What is intermittent fasting?

Most people think of intermittent fasting as a “diet” or ”starving yourself” but that couldn’t be further from the truth. When done correctly, it can be used as a therapeutic treatment to reverse obesity, insulin resistance and metabolic illnesses.

Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern that restricts food consumption to a short window of time each day to allow for a period of extended fasting.

Like the amount of meals per day, people are often unaware of how many hours of the day they spend eating. Despite thinking they eat 3-4 times a day, Americans, on average, actually eat 17 to 21 times a day!

Did you know?

your body burns sugar (glucose) or fat (ketones) for energy and fuel? When your body can transition back and forth between these two fuel burning mechanisms we call that being metabolically flexible.

Before COVID, a study was done that showed 88% of people were inefficient at being metabolically flexible. Somewhere along the line, their metabolism was “broken”, so to speak, and now they can’t go back and forth between burning sugar and burning fat, so they just burn sugar because it’s easier!

So many people eat low calorie, exercise and eat healthy foods throughout the day and wonder why they can’t lose weight. The answer is they are never burning fat and their fat metabolism is very inefficient.

Now, less than 10% of people are metabolically healthy at this point.
If you think you are one of these “sugar burners”, don’t beat yourself up. Most of us are! But you can reverse it. You can become a fat burning machine. Does it happen overnight? No. Does it take practice and time and patience? Yes. Is it 100% worth it to get your metabolic flexibility back on track and feel amazing? YES 1000 TIMES!

Intermittent Fasting + Oxidative Priority

There’s a priority sequence of the fuels that you burn:

First, your body will work to get rid of alcohol above anything else. If you have alocohol in your system, it’s going to shut off fat burning and it’s going to shut off carb burning. Your body burns this first because it is recognized as a toxin. This whole “mommy wine” culture is completely understandable and relatable but if you are drinking a glass of wine every night, not only is it messing with your sleep but it’s shutting off fat burning!

Second, your body will burn carbohydrate and then stored carbohydrate.

Third, your body will burn through fat in your bloodstream.

And finally, after going through all of that, your body will begin to burn your own body fat that is stored.

This is where intermittent fasting comes into play BIG TIME. When you allow your body to go without eating food or drinking soda/alcohol for a prolonged period of time (working up to it, of course) then you allow your body to FINALLY tap into that stored excess body fat. WHICH = FAT LOSS!

If we are eating every few hours, even if it’s healthy food, the body will never get to burning that stored extra fat. When I work with women, I encourage them to get their bodies “fat adapted”. That means we focus on:
-healthy protein and healthy fats at each meal
-stop the frequent snacking
-2-3 square, ample, nutrient dense meals per day

Once the body is fat adapted, (meaning there hasn’t been consumption of alcohol, high carbs, simple carbs) then the body begins to learn that we are asking it to go straight to the body fat burning zone.

Now, AFTER getting fat adapted, we incorporate intermittent fasting or eating during a certain timeframe each day and BOOM! YOUR BODY BECOMES A BODY FAT BURNING MACHINE!

In health and love,