Intermittent Fasting: My Experience

Intermittent fasting is a technique that I have found to be the most effective technique to reduce my weight. However, "fasting" is a loaded word that means a lot to different people. Here's how I do it and some additional thoughts about this.


When I do fasting, I structure my day around when I work out. It seems to be effective to still try to have some food once per day rather than trying a longer fast. I've done 2-day fasts but I end up overly hungry when I start eating at the end. A 1-day fast seems more manageable so far. My chief goal is to drop excess weight. My body maintains a weight whether I'm eating healthy food or poor quality food, or whether I'm exercising a lot or a little. I have found fasting is one way to move my set point. So, it's a short term intervention after which I go to more maintenance-level food intake.

When I talk about fasting, I'm typically thinking of "intermittent fasting" which has become more popular in the last 15 years. The idea here is that you go without food intake over a period of 12 or more hours, giving your digestive system and energy storage system a rest from its typical operation, and then have some food so that you do maintain a healthy nutritional intake. I find this is one way to reduce my overall caloric intake in a day, though, in a way that I can rebound without overeating, and thereby move my set point.

When I was diagnosed with cancer in late 2013, I weighed 235 lbs (107 kg), reasonable for a tall person such as myself. After I completed surgery and chemotherapy a few months later in 2014, I weighed in at about 300 lbs (136 kg). Getting that weight back off came in fits and starts, mostly during focused periods, a month here and there, where I was able to do fasting a few days a week on a consistent basis. I currently weigh about 250 lbs (114 kg) as of this writing in February 2017; I still need to drop some more weight, but due to weightlifting consistently I'm also stronger than I was in 2013. I did hit 235 lbs briefly in 2016 and I must say it was immensely gratifying to be able to wear all the clothes that I had to put into storage when I started cancer treatment.

Prerequisites

The real limiting factor to doing this weight loss was sleep and stress management. If these are not going well, I find it very challenging to stick with a nutritional plan that involves fasting. If you should attempt this, you need to be sleeping well on a consistent basis, and you need to have your stress pretty well managed. No one will ever have perfect management of either of these, but they shouldn't be dominant problems in your life. Please refer to other parts of this site for my comments on how to do manage sleep and sources of stress.

A Typical Day of Fasting

A typical day of fasting is oriented around the time of day when I might do my highest-intensity exercise, so that I'm eating most of my food intake in the few hours after exercising. Here's one schedule that seems to work well:

1. Wake up, have a cup of coffee with cream and sugar. Go to work.
2. Be as productive as possible in the morning, maybe have at most one more cup (12 oz. or less) of coffee.
3. At the end of the work day, go do some weightlifting for an hour. 
4. Maybe grab a snack immediately after weightlifting, then go home and have a dinner.
5. If I'm trying to drop my weight, dinner should be of a modest size. I focus on trying to have some vegetables as the top priority, then some protein and a little fat, then some carbs maybe. What this looks like in practice might be a salad bowl of cucumber-tomato salad with some dressing, some spinach or other vegetables on my dinner plate, some meat on my dinner plate in a moderate portion, and then maybe some carbs if I'm really craving them. If I have a couple sugary/starchy snacks after working out, that seems to be enough for me without having more carbs at dinner. 
6. Try to wrap up eating by 8 pm, then settle down and wind down for bed, and finally head to sleep.

Comments

Here are some other comments that I've noticed during this experience:

• I find that I am able to do this a few days a week. It works nicely with a high demand work schedule. I can do fasting during my work week and then let the weekend involve eating in more social and relaxing contexts. 
• I'm trying to reduce my coffee intake, but I haven't been able to give it up completely yet and I do like the comfort of a cup of coffee in the morning. Having this lets me be more disciplined about the rest of my day.
• I find that I do need to drink a lot of water on days when I'm fasting. You should pay attention to this as well.
• Some days, at the end of the day, I also have salt cravings and may wind up having 1/4 tsp of cajun seasoning mix or something similar. I've heard from others that this is not unusual and there may be some biochemical basis for this.
• If I have a day where I do not have exercise planned, I find I might be able to lighter on the evening meal. It's something to play around with to see what works for you.
• On days when I fast, I really enjoy having the extra time to work productively rather than dealing with food preparation. On the other hand, I think I appreciate food more and the flavors of food on days when I am not fasting.

If you have questions about details of this experience that you would like me to clarify, please feel free to email me at j at sleepfoodexercise.com