My Journey With Weight Loss – Intermittent Fasting

Yesterday I attended a great training session for volunteers on self care. The training was to make sure that as volunteers we are all taking care of ourselves first. They provided the 7 pillars of self care and I thought 2 1/2 years ago when I started this journey I could honestly say I was only ok in 2 of the pillars. About a year ago it might have moved up to 3. However, I realized yesterday all 7 were covered and I have made myself a priority. It was a pretty good feeling knowing that is what I have accomplished.

Last fall I read The Diabetes Code written by nephrologist Dr. Jason Fung. Now I have to say his analogies of diabetes and how the body works with insulin resistance was very interesting. Dr. Fung had a lot to say that I didn’t agree with. For example, he feels portion control doesn’t matter. As I have mentioned before I believe it does ultimately matter because if you are taking in more calories than you are putting out each day then you can gain weight. Besides, I found with the more weight that I lost the amounts I needed to eat to feel satisfied just got smaller. Don’t get me wrong, occasionally I have that one last thing at a meal that pushes me beyond just not longer being hungry but it is rare and I usually regret that whole I overate feeling. Another of his claims is that exercise is not important to weight loss and controlling diabetes. This one I really disagree with. How can you maintain a healthy body without making that body healthy? I believe that a strong, healthy body works more efficiently and helps with weight loss.

Where I really struggled was his support of intermittent fasting. We’re not talking just no snacking between meals (though I did take that piece of advice and it did a lot to move me along), he advocates for 24, 36 or 48 hours of fasting (by the way, I don’t think 48 hours is by any means ‘intermittent’). Basically you do this several times a week or if you can’t sustain this then he said at minimum do 12 hours of fasting a day. There are a lot of opponents to intermittent fasting for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it can be unsustainable. The thought of wandering around starving several days a week tell me that it would not work for me (nor my family as I can’t imagine how cranky I would be). Secondly, there are studies that showed people who did intermittent fasting regularly often gained weight. This was often caused by overeating during the window of allowable eating. Therefore, the lack of calories during fasting were more than offset by the amount of eating done during the non-fast periods.

While I don’t fast, I also only eat during a certain window each day, 5:30am-6:30pm. I eat my meals at regular times whenever possible and keep the intervals between meals at a fairly consistent amount of time. I don’t snack in the evenings nor take in any additional calories (hence the avoidance of wine as many days as possible) and have even gotten into the habit of only having clear herbal tea after dinner. Does it work? For me I think it is the combination of all of the changes I have made to my diet and exercise. While I don’t consider myself to be dieting, I know doing things like removing sugar and lowering both sodium and carbs has meant I just changed what I was eating and those changes are more than sustainable going forward.

If you have a chance read one of Dr. Fung’s books (he also wrote The Obesity Code) and determine for yourself. The one thing I will stress however, if you decided to do any ‘diet’ including intermittent fasting please do so in consultation with your medical professionals.