I imagine your already aware of one of the latest diet crazes at the minute being intermittent fasting, and your probably wondering whether or not this is something you should be doing?
And you have probably just read that title and thought ‘hang on a minute, that doesn’t make any sense at all!’
By now you should know I have a very unconventional way of looking at things in life, and i’m also very honest and just tell it how it is, but if you don’t read between the lines it can seem like I say one thing but then do another sometimes. so let me explain;
but first, what is IF? (i’m not going to try to spell intermittent fasting every 5 seconds as my England is not very good lol you know its bad when even spell checker struggles to help you out)
IF is basically where you fast (not eat) for a certain amount of time in the day and then give yourself an ‘eating window’ or a certain amount of time that your allowed to eat. so you may start by fasting for 18 hours then having 6 hours in which you eat all your food for that day.
is fasting bad for you?
Now im not here to actually slate fasting. people will say ‘oh no, you cant miss breakfast, its the most important meal of the day’……….. think about it, what does breakfast mean? break fast, break your fast, so guess what, if you don’t eat until 4pm then you didn’t skip breakfast you just broke your fast and had ‘breakfast’ at 4pm! So no, fasting isn’t bad for you.
so whats the problem?
My only concern with this fad (like most things in the fitness industry) is the way it is mis-marketed to people who don’t know any better and therefore it becomes widely misunderstood. There may be some additional health benefits to fasting but we are going to keep this simple and also just talk about it in the terms that most people intend for it, and that’s to lose weight. So the problem is you have all these so called fitness gurus telling people ‘hey, IF is magic, as long as you only eat in this magic window, you will lose weight’. which is just bullshit, I could hand on heart give myself no more than a 3 hour eating window everyday and put 30lbs of fat on, probably more if I wanted to. So IF by its own merit is not how to get in to shape.
So why does it work for some people?
It all comes down to the very same principle that every diet in the world works from, calories in vs calories out. the reason IF may seem like it works for people is because if somebody only gives themselves 6 hours in a day to eat then they are much less likely to overeat because they just haven’t got the time to fit in all those extra meals/calories. Its as simple as that, and this is the same for every single gimmick diet on the market today, every single one is just a tactic to get you to reduce your daily total caloric intake, but then give the credit to some other magical means.
So why do I do IF?
It has nothing to do with me actually wanting to put my body in a ‘fasted state’ or any of that bullshit, I just know exactly what my body needs in a day to either burn fat or to build muscle, and im the sort of person that gets hungry late at night when I have time to sit down and watch a movie or something, so all im doing is pushing my daily calories back so that when it comes to the end of the day I still have calories/meals left to enjoy when I want them (and I don’t restrict my foods either so this could be a cooked meal or chocolate and popcorn, providing I hit all my daily totals), if I eat all my food to early in the day then I know im probably going to cheat on my diet later that night when I get hungry/bored again. But I don’t broadcast it or try to promote IF because it has nothing to do with fasting it all comes down to the total amount you eat that day, whether its across 12 hours or 2 hours makes no (or at least very very little) difference.
So if your ready to enjoy all your favourite foods whenever you want to eat them and you want to learn in greater detail exactly how you can find out what your body needs, and how to burn fat and build muscle then download my Herobody Lifestyle Program
