Why I Quit Intermittent Fasting
I lost 50 lbs, and then gained it all back? The secret to my achievement? Intermittent fasting.
“But wait,” you say, “my cousin lost 100lbs and kept it off with IF” and “my doctor said it can help reduce my risk of type 2 diabetes”. Yes, a lot of health claims are made within the intermittent fasting communities and many of them even have plenty of research studies to back up the claims. I am not here to refute the data, I am here to tell my story.
I found Intermittent Fasting (IF) through a facebook group called Moonlight Sweets in summer of 2020. A friend had sent me an invite to the group and her and I decided we would give this IF lifestyle a go. The group requests that you read a few books before getting started and so I did my homework. I read The Obesity Code and Fast, Feast, Repeat, I binge-listened to “The Intermittent Fasting Podcast” and was fully convinced that this lifestyle would be the answer to all my woes.
I have struggled with carrying around extra fat for most of my life. Nothing has ever seemed to work for me long term, but I really believed I could make IF work for the rest of my life! I had read so many success stories in the facebook group, I had read the research and listened to others talk about it on podcasts, I was all in.
I began fasting in June of 2020 first with 13 and 14 hour fasts, basically just skipping breakfast and it felt pretty easy, at this point in my life I was just having coffee in the mornings and then my first meal closer to lunch time. According to the books though, 16+ hours is the sweet spot for fat burning so that was my goal. Within a few weeks I was easily fasting 16 hours so naturally I thought, why not try for 18 hours and then 20 hours. Eventually I settled into a 20:4 fasting pattern in which I fasted for 20 hours each day and ate for 4 hours. The inches and pounds began to disappear. I felt energized and so accomplished every day that I made it to or past 20 hours fasting.
Eventually the weight loss seemed to be slowing down, but I had heard that some people see better results with Alternate Daily Fasting (ADF) wherein you fast for 36-42 hours essentially not eating from dinner on a Sunday until breakfast or lunch on a Tuesday. I was missing eating breakfast and having cream in my coffee in the mornings so, this seemed like a great compromise, I could eat “normally” (meaning breakfast, lunch and dinner) 4 days a week and just not eat at all 3 days a week. Some people do a 500 calorie “down day” meal in the evenings of their “down” ADF day, but I felt like that was cheating, afterall, the longer I went not eating, the more fat stores my body was burning, right?
I lived like this for a few months, fasting Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays with “up” days on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, but eating all day on Sunday felt too indulgent so I just skipped breakfast on Sundays and typically ate a snack and a meal or possibly 2 meals.
By about April of 2021 I had lost over 50 lbs total since starting the IF lifestyle in June 2020, but I was feeling exhausted. I was feeling burned out, the fasting was feeling like work, but even when I did loosen up on it, I struggled to eat 3 full meals a day. My digestion was all messed up and I felt like it took me hours and hours in between meals to feel hungry again which I now know is a sign of a slowed down metabolism. My basal body temp was also low in the mornings, like 95 degrees (a healthy morning BBT should be 97.8-98.6 degrees), my skin was breaking out more, my periods were more painful and I truly just felt not so great.
In May of 2021 I started the NTA training program to become a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. I was still fasting, but had gone back to 16 and 18 hour fasts and began following some social media accounts that were challenging my accepted beliefs about fasting being healthy.
In school I began to learn how important it is to fuel our bodies with nutrient dense foods, to have healthy digestion and balanced blood sugar… none of which I had accomplished with fasting. I was dissatisfied with my digestive health, struggling to have consistent energy all day, and frustrated that the weight loss had stalled. I was questioning whether fasting was really something I could do for the rest of my life. It had to end eventually, right? It started to feel constraining and I wanted to feel free.
As I learned more about female physiology and our greater energy requirements for fertility and I discovered that all of the studies being passed around IF circles were based on male physiology, I knew I needed to change things.
I began to implement new routines and rhythms. I started eating breakfast within 30-60 minutes of waking up, I was focusing on getting at least 100g of animal protein per day and feeding myself every 3-4 hours with a snack or a meal. I began to see my BBT come up, it still isn’t at that 97.8 mark all the time, but it rose from the 95s to the upper 96s. My digestion began to improve and slowly the scale crept up. I gained back every bit of weight I lost, but do you know what? I would do it all again… well, maybe not the fasting.
My energy is more balanced throughout the day, my mood is more stable, I am sleeping better, my thinking is clearer, I feel more alive, and I feel free again.
My journey is not over. It has now been about a year since I began intentionally renourishing my body and replenishing minerals and while many of my symptoms of a sluggish metabolism have resolved, there is still the matter of carrying around excess body fat. I might write more about the emotional connection to this and the hormonal connection as well as the heavy metal, toxins and generational trauma, but for now I will just say that burning fat is a strenuous activity. It requires nourishment and it requires stress management if it is to be a long term solution.
I am continuing to nourish my body, manage stress, get good sleep, and more recently adding in more movement in the form of morning walks (when I wake up on time) and some weight lifting.
If you are sold out for intermittent fasting like I was, none of this will make sense to you, it may even anger you. That’s okay. However, please bookmark this blog post and when the adrenaline wears off and you start to feel burnt out on fasting, come back to this and give yourself permission to love your body by nourishing her. You deserve to be well nourished, my friend <3
