When I asked a patient the other day what she had for breakfast she said, “I don’t eat breakfast because I intermittent fast and the first thing I eat is lunch.” Oooookkkkk…two problems with that statement. First, BREAK- FAST is not the what you eat in the morning. It is what the hyphenated word says: it is breaking your fast.
So technically breakfast is whatever you eat first in the day. It doesn’t matter what time of day you eat because if you first eat at 1:00 you are just having your breakfast and lunch together.
The second issue is that not eating until a consistent set time is NOT intermittent fasting. There is nothing intermittent about it. That is time restricted fasting. TRF and IF are different and both have value.
So let’s talk about fasting, which is an ironic name for the process since time seems to go SLOW when you do it 🙂
There are three reasons why you should fast:
1.You will live longer.
2. You will live healthier.
3. It will help you afford the cost of food given inflation- HOLY COW.
There are hundreds of studies on fasting and they all come to the same conclusion: calorie restriction = life extension. Now, when someone is doing a study you always have to find out who funded the study to show the bias. Drugs, foods, nutrient, devices…..most times someone has something to gain. That is fine but you have to identify the bias and that isn’t to say these things aren’t worth while. But fasting doesn’t bring cashflow to anyone else so these studies are solid that way.
Time Restricted Fasting is just that: it limits your eating window. For example, you would eat between 10 am and 6 pm and fast the other 16 hours of the day. From what I have read, a 12 to 16 hour fast is the sweet spot. Shorter than 12 hours doesn’t help you much and more than 16 hours doesn’t bring more benefit. Good news- no 40 day desert Jesus fast needed! This teaches our body to become more efficient at fat burning as a fuel source and is a cleaner, more efficient fuel source that carbohydrates.
Intermittent fasting is just that: it is a regular schedule. Monday 7 am, Tuesday 10 am, Wednesday 11 am, Thursday 9 am and so on. This fasting should begin after dinner and the purpose of this way is to give us metabolic flexibility. Look back in caveman days, if I woke up and walked out of my cave and there was no food, guess who is fasting. ME! If there were some berries do you think I would say, “I am not going to eat because I am keto. No you would eat it. You see a rabbit, you would chase it. Intermittent fasting helps us become more flexible in the use of our fuel systems.
Not everyone should fast though.
No go’s on fasting:
- Pregnant women
- Under 20 years old aka basically students. You need to fuel your brain in am and fuel continued growth in body.
- Diabetics
Last bite of information- your breakfast should be primarily fat AND protein. Full fat yogurt, cheese, eggs throw in veggies with them, meat, oatmeal (fattened with chia seeds, hemp, nuts etc.) It should NOT be American breakfasts such as pancakes, cereal, waffles, French toast, donuts……
If you break your fast with sugar you are on a hormonal rollercoaster until night when your fasting happens when you sleep and you are resetting what you screwed up.
To get your metabolism FASTER – FAST.
Read past blog posts here