When I got really hungry, you could’ve pulled out your phone and shot a Snickers commercial on the spot.
Editor’s Note: An update has been included at the end of the post. This post was originally published in October 2018.
Intermittent fasting was the furthest thing from my mind.
The “hAnger” was very real. I became a short-tempered, upset child if I went too long without food.
Especially after I got serious about working out, eating ALL OF THE PROTEIN, and eating more frequently so my body would “use the protein more efficiently” (That’s a myth), my body got used to being fed frequently, and hAnger would come on very easily. Then, that was compounded by the misinformed protein intake fears.
So this January, when I hadn’t eaten breakfast and we had a late morning company meeting that dragged on and on past the intended end time, I started losing my ability (and patience) to think clearly and put up with whatever challenges we were working through that day. I was just not a happy camper, and I probably wasn’t as helpful in the meeting as I could’ve been.
We finally got out of the meeting and started to figure out lunch, but I barely had the patience for everyone to get on the same DAMN page.
I WAS TRYING TO EAT ALREADY, GOD DAMN IT.
On our way out the door, I wasn’t trying to hear much of anything until food started going into my mouth.
So Kairu, our marketing director, chose THAT MOMENT to suggest intermittent fasting.
I shot it down immediately: “Bro, I don’t care about that. I need to eat right now. And do you know how much I work out? I gotta eat, eat, eat dude. I lift heavy. I’m trying to build muscle.”
Kairu tried to defend intermittent fasting against those claims.
“Dude. Drop it. I’m not doing that shit. You see my hAnger right now. Intermittent fasting. Are you kidding me? I can’t do that.”
“It’d help with your stoicism,” Kairu said. “You should try it.”
Kairu then pointed out my reactiveness in that moment, as well as my overall reactiveness.
When we talk about reactiveness at FEARLESS, we’re talking about being emotionally ungrounded and easily shaken by situations, big and small. Snapping at people easily, overreacting to things, generally responding to stimuli with some flavor of nervousness or anxiety. It can get into a lot of subtleties, and we all get reactive at times, but with a lot of people, there’s a general vibe of reactiveness. Stiffness. Always on guard.
Kind of like a cat that’s easily startled. Or a forever nervous, shaky chihuahua.
I became a bit of a nervous, angry, defensive chihuahua pretty easily. Not just when I was hAngry, but in general whenever uncomfortable situations or even little micro-moments came my way.
Being reactive doesn’t help your relationships with your bosses or coworkers, it isn’t helpful with friends, it definitely isn’t helpful with women or relationships…it isn’t helpful with life. And it reflects a poor relationship to tension and stress, which often causes your cortisol to get triggered. Generally elevated cortisol over a lifetime? Not good.
Kairu and I went back and forth a bit more as we walked to lunch. He also pointed out how stubborn I was being about not even trying something, but I think what really got me was the stoicism thing.
That, and the fact that I was heavier than I’d ever been, and while still relatively slender with some good muscle, clothes hadn’t been fitting me as flatteringly for quite a while. The fat/weight loss potential of intermittent fasting definitely intrigued me.
So in the spirit of clothes fitting better…and the fact that I work for a personal development company…and have visions of coaching other humans in getting out of their comfort zones, I relented to get out of mine and give intermittent fasting a shot.
I jumped into a 16/8 intermittent fasting protocol, which means you fast (water, black coffee, other zero calorie drinks are fine) for 16 hours and have an 8-hour “eating window” before you start fasting again.
And guess what? With upping my previously non-existent water intake to help with hunger pangs, it wasn’t that hard at all!
I was actually surprised by how easy it was for this hAngry monster.
At first, I just did the 16 hours, skipping breakfast, and eating pretty freely between around noon to around 8 PM. Then, Kairu pointed out to me a theory that you really only hit ketosis (burning fat when your body’s out of glucose from food) at 16 hours and that I should aim for 18-20 hour fasts since 16 had been so easy.
And it was pointed out to me by Brian that one of the ideas is to limit the number of insulin responses you get (which happen each time you eat much of any calories – especially carbs/sugar – depending on which sources/data you believe…do your own research), so a bunch of meals or snacking theoretically wasn’t ideal. More on that later, but I moved to 18-hour fasts and began limiting myself to eating all my food in two sittings most days.
I remember my mom when I was younger occasionally telling me to “Drink some water!” when I was hungry and food wasn’t close by.
