"The best of all medicines is resting and fasting." - Benjamin Franklin
I stumbled upon an effective weight loss habit by accident several months ago. Lately, I have noticed my memory is not as sharp as it was in my 20s. That combined with my grandfather's death from Alzheimer's disease at the beginning of this year led me to research measures I can take to prevent dementia. Keeping my brain healthy was the goal. The weight loss was an added bonus.
So, what is the one easy habit? It is daily intermittent fasting. Not only is it simple to do, it has amazing health benefits for your mind and body. Keep reading to learn more about how fasting works.
From past experience, I know to make a healthy habit stick I need to make it fit easily into my daily routine. When making any changes to my eating habits, I first like to do my research to make sure it's healthy and doable long-term. Intermittent fasting fits all my criteria for a healthy habit change.
Why Fasting Can Improve Your Health?
Research has shown that intermittent fasting is a great way to manage your weight and prevent some diseases from forming. John Hopkins University neuroscientist, Mark Mattson, has been researching this for over 25 years. Mattson says after hours without food, the body runs through all the sugar consumed in a day and starts burning fat to make energy. According to his research, fasting can improve blood pressure and cholesterol levels, decrease brain fog and help with memory, reduce inflammation, and manage obesity. One Harvard study found that intermittent fasting may even slow the aging process in our bodies.
How Intermittent Fasting Works?
Pick a time window that works best in your lifestyle to fast. During fasting you can consume only water, black coffee, tea, or other zero calorie drinks. Once you have entered your eating window for the day, you can resume your normal diet. However, if your goal is weight loss, it is recommended that you eat a healthy diet by avoiding added sugars and ultra-processed foods. Instead, choose fruits, vegetables, beans, lentils, whole grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats. For me, I did not change my eating habits at all, but I do try to eat a healthy diet on a regular basis.
Note: Before starting this new habit, I spoke to my primary care physician. She agreed fasting for a certain number of hours before bed is a healthy way to allow your body to rest and repair itself overnight. However, she cautioned me not to drink black coffee on an empty stomach as it impacts cortisol and other hormone levels. I now drink water until I eat breakfast with my first cup of coffee.
How Long Should You Fast?
If you google the amount of time to fast, you will get a wide variety of results. Some people do a weekly fast that restricts calories to one 500-600 calorie meal a day for two days a week. I prefer daily fasting because it's less restrictive and easier to make a habit. I also tend to question anything that encourages restricting calories to less than 1200 a day.
For daily fasting, the general consensus seems to be you need to fast for approximately 12 hours for your body to start burning fat to make energy. A popular approach is the 16:8 ratio with 16 hours of fasting and 8 hours of eating. That ratio did not work best in my lifestyle unless I cut out breakfast entirely. I experimented with different hours for a few weeks and found that the easiest way for me to implement a fasting routine was to stop eating between 6:30-7pm and start eating again between 7:30-8am. I aim for somewhere between 12-13 hours fasting each day. It's surprisingly easy, since I'm sleeping for 8 of those hours. I do not feel hungry unless I wake up too early. When that happens, I just adjust my eating hours for that day.
The key to forming this habit is to find what works for you. If your goal is to get the health benefits, research shows you could see positive results with a 10 hour eating window. If you want to control your weight, you may want a longer fasting window. My weight loss happened because I cut out calories from late night and early morning snacks. No matter what your goal is the important thing is finding something you can do long-term.
Staying Committed to Your Health
I created 100 Days to Healthy as a guide to help you develop habits for healthy living. In the guided journal, you will identify three habits to change to better your health. You start a new one each 30 days. My three habits were to start intermittent fasting to eliminate AM/PM snacking, minimize processed food in my diet, and add weight training for 20 minutes three times a week. I started with the easiest first and worked my way to the hardest habit to implement. Intermittent fasting was the perfect first step in changing my health as it was straightforward, easy to follow, and gave me the reward of seeing measurable results from my actions.
*Disclaimer - This post describes my personal experience with intermittent fasting. Every person is different. This is not meant to be medical advice. Check with your doctor to see if fasting is right for you.
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