Is not eating until the afternoon bad?
I don’t do intermittent fasting every day, BUT I do think it is a very effective fat loss tool.
Of course, people thought I was crazy yesterday when I worked out in the afternoon without eating and didn’t eat till around dinner time.
One person even told me, “That it isn’t healthy.”
And yes, conventional wisdom tells you that you NEED to eat breakfast and not skip meals so not eating till dinner time does seem a bit crazy.
But is it?
In my opinion no, Intermittent Fasting (IF) isn’t crazy…especially if you aren’t eating a high carbohydrate diet and can be patient enough to get over the hunger pangs that occur when you first change your eating schedule.
If you are eating a high carbohydrate diet, then yes…it may seem like more of a challenge to get used to IF.
If you eat a high carb diet, you will experience more energy fluctuations throughout the day than someone on a lower carb, high fat and high protein diet. Your insulin will spike after each high carb meal, making you feel energized. Of course after the spike, your energy levels will dip, making you feel sluggish and tired.
When your energy levels dip, usually you feel hungry. This feeling of hungry caused by a high carb diet, and skipping those meals that your body feels it needs, does make doing IF more challenging and can make you feel light-headed at points.
Trust me…I’ve tried this and it wasn’t near as easy to get used to IF as it was with a high-fat, high-protein diet.
BUT if you do eat a lower carb diet that includes lots of fat and protein, you don’t have the constant energy dips and hunger pangs, which makes IF easier to do and an effective way to burn fat and gain muscle.
Just like calorie cycling and carb reloading (with potatoes and non grain carbs of course), doing IF every once in a while can keep your body guessing and stoke your metabolism.
Intermittent fasting can be challenging on either diet if you are used to eating at specific times of day. After a week or two of adjusting from your set meal times, you will feel like you have more consistent energy on IF.
Yesterday, I never felt hungry or like my energy was sagging. I got in a great workout too. All while on an empty stomach.
So tell me…how is that not healthy compared to a high carb diet with set meal times where you feel constantly hungry especially if you skip a meal?
If you need more convincing read this piece by an IF expert. Leangains wrote a great article debunking the Top Ten Fasting Myths.
Posted on December 7, 2011, in Conventional Wisdom - How I hate you, Diet, Man Biceps and tagged fasted training, intermittent fasting, LeanGains. Bookmark the permalink. 3 Comments.
Man Bicep 
Whenever I skip food until the afternoon, I feel really grody and tired and cranky. However, I do often go without eating dinner. Sometimes I’m just not feeling like eating, and so I don’t eat.
The husband and I talk about this quite a bit, how we get a lot of cultural messages that say we have to eat at specific times a day, even if it runs counter to the way our bodies are feeling. It’s better to just recognize when your body needs or wants food, and to eat at those times instead of sitting down and forcing yourself to eat when you aren’t hungry.
I totally agree. Whether you fast at night or in the morning it doesn’t matter. Just eat when you are hungry.
Day to day my meal times change. There are some days I eat right when I wake up and others that I don’t eat until the afternoon.
The most important thing is to find what works for you and to listen to your body not what some WebMD article says about breakfast.
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