Unlocking the Prison Door of My Food Cravings Through Fasting

I remember, before I read about the science behind fasting that I thought it was an absolutely crazy and unhealthy way to lose weight. Only an idiot would do that. I could not imagine going for 24 hours without food and did not think I was even capable of doing it. After all, I suffered from heavy duty cravings that drove me to eat. Cravings that seemed to be in control of me no matter how hard I tried to fight them. They always won. Little did I know that fasting is the key which unlocks the prison door of food cravings and the constant push to eat behind which I existed. 

I knew that if I did a three-day carb fast, that turned the eating machine off, until the next time I grew lax and ate too many carbs again. But I am beginning to realize that total fasting on two separate occasions for 24 hours during the week simply keeps them turned off, or under control, in only one day. And if I do indulge in a carb treat or two or three on my feed days, fasting the next day, again, halts the cravings. It seems to be that if I eat carbs, I crave more carbs and if I don't eat carbs I don't crave carbs. They have a sort of odd "rebound" effect. I would never have discovered that if I had not personally tried it out. I can't speak for others. I can only speak for myself, but I think if you've had trouble with that persistent, unyielding, monstrous push to eat, like I did, then fasting may possibly help you, too. It was a real mind blower and eye opener for me and was far easier to do than I thought it would be.

There are some other things that fasting for 24 hours does that have helped my body, too. Brad Pilon in his PDF "Eat Stop Eat" explains that not only blood sugar levels will come down to normal, but that insulin will also come down when you fast. He also says that fasting for 24 hours will take advantage of the largest single drop in insulin that will happen in a 36-hour fast. Insulin is the fat storing hormone and toning it down for a while slows down fat storage for that time period.

This chart is from page 80 of his book:

While your insulin is going down, there are two other things that are going up. One is growth hormone which protects muscles as you fast (totally eliminating the need to fear "starvation mode" -- it does not happen in that short of a time period), and also glucagon, which turns on the fat burning process in the body. And isn't that what we want? To burn fat?

So let me get this straight. You reduce fat storage, don't lose muscle mass, and burn off fat by fasting for 24 hours? Yep. Isn't that the goal we want: to lose fat? If you think about it, why did we not see this before? The diet industry is so focused on teaching us to eat in their particular style (which they are selling to us), and so afraid of the dreaded "starvation mode" (which does not occur until after 72 hours of fasting) that we, the dietees, do not even notice or consider that it is only logical that if you want to stop the effects of eating too much you may have to occasionally skip a meal or two. It's like missing the forest because you can't see it through the trees.

ESE also releases the water being held in your tissues. My ankles are now back to normal! Praise the Lord! I think the major thing that helped that was the fasting that I did last week. I decided to do a 4:3 which means that for 4 days I ate normally and for 3 non-consecutive days I fasted for 24 hours and only drank water or hot tea and chewed some xylitol gum. I'll go back to a 5:2 next week and then do a 4:3 from time to time.

One of the ways that I support myself in either starting or sticking to a diet regime is to watch videos and read books on the subject. In my viewing and reading adventures this week while I stayed home and let my body begin to heal from the juggernaut of a chest cold I've had for the last two weeks (I think I've finally turned the corner and am on the mend -- still have congestion but it is somewhat lighter and looser than it was a few days ago.) I stumbled upon a book called "The 5:2 Diet." I bought the kindle version for about $3 and began to read. Inside, the author, Kate Harrison, shared that she had created a facebook group to which I applied for membership and was accepted.

It has been a real pleasure to suddenly be part of a community of other fasting folks. I don't feel so alone in my quest as I did before, even though I am still kind of the odd woman out because they do a different kind of fasting than I do. We have similar "timing" but what we do on the fast days and on the feast days is quite different.

The 5:2 dieters choose the number of days they are going to fast (from 1 to 3, with most doing 2) and then on that day they reduce their calorie intake to 500 for women and 600 for men. That is about the size of one small to medium meal, depending on what you are eating, which they can choose to eat in any manner they want from 3 snacks a day to one meal a day to anything they can dream up that does not go over their calorie quota for that day. Then on the feeding day they again count calories. But first they must calculate how many calories their particular body needs for the day and then follow that as their quota for the feed day. After doing all this they lose from 1 to 2 pounds during the week with occasional larger chunks of fat falling off from time to time.

I think I like the "Eat Stop Eat" style of fasting better because I've never ever been able to do the "calorie counting" thing. Doing that shoves me over into wacky-ville. So glad to not be doing the calorie thing. On the ESE the premise is that the body needs to actually stop eating all together for a 24-hour period. The author, Brad Pilon, did his master's thesis on fasting. The ESE program is what he discovered about the science behind feeding and fasting the human body while researching many hundreds of studies which have been done in the past (and present).

Here is a link to his sales page, which, by the way, has a ton of fasting information on it even if you don't buy the inexpensive PDF he has for sale. ( http://www.eatstopeat.com/?vtid=eatblogeat&utm_expid=7760520-13&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fbradpilon.com%2Fbooks%2F )

Scroll down to the very bottom of the page when you get there and click on "Intermittent Fasting" (small type) and it will take you to an audio presentation with text and pictures by Brad, himself, that introduces you to the ESE program. I recommend getting the book because I have found it so motivating due to its fact and science based nature. And because the program is simple and easy to actually do! Brad has a direct style so you won't get bogged down in his explanations. He makes them plain. And the system works. Nothing else I have done in the past five years has worked to help me actually take off pounds and inches like the Eat Stop Eat fasting program has.

Brad says: You can follow the diet you like best. With Eat Stop Eat you can follow any style of eating you like, after all, Eat Stop Eat doesn’t tell you what you can and can’t eat, that’s all up to you.

Perhaps you may be getting tired of me going on and on about ESE... I'm not on his payroll.... I am just glad to have found something that works without me having to relearn or calculate anything except when I will stop and start eating again. I don't even feel like I have to do more than minimally manage what I'm eating on my feed days. I can basically eat whatever I am up for eating with the caveat that if I eat like a sumo wrestler I will continue to look like one. Current research has found that most people usually do not make up for what they did not eat on their fast days by over eating on their feed days by more than a miniscule 10% which means they've had a 90% reduction in calories for as many days as they chose to fast. That can really make a big difference in a weeks time and people are losing weight. Slowly, surely, and regularly. All you have to do is continue fasting on separate days.

Using Brad's method of going from, say, 2 p.m. to 2 p.m. the next day, you also never go a day without eating. As long as there is 24 hours between, you will be healing your body and losing weight, too.

If you think you'd prefer the 5:2 method of small meals and calorie counting here is the link for the kindle version at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AFYX78I/ref=pe_245070_24466410_M1T1DP

Amazon also has a free kindle app that you can download for your computer or your ipad. 

So glad to be back on track again.

Be back soon,

Hugs,

Marcia