That annoyed the hell out of me.
Water?! I was hungry, not thirsty! I think I even asked her once how that would possibly help, and her response was an unsatisfying “It just does!”
Stubbornly, I never tried it before I took up intermittent fasting.
So 18-hours was a little harder, but water really did kill most of the hunger pangs instantly.
I do have to admit that one of the major motivators to start – weight loss – is a dubious claim without paying attention to how many total calories you down. Some intermittent fasting articles I looked at early on indeed claimed that I didn’t need to worry about calorie tracking.
Um, no. For someone who had never paid attention to calories (or even weight) in his life, just skipping breakfast and then eating two meals until I was full was not going to work for weight loss.
It is still a calories consumed, calories burned game. Skipping a meal only helps if your other two meals don’t make up the difference. You’ve got to be at a caloric deficit to lose weight, bottom line.
So after I got back from a gluttonous Mardi Gras trip to New Orleans in February, I downloaded the MyFitnessPal app, started tracking my weight, and started tracking calories. And surprise, surprise, tracking is when I started getting clear weight/fat loss results.
Fast forward to October, and I love intermittent fasting now! It’s just part of my life and I’d be surprised if that changed any time soon. Here are 9 reasons why:
1. What got and keeps me hooked on intermittent fasting – the biggest thing – is that my meals are more flexible and enjoyable.
I like nice, big meals. Who doesn’t?
I’m eating all my calories in two meals instead of trying to divide those calories between three meals. I do try to hit a high protein number most days and I attempt to keep my carbs on the lower end and my eating healthy, but if I really want a big Jamaican rice-centric plate from Wi Jammin in LA or breaded, boneless “”wings”” from Buffalo Wild Wings, I can make it work and still stay at a calorie deficit for the day.
I tried switching to a one meal per day intermittent fasting schedule, but that didn’t usually work well for me trying to be energetic, feeling good, and productive right after lunch. Some people have no problem with doing one meal/day, though.
And if I’m going to weekend brunch and I want the ridiculous french toast and a fat-kid dessert, that’s just my only meal for the day.
I can eat relatively healthy (the healthiest I’ve ever eaten), hit my protein goals, enjoy big meals and cheating, and lose weight.
I have my fluctuations, stumbles, and vacation/work trips where I go completely off the rails because life is short and sugar and carbs are my favorite drugs, but I’ve still gone down from 145 lbs last December to ~120-125, while adding a lot of muscle. Considering it’s the most muscle I’ve ever had, I’m probably leaner fat-wise than I was in high school.
To be transparent, I have always seemed to have a great metabolism, and I’ve been working out like a madman this year. …But I’m also dealing with a physical disability, so keep your excuses in check, bro/brosette.
2. I can stick to it.
The best diet is one you can stick to. Inability to maintain a diet is the top reason diets fail, and this one isn’t wearing on me at all. I’m not perfect (and it may actually be healthy to give your body breaks from intermittent fasting, anyway), but consistency has been incredibly easy for me because of the meal flexibility.
3. Fasted Workouts
Working out fasted was another fear of mine. “Is that even healthy?!” “How can I build muscle if I work out fasted?! Won’t that even BREAK DOWN my muscles?!!”
But nope! Other than maybe two or three workouts in time-crunched situations, I’ve been working out fasted (bare minimum 6-9 hours since eating) since I started intermittent fasting in January. And mostly it’s more like 14-18+ hours into the fast…or 37 hours. More on the longer fasts later, but I haven’t had any noticeable degradation in workout performance, and the gains have come faster than ever.
There’s some good scientific evidence out there that working out fasted can significantly boost HGH production, which seems to go along with my experience. But I haven’t been scientific about it at all, and there’s also conflicting research you can find. But I do know my results haven’t seemed hampered by it.
There’s also some evidence about increased fat burning during fasted workouts, but I can’t say either way there.
4. No time to eat? No problem.
Eating less frequently saves time, especially when one of my meals is an (extra large, nutrient-rich) protein shake. So that’s nice.
If I’m in a time crunch and can’t eat easily, or can’t eat a meal that’s worth the calories/nutrition to me (ie: airplane food), not eating for quite a while usually isn’t a big deal for me as long as I have water.
Now I just have to remind myself that not everyone around me feels that way, and how I used to feel when I had to wait too long for food.
