Intermittent fasting is one of the hottest wellness trends at the moment. Celebrities, athletes, and even popular talk shows are touting the effectiveness of this plan. Of course I’ve been curious about the hype. So I tried intermittent fasting for 5 days. Here’s what happened, how it helped Grant’s company, and my overall thoughts about it.
What Is Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is cyclic eating, where you go through periods of eating and fasting. The point of intermittent fasting goes beyond weight loss and weight maintenance. It’s not even a diet, though some people do view it as such. I find it to be a way to pattern your meals more efficiently to fuel your body. Many claim that this also puts less stress on your system because you are processing less food during less hours of the day.
An additional belief is that intermittent fasting helps with overall productivity and drive. Imagine you are active and on the hunt vs. full, bloated, and tired. Those that are on the hunt would most likely be more effective and efficient.
Intermittent fasting is in theory supposed to help you burn more fat. A couple of good articles that outline the science of intermittent fasting are from Inc. and Healthline.
Health Prep gives 5 health benefits of intermittent fasting. They write that intermittent fasting reduces insulin resistance, plays a role in weight loss, is connected to the Keto Diet, improves blood pressure, and fights inflammation.
You don’t have restrictions on what you eat during the 8 hour eating window. However, intermittent fasting is supposed to encourage healthy eating habits during that time.
There are a few options for the cyclic eating. I chose to fast for 16 hours and eat for 8. You eat your last bite of choice in the evening. Then you may not, will not, better not eat anything for 16 hours after that.
There is some debate on if celery juice is really “allowed” or not. I drank it since I wanted to channel my inner celebrity for this!
How It Went For Me
My usual daily eating is already somewhat of a pattern in terms of what I eat and when. I do eat healthy food during the day, beginning with a cup of black coffee followed by a fruit and veggie smoothie in the morning. Then I eat an early lunch of some type of grain, protein, and veggie mix. Snacks for me consist of fruit, popcorn, or a granola parfait. Then I have a balanced dinner as well. Every night I of course enjoy dessert and often a glass of red wine.
So since I already eat fairly healthy and tend to eat my meals and snacks around the same time everyday, my big adujustment from intermittent fasting came with the timing.
While I usually spend a time period of 5:30 am – 9:30 pm eating, I had to switch that to 12:30-8:30 pm.
This was much harder than I anticipated. Here is why.
Poor Grant
My daily routine begins by 5:30 am. And to be honest, I’m usually that greedy person waiting for Chipotle to open at 10:45 am. But for this wellness trend journey I had to push myself not to eat for SEVEN hours longer than usual. This did not go well the first couple of days. I was crabby and plain hangry. The good wife that I am, I snapped at Grant like it was his fault. Grant was terrified of me and ran to work earlier than usual. And I mean he was out the door by 6 with the smoothie I was ready to snatch from him with a vengeance. So HIS productivity and awareness was definitely higher due to my intermittent fasting.
Also, let’s talk about celery juice. It’s gross. Especially when you you rely on it more than you want to. However, it gets a bit better as you go since it gives you a little boost of energy.
Intermittent fasting did get easier for me. But I believe the reason why was I was super busy with TV segments and meetings that started early for the remaining days. So I was up, showered, and out the door before the hunger hit. Additionally, I would need to run a couple errands, plan my appearances and blog, and pick up Tilly from school mid-day. So I didn’t have time to eat until 12:30 or 1 anyhow. Grant still went to work earlier in case I snapped while getting ready…!
What intermittent fasting did do was push my meals, so since I ate lunch later than usual, dinner was later as well. And I ended up not snacking in between. Furthermore, I found that having a set time of the day when eating ended stopped me from having an extra glass of wine or second serving of dessert in the evening.
So intermittent fasting definitely impacted how much I ate. And it did make me more aware of what I was eating. If you’re taking a plunge like this you want it to count.
Intermittent Fasting Results
I am happy I tried Intermittent fasting. But I was even happier to be done with it. I do very well with my current routine, so it definitely is not the wellness plan for me. I did lose some weight, which wasn’t my motivating factor for trying it since I’m very slim. But if you’re eating less, eating healthier, and drinking more water than usual, losing weight would happen. Additionally, celery juice is said to be anti inflammatory so bloating is reduced. I am sure you have to do this for much longer than 5 days to see the results on your fat reduction and muscle increase as well as long term benefits to your health.
I believe that intermittent fasting would be easier if you are someone who sleeps later into the morning or turns in earlier at night. That would make the fasting period seem easier, in my opinion.
I did a 24 hour poll on Instagram. Out of over 300 people that answered if they had tried intermittent fasting or not, many reached out to me and shared their experiences. One of my followers sent me a link to this New Yorker article that I found interesting as well. And I was surprised to find that over 60% of the people who answered the poll had tried Intermittent Fasting. And actually all of the people who messaged me about the topic did have very positive results. I got a lot of encouragement to push through, that it gets much easier the longer you go, first few days are the hardest, and how energy levels skyrocketed after a week or so.
I also do need to add this disclaimer, Before starting any kind of wellness trend or diet, please consult your doctor. This post is my experience and opinion, not an endorsement.
I tried Intermittent Fasting and wrote this because a few readers of my blog asked me what I thought of the trend. I love when you guys do this! So keep the post requests and emails coming!
Thank you for reading about my test with Intermittent Fasting. Let me know if you have tried it, plan to, and what your thoughts are!
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