Intermittent Fasting for Beginners

I adore the intermittent fasting lifestyle. It helps me stay lean, focused and energized throughout the day—and most importantly, it helps me get my time back.

What is Intermittent Fasting (IF)?

Intermittent fasting isn’t a diet. It’s merely a time-restricted eating schedule. It is compatible with any diet. To put it in the simplest, most concise terms, intermittent fasting occurs when you restrict your daily feeding window and lengthen your daily fasting window.

For example, a 16:8 fasting/feeding window is common for beginners. In a 16:8 fasting schedule, you eat during an 8 hour window (that’s plenty of time to get more than enough calories) and you fast during a 16 hour window.

Now, 16 hours without food might seem daunting at first, but keep in mind that this includes your sleep! You fast when you sleep. That’s why we call it “breakfast.”

Here are some examples of 16:8 time frames:

If you finish dinner at 6:00 pm. You would have your breakfast at 10:00am.

If you finish your dinner at 7:00 pm, you break your fast at 11:00am.

If you finish your dinner at 8:00 pm, you break your fast at 12:00pm.

Easy, right? You just give yourself some time to digest your dinner before going to bed, and then you give yourself some time to burn through your remaining stored energy in the morning.

16:8 is the standard. It is the bare minimum that anyone—with the exception of athletes or those with certain medical conditions—should be doing if they expect to get weight loss benefits from it. The benefits of fasting only BEGIN at 16 hours. Extending your daily fast to 18-22 hours will significantly increase autophagy—cellular cleansing and renewal—and increase your ketone production.

At this point, if you’re new to this information, alarm bells might be going off. Don’t fret. I’m not going to tackle this entire subject all in one blog post.

 In this article, I will answer four of the most common questions, concerns and objections a reasonable skeptic might have about intermittent fasting.

 Objection #1: Won’t my metabolism slow down if I’m not eating small, frequent meals?

Ah yes, TEF (Thermogenic Effect of Feeding). Eating burns calories! HALLELUJAH! Unfortunately, that isn’t the whole story…

Calories burnt throughout the day can be broken up into four main categories, according to the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM).

1)    BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate)—60-70%

2)    NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis)—15-50%

3)    Exercise—0-30%

4)    TEF (Thermogenic Effect of Feeding)—8-15%

The extra calories that you burn by snacking does NOT offset the extra calories you consume by snacking.

If you still aren’t convinced of this, I would ask you, has eating small frequent meals and snacks throughout the day resulted in a body that you’re comfortable with? If so, keep doing what you’re doing! Why are you reading this?

If you aren’t personally satisfied with the constant grazing method, then I advise that you keep reading.

For most individuals, TEF does not contribute to a substantial amount of calories burned. I suppose if you were chowing down on plain celery sticks all day, a “calorie negative” food, then sure. Perhaps it might provide slightly more metabolic benefit than daily fasting. But are you willing to do that? Be honest with yourself. It would be torture, especially because it would likely result in you craving something more calorically dense later (like peanut butter).

If you opted for the plain celery all day long option, I’d be remise to ask you, what void are you trying to fulfill by constantly stuffing your face?

Intermittent fasting will allow you to burn your excess glycogen and calories leftover from a hefty meal the night prior. If you didn’t overeat the night before, then good news! You’re burning off stored fat cells sooner rather than later.

If I haven’t yet convinced you that eating small frequent meals isn’t the way towards sustainable weight loss, I would also have to ask you, what is it that you’re trying to burn off by boosting your metabolism? Are you trying to burn the calories you just ate, or are you trying to burn the calories from last night? If the answer is “burn the calories from last night,” then the best thing you can do—dietarily—is to refrain from consuming any more calories until that job is done.

It is remarkably simple. When you run out of stored energy in the tank, your body starts using fat as fuel. This is what you want.

Fasting, in a way, mimics cardiovascular exercise. Fasting and exercise are both good for you because they undo the consequences of dietary excess.