5. I’ve drunk more water this year than the last 3 combined. (At least.)
As I said before, I spent the first 31 years of my life not drinking anywhere near enough water. Now drinking lots of water is a necessity to manage my little “hunger” pangs…many of which are probably actually the body’s misinterpreted cries for hydration.
So I’m drinking more water than ever in my life, which is healthy all by itself. And it also seems to be the remedy for my chronically stuffy nose. When I’m drinking enough water, I can breathe easier than I can remember. (Another “duh” in hindsight.)
6. Fasting may fight disease…in BIG ways.
Speaking of being healthy, my chronic, 14-15 year esophageal food allergy (Eosinophilic esophagitis or EoE) that makes it hard to swallow seems to have seriously subsided. Now, I have been eating less wheat (one of my allergins that seems to be one of the worst triggers) and eating healthier in general, so who knows. But I’d been eating much healthier for quite a while before I began intermittent fasting, and it was clearly after January that I started realizing that my throat was changing A LOT.
And that, too, seems to fall in line with a lot of research coming out about the health and specific immune system benefits (EoE is an immune response-related “disease”) of intermittent fasting.
USC has started testing 72-hour fasts on cancer patients undergoing chemo, and found some pretty damn cool and optimistic results that suggest prolonged fasts could reduce your cancer risk and even give you a brand spanking new immune system.
Fasting, especially in periods of ~24+ hours may also trigger autophagy. The idea in a tiny nutshell is that food digestion takes a ton of energy, and when we give our digestive system a nice long break, the body can spend more energy doing cellular maintenance and recycling, possibly even of cells that are more likely to become cancerous or disease-prone.
I’m not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, it’s been a while since I’ve read up on a lot of this, there’s lots of cherry-picking out there, and you should do your own research. One of the resources I loved was Eat Stop Eat* by Brad Pilon. I’m not even following Pilon’s recommended intermittent fasting format, but he actually read a ton of research and data (vs just reading the reports on research) and I learned a ton about the likely health benefits listening to his book as I sat in LA traffic.
*FEARLESS will receive, like, a few dimes if you buy through that link.
Long story short, we’re probably not meant to be in a “fed” state nearly as often as we’ve gotten used to in today’s society and the importance of “breakfast” is a load of misinterpreted data and false-causation.
There could be some cherry-picking in Eat Stop Eat too, but he presents a lot of convincing evidence of the health benefits.
Another big one is a reduction in chronic inflammation, and an increase in insulin sensitivity. Though it should be noted that bigger meals probably raise insulin levels for longer periods than smaller, more frequent meals, so some parts of that argument may not be true.
But any chance I could be lowering my cancer and other health risks and increasing my longevity while enjoying my meals more? Sign me up!
7. 36-hour fasts: Big calorie deficit, and probably healthy
I worked my way up to occasional 24-hour fasts…the first one may have even been by accident on a busy day. I definitely had a couple extend to 27 or 28 hours by accident.
After I’d done five or six 24-hour fasts and it wasn’t very challenging at all any more, I decided to go for 36 hours: Completely skipping a full day’s calories.
I know that might sound extreme to someone who hasn’t done any intermittent fasting, but it’s really not. Especially when you build up to it.
The first one was slightly challenging, but I do mean slightly. Slightly distracting or annoying at times while I worked, but much, much easier than I’d expected. (I also scheduled it so I didn’t even hit 24 hours until after the end of my work day, to ensure it wasn’t too hard to be productive.)
I wasn’t even that hungry when I broke the fast. The occasional hunger pangs just vanish almost entirely for me not too long after the 24-hour mark.
More on these longer fasts in a future post.
8. Challenging myself
As Brian always says, growth happens through challenge and tension.
I love physically challenging myself at the gym, and now I love challenging myself with intermittent fasting. It’s really cool and empowering going from being physically and especially emotionally overpowered by hunger and food, to the point where going without calories for a day and a half isn’t even a big deal.
It’s similar to the rush I get from a great, hard workout, lifting really heavy shit, or doing something new with my left arm or leg that I couldn’t (or didn’t think I could) do before.
(via GIPHY)
It’s just a great feeling of emotional strength and energy, and I sometimes I even feel stronger physically from it, too.
9. The Stoicism and Grounding
With feeling great emotionally and physically from challenging myself, and overcoming that hAnger, more stoicism and grounding comes naturally. More of that “I can handle it” feeling in general.
