Meditations on fasting.

For the past 4 weeks I've been steadily losing body fat. To do this I've used intermittent fasting and low calories.

Intermittent fasting (IF) is not a wonder weapon to beat all other diets. But I have noticed a few unorthodox benefits from using IF that I'd like to share with you today. 

First off, the only scientifically verified principle for stimulating your body to lose fat is being in a calorie deficit each day. Eat too many calories and you stay the same or gain fat. 

Second, there are many ways of eating less. Most diets, especially the mass marketed ones, are simply ways to enforce eating less. This is very important to your diet success and we'll come back to this point.

So now we know IF is just a method to eat less, and by eating less we lose fat. There seems to be a band wagon for fasting where the proponents say the body burns fat quicker when fasting, there's no evidence to suggest this is true.

But what follows are my meditations on fasting. 

MY FRAMEWORK

Each day I don't eat from 9:30pm until 1:30pm. 16 hours. Again, there is no magic time of day to break a fast. What matters is finding an easy way to eating less calories. 

THE BENEFITS

1) large meals

I can eat large meals whilst still eating a low calorie target for the day. My target is 1800 calories. Eating 4-5 small meals throughout the day would mean each meal being approx 300 calories. That would suck! 

My appetite is huge so I struggle to eat small meals and feel satisfied. 

Fasting then, has allowed me to eat bigger meals relative to eating every few hours. 2 meals per day and a few small snacks and I'm done. Mentally, this is much easier. 

2) work hard 

I have a lot of work to do with my job. Early mornings, late finishes. Personal training clients in the day time plus a whole host of business owner tasks every day. Straight up, IF has saved me time. Don't need to eat = More work done. Winning.

3) eat whatever I like 

Rather than cheating and binge eating when I've had enough, I simply take out my snacks for the day. This 'saves my calories up' for a large evening meal. 

So I break the fast with a small 500 calorie meal at 1:30pm, then eat a big 1300 calorie meal for tea of whatever I like. 

This isn't ideal for health reasons, and I try not to eat junk, but a curry or some spag bol now and then WITHIN my calorie target means I don't go crazy and I still burn fat. 

SUMMARY

So there's a few benefits of intermittent fasting.

Remember, it's not a life saving magic trick, it doesn't burn fat more than any other method, only a calorie deficit does that.

But what it does do is allow me to eat larger meals, cheat without bingeing, and saves time so I can be productive. 

Final point, and perhaps the most profound, is that living each day with rules means I don't waste energy trying to make decisions or trying to avoid foods. I have a plan B to fall back on (on plan cheating). I get more work done (less stress). 

Anyway, I'm 9lbs lighter over the last 4 weeks. 5 more lbs and I've dropped a stone! 

Rise above

Ant

Anthony Shaw

Head Coach

Raw Strength Gym, Warrington 

PS - if you'd like a free 6 week trial of our program then I have an information pack I can email over with membership prices, session times, our methods and more.

Interested? Email me and I'll shoot it over - anthony@rawstrength.co.uk