Objection #2: Will my blood sugar crash? Won’t I get hangry?

With a little bit of practice, a healthy human body is remarkably efficient in adapting to the absence of calories.

So let’s say in this example, you try intermittent fasting for one day, and you manage to go 20 hours without anything but black coffee or unsweetened tea, and water. That’s 20 hours with no external caloric sources. You finished your dinner by 8:00pm the night before, and you waited until 4:00pm the next day to start chowing down.

In this scenario, most of your glycogen reserves have been depleted. Your liver has begun the process of gluconeogenesis, the breakdown of non-carbohydrate substrates in the body. Essentially, gluconeogenesis regulates blood glucose in the absence of carbohydrates.

Shorty after that, lipolysis occurs. This is when it gets exciting! During lipolysis, triglycerides are broken down into free fatty acids and glycerol. Most of these fatty acids comes from adipose tissue (the very same fat that you’re trying to get rid of!)

Enter, ketosis. In the absence of carbohydrates, your liver will start using these free fatty acids as fuel and turn them into ketone bodies. It is important to note that gluconeogenesis facilitates the usability of these ketones.

Intermittent fasting is a way to enjoy the benefits of a ketogenic diet, without having to suffer the negative health consequences of such a diet. Your body needs carbohydrates, and muscle tissue will inevitably degrade without them. The high fat nature of the ketogenic diet can also contribute to cardiovascular issues and insulin resistance down the road. Ketogenic diets are also generally miserable to adhere to. These are just a few of the reasons that I don’t recommend low-carb or keto diets to my clients.

Objection #3: Will intermittent fasting cause me to lose muscle?

It’s true that prolonged and continuous fasting will contribute to muscle loss. So will prolonged low-carb diets.

Strategically timed intermittent fasting, however, can do just the opposite, particularly if you incorporate resistance training at the end of your fast, and eat promptly after.

This is due to a hormonal effect that fasting has on the human body. As insulin levels drop, the healthy human body will generate Human Growth Hormone (HGH) during a fast. HGH increases drastically with prolonged fasting, but for the sake of sustainability for those who looking to grow or preserve lean muscle mass, intermittent fasting is the most sustainable solution.

Your post-workout feeding will cause an insulin spike, which facilitates hypertrophy (muscle growth). For this reason, I consider intermittent fasting to be a fitness hack, and for those who are concerned with muscle growth and maintenance (everyone should be if they care about their metabolism and bone/joint health), intermittent fasting is superior in this regard.

Objection #4: Intermittent fasting is just a normalized eating disorder.

This is the one objection that isn’t easy to debunk, because there is so much individual psychology to consider. Not one single human has the same relationship with food. This issue needs to be treated with empathy and nuance. For some people with histories of anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorders, intermittent fasting might not be right for you.

I would argue, however, that most adults are in the opposite situation. For most people, the consequences of continuous grazing and being in a constant state of digestion far outweigh the risks of intermittent fasting.

For those who frequently overindulge and have trouble controlling the urge to snack, intermittent fasting can be a way out of that vicious overconsumptive cycle. In many cases, it is easier to just say “NO” to food completely during a predetermined amount of time in your day, rather than attempt to monitor your food intake for every waking hour.

Just as it can be argued that intermittent fasting causes disordered eating for some, it can also be argued that intermittent fasting heals disordered eating for others.

A word of caution: Intermittent fasting can be a great tool, but it might not be for everyone, especially for who have metabolic or hormonal disorders, or who are on medications. Intermittent fasting also might be contraindicated for pregnant and nursing women, children and adolescents, underweight people, and young women of child rearing age.

If you would like to know more about how to incorporate intermittent fasting into your plant-based diet, don’t hesitate to reach out to me via phone, email, or social media!

Disclaimer: This article is not to be used as medical advice. Please consult your physician before starting any new diet or time restricted eating program.