Lessons learned after 10 months of Fasting (and losing 28 pounds)
For the first time in my life, I achieved my ideal body composition and was able to sustain it. This blog post intends to be a practical guide to implement this method
All my life I’ve thought I had a very slow metabolism when compared to other individuals. I saw my friends eating without restrictions and not gaining fat or weight. Since 18, I averaged 10 kg above my ideal weight even when training consistently. Now I’m 43 and I ask myself if there is a sustainable method I could implement to keep a healthy body fat ratio consistently over time.
The summer of 2020, my wife and I were invited on a vacation, and I saw a good friend whom I haven’t seen for the last year. He was in great shape and I was impressed with the change in his body after losing 15 kg. He told me he was just skipping dinner and eating a very nutritious breakfast and lunch. That’s it. He didn’t even give this method a name, but this made me curious.
When I went back home, I started doing some research on Youtube and Google. The method was called Intermittent Fasting and two things made me even more curious and interested:
- I found many longevity experts talking about it’s benefits
- I found well known doctors and nutritionists writing about it
- I even found that the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to the scientist who discovered the mechanism of Autophagy (cells eating own cells), which rejuvenates the human body.
The results after 10 months
After 10 months of implementing this new habit, I’ve experimented improvements in my body weight, reduced food anxiety and a general feeling of “lightness”.
Body fat is a concept that has a long history and is well measured for the different body types. I read The happy body and understood that for my body type and measurements, I had a 34% body fat compositionHigh). After the 8 months of Fasting and Training, I now have a 13.5% body fat composition.
- I started tracking my weight, skin fold measurements, body ratio % and muscle ratio % in this Google Sheet which anyone can clone. To my surprise, while Fasting I could gain muscle while losing fat, which is one of the main myths around this practice.
- I track my weight with a Bluetooth scale I purchased from Amazon, and integrated it into Apple Health.
- To track my Fasting windows, I used the Zero App. It’s easy to track this habit even with the Free version, it includes challenges with other users and has good content from doctors and trainers.
- The weight loss reinforced the loop: as I see the “Habit Metric” improving, I want to keep the habit up and I feel good about myself. Also, this success encourages me to add new habits to the system.
Diets vs Fasting
Without a doubt, the most impactful concept that changed my mindset when I implemented the Fasting method was that I understood the difference between working on a habit system (sustainable and long term habit) vs doing a goal oriented effort (non-sustainable and short term effort).
After reading The complete guide to Fasting and Atomic Habits, I identified two problems with diets:
- Diets feel like a hard effort to sustain while we are doing them, and the perception in our mind is that we’ll end the effort “once the Diet is over”. This, to me, is the definition of a short term solution to a problem, not a sustainable long-term method. What happens when the 2 week Diet period is over? We end with a slower metabolism and a deep craving for Food that was not allowed during the Diet.
- Diets to lose weight are meant to force a “Caloric deficit” in the body (burn more energy than the energy produced from Food intake). After adapting to this caloric deficit, the body interprets it as a lack of food in the environment, slowing its metabolism to preserve the calories as your body enters so-called starvation mode. This has been demonstrated dramatically in a study of people who lost large amounts of weight while participating in “The Biggest Loser,” a reality show on TV.
On the other hand, when Fasting occurs the body reacts to a long non-eating window which can boost metabolism up to 14% due to the rise in the hormone norepinephrine, which promotes fat burning. The trick is to concentrate on the habit, think of it as a way of living and forget the results.
As James Clear explains in this post, if you have a good system in place, the results will just be a consequence. For me, Fasting is not a temporary thing, it’s a life habit.
The eating window
- At first, when I ended the 16 hour Fasting Window and starting the 8 hour eating window, it felt like a “Feast had begun”. This was of course invented by my mind, it was not a body thing.
- After eight consistent months, this feeling has disappeared, my eating window starts very gradually and I don’t feel like I have to overcompensate for the long Fasting window with additional calories.
- Hunger is, in the modern life, mostly created by the mind. An example: when I started trying longer Fasting windows (> 20 hours), the last hour I felt very anxious looking at the Zero App timer waiting for it to go to zero. But two months before trying the 20 hour windows I had tried a 72 hour Fasting and could finish it successfully. Isn’t it strange that I could prove to myself I could do a 72 hour Fasting and I still got very anxious when there was just 1 hour left to finish a 20 hour Fasting?
Benefits of Fasting
- Simplicity: it’s much easier to eat during a small window of time than to eat all day long. What should I eat? Where should I eat? What should up?
- Losing Weight: a proven method to accelerate metabolism and force the body to extract energy from stored fat without losing muscle.
- Decreasing insulin levels: Intermittent fasting’s effect on insulin sensitivity has been a hot topic in recent years. In a 2018 study, researchers found a link between therapeutic fasting and reversing insulin resistance, permitting patients to wean off insulin therapy without altering their blood sugar levels. This link between insulin and fasting has also helped patients shed significant amounts of body weight and reduced their waist circumference.
- Reduce expenses: When you cut your diet down to one or two meals per day, your food costs drop accordingly. It’s impossible to say exactly how much you stand to save, because it depends on how often you dine out, what you buy at the grocery store and so on. But even if your total food expenses drop by just 25%, that’s a huge difference. Suppose you typically spend, say, $100 per week on food. If you subtract the cost of seven meals per week, that might realistically lower your expense to $70. Over the course of one month, you’d save $120. Over one year, $1,440. That’s a vacation. A down payment on a new car.
