Intermittent Fasting 101

If you read the words “intermittent fasting” and a mental image of someone sipping water looking miserable and hungry emerged in your mind, I get it. Intermittent fasting has developed a reputation as extreme and overly restrictive. It’s often criticized as a way to prop up a damaged diet culture that is obsessed with weight loss and chasing the “perfect body.”

The idea of not eating can trigger preexisting negative thoughts and habits: Real intermittent fasting isn’t about punishment, calorie restrictions, or restriction at all. In fact, it’s less about what you eat and more about when you eat. Let me be clear: chronic calorie restriction and fasting are not the same things.

Here’s what makes them different:

• Chronic calorie restriction: Reducing your average daily caloric intake below what is normal for a long period of time.

• Intermittent fasting: Limiting how often you eat, or not eating at all, during certain times of the day, week, or month.

See the difference? The key to intermittent fasting is when you eat-not how much you eat. Intermittent fasting, especially the type of fasting has nothing to do with counting calories, chronically restricting food, or eating less overall.

So where does this confusion between fasting and chronic calorie restriction come from? Probably from the fact that one of the practical side effects of intermittent fasting is healthy weight loss. Weight loss is something fasting, and calorie restriction do have in common—but that doesn’t mean they’re the same thing. In fact, somewhat ironically, studies have shown that, for weight loss, fasting can be even more effective than chronically lowering your calories. For example, one study published in the reputable journal Nature showed that in 28 obese adults, fasting led to greater weight loss than calorie restriction.

If this surprises you, you’re not alone. Many of us are still operating under the old logic that weight loss is about “calories in and calories out,” when the reality is that weight loss is much more complicated than this overly simplistic equation. Your body is not a calorie calculator, it is a chemistry lab, and intermittent fasting resets the beautiful biochemistry lab otherwise known as your metabolism.

Intermittent fasting causes fundamental shifts in your body’s physiology that help your body burn more fat, feel less hungry, and regain energy. Intermittent fasting is far easier to maintain than a calorie restriction diet. Most diets fail, and they fail for a reason: chronic calorie restriction will slow down your metabolism and put your body into starvation mode, where it tries to hold on to fat. One study compared the effectiveness of intermittent fasting with continuous calorie restriction and found that intermittent fasting is a great alternative for weight loss, particularly for those who find chronic calorie restriction difficult to maintain.  

But wait—aren’t we supposed to eat more frequent, small meals a day to keep our metabolism going? Isn’t that the healthiest way to live to maintain our weight?

At first glance, this idea seems legit, but the truth is, this theory doesn't hold up when put to the test. One randomized trial using two groups of diabetic patients compared the effects on one group of eating five to six small meals a day to the effects on a second group of eating two larger meals. The number of calories the two groups consumed was the same, but the results showed the two larger meals led to greater weight loss, less hepatic fat content, increased oral glucose insulin sensitivity, and more. In other words, it was better for the metabolism, weight loss, and blood sugar balance to stick to the two larger meals. Our bodies are better able to digest and use the food we eat for usable energy when we eat fewer large meals a day.

Other review studies have shown that snacking is meant to keep you from overeating—and snacks can help you feel satisfied temporarily—they don’t cause you to eat less at your normal meals, which means you end up consuming more food and calories overall. It’s been my personal experience—that it is not what you eat…but more importantly, it’s when you eat.

Another common misconception about fasting is that because fasting can cause weight loss, its health benefits must be attributed to weight loss itself. This theory has actually been studied and disproven. There are huge metabolic health benefits when we fast 12-14 a day and weight loss is only one of them. Other studies, as cited in a large review paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, have specifically shown that specific benefits of intermittent fasting—such as improvement in glucose regulation, blood pressure, and heart rate, and in the efficacy of endurance and abdominal fat loss-are separate from its effect on weight. As the authors of the paper explain, human and animal studies have shown that the benefits of fasting are not simply the result of fasting induced weight loss. Instead, they say intermittent fasting awakens powerful healing mechanisms that were lying dormant inside the body. Fasting enhances health and leads to weight loss in ways that are unrelated to a calorie deficit. Instead, fasting triggers shifts in metabolic and hormonal pathways that bring balance back to the body and allow it to maintain a healthy weight more easily, naturally. In short, you can get healthy so that you can lose weight, instead of trying to lose weight to get healthy.

