Of all the diet culture trends, intermittent fasting or “IF” is one of the most controversial. We see influencers, friends, even entire YouTube channels and blogs devoted to the miracle of losing weight just by adjusting the timing, not the content, of your eating habits.
For me, I had hit a frustrating plateau and was looking for the same game changer. As much as I am against “diets,” I thought revisiting IF could have a positive kickstart to burning extra fat and eliminating decision fatigue from planning several meals a day. It ended up, as you can see from the title, in me quitting. I am going to tell you why and what other information I found out why a lot of people quit and why it may be a good idea to do so.
Intermittent fasting or “IF” is a weight loss phenomenon that has swept the nation and remained a popular trend. I have done almost all of the variations, and a few months ago I turned back to it to get me out of a weight gain rut. I also believed in all of the promises besides weight loss – cell renewal, better focus, and more energy. And all of those things came quickly at first. But it started to become unsustainable, and I am going to explain why and what my experience was here.
Each book, program, or friend evangelizing about what they were doing to lose weight carried the hope that the future I imagined (thin and effortlessly fit) would become a reality at the end of this new “lifestyle change”.
What is Intermittent Fasting?
IF involves abstaining from any caloric food or beverage for a designated period of time. 3 main times of IF which vary by length and terms
- Alternate day fasting – involves alternating between feeding days and fasting days
- Whole day fasting – (otherwise known as the 5:2) fasting consuming no to little calories on the fasting days
- Time-restricted – most common is the 16:8 method, which is a 16 hour fast and an 8 hour window, but there are variations, like 20:4, the Warrior Diet, or OMAD (One Meal a Day)
During a fast, you cannot consume food or drink with calories. This includes:
- Bone broth
- Coconut water
- Milk
- Juice
- Protein Powder
- Some supplements (like BCAAs)
Black coffee or tea are permitted, although it depends on who you ask. Some “water fast” purists argue that the caffeine breaks the fast while others maintain it is fair game since it is 0 calories.
When you fast, your body is not getting energy from food, which will cause your blood sugar and insulin levels to decline.
- First, glycogen, think of this like the sugar your body has “in storage,” just in case; then
- Once that is depleted the body will use fat stores
Proponents of IF suggest that one of the main benefits of fasting is that it will help you shed body fat by keeping insulin low and reducing opportunities to store fat, and for longer fat the body uses fat stores for fuel.
So this makes sense right – as soon as you finish burning up your stored sugar and keep insulin low, fat storage opportunities will be reduced and we will tap into our fat stores.
Why Intermittent Fasting Can Backfire
It’s not that simple. Whether you lose weight will depend on your overall energy balance, what and how much you eat and how much you move throughout the day, including exercises. If your overall intake during your eating window is lower than the calories you burn, this could result in weight loss because you are in a caloric deficit. But if you are super hungry during your eating window and eat more, you could not lose weight or even GAIN weight. Simply shifting the time when you eat is not enough of a lever.In this study, it showed that the subjects lost weight, gained weight, or maintained their weight while intermittent fasting.
So why do people lose weight while IF? It has less to do with hormones and insulin and more to do with the fact that people simply eat less and do not fully compensate for missed meals.
Intermittent Fasting is Another Form of Calorie Restriction
So what’s better for weight loss? IF or caloric restriction? In general, there is not much difference. Studies have shown that a caloric deficit is a caloric deficit whether it comes through restriction or intermittent fasting. It’s the deficit, not some magical metabolic switch for fat-burning that happens during IF. The study confirmed that participants actually lost more weight through a daily caloric deficit than intermittent fasting.
Now what about insulin levels? One of the asserted benefits of IF is that it keeps levels of insulin lower. Everytime we eat, under this theory, the big bad fat storing hormone insulin is secreted to store fat. However, insulin is not a “fat storage hormone”. Its primary purpose is to get needed energy to our organs and muscle tissues. When our glucose stores are full, insulin will store excess glucose as fat. However, this will only occur if we are in an energy surplus. Further, both protein AND carbohydrates stimulate insulin.