- Lowering your impact on the planet: Imagine if entire populations switched to two meals a day from three. We could get by on fewer crops and animals, which in turn would reduce overall water consumption. Maybe that’s a bit of pie-in-the-sky thinking, but there’s truth to it.
- Increasing the Human Growth Hormone (HGH): Studies show that fasting leads to a major increase in HGH levels. One study found that three days into a fast, HGH levels increased by over 300%. After one week of fasting, they had increased by a massive 1,250%. Other studies have found similar effects, with double or triple HGH levels after just two to three days Fasting (to learn more read Study 1, Study 2 ,Study 3).
- Gain back 1 hour per day: When you skip a meal, you are gaining extra time to read, train, watch a movie or whatever activity makes you feel well.
- Anxiety relief: Organizing the eating schedule through fasting, will also maintain the hormone cortisol associated with the body’s response to stress. Fasting can stabilize the hormone cortisol produced by the adrenal glands. To put in simpler words, it can reduce stress levels.
- A feeling of “lightness”: Fasting gives you a feeling of physical “lightness,” which provides a boost of energy. Another reason for this energy-surge is because, in a normal diet, our body generally converts foods through carbs and sugars. But fasting retrains our body to convert energy from fats, thus boosting our natural energy levels.
Fasting is not a magic pill, it’s just another tool
At first, I hoped Intermittent Fasting alone would be a secret weapon for health and fat loss. It seemed like all of the experts were saying that if I changed what time I ate, then I would lose fat and gain muscle easily. That sounded good to me.
Now I think Intermittent Fasting is just another tool in your toolbox. Just as eating a healthy diet of real, whole foods is another tool. And exercising regularly is another tool. And meditating or doing yoga to reduce stress is another tool. And sleeping at least 8 hours per night is another tool.
Social life and Fasting
- Adjust your Eating window to your family dynamic: you will face resistance from those around you if your eating window is very different from theirs. In my case, I make sure I eat around 2 pm which is the time my kids and wife are at home and we can share some family time.
- What to do if I skip dinner and have asocial events at night? This one was challenging to me but I was able to sort it out. If I have a special event at night, I’ll just skip the next breakfast and do a 16 hour window Fast. For example, if I end a dinner in a restaurant at 11pm, I’ll shift the Fasting window (remember I usually skip dinners) and start eating at 3 pm.
- What to do when you travel for business? Intermittent fasting is an excellent travel strategy, because Airports and Airplanes usually offer very low quality food. The Fasting ability you acquire allows you to just skip 1 or two meals and pick a good place once you land.
- What to do when you travel with family? This one is the most challenging for me, because a family vacation involves at least three meals a day and to be the only person Fasting just ruins the whole social experience of gathering to have a meal. What I do in this case, is prioritize the family social experience and not the Fasting routine. If I can fast 16–8 for a couple of days during the vacation, great. If not, I’ll resume when I get back home.
Understand if you can do Fasting
- I’m not a doctor, I don’t know if Fasting is for you
- You should always consult with a doctor before making changes to your diet or eating behaviors.
- From my research, you should avoid intermittent fasting if you have higher caloric needs: individuals who are underweight, struggling with weight gain, under 18 years of age, pregnant or breastfeeding should not attempt an intermittent fasting diet, as they need sufficient calories on a daily basis for proper development. For more info follow this link
Tips in case you want to try it
- Don’t start with a long Fasting interval (more than 16 hours). Start with a 14 Fasting window, learn, track yourself, see how the body responds. If you feel confident, extend it to 16 hours and keep going as it gets easier.
- I train in the late afternoon (6:30 pm) because my mornings are very busy with the kids and many calls, and also because I discovered that workouts make hunger disappear completely. I don’t know, but I use this effect of training to my advantage: I train just when I have the highest risk of going through a “hunger tsunami”
- Remove visual cues: I found out that if I’m around the kitchen at 8pm, smelling delicious food or seeing my kids or wife eating, I’ll have a very hard time resisting to eat. The trick for me is simple: I just go to my room to read, play the bass or do some work for that hour.
- The first seven days are tricky: as with any new habit, the first days are the most difficult to go through. I felt the hunger signals at 8pm, not because I was hungry but because my mind was used to having dinner. After day seven this hunger signal disappeared completely.
Videos that helped me
During my research, I discovered Mark Sisson. He is a 68 year old and is in an amazing shape as you can see in the video below. Mark inspired me and I was very curious to learn what he’s been doing to be in such a good shape at his age.
Mark is also a very successful entrepreneur and has been writing about nutrition and training in his blog Mark’s Daily Apple for many years.
Another great source of scientific information was Dr. David Sinclair, a specialist in Longevity and the author of the book Lifespan.
David explains in the following video, the science begin Fasting and its effects, and the experiments he is conducting with his team in his Lab to extend Life of humans.
Another Doctor I discovered while using the Zero App is Dr. Peter Attia. He presents lots of videos inside the App and explains how to implement Fasting and talks about Nutrition and Training. In this short video he explains the Benefits of Fasting with Joe Rogan:
Books that helped me
- The complete guide to Fasting (understand the science behind Fasting, Benefits, read about success stories and patterns to implement it)
- The happy body (understand how to measure fat and muscle, how to keep the body flexible and how to keep the body young until a late stage in life)
This article is part of a series
This is part of a series of articles about building a “Continuous Improvement System”: a dedication to making small changes and improvements every day, with the expectation that those small improvements will add up to something significant.
