My Experience with Intermittent Fasting

Posted by Andrew On August - 12 - 2011

Intermittent fasting isn’t a new concept when it comes to dieting. Many believe that fasting has body detoxification properties and a lot of diet these days seem to push it as their main concept. The particular protocol I followed was Intermittent Fasting by Martin Berkhan. This particular protocol called for a 16 hour fast followed by an 8 hour feeding window. The timing was entirely up to yourself so long as the 16/8 pattern was adhered to. There are a few different setups for this diet which revolve around when you decide you want to train. If you train in the morning then you will be training fasted with BCAA’s only but if you train in the afternoon you have the option of having 1 or 2 pre-workout meals, personally I opted for the one pre-workout meal and it was sufficient enough.

My Approach – How To Fast

To being with I worked out a suitable 14 hour period where I could go without my food. As it stood this worked out to be from 9PM at night to 1PM the following afternoon, then from 1PM to 9PM I would eat my daily calorie intake. I stood by my normal diet setup in that I took 500 calories off my maintenance calorie number (BMR) and formulated an eating plan around this new number (~2500 calories). So effectively I was to eat 2,500 calories in the 8 hours between 1PM and 9PM. The only other stipulations on the diet were that you were to eat 25% of your calories to break your fast, and since I was training at 3:30PM this would also be my pre-workout meal. Post workout was to be the largest meal of the day followed by my last meal before bed. My day planned out as follows :-

6:15AM – Wake Up
1PM – Break Fast (~500 Calories)
3:30PM – Workout
5:30PM – Post Workout Shake (~300 Calories)
6PM – Post Workout Meal (~1200 Calories)
8:30PM – Pre-Bed Meal (~500 Calories)
9PM – Fast Begins

Throughout the morning I would drink coffee , mostly because I LOVE coffee, but also because I found that the caffeine killed my appetite slightly. The most difficult part of this for me was the morning time since I would be at work 5 days a week and, as it happens, my desk is located directly across from the break out area where food is cooked. I would smell the food being cooked and my stomach would start talking to me, I swear sometimes I hallucinated that my desk phone was a banana. What I did find interesting though is that on the weekends I wouldn’t be as hungry as when I was at work, I think this was due to the fact that on the weekends I was more active and wasn’t thinking about food.

When I was training I never found my energy levels dropping, I was always able to keep the same intensity and even beat PR’s but that could just be me. I have never had any trouble finding energy in the gym. After training was always my favourite time of the day purely because I was able to eat a massive meal. I am assuming that since you are reading this you know about my past, even now I still love eating big meals. I would get some weird looks when I was preparing and eating my meals since at times my plate would be packed high. Pre-bed would usually be some sort of slow digesting protein and fat for instance fat free greek yogurt (F.A.G.E) and some peanut butter.

Results

Over the course of my experimentation I didn’t so much drop weight but I definitely dropped body fat. My body measurements were smaller, when I find the notepad I wrote them in I will post them, and I definitely looked leaner. I wasn’t worried about the number on the scale since I don’t believe it should be used as the sole judge of your weight loss progression. How I look in the mirror and on the tape measure mean far more to me than a few digits on the scales. Along with the inches lost of my measurements I managed to break quite a few personal records in the gym.

Conclusion

My experience with Intermittent Fasting has been a positive one. Sure there were the hunger pangs but after a week or so of adjusting they disappeared. I looked leaner, felt leaner and had more definition in my muscles. The best thing about the Intermittent Fasting protocol is how good it is at fitting into a lifestyle. A lot of diets stop people from going out to dinner because they have eaten all they can for the day or because they only have a certain amount of calories left in there totals. With Intermittent Fasting you are able to go out and be social because your fast will generally start late at night and finish up late morning or early afternoon. The only real issues with this diet are the psychological issues, you will need to break some well-founded habits in terms of when you eat and what you eat.

I would recommend Intermittent Fasting to those individuals who are looking to break through a plateau or who are finding being sociable while dieting difficult under more conventional protocols. This is purely my opinion though and before undertaking any sort of diet protocol check with your doctors first to see if there are any reasons you should not attempt such endeavours.

-Andrew

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