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Intermittent Fasting?


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How do you guys feel about intermittent fasting with the Whole30. I work in a Doctors office and some of our Doctors swear by intermittent fasting. I'm starting whole30 tomorrow and would love to know what everyone thinks. Thank you in advance. Wish me luck and keep me in your prayers!

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The head cheese's around here aren't going to like the idea.. but on a side note I just saw Jimmy Kimmel on tv the other day and thats what he's been doing.

Tuesday and Thursday he simply doesnt eat..  ( I CANT IMAGINE )   

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Save your intermittent fasting for after a Whole30. If you do IF during a Whole30, you will get less than ideal results. There are hormonal benefits from eating soon after awakening and if you practice IF, your hormonal rhythms will not be the same as a person eating meals every 4-5 hours. 

 

It is a common mistake to think you can make one thing better by combining it with another thing. The reality is that most attempts to do this will result in less than ideal results. Whole30 foods won't hurt practicing IF, but IF will undermine the Whole30 experience for maybe 90 percent of the people who go for it. And trust me, you should not assume that you are part of the 10 percent who would do fine.

 

Disclosure: After about 4 years of Whole30 eating, I spent 3 months practicing IF. IF was comfortable and convenient, but my sleep quality eroded during the 3 months. I started eating breakfast again and my sleep quality improved. I think it is great to practice IF at some point, just never during a Whole30. Most people need a solid year of healthy, Whole30-style eating before their bodies are in shape for experimenting with IF. 

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Eating everything later in the day wouldn't work for my metabolism and is it really fasting when you simply skip breakfast.   The breakfast within an hour of waking was the cure that changed everything for me. 

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I'm with MeadowLily. I recently heard about this version of intermittent fasting that involves building on the hours you haven't eaten since dinner by going straight through to lunch. Um, that's just called skipping breakfast, and I know plenty of adults who do it. Is it possible that this form of "fasting" is actually healthy?  

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I know alot of school children who've skipped breakfast, not by choice.  I can't think of one that it helped in school or on the weekends and not by choice.   Skipping meals can lead to binge eating in children and adults whether it is self-imposed or not. 

 

I support Breakfast Clubs for children and food backpacks for the weekends when they don't have a school breakfast or lunch.  :( 

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I do the Breakfast Club for Children out of love for the kids and my father.  He grew up without a breakfast and could not afford a school lunch.  He had to sit and watch while all of the other kids ate their lunch without anything to eat.  Those were not good times. He and his brothers developed rickets.  You don't hear about that anymore.  I make sure he has everything good to eat now.

It's my mission.

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This may not be a popular opinion here, but whilst IF works remarkably well for some (healthy males for the most part), for others who look on it as another diet (or a trendy way to restrict calories) it can become just another incarnation of over restriction and/or binge eating, except on a daily basis.

Strive for hormonal balance and steady blood sugar before attempting IF.

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This may not be a popular opinion here, but whilst IF works remarkably well for some (healthy males for the most part), for others who look on it as another diet (or a trendy way to restrict calories) it can become just another incarnation of over restriction and/or binge eating, except on a daily basis.

Strive for hormonal balance and steady blood sugar before attempting IF.

That may not be a popular opinion, but you know it's shared by a LOT of us and it's the truth... I agree with Tom that people who come from a place of restriction, unhealthy habits and dieting need at LEAST a year of healthy eating with no counting/tracking/macros/points blahblahblah so that they're not using IF to hack the Whole30... it can seem like a great idea at first but it often devolves into really bad habits. Also, what people who use it to 'diet' don't seem to understand is that you don't eat less.... you eat the same amount of food, just in a smaller window... the VAST majority of people who use IF to hack an eating plan or the Whole30 use it to excuse themselves of eating 1/3 to 1/2 the expected intake... and that is absolutely NOT what the idea is...

Don't complicate your life by adding in 'expert level' eating plans... eat to the template, 3 times a day... do that for 30 days... do your reintroductions so you know how food affects you and then make your own WholeME plan to eat 3 template meals a day with whatever you choose to add back in and let that be your path for a long time... a LOOOONG time... let your body rest from all the crazy things that the media and society encourage us to do to meet an unattainable 'perfection' that means nothing in the long run.

