If THIS Is How You Feel While Intermittent Fasting, You’re Doing It Wrong!

If you think “intermittent fasting” (or “time-restricted eating”, etc.) is too hard and leaves you feeling too hungry/hangry… with all due respect, you’re doing it wrong!!

Time-restricted eating (what most folks now refer to as Intermittent Fasting), simply put, is eating fewer meals and eating them in a smaller window of time. And, as a general rule, no snacking.

This is the first goal for many who are transitioning to this healthy ancestral way of eating, to reduce the amount of snacking… then move toward “3 square meals” a day. Next, you can play with 2 back to back meals and and eat them within a smaller window of time. e.g lunch and dinner, or breakfast and lunch. Eventually, you may opt for some days with one meal or even no meal! (gasp!)

Bonus points if what you’re eating is actually health-enhancing! Think: clean, least-toxic-possible varieties of REAL foods; high healthy fats + lower carbs (especially refined carbs) + moderate protein + insulin friendly choices.

Eating less often alleviates the burden of all-things-eating-related and can dramatically help restore insulin and blood glucose to more favorable levels. There is incredible hormonal benefit to eating this way, which in itself is powerfully healing and regenerative by nature.

This is contradictory to what the food industry would have us believe is ideal. Breakfast is certainly NOT the most important meal of the day, nor do we “need” to eat multiple small meals per day to keep our metabolism fired up!

Eating ALL. THE. TIME. day in and day out, month after month is new on the timeline of human history. Food manufacturing and the snack food industry have changed what we believe about the necessity of frequent feedings.

I digress.

With Intermittent Fasting, the focus is NOT on eating LESS… but rather eating LESS OFTEN! When you DO eat, you FUEL up with healthy, satisfying, satiating foods – high in healthy fats, low-to-no carbs, and moderate protein. Eat until you feel satisfied, but not feeling the need to remove your belt or reach for your stretchy pants!

If you’re eating a couple times per day, at least in one of those meals, eat until you feel pretty full. This is for hormonal reasons to maximize the benefits.

Calories in/calories out is an inaccurate and outdated theory for how we gain weight, lose weight, and metabolize. Sure, calories play a role, but not this way.

Since you’ll be eating less often, you will indirectly be taking in fewer calories in the big scheme of things, BUT not in each and every meal. When we limit portion sizes and eat only small meals throughout the day, we miss the opportunity to properly signal our brains that we’re “safe & full”… we sabotage our efforts to be metabolically flexible and fit.

Instead of eating 5 or 6 small meals per day, we’d be more efficient AND significantly better off, as far as our longevity is concerned, if we at one or two larger meals (consisting of the healthy food types mentioned above) each day… then threw in a day each week where we ramp up the healthy carbs and proteins.

Over time, this helps us become more fat adapted and metabolically flexible… and LESS HUNGRY.

If you’re consistently hungry because of missing one or two meals, you’re not there yet. Adding more healthy fats and restricting unhealthy carbs will help move you in that direction. Eating more often will not. That’s kind of like giving more alcohol to an alcoholic or more sugar to a type 2 diabetic – it seems to resolve the issue in the moment, but makes it worse in the long run.

{Side note: If your goals consist of achieving optimal health & function, fat loss, disease reversal, hormonal optimization, and maximizing your longevity potential… and someone is STILL advising that you eat smaller meals more frequently… you might consider turning elsewhere for said ‘health’ advice.}

Finally, you’ll get even more bonus points when you start to strategically incorporate weekly, monthly, and seasonal diet variation, plus therapeutic functional fasting, extended/block fasting, and cellular detoxification.

Now THAT’S the start of a game changing plan!

Dr. Colleen Trombley-VanHoogstraat (“Dr Mom Online”) is a long-time personality in Natural Health & Wellness and is in her 24th year of active practice in Michigan, along with her husband Dr. Marc VanHoogstraat. She’s also the proud mom of two rather fabulous kiddos that she currently home schools. Her unique perspective of the science of Wellness provides predictable solutions and transformational results for those struggling with chronic health issues, as well as those seeking lifelong health. To discover her simple strategies for creating better health through functional nutrition, movement, mindset, cellular detoxification, and metabolic re-setting, jump on board as a regular reader of Dr Mom Online when you plug in your name and email address and follow along on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/drmomonline/

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Dr. Trombley
 

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