The Intermittent Fasting Truth (The Good And The Bad)

Here’s the intermittent fasting truth.

Intermittent fasting seems to be on the upward rise (again). In fact, it’s one of the most popular diets around the world today practiced by many including celebrities.

The main attractions of this diet include the promises of weight loss, improved health, simplicity, and freedom from dietary restrictions.

What is Intermittent Fasting (IF)?

Before we get into this, I just wanted to clarify that IF is not a diet. In simplest terms, it’s an eating pattern/schedule. While doing IF, there aren’t any special foods you need to stay away or stick to. You are simply eating your normal amount of calories for the day, but in a smaller time frame. For example, rather than eating 2,000 calories over the course of the day in 12-14 hours having breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with IF, you would eat those 2,000 calories in 1 or 2 meals in a smaller time window.

There are many variations of IF but the main idea is to restrict yourself from eating calories for certain periods of time and giving yourself a “feeding window.” The most popular version, the 16:8, is done by not eating anything with caloric value for 16 hours of the day (which includes sleeping time). During the fasting period, you are allowed to water, black coffee, sparkling water, or anything else that has very little to no calories. And then, during your 8-hour window only, you are able to consume your calories.

The Intermittent Fasting Truth – My Take

I discovered and started implementing IF back in 2016 when I read an article on Leangains about the benefits of IF. At the time, my only goals were to lose fat and build muscle (just like every other person ever lol). And of course, the author of Leangains, Martin Berkhan, was this extremely ripped dude who could lift a ton of weight like nobody’s business. Except it became all about my business because this was exactly what I was striving for: a lean, strong, and muscular body. (P.S. Don’t judge me because I also just started college this year so I seriously thought this was the secret to a perfect life.)

My typical day would consist of waking up at at 8 or 9am and having nothing but water, black coffee, or sparkling water. I would stay busy until around 2pm-ish and break my fast with a light snack like fruit or yogurt. I would then wait a few more hours and have my extremely large dinner at around 6-7pm and be stuffed and ready to pass out from a food-induced coma. Bedtime would be around 10-11pm and then rinse and repeat.

I kept this up until about late 2019 and decided to quit IF altogether because of certain benefits I’ve noticed from eating on a normal schedule (more on this below).

If you want to see me attempt Terry Crews’s intermittent fasting cheat day and hear me talk a bit about IF, check out my YouTube video!

What I’ve Learned

The Goods

1. Simplicity

During an interview with Vanity Fair, President Obama explains how simplicity is the key to life with an interesting strategy he employs. “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” he said. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”

President Obama further explains this concept called “decision fatigue.” He states that it can drastically impact your ability to make decisions throughout the day. By simplifying his routine and reducing the number of decisions he has to make on trivial events, he can save his “decision-making energy” on more important, presidential things.

In the President’s case, not thinking about clothing can allow him to run a country. In the case of you and me, not thinking about food lets us focus our thinking and willpower on other things besides what kind of foods we put into our mouths.

The key to life really is simplicity. Because the less you think about trivial things that don’t matter all that much, the more time you can spend making big decisions that increase your overall happiness, success, and satisfaction in life.

And if your goal is primarily fat loss, IF can be a great tool to help you stay in a calorie deficit. It definitely simplifies the meal preparation process and allows you enjoy bigger and higher calorie meals all while meeting your goals.

In my personal experience, intermittent fasting has allowed me to increase muscle and strength, reduce body fat, and maintain optimal health while simultaneously spending less dedicated time cooking, cleaning, preparing, and eating meals. Why do more when you can do less?

2. Always On The Go

If you’re even a tiny bit into fitness, you’ll know exactly how hard it is to stay healthy and fit while traveling or living a busy and always on the go lifestyle. Think about how stressful it was the last time you traveled. It’s hard to eat healthy, work out when and with what you want, and you don’t get to sleep in the comfort of your own bed. It’s probably the most chaotic thing you can think of.

But when you intermittent fast, it becomes sort of a relief. When you eat one meal (or two) less a day, your calorie intake for your other meals increase that much more! This means you can let loose a little bit and enjoy higher calorie (and maybe not so healthy) meals later in the day. This allows you to not have to think about your food choices (as much) and gives you more freedom from the diet mentality while traveling.

3. The MASSIVE Meals

Following the intermittent fasting schedule means you aren’t eating as frequently. If you are good at math, this means as the number of meals per day go down, the size of the meals go up. This is perfect if you naturally have a big appetite. (This allows you to be the go-to plus one to bring to a buffet 😉)

Personally, I love eating a huge amount of food especially later in the day. I have no evidence to support this, but I speculate it’s something about human nature that makes it more satisfying to eat huge meals in the evening. However, this can backfire…(more on this later).

4. Mental Clarity

Full disclosure, there is an adjusting period of about 2-3 weeks where you’re just hungry and low energy from not eating for an extra few hours more than you normally would. However, if you’re one of those people who are able to get through this hump, it soon becomes a sense of mental clarity and focus during the several hours of the day. I have no idea what the research says, but anecdotally speaking, when I fasted, I felt more focused and productive in the mornings. My guess would be that I didn’t have to think about making or eating breakfast and all I needed was a cup of coffee in the morning and I could go straight to work.

