This is a wrap up for the intermitted fasting experiment that was for the large part unsuccessful. I did manage to fast a couple of times and I did learn some things along the way, so, not all is lost.
The first thing I learned is that fasting is not as hard as one might think but it does take a high level of discipline and it is emotionally taxing. The emotional part I did not expect. One the nights before a fast I would look towards the next day with trepidation. Fating is not fun. It removes you from social situations and there is something frightening about not eating. Eating is such a normal human function that denying ourselves that function triggers some powerful emotion. I can see how fasting can be used for spiritual purposes for the simple fact that you almost must rely on something more powerful than yourself to complete a fast.
Next, I learned that fasting causes me to loose discipline. It takes so much discipline to remain on a fast that when I return to eating I am spent. I don’t have the energy to tell myself no and my body says yes! Depriving yourself of food when it is available is not natural but realizing that you can go without if need be is an important realization. I think there are some blood sugar issues and bodily functions at work here that cause compensation mechanisms to kick in and make self control very difficult. I cannot say that I went nuts on my eat days but I certainly did not exercise the discipline that I would have liked.
Routine is important. Dieting is a huge challenge and one thing that makes it much easier is routine. If you get in the habit of eating the same thing or a similar amount every day it becomes much easier to sustain that diet. If you change that diet on a regular basis and from day to day you mind and body do not know how to react. Intermitted fasting is the definition of making drastic regular changes in diet. It puts you on an emotional roller coaster with not routine to fall back on. It is not keeping it simple it is making something more complex than necessary.
Intermitted fasting effected my life much more than I care to admit. I am at work in an environment where I have the same routine day in and day out. Very little changes for weeks at a time and I find it very easy to develop routines and stick to them. Keeping a workout schedule has always been simple, but I found that with intermitted fasting I had to work my routine around the days that I was eating. Fasting puts a big hole in your week. Days that I fasted feel almost as if they were lost.
One positive that I recognized was that after the first meal coming off of a fast I felt fabulous. I was amped, it felt like I had chugged a couple of red-bulls but without the jitters. I felt alive and healthy. This post fast high is almost enough to do it again, considering that my fast would be broken right before bed this was kind of disappointing. I would be interested to see how it feels to break a fast first thing in the morning.
I feel that if I had remained on the diet long enough to go through a couple more fast sessions I would have lost some weight but not without having my routine suffer and my emotional state get wrecked. I would not suggest intermitted fasting to anyone looking for a simple way to loose weight.