To be honest, this wasn’t the blog I set out to write this week.
In fact, I was going to write about bacteria.
Or more specifically, Probiotics.
And I’ll still do that, but not today.
Today I’m compelled to write about what I’m living at this very moment.
You see, right now as I begin writing this, I’m about 17 hours into a 24-hour fast.
I’ve never fasted this long before (other than for my colonoscopy, but let’s just say that that experience was a little different ;).
And the thing is, this 24-hour fast is consuming me!
So, to distract myself I’ve decided to write about my experience, as it happens, in the moment.
You may be wondering why I’m doing this in the first place, so here’s a little background:
This idea for a 24-hour fast is actually not mine, but it’s an experiment that’s part of the nutrition coaching program with Precision Nutrition.
It’s not mandatory, but as a nutrition coach, I think I should know what this feels like. Right?
And while I’m at it, I wanted to take the opportunity to share about something called intermittent fasting.
Intermittent Fasting
If you’re at all into nutrition or dieting, you may be hearing a lot these days about intermittent fasting (or fasting for short periods of time).
The funny thing is that fasting is anything but new. It’s actually been around as long as we humans have been around.
Back in the day (I mean thousands of years ago up until about 70 years ago), food was a lot more scarce.
People didn’t always get three square meals a day and two snacks. They ate when there was food. And they didn’t eat when there was none.
Our bodies have evolved to survive this way for millennia.
Then enter the mass production of processed food of the past 70 years, and fasting is rarely practiced except for religious or cultural reasons.
But our bodies haven’t yet adapted to being constantly fed and continuously digesting.
See, when we aren’t digesting food, our bodies actually have the chance to clean up and repair damaged cells, and get rid of harmful cells.
Think of it like this…
Eating constantly is like having a revolving door in your house, with guests (food) coming and going all day long. You’re continuously entertaining (eating) and you never have a chance to clean up (fasting). It’s dirty, messy chaos in your home and you’re even having nightmares about it which is preventing you from sleeping.
Yikes!
So, at some point you’ve got to tell the guests (food) to go home and then lock the door for a day or part of a day (intermittent fasting) so you have the time and energy to clean your home (or, even better, pay someone else to do it :).
Make sense?
As for the research, it’s showing that intermittent fasting is actually very healthy for us.
Animal studies done so far are indicating that intermittent fasting can reduce or prevent the proliferation of cancer cells, lower blood glucose levels, and help with fat burning.
Studies are also showing that fasting from time to time may enhance brain function which may have positive implications for people with depression, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease.
Finally, further studies have shown that intermittent fasting may actually slow down the aging process and lead to a longer life span.
So, what’s not to love?
Well, actually, it’s not all roses.
Fasting sounds great, but if you’ve never done it before, it’s not always an easy thing to do.
Hence this blog.
Now you may be wondering, “How does an intermittent fast work?”
Well, there are actually several ways to accomplish an intermittent fast.
The first is to do what I did, which is fast for an entire 24 hours.
This can be done once a year, once a month, or even once a week. But more frequent than that isn’t recommended.
The second is more of a daily fast with a defined “feeding window”.
Many sources suggest a 16-hour fast with an 8-hour feeding window. So that means if your last meal is at 7pm tonight, then you wouldn’t eat again until 11am tomorrow.
The feeding window can be bigger or smaller than 8 hours, but optimally the window should be at most 11 hours. That means at least a 13 hour daily fast.
For more about this topic, I encourage you to read “Experiments with Intermittent Fasting” by Precision Nutrition’s Dr. John Berardi.
My own experiment with a 24-hour fast
I love to eat.
Yes, I know, most people do.
But not only do I love to eat, I’m also constantly thinking about food.
Maybe you don’t believe me (and I’ve heard things like “But you’re so slim, surely you don’t even think about food let alone eat it”), but when your work revolves around food and nutrition, and you work from home a lot of the time, food is on the mind almost all day long.
And that made me wonder how I was going to get this thing done. Could I really NOT EAT for 24 hours?
I was going to give it my best shot.
So, I decided to make my fast from supper last night to supper tonight.
Right now, as I write this, I haven’t eaten since 5:46pm last evening.
That’s 1,129 minutes without a bite to eat so far…. Wait, make that 1,130.
So, moving on…
Evenings to be honest aren’t a problem, I’m not usually an evening snacker. My issue is breakfast. I practically dream of it every night.
5:30am
So, I woke up this morning with breakfast on my mind… And then quickly realized there wasn’t going to be any.
But the weird thing was that this thought didn’t send me into a fit of rage or a woe-is-me feeling of deprivation.
In fact, a funny, unexpected feeling of FREEDOM showed up.
I actually felt free from figuring out what I was going to eat, taking the time to prepare it, cleaning up the mess afterwards, …
Instead, I could do anything I wanted!
So, I decided the best thing I could do was leave the house.
I shouldn’t surround myself with temptation on this of all days.
Of course, I headed to my off-site office: Starbucks.
