Intermittent Fasting

Perspective from a Christian Dietitian

I am not one to jump into controversy but I am one to stand up for those who the dieting industry has exploited.

So many heartaches have been shared in my office by women who have tried diets only to think they failed when it was the diet that was the problem. And now, intermittent fasting (IF) has their attention.

And yours. This post is in response to multiple requests.

Image by Victoria from Pixabay

Am I leary that IF is today’s popular diet that will come and go? You bet.

Am I biased because I’ve met with women who felt let down by IF?? Likely.

But what does the evidence say long term? Are we better off limiting eating within a shortened window of time?

I could spend a good long time, looking at every research paper on this from all angles.

I did not. I cannot.

I will be speaking more from clinical experience. What I have seen work and not work as a clinical dietitian, along with some evidence to back it up. If you authored a clinical trial on IF, you know way more than I do.

Either way, this is a high-level comparison that I hope gives you food for thought and brings a little more Peace to your table.

Let’s dig in.

What do we know about Intermittent Fasting?

Want to know more than these bullet points? - See the footnotes below¹²

• IF can limit snacking and grazing 24/7. As a society, we stay up later more than ever and often eat more from sheer opportunity.

• IF focuses only on when you eat not what you eat or how you eat.

• Your metabolism is decreased on IF in the short term and long term.

• You are hungrier after a fast, encouraging you to eat larger meals.

• You are more likely to gain more weight over time if you eat fewer meals that are large or medium-sized than if you eat smaller meals more often.

• The time frame between your first and last meal is not associated with your weight changing over time. Therefore, IF is not associated with having a lower weight in the long run.

• Less time between waking and breakfast (or your first meal) is associated with less weight gain over time.

• A longer gap between your last meal of the day and bedtime is linked to less weight gain over time.

  • This isn’t saying the longer the better. A trend of eating your main evening meal further vs closer to bedtime was associated with less weight gain over time.

Conclusion:

• Having large meals less often is more beneficial than limiting eating windows.

• Eating smaller meals spread over a full day may not change your weight in the short term but does result in less weight gain over time.

• Eating within a shorter timeframe does not lead to weight loss over time.

Hunger and IF

Your body knows what it needs. If you do not eat enough throughout the day, it will use hunger to push you to eat enough in the window it has.

You require willpower to fight against physical hunger. And you have heard me say here before, you have a finite amount of willpower. There will come a day when it is needed for something else other than IF. Any goals you achieved with IF will reverse once the striving ceases.

If you do not feel hungry when IF, that is not a good thing. It means your metabolism has already turned down a notch in response to repeated deprivation.

The good news is you can teach your body to become hungry again for regular meals and stimulate your metabolism. Find out how here.

Grace given even in our physical body.

Instead of IF:

• Transition your view of eating to what food does for you vs. what it does to you.

• Call to mind that the age-old fast from evening to waking is working with your body’s design to have a time of nourishment and a time of restoration. You are likely already fasting when your body needs it.

• Break the fast with, yup, break-fast; ideally, within one hour of waking.

• If you find structure helps, make the overnight fast longer, but start earlier in the evening, rather than delay eating in the morning. Don’t make it a rigid rule, just a method to help nourish yourself when you need it.

• Always eat when you are physically hungry. Always.

• Choose adequate sleep over a smaller eating window to control grazing. Adequate sleep (7-8 hours a night for adults) has immediate benefits to your appetite.

• Eat every 3-4 hours to keep portions moderate, stimulate metabolism, and nourish your body consistently.

• For any major diet changes, ask yourself, can I do this for life? If the answer is, I’m not sure… don’t do it. Avoid the heartache and the potential detriment to your metabolism.

• Transition instead, to a lifestyle that you’re confident you can maintain for the long haul.

• Pick one step you can do this week and begin your journey there.

Give Yourself Permission to Release from Striving for the Perfect Diet

Eating is meant to be restorative, not punitive.

When you strive to eat a certain way, rest is set aside and hinders nourishment for your soul. Be gentle with yourself in the process and allow grace. Jesus does.

God created you to need food for your enjoyment and for your nourishment as well as to bring us together.

The enemy of our souls wants to come steal, kill, and destroy all this (John 10:10).

He urges you to plunge into a diet and chastises you when you inevitably need your willpower for something else.

See it for the lie that it is and capture the negative thoughts right from the get-go (2 Cor 10:5).

Replace it with the Truth of how remarkably He made you (Psalm 139:14).

Try an alternative approach that lets you work with the biological makeup that God designed just for you (Psalm 139:13).

Tending the Temple

(1 Cor 6: 19-20)

Mankind’s first job was to tend the garden. Nourishing both physically and eternally. Likewise, you can tend your body and your soul with regular nourishment from food and by allowing Peace Himself to take a seat at your table.

My heart’s passion is to help you see food as a gift that brings us together and nourishes us, both body and soul. I see IF in contrast to this.

You may argue this point based on personal experience. That is okay. But I don’t base this opinion on one voice. It represents the heartache of countless voices I have heard personally. I want to prevent you from being included in that group in the time to come.

I see IF as a way to try to control our bodies’ design by restricting when we allow ourselves to be nourished. Instead of, tending our body that we have been gifted by nourishing it when it is designed to receive it.

When you release your grip on dieting and embrace your body’s design, you are not giving in.

You are receiving the gift you have been given, tending the Temple of the Holy Spirit which frees you to embrace Peace at your table and rest for your spirit.

Allow food to be seen as a gift rather than something to be controlled, and experience the Peace and rest it was meant to be.

Take your time to let this sink in. Then revisit, what is one step you can take today towards the rest that nourishment is meant to give?

Share it in the comments or over in the chat around the Contented Table. We are encouraging each other on in this exploration of nourishment.

Pull up a chair to the Contented Table. There is always room for one more.

Until then,

A gentle reminder,

God wants you to know:

I see you, I hear you, I love you.

Jane

1. Association of Eating and Sleeping Intervals With Weight Change Over Time: The Daily24 Cohort

2. What is Fasting? Is it a Safe Way to Lose Weight?