During my years of weight loss, I realized that what you eat is more important than what you don’t eat. People talk about eating routines, diet, foods, nutrients, etc. But when it comes to weight loss, the most important thing is consuming fewer calories than you burn. That’s where fasting comes into play.
Start smaller than you think
Most people fail fasting because they start too big. I was at a lunch meeting once and a gentleman on my side told me he wasn’t eating because he was fasting, trying to lose weight. I asked him how long he was going to fast for and he said 72 hours. I balked. Then my follow up question was: have you done that before? And he said: No, first time. I equated that to trying to run a marathon before being able to run a mile. That’s why most people fail.
Start smaller than you think. Success for fasting, and honestly for most things in life, is making it easy on yourself by taking baby steps. Be it cleaning your room — you can start just doing two minutes of work and before you know it you’re going to be done in 30 minutes. Or when you’re in a relationship, you can start by going out once or twice and seeing if you’re a good fit. Same thing happens for fasting. You can start doing 10 or 12 hours and going from there.
A good approach would be to stop eating 3 to 4 hours before bed, then waiting 12 hours to eat again on the next day. That can be your first day of fasting and that would be successful. If you try to jump straight to 72 hours you would get to the 18th hour hungry, depleted, cranky, and without energy. Would you try to do it again if that’s how you felt the first time doing it? Probably not.
Once 12 hours feels doable you can do 14, 16 and maybe more. Give your body a couple of weeks to adjust and build it gradually — it’ll be more sustainable and will feel easier.
What you eat matters as much as the fast itself
So now that you know starting small is the best option, the second most important thing is what you eat.
Let’s say the previous day you started fasting, you went to McDonald’s and got a combo with a regular soda, fries and a burger. Then in the afternoon, you got an ice cream and a cookie, and at night you felt that was enough, so you went straight to bed and decided you would be fasting.
By morning on the next day, you wake up feeling tired; it’s like you don’t have energy. Your head is pounding, and for some reason everyone seems extra annoying today. You resist, and when you reach your 13 hours of fasting, your stomach starts talking to you. You ignore it, after all you’re fasting. You push through and you complete your 14 hours of fasting. But after an experience like this, are you going to try to do that again? Probably not. And that’s because what you eat is more important than the fast itself.
For instance, if on the day before you woke up and had a nice breakfast with eggs, whole-grain bread, and a piece of fruit, you would get to lunch without feeling starving and you would be able to eat a balanced meal: maybe a piece of chicken, broccoli and rice with a chocolate for dessert. In the afternoon, you could have a protein bar, and before bed at 8 PM you could have a piece of pizza while watching TV, then sleeping by midnight. That sounds great, right?
You can have basically the same number of calories as someone going to McDonald’s and having sweets in the afternoon. But you can have this energy spread out throughout the day —in the form of balanced meals and rich nutrients— making your hunger and energy levels feel stable during the day and giving all the nutrients that you need. You would feel the difference on the following day when you’re trying to reach 14 hours of fasting, because on the prior day you made it easy on your body.
Plan around your actual life
Now, it’s easier said than done. Because when you’re looking into Internet recipes, fasting windows, and other people doing it, it seems easy and doable. But you have to realize people have different lives, different bodies, preferences and so on.
To make fasting work for you, you need to adapt these concepts and ideas into your routine, lifestyle, and taste. There are few things that are equally true for everyone, especially when it comes to fasting. First of all, most of your fasting should happen at night because these are the hours when you can’t eat anyways. If you’re asleep for eight hours, that’s eight hours of fasting, and if you’re trying to achieve 12 or 14, you just need to subtract these hours. From there you can take three hours from the night before and three hours before breakfast, and then you would have 14 hours.
But sometimes life gets in the way and you need to plan ahead. If Friday night is pizza night, you can move the hours up or down so you can still be in your window and participate with your friends and family. If there’s a party that weekend, you can shorten it or move it. You don’t need to fast every day or the same amount of hours every time, but by planning ahead you’re able to stay in control and keep going with your weight loss. What matters is that you can lose weight sustainably without feeling stressed or miserable and still have a good quality of life.
What to do during your fast
So now that you know how to fast, when, and what to eat, a few things will come up during your fast, and you need to know how to deal with them before they happen. So during the fast you cannot have any calories. That means no food or drinks that have calories. Coffee and tea are fine — they can help with focus, hunger and energy. Also most importantly, drink plenty of water. I would try to avoid 0 cal sweet drinks like diet soda or flavored water. Most people handle them fine but they often backfire and cause more hunger.
When hunger comes — and that will happen — drink water first. Hunger usually comes in waves, and if you sit with it, notice it and don’t react right away, it passes within about 15 to 20 minutes. You can go for a walk, think about your goal, distract yourself, or meditate until it goes away.
Light movement is usually fine but harder workouts are usually not ideal because they can cause fainting, dizziness, nausea, etc. You can wait and increase the loads or intensity slowly until you’re better adapted.
The thing that actually got me through it
What really helped me fasting was something that I hadn’t heard or seen anywhere. So I had to come up with a solution and test it myself.
I started taking electrolytes because I realized that one of the most important functions of food is fluid balance. Sodium, potassium and magnesium help not only with the main bodily processes, but also with bringing water inside the cell. When you don’t have food, these levels drop and they can cause fatigue, headaches, and cravings.
Usually spring water is fine, but sometimes you need a little boost, and that’s where LMNT packets come in. I started buying them, but they added up quickly, so I got the recipe online, bought the ingredients and made it myself. Now I take it for a fraction of the price with the same benefits. You can also add flavoring and other nutrients in order to enhance the mix. I’ll leave a link below on how to make them yourself.
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Not medical advice. If you’re pregnant, breastfeeding, under 18, or have a medical condition, check with your healthcare provider before fasting.