Intermittent Fasting
The words “intermittent fasting” strike fear into the hearts of many.
Bear with me; it’s not the horrible, dreaded hunger strike you imagine.
Let’s start with the basics:
- For men, it means eating all your daily food in an 8-hour window.
- For women, it means eating all your daily food in a 10-hour window.
- You can pick your eating window. Go with whatever works for your schedule. You should, however, stay consistent from one day to the next.
You’ll be asleep for eight of the remaining hours anyway (What?!?! Who gets 8 hours of sleep?!?!” you say? Hang on, I’ll come back to that). You’ll be at work for at least another 8 hours (plus more if you commute). Guess what? That’s 16 hours committed to other tasks already! The rest of the time is available to eat!
But wait, there’s more! Because the food you are eating follows your macro profile, during that 8 or 10-hour period, you will consume enough calories for the entire 24-hour period. The food is also high in healthy fats and proteins, so you won’t experience a carb crash and be hungry an hour after your feeding window closes.
There is another benefit, too: because you contain your eating to an 8 or 10-hour window, your digestive system can rest. Your entire life, your digestive system has been working hard for you (despite not having the best working conditions). Doesn’t it need a little love and care too?
Putting it into action
Example Schedule #1
Here is what a typical day might look like and how to work your feeding window into it:
5:00 am - Wake up, hit the gym, or get in some early morning work
8:00 am - Official office hours begin. Drink coffee, tea, or water.
11:00 am - Starting to get hungry by now. Drinking a large glass of water helps to take your mind off of it.
12:00 pm - The feeding window opens. This is the first meal. It helps to have something ready to eat because delays in getting food into your belly lead you to make bad choices.
3:00 - 4:00 pm - Sometime during this window, you start getting hungry again. Have another smaller meal or snack, maybe a cup of low-fat cottage cheese and water.
6:00 pm - It’s dinner time! Finish your day with 8-10 oz of grilled chicken breast, a salad made from bell peppers, spinach, balsamic vinaigrette, and a few (4) tablespoons of hummus. This meal is packed with protein and fat, so it will take a long time to digest. This gives you ample runway to close out the feeding window.
7:00 pm - If there’s room left in your meal plan (thanks to hitting the gym earlier in the day), finish off with some dark chocolate
8:00 pm - The feeding window closes, and you are stuffed. You wouldn’t want to eat more if you could!
Example Schedule #2
This schedule is for people who love breakfast. So you start eating a little earlier, and thanks to a 10-hour window, you still have time to have dinner with the family (when everyone else’s schedule aligns, too!).
7:00 am - Shower, dress, and commute to start your day at work. You can have a coffee, Amino Energy or BCAAs to sip on during your commute.
10:30 am - Bacon and eggs at work (thanks to a fantastic technique to cook everything deliciously in the microwave.
12:30 pm - Snack on an apple and some Chicharrónes.
2:30 - This is your largest meal of the day with 4-6 oz of chicken breast either in a mixed green salad with Ranch dressing or accompanied by butternut squash risotto
4:30 is snack time again with homemade granola
6:30 pm - at the gym.
8:00 - Dinner with the family.
Having your food prepped and prepared at the start of the week allows you to avoid extra work cooking and cleaning each night and close your feeding window with a relaxed evening.
You may have noticed the first meal plan includes a lot of dairy. You may get a little worried if you are lactose intolerant or have an aversion to dairy. Relax. Note that the second meal plan contains no dairy. It also uses multiple, smaller meals throughout the day, where the first has 2 or 3. You can create a meal plan that works for you, regardless of your dietary preferences, allergens, or conditions. Yup, that includes you Vegans. And the Vegetarians. And the Paleo crowd. And anyone else I failed to mention!
Look, I know you have a hectic schedule without a lot of free time! That’s what I love about intermittent fasting: it’s controlled, planned, and doesn’t suck more time out of an already busy day. Bonus: your body gets the food it needs, giving you more energy to power through the day.
Oh yeah…
About those 8 hours of sleep: because you spent your time planning your meals and didn’t spend a lot of time cooking due to prepping earlier in the week, and you were productive outside of your eating window: you have a lot of leftover time.
Catch up on that sleep!
Today’s Tasks
Don’t forget to complete today’s tasks for the challenge.
- Drink 1 gallon of water
- Workout for 45 minutes
- Read ten pages from your book
- Stick to your meal plan Once completed, head to the tracking site and mark them as completed to track your progress for the challenge. Tomorrow you’ll be able to earn extra points in the challenge in the first surprise element!