Experimenting with Intermittent Fasting

By | 4th February 2012

I’ve dabbled with intermittent fasting in the past, but decided to have a go at doing a full 24-hour fast to kickstart myself back into a lower-carb mode.

I am in the middle of reading Free The Animal: Lose Weight & Fat With The Paleo Diet and it kicked me back into the idea of fasting. There are some interesting potential benefits of fasting, such as increased autophagy and other immune improvements. As usual, Mark has done a good coverage of the subject.

Anyway, I ate at around 2pm on friday, and that was it, except for some tea and a cup of coffee on saturday morning. I was feeling pretty hungry around lunchtime on saturday but spent 45 minutes doing some low intensity peddling on the exercise bike (freezing cold outside, with snow forecast) and the pangs faded.

At 3ish, I decided that it was time to eat, and cooked up a huge 5-egg omelette with bacon, sausage, peppers, onion, mushroom, tomato, kale and spinach. It was full of colours and delicious, and satiating but I had some chocolate and fruit with lots of thick cream to finish off.

Later, I felt a bit peckish and had a couple of smoked sausages and some cider. I’ve largely avoided carbs, to encourage the idea that fat is the thing to burn. I’ll eat normally tomorrow, and consider another fasted day next week.

There’s plenty of information about how to build up to fasting. My understanding is that you will gain the most benefits (and find it easier) if you have already adjusted to a higher fat/lower carb diet.

One thought on “Experimenting with Intermittent Fasting

  1. al

    I suggest you continue with it – it really works.

    You’ll get to the point with intermittent fasting where you won’t want to eat outside of the allowed hours.
    Results generally show after a month or two. Enjoy.

    Reply

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