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"You’re Doing it Wrong In addition, most people don’t practice IF the way they’re supposed to. You do it every day, which isn’t very “intermittent.” And you don’t eat anywhere near a day’s worth of calories in your feeding window, because it’s hard to consume that much food in such a short period of time." (This is especially true if you’re also on a Whole30, where everything you’re eating is real food, and therefore incredibly satiating.) - See more at: http://whole30.com/2015/10/fasting/#sthash.Kio7vaRJ.dpuf

 

If I had a feeding window I could consume everything and then some within a short amount of time.  I've had alot of practice with a broken shut-off valve.  I could do it in an hour's time if it that was the requirement.  Done.  

 

I will not be able to graduate to the super school of IF because I messed up a long, long time ago.   I'm hinged now.  

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Not to swim upstream, but for posterity's sake because this forum gets searched and archived a lot, I suggest that IF is not expert mode. Not sure about the 90/10 ratio Tom mentions, but if, as SugarCube mentions, one doesn't try to make it an "eating less" affair but rather an "eating less OFTEN" affair, I think great results can happen.

Yes, hormones regulate when eating per Whole30's recommended timing guidelines, but those hormones also regulate when eating in a regular shortened IF window. There are potential other benefits as well that result from allowing the body to rest in a non-digestive state: certain repair and maintenance processes can take advantage of the respite from metabolizing food.

The potential issues re: females & fasting are vastly overstated: firstly they are most often associated with too great a caloric deficit, secondly rat studies have poor correlation with human results, and thirdly there are vast numbers of women who enjoy success from a variety of IF protocols.

My mantra is "Whole30 tells me *what* to eat, IF tell me *when* to eat it". If nuts and dried fruits are begrudgingly accepted as Whole30-legal, I think IF should be too. So much of the stress I see resulting from first attempts at a Whole30 revolves around the a.m. meal, the food on the go, the constant prep & clean ... yes, some of these issues can be solved by batch cooking, and some can be solved by IF as well. Both strategies can be about maintaining a healthy relationship between food and lifestyle.

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Sorry, I disagree... it IS an expert level of eating when people come from a SAD diet where their hormones are disregulated, they don't understand their own body's hunger and satiation signals... There is also anecdotal evidence from actual women all over this forum where they discuss how IF has not worked with the female hormonal system... it is not vastly overstated for those that have tried it (eating the right amount of calories) and it was devastatingly unsuccessful... that has nothing to do with rat studies... I don't disagree that some women probably do well with it... but for people who are doing it because their hormones are out of whack and they feel 'sick' eating breakfast in the morning, all it's doing is providing an excuse for not eating and not doing the work to regulate the body systems. That is not a good or productive reason to do IF. Food on the go is also not really a huge issue once people become fat adapted... that's the beauty of it... everyone deserves to eat three meals a day at regular intervals and feel the fat adaptation benefits and the benefits of having hunger signals in the morning before they go fooling around with IF...

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... So much of the stress I see resulting from first attempts at a Whole30 revolves around the a.m. meal...

 

 

... but for people who are doing it because their hormones are out of whack and they feel 'sick' eating breakfast in the morning, all it's doing is providing an excuse for not eating and not doing the work to regulate the body systems.

^This.

Choosing to IF because you struggle with the first meal is like putting a sticky plaster on the issue, rather than exposing the wound to the air to allow it to heal.

And as for those women who do find success with it, there has not been enough research on rats or humans (& none at all on perimenopausal women IIRC - many of which we have here) to know the long term effects on the body.

 

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I was a breakfast skipper and a smoothie slurper for lunch.  I waited until suppertime to eat my main meal of the day.  I was stacking on the pounds at an alarming rate.  

 

My husband's friend is doing IF by choice.  He eliminates breakfast/lunch and only eating supper which is not really IF because he's doing it every day.  He is also stacking on the weight.  He works very, very hard...outside every day.   At the age of 33, someone told him this was the way to go.  It's not working and he is in the prime of his life.  Active.

 

Men and women have hormones.  My husband encouraged him to go back to eating a large breakfast with the crew.   A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.   

 

The proof.  Has it taken the cravings away for refined foods,  is it working for you.  If all problems have been solved with skipping breakfast and lunch, every day....that's wonderful.

 

If it's not solving  problems with food and weight,  reassess.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I have never eaten breakfast - even as a kid.  I tried yesterday and promptly threw it back up (same reaction I've had when trying to eat breakfast in the past; I also have this reaction if I try to drink water too early).  According to what I've read here, I should continue to eat breakfast, but it doesn't make sense to me if it causes me to vomit each morning.

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