I’m not going to bs you and tell you I’m completely grounded from intermittent fasting. My reactiveness is still something I have a lot of room to improve on, but it does seem to have come down a little in general, I feel a little more in control and solid, rooted, grounded, and I’ve also gotten a little feedback here and there from our coaches that seems to reflect that.
Enabling: An Important Caveat
Like I said earlier, sugar is like crack for me. Carbs too, but sugar, oh sugar. I am a fat kid at heart FOR SURE.
I’m eating healthier than I have since I was on breast milk. But sugar is my kryptonite…and I wouldn’t even want to give it up if it was easy. I love my addiction!
Mostly, I limit eating crap to a cheat day a week, but the ease with which I can eat very little – or nothing – for a day now does let me “get away with” and even sometimes encourage me to go into full “fuck it” mode like…an addict. Especially when I’m traveling anywhere with great food for days or a week at a time.
Because yeah, I do now think about long-term health on the daily, but let’s be real: How I look and the direction of the bathroom scale is a much easier short-term motivator than the abstract future of my health.
And just making up for gluttony through intermittent fasting probably isn’t in line with the potential health benefits I claim I’m after.
So I gotta watch that. But again, life is also short, so it’s all about balance.
“Everything in moderation, including moderation.” – Someone
Once a cartoon character when I was hungry, intermittent fasting has been something I’ve almost effortlessly stuck to 10 months in thanks to the meal flexibility it provides, the time and urgency of eating it frees me from, its likely health benefits, and in general the ways I’ve shown myself I can have more power over my impulses than I used to believe.
So if you think you “can’t do that,” ask yourself if that’s real…or if it’s just another limiting belief.
February 2021 Update: I transitioned away from intermittent fasting late summer/early fall of 2019. Why would I do that after everything I wrote back in 2018?
Tweaking. Dialing in the gains. (Or attempting to, at least.) But if you’re not crazy obsessed with your gains like me, don’t even think about any of what follows as important.
As my weight training progressed, so did my aspirations. I started to realize that I was building a pretty damn cool body – something, as I’ve written about before, I never thought was possible with my disability.
At the same time, in a weird, on-the-other-hand kind of way, I started to understand and learn about how dialed in things get for models on magazine covers…but on the other hand, again, I was making so much progress, seeing it myself, and getting a lot of cool feedback from strangers and friends alike.
How far could I take it?!
And as I did more and more reading and YouTube-video-watching of trusted sources (trusted sources being the key – there’s SO MUCH convincing pseudoscience baloney out there), I decided that there were probably some minor muscle-building and cutting benefits to having a more steady stream of protein and carb intake vs intermittent fasting.
Let me be clear: I said minor benefits. And it’s not even for sure because there is some competing scientific data out there and so much we still don’t know about the human body and the great variations in the old saying “every body is different.”
But my aspirations include being at around 8-10% body fat when I’m at my leanest. (Though I doubt I’ll ever want to stay that low for long because it’s not super healthy and doesn’t lend itself to feeling your best, either.) That’s hard at any size, but especially at 5’7″ with a small left side. The lighter you are, the even lighter you are at a very low body fat percentage=low maintenance calories=less calories (and nutrients) + less wiggle room.
So along with doing bulk/cut cycles to maximize my muscle mass, overall body weight, and metabolism when I’m at a low body fat percentage, I’m now just trying to maximize my gains with a steadier protein and nutrient intake.
But I explain all that to say that I admittedly have no hard evidence or data to be sure it makes a difference, and, again, if you’re not absolutely obsessed like me, it’s nothing to even think about.
I may go back to intermittent fasting at some point (especially occasional longer ones for health), I’m really glad I have all that experience with it and a better understanding of my body and hunger from it, and I do really miss how good it made me with drinking water. That’s something I still am struggling to fix without the fasting “hunger” pangs keeping me in check.
And those huge meals….ok, well, I still have those sometimes 😉
Related:
Eat Stop Eat by Brad Pilon
How You Eat Could Boost Your Confidence Level…or Hamper It
How Being Proactive Makes You More Attractive
The 8 Qualities Of A Confident and Masculine Man: Grounding
Is Personal Development a Scam? A Disabled Person’s Story
What Bodybuilding with A Disability Has – And Hasn’t – Done For Me
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