your appetite during the eating window decreases, and calorie intake typically falls by around 500 calories a day—enough to lose about a pound per week. Plus, the physiological changes within your body will assist in supporting weight loss. Without any other lifestyle changes, most people will lose between 5 and 10 lbs in the first month.
Weight loss method – minimum of 5 Fed/Fast days of 7/17 and 1 – 2 full 24 hour fast days
Maintenance – Monday thru Friday of 5 Fed/Fast days of 7/17 and cheat days starting Friday afternoon until Sunday early evening, followed by a 24 hour fast or return to normal Monday thru Friday schedule.
TAKING YOUR FIRST STEPS
To have great success with our program it is important to understand that all animals, including humans, are genetically programmed to store as many extra calories as fat as possible. This is easily accomplished by most people because of our genetically programmed addiction to high pleasure and low nutrient value foods.
We live in a time where science has studied our taste buds and our brain response to various foods and this information has allowed food manufacturing companies to create processed “pleasure trap” food products that trigger our limbic, or emotional hunger, in ways that our bodies could have never have prepared for. This is why we tend to over eat and then we feel guilty for doing something we were tricked into doing. To avoid this “pleasure trap” from occurring it is advisable to avoid all prepackaged or processed foods that have any ingredient that doesn’t sound like food or you do not recognize: like autolyzed torula yeast extract, monosodium glutamate, powdered chicken.
Also, we encourage you to eat the majority of your calories from whole plant sources that are low in fat and have little added oils. Such as sweet potatoes, brown rice, corn, beans, chick peas, green leafy and other colored vegetables. These foods have the highest nutrient value per calorie and will cause you to feel full for longer. Plus you can freely eat these foods until you are stuffed without worrying about overeating. Although we recommend a mostly vegan plant based diet, you will get benefit from eating 90% of your diet from whole unprocessed foods and 10% or less from “cheat” foods like sweets.
An additional way to increase nutrient intake is through juicing. Although opponents of juicing complain that juicing is less than ideal because the fiber and some nutrients are lost, the overall effect is that we consume 4 or 5 times as many vegetables through juicing than we would eat if we ate them whole. Also, juicing green leafy vegetables and wheat grass provides a detoxification effect that helps to promote fat metabolism. For more information on how to do your own juicing please consult our office directly.
Lastly, most people who start with intermittent fasting expect significant immediate results. Rest assured, this diet works… but it is not a quick fix. Progress is typically slow but very steadily. You will see about 1 or 2 pounds lost per week, and possibly more if you focus your energy on eating healthy foods during your fed time.
Also, you should plan on being hungry. In the beginning your body will crave regular calorie intake. This is what it’s used to and breaking that pattern is difficult, especially if you are surrounded by food sights, smells, discussion, etc., throughout the day.
There are 2 things that we have found that make the fasting time easier.
- Drink plenty of lemon or lime water, coffee or tea (no sweetener or cream), or other non calorie beverage, but nothing artificially sweetened.
- Finish your Fast as early in the day as possible. If you stop eating at 6:30 pm you can attain 17 hours by 11:30 am the next…just in time for lunch.
After several days or weeks of fasting for 17 hours you may find it easy to push your time to 18, 19 or even 20 hours. We even encourage you to try and occasionally push your fast to 24 hours. Just make sure you are not cutting your nutrition or calories too low with too little time to eat and consume at least 2 meals per day and choose unprocessed whole foods.
YOUR FIRST DAY
The first place to start is setting a goal. It doesn’t have to be a goal weight, but that is most common. Your goal may be fitting into an old pair of jeans, having a certain fat bulge gone, or something similar. Whatever goal you choose, it should reflect a leaner body.
Now that you have a goal in mind and have possibly taken your before picture in a bathing suit, it is time to actually start planning for your intermittent fasting.
Most people start by preparing for the fasting period to make sure they have enough liquids and distractions to keep their mind off of eating for 17 hours. In my experience, the fast time of 17 hours is the easiest part. There are no decisions to make – just don’t eat and drink plenty of non-caloric beverages while avoiding artificial sweeteners. The real challenge is to make sure you eat healthily during your fed time, so planning for your fed time is essential.
Begin by deciding what you want to eat when you break your fast, and have it readily available and easy to prepare. But not too close…avoid any temptation.
I also try and make this meal super healthy and a little smaller than I would typically eat for a couple of reasons.
- By the time I am ending my fast I am definitely ready to eat. Therefore I am not as picky about my food choices. I just want something, and I will take almost anything. Better choices at this time are foods with a high vegetable and high nutrient content: Salad, beans, rice, smoothie or green drink, etc. I also try and keep it low fat to be fuller with fewer calories.
- The meal I eat is also smaller than typical because after a fast it is easier to feel full from less food. If given the opportunity I could eat much more but by stopping with less food, I am still satisfied and I save room for my next meal in a few hours. Remember that your window for eating is limited and if you are too full before the window closes you won’t have an opportunity to eat again until the next day.
For the rest of your fed time, eat freely. But keep your food choices high in fiber and low in fat. The low fat keeps the calorie content down and the fiber keeps your digestive tract moving even with fewer meals. Keep in mind that lower fat does not mean fat free, animal products are usually higher in fat and contain NO FIBER, and keep your junk foods to less than 10% of your total calories.
The cleaner you eat, the easier it is to accomplish your fasting periods, and the junkier you eat, the more difficult it is to make it through a fasting period. This is due to the fact that most of us are food addicts in one form or another and the more we eat for pleasure, the more we seek pleasure through food. The more we eat for nutrition and health, the more vitality we get from our foods.Lastly, your nutrition intake can be maximized by juicing, using a green supplement, and switching your diet to a primarily vegetarian or vegan diet.
What Are The Intermittent Fasting Benefits?
