WHAAT you say?  Settle down! And I'll tell you all about it.

How it came up, what I learned, and what I did about it.

Taking Another Look

First, some personal history.  Years ago, I dabbled in fasting as a weight loss tool.  Horribly unguided, white-knuckle fasting that would pretty much go on as long as I could tolerate it.  Then I'd try to "break the fast slowly" as all the experts advised, but I would run fast lane into binges and overeating.  Stuff-starve at its worst!

Interestingly enough, over the past couple of years, as I am an avid reader and researcher of what's going on in the health and fitness fields, the idea of fasting seemed to be resurfacing as a health and longevity tool. 

Because of my prior experience, and all the work that I had done to heal my relationship with food, eating, and my body, I dismissed and ignored all of these references.  Did NOT want to go THERE! And as a foodie, someone who enjoys everything they eat (and won't eat anything I don't like, so there!) I was especially, shall we say, trepidacious!

However, references persisted, and I thought, OK Lani, let's take an objective look at see what this is all about.  After all I am a new person, different from those years way back when.  I've learned from experience, but I've also become able to look at things more objectively than ever before.

What Caught My Eye

As I began to let the material about fasting filter into my domain, I saw references that made me sit up and take attention.  Particularly these phrases:

And of course:

~ reduce body fat stores without sacrificing muscle.

But let me show you an easy place to find out a little bit for yourself.

The simplest, most direct presentation of this information is by my friend Brad Pilon, who has written a book about intermittent fasting called Eat Stop Eat. Brad is a nutrition researcher who did exhaustive, objective research on fairly recent studies done with intermittent fasting on a variety of subjects.  It is all very well documented in his book, and it is an impressive collection, I must say!

Evidence To The Contrary

Here's what Brad found out. 

First, many of the ill effects that we may associate with fasting occur after extended periods of fasting.  Short-term fasts, as Brad details in his book, do NOT demonstrate negative effects and have been shown to improve many of the biomarkers as I have listed above.  His documented research and "sciency" audio files available had me sit up and take notice!

Brad's "Fasting Files", as I call them, which are part of the Eat Stop Eat book, include all kinds of nuggets, such as this one: after several hours without caloric intake of any kind, there is a marked increase of fatty acids in the blood stream.  If no food has been recently eaten to account for this, then where do the fatty acids come from?  Possibly stores in the body?

The Benefits Are In The "Intermittent Mini"

In Eat Stop Eat, Brad promotes fasts of no longer than 24 hours.  And only one or two times a week, depending on your goals.  The beauty of this is you never go a day without eating!  A common pattern is dinner to dinner, or lunch to lunch.  So, if you ate dinner at 6 one day, your IMF would be until dinner at 6 the next day.  And it is very flexible – you can work your way up!

I have found intermittent minis to deliver to me personally in many ways:

~ great energy on fast days
~ trimmer in my middle
~ PHENOMENAL returns for my clients who have been utilizing this technique themselves. 
Great deliver in terms of gentle weight loss, good energy, improved relationship with food and
eating, appetite moderation (quite possibly the increased insulin sensitivity), and detected
decrease of inflammation in the system.

Now, you might be thinking – as I did – if you were to fast for the day up to dinner, that all you-know-what would break lose when it came time for dinner.  C'mon, I know that's what you're thinking!  Because I was certain of it.