Lets pretend i just took a one month, 3 day break from the Internet and move on, cool? cool.
Valentines Day is coming to a close and this is the first year where i don't have a months worth of chocolate sitting in my lap. This is a good thing. I don't really even miss it... I mean, kinda.
So I have a confession: I never stopped winter/holiday eating. I have a problem. Before Christmas, i was doing great with intermittent fasting and i was actually on the path to be at my goal weight by my birthday. Christmas is long gone and so is my prospects of skinny jeans by march. Something's got to give, and i really don't want it to be the button on my pants. Fuck.
I have a shameful history of dieting. I've done weight watchers, Atkins, vegan/vegetarianism, skinny bitch (vegan), multiple diet pills, adderall, fasting, fasting with expensive shakes, cleanses and I have reoccurring episodes of b/ping. Gross, right? None of this has lead to anything but a bad body image and a few more lbs then I started out with. Some things are great. For example, i occasionally get into a groove with exercising... I managed to run a treadmill 5k in about 45 minutes (15 minute miles, not that great, but still) last October until I got into a funk one day and quit my gym. The total body cleanse I get from trader joes feels great for my digestive system. Some things do work.
Then there is intermittent fasting. Holy shit, dude. IF first came to my attention when my coworker randomly asked me if i was doing "lean gains" which i had never heard of. I looked it up that night and it was all body builders and gross muscles, but their theory of eating was that, when we, as humans were evolving, we went significant periods of time without eating (because we were hunting, gathering, ect). Now we live in this culture where we constantly have food around us and we are constantly hungry. Your body, and the way it has evolved, has not forgotten how to handle long periods of fasting and can still regulate blood sugar just fine, but your brain has most likely forgotten. Your stomach tells your brain that it's empty and your brain tells your stomach to grumble and you feel hunger. If you wait to eat, that hunger will go away. Sound familiar? Everybody has been in a situation or two where they couldn't eat when they wanted and they suddenly weren't hungry.
The theory is that this period of fasting, which can last anywhere from 12 hours to many days, allows your body to regulate it's blood sugar so there is a slow burn and to utilize it's fat stores. The moment you eat, your body uses the food it just received and the fat burning ends. So if you ate dinner at 7 o'clock, went to bed, woke up and then didn't eat until noon, guess what?! You just fasted 17 hours! Fantastic! Can you keep it up?
Even more so, the period of fasting (i.e. fat burning) changes your body composition more so then just dieting. You can still eat the same amount of healthy calories and your body will still change, just by altering when you eat. Myths surrounding "starvation mode" have been busted time and time again. Yes, there is such thing as starvation mode, but your body is not starving if it has a store of nutrients built up in your body. Additionally, larger meals, whether practicing IF or not, yield larger boosts in metabolism then smaller meals. Your body wants to remain as is and will slow down and speed up metabolism as it needs to remain at a constant state. (This is also why it is important to exercise while dieting and why many people hit plateaus when reaching fitness goals).
There has recently been a lot of attention on intermittent fasting. It seems as though i came across it just as everybody else did. I read a blog article on lifehacker about it, there was a little blurb in Women's Health Magazine and there is a new book called The 9 to 5 diet that talks about limiting your eating to an 8 hour window (i.e. fasting for 16 hours). It is everywhere, and it works. For some, that is.
This diet, like every single diet ever, does not work for everyone. People with type 1 diabetes should obviously stay away from this diet and some woman do not respond well. (The trouble with women, opposed to men, is thought to be related to hormones that are dependent on fat stores and the idea that the way our bodies work are different from men because we're constantly preparing to have a baby, whether we want to or not).
That being said, i like this diet. It doesn't require a ton of work and i like the way it makes me feel. I don't have to eat little baby portions of food 6 times a day, i can eat a real meal twice a day. It works with my ever-changing work schedule and there is no such thing as cheating.
It's time to start again.
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