Intermittent fasting benefits can include the following:
- Weight Loss
- Insulin Resistance
- Inflammation
- Heart Health
- Reduced Risk of Cancer
- Brain Health, Improved memory
- Anti-Aging, Longer health span
Intermittent Fasting: What to eat?
What you eat during an intermittent fasting diet is your ‘normal’ diet but beware of low nutrient value foods. If you eat chips and sweets during your fed time, you will likely experience negative symptoms the following day. This may include headache, fatigue, ravenous hunger, irritability, and loss of concentration. Therefore we strongly encourage you to eat high nutrient value foods: Fruit, vegetables, whole grains, etc.
What is Dry Fasting?
Dry fasting avoids intake of all substances, including water. Unless this is being done under a doctor’s supervision and there is a medical necessity, dry fasting is NOT recommended in 99% of cases.
What is Water Fasting?
Water fasting is a prolonged period of only consuming water. This type of fasting can be done safely for most healthy people for short periods. However, there are certain medical conditions that can cause serious injury if calories are restricted for any length of time. Consultation with a doctor is always recommended prior to beginning any fast.
Can You Drink Water When Fasting?
Absolutely. Avoiding water is rarely recommended unless it is required for specific medical reasons.
What To Eat During Intermittent Fasting?
During the fasting period: Nothing except for water and unsweetened drinks that include tea and coffee. Unsweetened means unsweetened. Drinks that are artificially sweetened with stevia, saccharin, nutrasweet, aspartame, etc, ARE NOT unsweetened and should be avoided.
During the ‘fed’ time you can eat whatever is within the parameters of your normal diet with special attention paid to high nutrient value foods.
What to Eat When Fasting?
Nothing. Other than unsweetened beverages of coffee or tea and water should be consumed.
Can You Drink Coffee While Fasting?
Yes. Black and unsweetened. No cream, no sugar.
Can I Workout While Fasting?
Absolutely! Most people report a better workout during their fasting period. If possible, try to time your workout to be completed as close to your fed time.
Will Fasting Cause Muscle Loss?
Since prolonged fasting is not recommended, there should be no muscle loss associated with intermittent fasting as long as during your fed time you are consuming enough calories.
Should Kids Fast?
Although certain medical conditions may require children to engage in fasting, Intermittent Fasting or any other type of fasting should be engaged in by growing children.
THE SCIENCE OF HUNGER.
There are two types of hunger – emotional or limbic hunger and somatic or hormonal hunger.
The first type is your emotional hunger, also known as your limbic hunger. This is the hunger you feel when you see a TV commercial for Doritos or when you drive past a great smelling barbecue It can be thought of as a craving more than a true hunger for nutrition.
Thousands of years ago when food was scarce and not as plentiful as it is today, this emotional hunger was very useful. Our ancestors were always trying to pack on as much fat as possible to prepare for the inevitable time when food would not be available – similar to a squirrel saving their nuts for winter. At that time, the emotional hunger, or limbic hunger helped our ancestors eat as much as possible when they found something that was good to eat. This helped them store calories for the inevitable time when food would be scarce. Today, in our super food rich society, we do not need to “fatten up for times of famine,” and this has facilitated our limbic hunger getting us into the bodies we have today.
Essentially your limbic hunger is the cause of cravings when your typical eating behaviors conflict with your long term need to eat less.
Conversely, Somatic (so-MA-tik) hunger, or your hormonal hunger, is the sensation of discomfort in the stomach area that is commonly called true hunger or hunger pangs. Somatic hunger is the result of the interaction of hormonal and nerve signals and incorporates information about when the stomach is empty, plus your overall macronutrient needs both in the gut and throughout the rest of the body. Your somatic hunger is a signal, described as a constant, and aching stomach pang, that doesn’t go away with fluid intake or exercise, or various distractions that typically work so well with the limbic hunger. By itself, this sensation can be unpleasant, but like a sore ankle or a bruise it can be very tolerable as long as it stays out of the mind. You may consider your sensations to be far beyond unpleasant and totally intolerable but rest assured, that can change. Nature is not stupid. If hunger alone were to incapacitate a hunter by being excessively distracting or intolerable, then the hunter would be unable to hunt and the species would have died off long ago. We’re built with more resilience than that. As time goes by on your program, the sensation of hunger becomes less frequent, less intense, and much less distracting.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Q. I get hypoglycemia when I don’t eat.
A. True hypoglycemia is rare in people without diabetes. If you can go 8 hours during sleep without hypoglycemic symptoms you don’t have hypoglycemia. As you get used to fasting the “hypoglycemia” type symptoms should disappear.
Q. I get headaches when I don’t eat. I get irritable when I don’t eat.
A. That is part of your withdrawal symptoms. This is common when you are changing a habit or addiction. To remedy this, slowly increase the fasting time. Start with 10 hours, then 10 ½ hours the next day, and keep increasing ½ hour daily until you can tolerate the fasting.
Q. What about binging during the “fed” time?
A. This is very common during the first 4 weeks. Don’t worry about it. After 4 weeks, as long as your weight is falling and you are binging with healthy foods, don’t worry about it. If not, consult with your physician.
Can I just have a small bite of food during the fasting time? If it contains calories, the answer is NO. It will cause an insulin release and change the fat cells activity back to storage for the next several hours.
Your weight should trend week to week, not day to day. You will not lose muscle if you avoid multi-day fasting. With regular exercise your muscle will be preserved. Without exercise there will be no more than a 5% loss of muscle.
We hope you enjoyed our guide to intermittent fasting and have a new found understanding of intermittent fasting and what this diet entails. If you have any questions or would like to discuss this in further please visit us at palmbeachgardens-chiropractor.com. We are a top rated chiropractor in palm beach gardens with the passion to help improve your health.