3 ways to do intermittent fasting
Let’s start with the beginners fasting protocol:
16:8 intermittent fasting.
In this protocol, you go 16 hours without eating a meal then eat your day’s meals in an 8 hour window. During a 16:8 intermittent fasting protocol your body will be depleted of its blood glucose (regularly available fast fuel) and your insulin levels will drop triggering the body to stored energy (fat). \
As you begin to play around with the 16:8 intermittent fasting you may notice that you feel lightheaded, hungry and/or unpleasant shifts in your mood. The time at which you notice these signs may be 4 hours post meal or may be 12, it depends on a lot of factors, some of which are in your control and we will get to next week.
Regardless, these are all typical signs that your body throws to let you know that the blood sugar stores have dropped below an acceptable level and it would like you to eat some sugar to replenish vs having to tap into your available energy stores (fat). Think of your body wanting to go into your fat stores like you wanting to dip into that savings or IRA account, you’d just rather save that for the future or an emergency.
As you practice the 16:8 intermittent fasting protocol more frequently, you will notice that you’re able to make the 16 hour fasting window without much or any difficulty. You look up at the clock at 11:00AM and you’re not even hungry. You break fast around 12:00 with a light meal then have dinner finishing eating around 8:00 pm
16:8 Sample Day
Breakfast
Water fast : Water or unsweetened tea/coffee.Fat fast: Bulletproof coffee (Coffee with 1 TBSP unsalted Kerry Gold Butter and 1 TSP MCT oil blended in,)
8 hour eating window
16 hours after your last calorie intake the night before. If you finished eating at 8 pm the previous day, your 8 hour eating window would be between 12 pm and 8 pm on this day.
Next we move to the advanced intermittent fasting protocol: 18:6 intermittent fasting. This fasting protocol extends the fasting period 2 more hours and you eat your meals for the day in whatever 6 hour window suits you, keeping in mind that it’s best to stop eating at least 2 hours before bedtime if not more.
18:6 Sample Day
Breakfast
Water fast : Water or unsweetened tea/coffee.Fat fast: Bulletproof coffee (Coffee with 1 TBSP unsalted Kerry Gold Butter and 1 TSP MCT oil blended in,)
6 hour eating window
18 hours after your last calorie intake the night before. If you finished eating at 8 pm the previous day, your 6 hour eating window would be between 2 pm and 8 pm on this day.
Next, The OMAD intermittent fasting protocol is something to try when 16 and 18 hour fasting is easy and you no longer feel ready to kill your co-workers for missing a meal. This OMAD stands for one meal a day and is a creative 23:1 fast hack that allows you to still sit down and have dinner with your family. It’s my favorite fasting method and my go-to on really busy days when I don’t have a lot of time for meals or days when I travel and don’t want to eat crappy airport food. Typically I will eat dinner with the family on Sunday night, then I will fast until dinner time on Monday night. The 24-hour fast really kicks up the benefits of intermittent fasting that we discussed last week because your body goes into the full process of breaking down fat molecules to transform them into energy rich ketones. Your heart rate and blood pressure drops, as does your triglyceride levels. This protocol is not meant to be done everyday! Typically, most people who follow the OMAD will do it 1-2 times per week.
OMAD Sample Day
Breakfast
Water fast : Water or unsweetened tea/coffee.Fat fast: Bulletproof coffee (Coffee with 1 TBSP unsalted Kerry Gold Butter and 1 TSP MCT oil blended in,)
1 hour eating window
23 hours after your last calorie intake the night before. If you finished eating at 8 pm the previous day, your 1 hour eating window would be between 7 pm and 8 pm on this day.
***A note on being metabolically flexible. It is highly recommended that you change not only the duration of your fasts but also the style of your fasting. Just like you change up your workouts to keep your body from getting used to any one method of training or overtrained, you should do the same for your intermittent feeding protocol. You want your body to have to be flexible with fuel sources to it is highly adaptable switching between My week typically looks like this:
Monday: OMAD with a protein fast (we’ll get more into this next week),
Tuesday: no fast
Wednesday: 16:8
Thursday: OMAD
Friday: 16:8
Saturday: no fast
Sunday: no fast
Next week we’ll discuss the fat fast and protein fast, as well as some hacks to make fasting protocols a bit easier. For this week give the 16:8 intermittent fasting protocol another try once or twice.
