why i've started intermittent fasting...

Hello everyone! Welcome to or welcome back to the blog, I’m back with another fitness related post, one that I have really wanted to write for a long time, but I wanted to learn more about the eating plan and actually do it for an extended period of time before writing about it. Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern (some refer to it as a diet but I am not a fan of this), where an individual fasts for an extended period of time, and then eats within a certain period of time.

There are different types of intermittent fasting, but the most common method and the one I am doing at the moment is the 16:8 method. This involves fasting for 16 hours, and eating for 8. Typically, this fast occurs from 8pm in the evening to 12pm in the following afternoon. Within the fasting time, you can only drink water, black coffee or black tea (some milk is allowed but not excessive amounts).

I would just like to add a little disclaimer: I am not doing this as a strict ‘diet’ as such, because I am not forcing myself every day to not have breakfast or to stop at 8pm, but a solid 5/7 days per week I follow this pattern. To put it simply, if I’m hungry, I’m going to eat, I won’t starve myself to try and stick to it. I also don’t stick to it on days I’m at work, because I need breakfast to function, before I go and work a 6- or 7-hour shift!

Currently I am really enjoying this eating pattern, and it has been working well other than the black coffee, I really struggle to part from an iced coffee, so currently, I have been having that if I don’t drink water in the mornings. From going from 3 meals to 2 during the days, I make my meals a bit bigger just to compensate for the lack of breakfast.

People think with intermittent fasting, you just stop eating, but no, you actually eat a similar amount, you just size up your meals and have snacks throughout the 8-hour eating period.

With any eating pattern there are obviously pros and cons, and I have rounded up some of the ones that I value from this, as the main reason I am doing this is to a) cut down on snacking in the evenings, and b) to stop bloating, I am in no way trying to lose weight (hence why I eat a lot in the eating periods).

Pros	Cons
-        Weight loss (but you do still eat) -        Lowers insulin -        Increases growth hormone -        Helps reduce bloating -        Also helps within the brain.	Not suitable for all.          I’ve found I can’t work out in the mornings because of it.         You are hungrier.          You can end up with a lower blood sugar.

I hope you have enjoyed this post; I am really enjoying bringing some fitness posts to my blog! Have you heard of this eating pattern before? Hope you have an amazing weekend,

 

mills x