My Take On Intermittent Fasting
Hi there, and welcome back to the blog. This June, as we come up to the one year mark on this website, I wanted to assure you that consistency is the number one priority for this blog going forward. I expect to have at least one new post out per week from this point on.
This week I wanted to discuss intermittent fasting and my take on nutritional advice on the whole. So let’s get into it.
To preface this blog post, I’d like to state that it is not on me to advise someone on how they should live their lives or how they should eat. This is simply my experience with something I have been experimenting with over the past few weeks and shouldn’t be taken as nutritional advice.
I admit that if I ever came across a blog post, podcast, or book that told me how I should be eating, I would discard that content quicker than you could say ‘intermittent fasting’ – which, by the way, is surprisingly hard for me – I feel like I should get a trophy any time I pronounce it right on the first go!
Personally, I never would have thought about intermittent fasting until I read a blog post by James Clear – a great first name, by the way! – so, I decided it was worth it to give it a go, as the benefits if it worked seemed great. I finally gave in to one of these nutritional trends I never thought I would touch.
I would wake up at my usual time in the morning and choose not to have any food until 1 p.m. barring a cup of tea straight away that morning. Apparently, anything under 50 calories is okay. Have to have tea in the morning; otherwise, it’s just a sin.
The first benefit I noticed is that not having to waste any time straight away on breakfast is a great way to be more productive in the morning and get what you need to be done. I got more work finished in the morning, thanks to cutting out on breakfast.
Usually, my last meal of the day would be between 6-7 p.m., and from then on, I would wait until one the next afternoon to eat again. It was hard for the first couple of nights to adjust, but I felt the hunger feeling at night was more of a psychological hurdle than actual hunger I’d feel before going to bed. I would usually wake up the following day, having completely forgotten about it.
Even a few months ago, taking nutritional advice off someone on a blog post or website, a podcast, or a book was such an out of character thing for me to do since most of it is trying to convince everyone that they either have a lactose intolerance or they have a wheat sensitivity or something like that. Of course, those things do exist, but trying to convince everyone that they have some kind of sensitivity to food with no prior health or gut issues is just wrong on many levels and is something I never bought into.
The reasoning behind switching to intermittent fasting has plenty to do with the pandemic and the weight I gained during the multiple lockdowns. Over the past few months, I have been feeling down and ashamed of the weight that I have gained since the first lockdown and thought intermittent fasting would be the best way of burning off some of that gained weight, along with plenty of exercise, of course.
As I mentioned above, the beginning of intermittent fasting is usually the worst part, and I have been coping reasonably well for the most part, barring those difficult first few days. It seems so sustainable to me, and I can’t ever see myself coming off it in the weeks and months to come. That being said, taking it one day at a time helps, and it is good to just focus on winning the day that is in front of me. I know I’ll reach my goals if I can do that consistently.
Writing a post such as this one is very unusual and a little uncomfortable for me, and I know it might upset some people and if you have continued reading this far and feel upset in any way, I apologise for that. However, as I mentioned above, it’s not on me to tell someone else how to live and eat. I am just recording my own experience over the last few weeks and sharing my story to help maybe one or two other people who feel the way I do.
With that said, I would like to thank you all for coming by to read this week’s post. I hope you enjoyed it. I really hope to see you all back next Wednesday for the next blog post, where we will be back to our regularly scheduled uploads.
Until next time.
Warmest regards,
James.
P.S: If you enjoyed this article, why not sign up to my Inner Circle, to receive monthly updates with the latest news, products, events and competitions. You won't hear from me any more than you need to, and that's a promise!