The Bads

1. The Binge Mentality

The more I think about it, at its simplest form, intermittent fasting is just a form of structured binge eating. It’s a pattern of restriction so that you can “reward” yourself later on by eating bigger than normal portions of food. Now, I’m not saying that everyone practicing IF has a binge eating disorder. What I am saying is that this pattern of restriction and reward, where the fasting is restricting and the reward is the bigger meals, can certainly lead to a binge eating disorder. In my personal experience, intermittent fasting was a great way to help me lower my body fat and attain my fitness goals. However, at a certain point, I would find myself really pushing my fasting window later and later and starving myself just so I could “reward” myself with bigger and bigger meals. I would eventually eat One Meal A Day (OMAD) because I got so used to eating bigger and bigger meals that I always wanted more and was never quite satisfied. Eventually, I got sick of doing IF because I always felt hungry and never satisfied no matter how much I ate.

If you are struggling with binge eating check out my article on “How to Recover After a Binge/Cheat Meal“.

2. Underestimating How Much You Can Eat

Similar to the previous point, we really do underestimate how much we can eat in one sitting. During the “lowest point” in my intermittent fasting journey was when I would easily eat over 2,000 calories in one sitting and still felt hungry and wanted to eat more afterward. “How?” You may ask.

Because of this little hormone called ‘ghrelin’.

You see, ghrelin is this all controlling hormone that is always working in our bodies. It’s what gives us the sensation of “hunger.” Whenever you have the thought of food clouding your mind and the stomach pangs coming on, you can thank ghrelin for doing its job.

Whenever you fast (not eating for long periods of time), whether its intermittent fasting or just during your sleep, your ghrelin levels will creep up the longer it is between meals. This is completely normal, your body wants you to eat for energy because it needs energy to stay alive (duh). And when you eat, they go back down. However, when you fast for an extremely long period of time, your ghrelin levels can get so high that the next time you see food, they’ll stay elevated longer because your body doesn’t know when the next time it’ll get food. To your body, it thinks it has just gone through a period of famine and is starving so it needs as much stored energy as it can get until the next time you can find food. When this happens, it can be extremely difficult to stop eating. Anyone who has ever crash dieted knows this feeling. It’s almost a euphoric feeling stuffing yourself with food. And even when you think you’ve had enough, your ghrelin levels will literally force you to stuff more food into your system because it’s just telling your body “WE NEED THIS! WE’RE STARVING!!” And I know I said IF can be better for those with big appetites, but it can certainly spiral out of control for certain individuals. That being said, do it at your own discretion. If you find yourself progressively eating more and more and not being satisfied, then I would consider eating more frequently to maintain relatively constant ghrelin levels.

3. Muscle Protein Synthesis

Another pitfall of IF is the process of muscle protein synthesis (MPS). A quick overview of MPS: our bodies are constantly going through periods of MPS and MPB (muscle protein breakdown). Whenever MPS > MPB, we call this anabolism and whenever MPS < MPB, we call this catabolism. When we want to maximize muscle, we obviously want to keep MPS > MPB as long as we possibly can throughout the day. What the research has shown is that MPS levels stay elevated for about 3-4 hours before requiring another stimulus. The research has also shown MPS is stimulated in two ways:

• Resistance training
• Ingesting protein/essential amino acids

When we relate this back to IF, resistance training stays relatively constant and is unaffected. However, IF certainly affects the number of protein feedings we eat throughout the day. As you can see, because IF has fewer meals per day than a normal eating schedule, this results in less stimulation of the MPS signal if your goal is to maximize muscle growth.

However, one of the most popular arguments that “fitness gurus” mention is that fasting increases growth hormone (GH) to preserve and build muscle. Yes, it increases GH, but it will not increase lean tissue. One of my favorite analogies is from popular YouTuber, Greg Doucette. “Think of your muscles as a house you need to build. Growth hormones are the workers and protein is the materials. Fasting increasing GH but that’s like saying hire more workers, but not giving them the materials they need to build the house. It’s like hiring 50 more workers and they’re all just standing around with no material to build!”

However, overall, eating enough protein daily matters significantly more than the number of protein servings throughout the day. But if your goal is to maximize the amount of muscle built, then you certainly want to eat enough protein in terms of total intake and frequency.

Final Thoughts On The Intermittent Fasting Truth (And What I Do Now)

Now that you know all this about IF, you’re probably still wondering, “Should I do IF?”

Well, firstly, I can’t tell you what to do. I mean I could, but ultimately the choice is up to you. If you were my client, I would advise against it, but ultimately, the most important things you should consider are:

• What are my goals and will IF help me reach them?
• Will I enjoy IF? (i.e. skipping meals in the morning, able to eat larger meals)

Having experimented with both IF and a normal eating schedule, I much prefer a normal eating schedule because of my own body and goals. This can differ for you. One of my primary goals are to maximize strength and muscle gain so following a normal eating schedule helps me maximize MPS. I also feel less hungry eating more meals because it helps me keep my ghrelin levels relatively constant so I don’t feel the need to binge versus me following an IF eating schedule in the past.

One of the final things that I want to say about IF is that it is not a magic pill. Even if you fasted all day and ate only one large meal, if that meal puts you in a calorie surplus, you will gain fat. Some people think that just because they follow IF, they can eat to their heart’s content without a care in the world. But in reality, if you are not in a calorie deficit, you will not lose fat. In the grand scheme of things, IF is just a tool to help you with staying in a calorie deficit.

To wrap things up, do what you want and don’t listen to other people who tell you how to eat. You have your own goals and preferences so if you’re interested in IF, go ahead and give it a try for a few weeks or months. If you like it, keep going. If you don’t, try something else.

Hope this helps you learn a bit more about intermittent fasting and if it’s a good choice for you!

Until next time,

-Aus

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