Intermittent Fasting Part 1 37/84

I've been waiting to do this one for a while. I'm not sure why I waited so long but I wanted to make sure that I had as much info together as I could before I got after it. Then this week I found 3 podcasts by the experts as Precision Nutrition on the topic and it gave me the brain boost I needed to have enough content to make this. Intermittent Fasting (IF) is something I'm pretty passionate about because it has been working so well for me for so long, but I also understand that it is absolutely not the best option for everyone, and can even have some pretty nasty side effects for some people. In this post, I want to get into what IF is, variations of it that can all be used, the potential benefits, who it can be good for, and know it could be bad for.

All start by saying this, everyone does IF at some level already. Intermittent Fasting, by definition, is taking periods of not eating. At it's most basic level, this is the fast that you go through when you sleep. Most people are already fasting for around 10-12 hours from the time they eat their last meal at night until they eat their first meal in the morning. This is one reason why it's kind of funny to me when people freak out about the idea of extending that fast for just a few more hours.

There are a few different versions of IF that can all have some pretty good potential benefits. Some of the most popular ones right now include taking a full 24 hours without food each week, extending your fast until 14-16 hours each day, or doing a 36-48 hour fast. I'll go into a little detail on each one and you can decide for yourself if you want to try. \
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Personally, I do the daily 16ish hour fast, from about 9:00pm at night until about 1:00 the next day. Sometimes I eat my first meal earlier and sometimes I eat it later. I basically just depends on when  I finish with my morning clients. This one is really easy to think about because you basically just skip breakfast and wait to eat until lunch. This is something that I've been messing around with for years now. I started about as soon as I finished college volleyball in 2013 after reading a book call "The Renegade Diet" by Jason Ferruggia and I have only taken small breaks from using it since then. I also get reinvigorated by it every time I read the book "Engineer the Alpha" by John Romaniello and Adam Bornstein (maybe my favorite book of all time). Do you want to know the biggest reason I've been sticking with it for so long? Because it works for me. I've found my thing and I always encourage everyone to find theirs too. It's my go-to whenever I want to lean out a bit and I use it to help my stay leaner while I do a Massing phase. It has been working for me for years now and I plan on sticking to it.

The other two types of IF I listed are a bit different in that, instead if doing a short fast each day, you do and extended fast only one day out of the week. The 24 hour fast going from dinner one night until diner the next night without any food at all. If you decide to do this (with me because I'm going to try it soon) then I'll allow you to take some BCAAs, greens supplement and/or  tea or coffee during the day. But as you do it more often, you should try to stay away from those more (coffee and tea are still ok).

The 36 fast goes from diner one night, no food at all the next day, then breakfast the day after. This is obviously very similar the the 24 hour fast but just a little bit more extreme. Each one of these have their benefits and their drawbacks and if you want to hear about those then you're going to have to check back tomorrow. The potential benefits of IF can be amazing if you stick with it, but it can be hard and for some people it just doesn't work. Tomorrow I'll get into the detail of the benefits and side effects and let you chose for yourself if it is something that you can benefit from.