The Physiology of Fasting

These days, it seems like there’s a new fasting research study being published every single day. Fasting success in modern medicine is multifaceted, but many of its benefits can be explained how it aligns humans with information that’s encoded in our genes, connecting us more closely with the way our ancestors lived. That’s because while we have fasted for religious and health reasons throughout history, we have also fasted out of necessity.

Think about it: before there were refrigerators, packaged foods, and drive-throughs, people naturally went long periods of time without food—and our bodies encoded this information into our DNA over millennia. It’s important to think about the health benefits of fasting from an ancestral and genetic perspective since we are mostly working with that same DNA today, despite the fact that our lifestyles have changed drastically, especially in the last 100 years. In fact, researchers estimate that 99 percent of our genetics haven’t changed in over 10,000 years.

While our genes have remained relatively the same, our lifestyles have transitioned from hunting and gathering societies to farming cultures, which set off an era of food always being readily available. The water we drink, the air we breathe, the soil our food grows in, the food we eat, and how often we eat it have changed drastically in a short period of time when seen in the context of the totality of human existence. This has caused a genetic-epigenetic mismatch of sorts: our genome adapted in a way that allows us to cycle in and out of eating—but we are no longer honoring that adaptation, because we’re eating all the time.

So why is this a problem? Well, because fasting is literally encoded in our genes, our bodies have evolved to perform certain functions in times of feast and times of famine. For example, autophagy—which is when your body cleans house and recycles dead and damaged cells and proteins—is triggered during periods of time without food. After about 8 to 10 hours without food, your body also enters something called ketosis, which is known for its beneficial effects on the brain and metabolism. Certain mechanisms are activated only in times of fasting, but because many people consume three meals a day with snacks in between meals, fasting never occurs and these mechanisms can't be activated: they actually lie inactive. According to researchers, this evolutionary mismatch is at the heart of what is triggering chronic health problems to an extent never before seen in human history—the chronic health problems many of us are suffering from on a daily basis. And it doesn't end there either.

As the authors of a study published in Trends in Cognitive Science theorize, the continuous availability and consumption of food causes changes in epigenetic molecular DNA and protein that negatively impact cognition and can be passed onto future generations. In other words, this loss of periods of fasting has stunted our healing mechanisms and sabotaged our own health, and we may be passing this confusion on to our children. This is why reconnecting with the way our ancestors lived—through Intuitive fasting—is so important. Our bodies have evolved over generations to naturally go for periods of time without food; we are not honoring those adoptions, and the consequences are severe.

Coaches Challenge

By now I hope I’ve convinced you that fasting is not about starvation, nor is it just a trendy wellness practice. Fasting enhances health which leads to weight loss in ways that are unrelated to a calorie deficit. Instead, fasting triggers shifts in metabolic and hormonal pathways that bring balance back to the body and allow it to maintain a healthy weight more easily and, naturally. In short, fasting is a good tool allowing you to get healthy so that you can lose weight, instead of trying to lose weight so you can get healthy. This mind set is a game changer.

I would recommend finding opportunities to make intermittent fasting a part of your daily routine. Personally, I found that skipping breakfast and avoiding late night snacking was the easiest way to extend my fasting window. I'm not going to sugar coat it, it’s never easy making changes in our daily routines but i will say in time it gets easier especially when you work through some of the discomfort and become acclimated to a new routine. Over time, the cravings disappear, and it doesn’t take long before you can easily increase the daily fast into 14 to 16 hour windows. As a coach, I recommend that you push through whatever works for you and there is no shame if it takes you a little longer to push into the longer fasts. But work daily at creating an intuitive fasting routine that works for you and in no time, you’ll begin experiencing the weight loss you desire.

I want to leave you with this: losing weight is much easier than you think, and it begins by creating fasting and feeding windows that work for you. There really isn’t any reason to count calories, just remain focused on your eating and fasting windows—that’s where you are going to get your best results. 

Take a few minutes and watch Dr Jason Fung’s "Fasting the Basics" to help you get started.

https://youtu.be/jqZsS03dlPk?si=UCv-9jeDx8cbd5r1