Then there is ‘insulin sensitivity.’ This basically refers to how sensitive your body is in response to insulin. If you are insulin sensitive, your body can use glucose more effectively. Low insulin sensitvitty, or insulin resistance, can be a precursor to Type 2 diabetes. A study looking at participants in a 4 hour eating window lower in the day actually found that the partciipants ended up being more insulin resistant. Coversely, food intake aligned during daylight hours could produce a better insulin response.
What about body composition? There are some proponents of IF that say it can improve muscle mass during a workout. The research, however, doesn’t support that for short-term intermittent fasting – in fact, it can potentially break down muscle, and this increases the longer the fasting window. .
1 – If IF suits your lifestyle and aligns with your hunger cues, it could help with weight loss. But it may stop working – or even back fire
2.- If you lose weight, it’s because you are eating less
3 – If you are aiming to improve insulin sensitivty, you should consume food earlier in the day
What about intermittent fasting for other reasons besides weight loss?
There is a lot of discussion about “autophagy” – but we are in a constant state of autophagy!
If you’ve ever heard someone say intermittent fasting induces autophagy and cell regeneration, call BS. They clearly haven’t read the research on autophagy. The thing is – there are only a couple of human studies that actually attempt to measure autophagy in live humans, and those studies are far from being definitive.
While we know that autophagy occurs in humans and is an important process for cellular health – and we know that mild stressors like exercise, infection, and food deprivation increase its activity in mammals – we do not know how long it takes to induce autophagy during fasting or to what extent it is upregulated in response to fasting – at least not in humans.
Special considerations for women
My experience
My experience with IF became less sustainable when I was fighting against my hunger. When I first started IF I was not as hungry, but then after a few weeks I would wake up and feel hungry and then get depressed looking to see that it was only 830am and I had 6 hours left before my eating window. A lot of days I used coffee to suppress my appetite and then found myself getting jumpy and overreacting to minor situations.
It also started affecting my social life. Now that we are going to the office again colleagues are eager to go to lunch, but I felt like I had to turn it down or make it a coffee meeting to meet the needs of my feeding window.
The feeding window also became problematic for me. It became more of a “bingeing window”. I would break my fast late in the afternoon, but often it would not be a full nutritious meal because I would want to save my energy and eat more at dinnertime. At dinnertime, I would eat myself into a food coma. It didn’t matter that I was eating a lot of high volume low calorie foods – eating a pound of vegetables until your stomach hurts is still not a healthy food relationship behavior. Then after dinner I would keep wanting to eat more – I’d make myself a protein shake, then eat a homemade muffin, then forage and eat some nuts.
The ultimate breaking point for me was getting sick recently. I could feel my body fighting to get better but this intermittent fasting business was not going to cut it. My body was screaming for nourishment and the medicine I was taking was intolerable on an empty stomach.
I couldn’t eat much, but I slowly started eating breakfast again. And I felt guilty about it. I never thought of myself as a quitter. But as I did some research, I saw I was far from being alone. And this article from the blog really opened my eyes:
“[IF] [is] still a diet wrapped up in a package of “health and wellness. And diets don’t work.
Roughly 95% of diets (or attempts to lose weight) end in gaining back all weight lost within 1 to 5 years. And a significant number end up a heavier weight than they were BEFORE the diet.”
And IF has a pretty high dropout rate – on average about 38 percent.
So where do I stand
Technically, I still am intermittent fasting. I now make it a practice to end my last meal by 8pm and because I eat more throughout the day it is not a big food coma kind of meal. I allow myself a small dessert, like a piece of chocoolate or a scoop of ice cream and really savor it. I usually eat breakfast between 8-9am the next day, so that is still a 12-13 hour fast, which research shows is best for our natural circadian rhythms.
Now I look forward to breakfast food again. Eggs, toast, butter, feta cheese, honey, avocado toast, pancakes, and oatmeal are all on the meny again. I find myself much more calm and have less jittery energy if I have a small breakfast a few hours after waking up.
What I have learned from this expeirence is that just because it may not be as obvious as Weight Watchers or keto IF is still a diet with rules that will make you fight your natural instincts. If I happen to not be hungry until 11am, then I won’t eat, but making a rule about it really affects my mental well-being.
It is amazing that getting sick was what it took to make me wake up and smell the bacon (literally) but I am grateful that the universe gave me a sign and feel a lot happier about where I am on my wellness journey.
