A short introduction to Fasting for beginners

Fasting as a lifestyle #

In my opinion fasting is about planning & control. It certainly is not a diet and it also isn’t a quick fix for weight loss. Fasting is more about a lifestyle in which all components are balanced.

You can see fasting as a circle. To be able to fast,  you need to be well rested and eat healthy food. And to do these things, you need to plan ahead. Plan your week/month. Plan what you want to eat etc. etc.

Hollistic aproach of fasting #

The ultimate goal is to lead a healthy life. In order to do that you have to prioritise what’s important. Eat well, exercise and be well rested.

Fasting4All helps you to keep track of these targets and visualises the data as key metrics.

What happens with your digestive system after a meal #

After every meal your blood sugar levels and insulin rise. For example, if you are used to eat three meals a day with some some snacks in between your meals, your insulin level keeps spiking. This prevents your body from reaching the fat burning stage. This also explains why diets are so hard and the results are often disappointing. Surely,  diets could be a fix for some months, but in most cases it isn’t a solution for the long run.

Fasting eliminates the repeating blood sugar level spikes because you only eat during the the non-fasting hours. 

For more information: dr. Eric Berg has several youtube videos about Fasting. I can recommend to watch the video below because it gives a very good explanation about what happens with you insulin levels.

A few tips about food #

Have a critical look at what you eat and ask yourself: is this healthy food or is it just “easy” food? During this revision process avoid the misconception that healthy food is just a boring salad which leaves you hungry. With healthy food I mean that you have food which gives your body the right nutrients. If you eat well, you will feel well and when you fell well you will have more energy. Fasting is just as much about eating the right food which leaves you well prepared to have enough energy to complete the fasting session.

Important: If you start fasting, don’t replace food for liquid calories! It’s best to drink water, tea or (moderately) coffee. Avoid drinks with sugar or which are artificially sweetened. The sugar will trigger an insulin reaction and that alone will break your fast.

Rest & preparation #

To succeed with fasting it’s essential that you are well rested. If you are tired or if you are facing stressful situations your body produces cortisol which makes it far more difficult to start burning fat. This also explains why you feel more hungry when you are tired and/or stressed.

In my experience stress is almost always caused by external factors. Sometimes you can control them, but unfortunately in most situations the stress causing factors are beyond your control. So what can you do about it in relation to fasting?

Well: planning is key: if you are expecting a very busy day at work, it’s not a good idea to plan a fast. Even if you are experienced with fasting it can wear you down and ending up feeling miserable. Another example is travelling abroad or other situations in which you have more stress and less control.

So plan a fast when the conditions are optimal. This gives you the best starting conditions. It’s like Benjamin Franklin famously said: “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”

Planning your first fast #

The best way to start a fast for the first time is to prepare yourself and make it into a positive experience. How to do that?

1. Plan a your first fast for the weekend or a non-working day
2. Start with a 16/8 or 18/6 fasting session
3. Eat your regular meal between 12.00 and 17.00 (12 pm ~5 pm)
   In my experience it’s much better to eat around lunch time. My advice is to listen to your body and eat when you are most hungry and plan the fasting subsequently.
4. start fasting (you can use the Fasting4All app to keep track of your fasting session)
5. When you wake up: you are probably hungry. Don’t give in, this feeling is known as the hunger wave. Visualise it as the waves in the ocean, sometimes there’s a large wave, sometimes it’s a small one, but they will always pass over.
6. What you can do: drink a glass of water, tea or coffee. With coffee: be careful not to drink too much, keep it to one or two cups because your body may react more on the cafeïne on an empty stomach.
7. Next: plan to do something! Go out for a walk, do some exercises, plan something with friends or family. Whatever you do, don’t do nothing and hang around on the couch. If you are active the time will pass much quicker and before you know it your first 18 hours of fasting will be complete!

Dealing with hunger waves #

During you first fast you might encounter a few hunger waves. The best way to handle them is to become active: if possible, go out for a walk. It might sound strange, but after walking a few minutes the hunger feeling will reside and go away. There are several reasons why you might experience these hunger waves:

your body is used to have food when the first hunger feeling arise;
Your body is used to have food when you become bored. This is a very important phenomenon and it’s often confused with being real hungry! You will learn to recognise the “bored” eating feelings when you grow into fasting as a lifestyle. Don’t worry about it for now, just know there is such a thing!
Your body is used to high carb/sugary diets. This is a tricky one because suger is a fast and easy energy source for you body. It gives almost instantaneously energy and it makes you feel good. But after the suger rush passes you need another ‘shot’ and this will make your fasting session a lot harder to do.

Fasting methods #

Fasting is a timed approach to eating. In Fasting4All there are 3 main fasting methods available.

• Free style
  • No fixed end time. Great for beginners and for experienced people who want to fast for more than 24 hours.
• Fixed time methods
  • Ranges from 16 to 22 hours.
• Meal oriented
  • OMAD and ADF

Example: Fasting 18/6 #

In this example the 18/6 fasting schema is used. It means that you fast for 18 hours and have 6 hours to eat your meals.

During the 18 hours, your digestive system get the time to process the food you ate. Its important that you eat food which gives a long saturation so you don’t get cravings for food. After the 18 hours have passed, you have a window of 6 hours in which you can eat.