You’d think that might be worse, given that temptation would be wafting through the air. But, the thing is that I get more done work-wise at Starbucks.
I think it’s because I have to actually pay for the food there, and I can’t just get up and look in their pantry or raid their fridge.
Therefore, I can just sit down with my green tea and focus on my screen.
Hallelujah!
But, then it happened, about two hours into my Starbucks sit-in.
8:00am
I got that hollow growl and an internal tightening that extended from my stomach up to my throat: HUNGER.
I don’t feel it often, but it’s unmistakable.
That was then followed by a YUCKY, nauseous feeling. (I really hate that feeling.)
But I’m a big girl, so I gently reminded myself, “Don’t worry, you will live, this is just a little experiment. There will be food at the end of the day, so just take a few breaths and calm down.”
And indeed calm was restored once again (after about 5 minutes of uncomfortable-ness).
Then I had to head home to drive my daughter to work, run a couple of errands, and do a live webinar. More welcome distractions.
11:00am
This is when I actually began to prematurely believe, “Wow! This was easier than I thought!”
You see, before I even began I was worried that I’d be derailed by 7am but no, I was still on top of it!
Almost 18 hours done, just over 6 hours to go. I was in the home stretch. What could go wrong?
Yup. Spoke too soon.
This is when my mind began looking for ways to escape from doing my work.
It became suddenly clear to me that this is a habit… I do this all the time.
I give into temptation and put things off by getting up and grabbing something from the fridge. Then, inevitably, I make a tea to go with it.
I can’t believe that my own mind is plotting against me!
I can hear it whisper things like, “How about a cookie (or 2 or 3…) with that tea,” or, “Look, it’s 11! Time for lunch…”, or “You deserve a break, there’s time to get this done later. I’m sure what’s happening in the fridge is much more exciting, so let’s saunter over there and check it out…”
That’s when the conscious part of my mind, the part that actually chose to undertake this challenge, saved the day. It ignored those things and reminded me what I wanted to accomplish.
As a result, I’m still physically hungry but getting my work done.
This was enlightening for me.
I realized that despite having or not having feelings of hunger in my body, it’s actually my sub-conscious mind and its trickery that really win out most of the time.
And because I allow this to happen, it’s rare that I ever get to the point of being really hungry.
And then I notice something else hanging around in my mind.
FEAR.
I kind of feel like I’m afraid I won’t get fed, or won’t get my share of food. It’s a very primitive, selfish feeling. It’s kind of ugly.
But I know logically that there’s plenty of food, and food will be there when this is done. So I tell myself that for now, and fear seems to back off.
One good thing I’m noticing is that I feel a little cleaner, on the inside, if that makes any sense.
I guess maybe I took the house cleaning analogy to heart and I’m feeling positive about the tidying up happening in my cells.
I actually feel LEAN and CLEAN, like when I purge my closets of stuff I haven’t worn for years.
4:00pm
Okay, this is where the wheels are beginning to fall off.
See, for me, 4pm marks the time I transition from work-mode to home-mode.
At this time of day, I typically crave salt, so if there are any chips in the house… well, they know enough to hide.
Right now, my stomach is growling, I’m feeling empty, and my mind is screaming for comfort.
I’m feeling UNGROUNDED and completely DEPRIVED. It’s taking a lot of strength and logical self-talk to keep myself from having a tantrum.
Now I really need to distract myself.
So, I come up with a great idea: I make a list, and head to the grocery store!
Yes, this was a silly thing to do in retrospect, but I needed to pick up ingredients for my celebratory vegetarian chili which I promised myself would be at the finish line.
Lucky for me I chose the bare-bones grocery store, so there’s no chance of free samples.
Now I go home, chop up the veggies and begin cooking the chili, distracting myself with Casey Neistat videos. He’s a YouTuber, I love his vlogs, and I’m probably one of his only female fans over 40. Completely off topic, but I digress…
5:30pm
Ate dinner. I did it!
RELIEF.
The end.
Reflecting back on my fast, as difficult as it was at moments, I really enjoyed the feeling of freedom and that feeling that I was doing something good for my body on a cellular level.
In fact I enjoyed it so much that I’m going to begin implementing a daily fast and see how that goes.
I’ll start with an 11-hour feeding window and fast from 6pm to 7am. And I’ll keep a journal to see what I notice. Then I’ll let you know what I find out.
Are you thinking of trying intermittent fasting?
Before you do, please consider that intermittent fasting isn’t for everyone.
In fact if you have a medical condition that forbids it, or problems with disordered eating and binging, intermittent fasting should probably be avoided.
But otherwise, I think it’s a great way of learning more about yourself. You’ll find out more about your physical body cues (hunger), the role your mind plays in your eating habits, and how food or food deprivation affects your emotions.
It’s a very eye-opening experience
Keep moving forward,
Debbie
P.S. Join me for the free August Greatest HIITs Fitness Challenge starting on August 1st. Click on the link to find out more and sign up!