Over the last 30 years of my adult life, on more than one occasion I have found that I have let my health slip and my weight go up. Every single time I had success with burning off the pounds, it was in co-ordination with what I call Night Fasting.
This system is where I eat a healthy, nutritious meal between 8am and 10am and another between 3pm and 4pm. Each of these meals consists of what I can fit in a bowl size of my choosing. I currently use a standard soup bowl. My meals now are vegan, packed with alkaline forming nutrients and are delicious. Yours don’t have to be in order to benefit from this eating schedule.
It turns out, my idea wasn’t so original. Medical researchers have been on top of this for decades. They call it intermittent fasting, or simply IF. The specific schedule I have is known as the 16/8 or Leangains Protocol. It basically states that you feed over a period of eight hours and fast for 16.
Not Eating For 16 Hours Seems Excessive!
It sounds horrible but it’s not. After all, a good portion of those 16 hours are spent sleeping. And, oh boy, will your sleep ever improve. So, depending on your life schedule, you can shift your times around in whatever way that suits you. However, it is best to have a 3-5 hour gap between your last food intake and the time you go to sleep.
Why no eating before bed? This time allows for you to fully digest your last meal. This, in turn, allows for your inner ‘maintenance department’ to really go to town repairing cells and removing damaged proteins. This works in a major way to eliminate the morning fogginess or ‘brain cloud’.
As for hunger, once you break through your first day or two, your hunger surprisingly disappears or is at least subdued. Drink a lot of water. Coffee and tea are also acceptable drinks outside of your eight hour period. Stay away from sugar, dairy and anything made of wheat.
Always go into a diet or ‘lifestyle shift’ with a vision and goals. If you can truly, in your mind, see and feel the improvements that are coming your way, this will get you through.
What Are The Benefits To Intermittent Fasting?
First off, don’t take my word for it. A simple search of the benefits of IF will lead you to articles and studies done by very reputable institutions around the world. It’s simply a fact that eating in this manner is incredibly beneficial to human health.
Here’s a major list of benefits:
- Makes stored fast more accessible for use as fuel.
- Allows cells to be repaired.
- Allows for autophagy – the digestion and removal of old and damaged proteins built up inside cells.
- Human growth hormone (HGH) can jump by 500% which leads to fat loss and, of course, muscle gain.
- Improves insulin sensitivity which, again, leads to more body fat being used as fuel (aka burning the fat off).
- Repairs DNA and helps with longevity and immunity against disease.
- Loss of belly fat which is responsible for a ton of diseases. People in studies, even if they didn’t lose significant weight, almost always lost inches off their waistline.
- Lowers blood sugar levels.
- Reduces inflammation.
- Decreases risk of heart disease.
- May prevent cancer.
- Increases BDNF, a brain hormone.
- Could protect against Alzheimers.
- Can extend lifespan.
What do you think? Some items you might be interested in?!
Plan Your Meals
What I eat is what I eat. Many people have different tastes. But, to give you a idea, here’s how I go about ensuring I always have food on hand for my meals. If you wing it and suddenly have to prepare from scratch when it’s time to eat, it could lead to failure.
I base my meals on lentils and beans. These are easy to prepare in batches that you can draw from for several days. Make it taste good! Use seasonings – they’re generally 0 calorie and good for you.
I then either reheat as is or fry up fresh vegetables in extra virgin olive oil and mix in the lentils or beans. Don’t skimp on the olive oil – it’s great for you!
I also batch make soup using the Vitamix (blender on steroids). However, I don’t use the soup function with this great tool. Instead, I just blend a bunch of veggies (broccoli, onion, garlic, carrots, or whatever other healthy vegetables are around at the time.
I then take the mixture and put in a pot over the stove, add water and a cup of lentils. I bring it to a boil then let basically cover it, turn off the stove and let it cook as it cools down. Oh, and I season the crap out of it with turmeric, curry powder and, well, whatever fancies me that day.
Always think ahead. Make sure you’ve got fuel on hand to put in our tank or you’ll be heading down the road to disaster…