No matter what nutritional beliefs you hold true, you will probably agree when I say that we simply cannot eat everything that is available to us on any given day. Food is simply too abundant, too available and too cheap for us to live in a constant state of eating at raw impulse.
In order to not gain an unbelievable amount of weight during our lives, we must practice some form of restraint. In other words, we ask ourselves, either consciously or subconsciously, “What is the right thing to do now — Eat or not eat?”
As ridiculous as it sounds, simply accepting that since you do not have to eat all the time, you are free to choose when you want to eat is enough to separate you from the way the majority of the population thinks about food. In fact, this is the basic, most fundamental philosophy behind a way of eating called intermittent fasting.
Intermittent — Occurring occasionally or at regular or irregular intervals.
Fasting — Taking a break from eating (zero calorie intake) for a predetermined period of time without a necessary interval from one fast to the next.
This means that Intermittent fasting is the practice of “Occasionally taking a break from eating.”
(Pretty simple right?)
Intermittent Fasting is backed by the simple belief that we do not have to eat all the time, therefore we are free to choose when we eat.
This gives us the ability to occasionally take a break from eating. This break may be daily, like when people fast for 16 hours every day (a style popularized by Martin Berkhan), or this break may take place weekly, like when people fast for 24 hours once or twice a week (A style popularized by Brad Pilon).
Whichever style you choose, many of the benefits are similar. A break from eating can serve as a “reset” when bad habits begin to creep back into our lives. It’s a way to practice patience and to reinforce the understanding that it’s OK to wait to eat. You can wait for something better, or a better time, or a better person to eat with. You simply do not have to eat all the time.
Intermittent fasting also involves minimizing the importance you place on multiple small nutritional choices each day, instead allowing you to concentrate on the main food choice we make multiple times throughout the course of any single day — should you eat, or not eat?
In this way, intermittent fasting allows you to control your food intake like an on/off switch where the choice is binary and simple.
My belief is that with Intermittent Fasting you can be a lean, muscular, healthy person without being obsessive about your food choices.
Now, If you’re worried about building muscle while still practicing intermittent fasting, please remember, you have 168 hours in a week to divide between fasting and eating, so you can arrange these hours in a way that is conducive to both fat loss and muscle gain.
This leads to the most important point behind intermittent fasting — DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU.
Just as there is no perfect way to eat, there is no perfect way to fast. Some people prefer frequent daily fasts, others prefer to only fast when it suits them.
Just remember, the goal is to eat, and to enjoy eating. The practice of occasionally taking a break from eating is done so we can enjoy the foods we eat when we do eat.
If you’d like to learn more about the science behind Intermittent fasting, including how it causes fat loss or how it doesn’t break your metabolism, then I encourage you to check out Eat Stop Eat by Brad Pilon.