my intermittent fasting results

What To Eat & Drink When Your Intermittent Fasting

Part of my routine is intermittent fasting and a variation of the 5:2 diet. It works for me, but it's not easy. Check out the video I recorded on my experiences and also some of the more detailed info about fasting!

My Results With Intermittent Fasting

 

Listen To It On Soundcloud

 

Below Is A Transcription Of The Video

Below is a direct transcription of the video:

Introduction

Hey guys, Jonathan from CuraVita here. Intermittent fasting, what is it, does it work, and is it working for me? Don't forget we've got our CuraVita Green Boost Supergreen here. You can head on over to curavita.com.au if you're not there already, or hit the link in the description below and you can go to our five star Supergreen powder product in the store there. So let's just head to the computer, and we're going to talk about fasting and how it all works.

What Is Fasting & The 5:2 Diet

Righto, we're now in front of the computer, so we can go and have a look at some articles and some different sites that talk about fasting. Now first of all, just want to... Some of the questions. I've been fasting I suppose on and off for about a year. But probably the most consistent I've been is in the last three or four months. For various reasons with work, and business, and family, and actually just getting slack. If you've listened to some of my other videos and been over to the CuraVita blog, you'll know that I'm a 40-something Aussie guy, and was very fit and active in my younger days. I'm a lot fitter now than I was maybe 10 years ago. I've got a dodgy knee so I can't run. I do ride my bike a lot.

But I got really excited about getting into the idea of thinking about how to not only stay fit but stay healthy, and then obviously improve the longevity of life as well, and be able to do things as I get older. I was finding it very difficult to lose the weight I wanted. Once upon a time I could just run or do some physical exercise, and I wouldn't even have to worry about what I eat. And most guys my age find as you get that little bit older, and sort of starts around about 30 I suppose, especially if you drink a bit of beer, or you excess indulge and eat to excess. It's much, much harder to maintain that weight. It seems to happen to a large majority of us. Some of us, or some guys that can kind of get by, and they seem to have that metabolism where it doesn't matter what they eat or what they do, they just stay lean. But for the rest of us, it's a struggle.

But fasting. So this is to me by far the most powerful in terms of losing weight fast, and then getting to that point, feeling... Just turn off my phone. Okay, I'm back. Yeah, so the most powerful lifestyle hack I suppose you would call it. It's not really a hack, but to actually lose that weight. And with me, I don't weigh myself. I know when my body's feeling right, and when my body's feeling healthy, and that internal feeling of knowing when everything is right. When I'm not, when I've indulged too much or I don't exercise for a number of days, or some other things happen in life, I know my body starts to feel like it's not where it needs to be.

My Experience & Results With Intermittent Fasting

So that's the way I do it. So I'll just talk about some of the ways that I did it. Because I jump into things sometimes headfirst and shoot first and ask questions later, that type of mentality, although I'm getting better with that. Certainly when I first got into fasting, I was watching a documentary. And you can see here, we've got on this article open here, by the British journalist Michael Mosley. And he did a documentary on fasting. So I watched that documentary, and then the next day I literally just stopped eating, which is obviously not the right thing to do. But I stopped eating for a couple of days, 48 hours. And I got through it, and it was difficult.

But then I did a bit more research, and then I did that process in the correct way for about six weeks to eight weeks, I suppose. And it was very difficult for me. I love my food. And the hunger is such a strong and powerful urge and emotion, that when you're deprived of that, your body really does ask you what the hell is going on. But after that six to eight weeks, I lost lot of weight. I had people commenting regularly on how lean I was and how much better I looked. So that was just a start for me, and it was a really good indication that it was working and on to something.

But then I went and did a bit more research, and then I looked at the 5:2 Diet, which we've got here, and which we'll talk about in a second. And there are some other intermittent ways you can fast by sort of one day where you don't eat, or you might only have a very low calorie day, and then you might eat normally for say, three days, and then on the next day after that then you have another low calorie day. But what I'm actually doing now, I am doing, it's 5:2, but one day where... So I will eat my meal the night before. Then the next morning I'll get up and have a black coffee, and that's it. I'll drink lots of water during the day, that's one thing I've found with fasting.

If I don't drink enough water, I lose focus at the end of the day and I'll also get a bit of a headache, obviously from a little bit of dehydration. So [inaudible 00:05:26] and hydrating is really important. So I won't eat for that day. And when I first started doing it this way, I was having a small meal later that day. But now I'm doing it where I don't eat the entire day. So I'll go a full 24 hours without a meal, just a black coffee or maybe two black coffees, and then I eat the next morning with a normal breakfast or sometimes a big breakfast.

Then say I'll do that on a Monday, and then I might have Tuesday and Wednesday where I eat normally. And then Thursday which is today, I do the same process again. I eat the meal which was last night on Wednesday, and then I have one or two black coffees, and I don't eat until tomorrow morning. So again, a full 24 hours. And to me I find that with my lifestyle and my work, I can do that without losing productivity. It's still hard, but I can get through one day like that, still get the benefits of the intermittent fasting, rather than doing it two days in a row or three days in a row.

So that's the way I do it now, it works for me. It really does have a benefit with maintaining weight and allowing my body to go almost into that ketosis state where really, it changes the way your body is working, and there's a lot of research you can do with that yourself. So that's the way I do it, but it's not the recommended way on the standard 5:2 Diet. So here we've got in front of me here, we'll just read through the first couple of paragraphs to give you a bit of an idea of how Michael Mosley and the people behind the concept of the 5:2 Diet recommend you do it.

Opinions and Results From Other Websites

"Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern that involves regular fasting. The 5:2 Diet, also known as a fast diet, is currently the most popular intermittent fasting diet. It was popularized by British journalist Michael Mosley. It's called the 5:2 Diet because five days of the week are normal eating days, while the other two restrict calories to 500 to 600 per day." So that's where the way I do it is different, where I restrict my calories almost to zero on those other two days. Because there are no requirements about which foods to eat, but rather when you should eat them, the diet is more of a lifestyle.

So this is... My partner looks at doing it this way. It's a little bit easy because you can intake calories on those days, and actually you can choose whatever you want to eat, it just has to be below 500 are 600 calories per day. And you can have a salad and maybe a tiny bit of rice, not too much. You can have a juice and drink a coffee, et cetera. So it doesn't interrupt the pattern of your eating all that much. So some of the benefits of intermittent fasting. This is a study posted on Healthline. Some of the things I've already spoken about, but reduced body weight by more than five kilos, reduced fat mass by three-and-a-half kilos, reduced blood levels of triglycerides by 20%, increased LDL particle size, which is a good thing. Reduced levels of CRP, an important mark of inflammation. Decreased levels of leptin by up to 40%.

So there's some really good and evidence-based health benefits by fasting. Just some of the things I feel with fasting. You would think, especially when you do it after a while that you'd have trouble sleeping. But I actually find on my fasting days, I sleep better. And I wake up the next morning and I'm actually not all that hungry. I will go and have a big breakfast, but I'm not as hungry as what I would normally suspect. One of the things that I've found much easier in the last five to six weeks is, I can cope with the fasting a lot better.

Now I think that has got to do with that now I'm actually using the Wim Hof Method. I've got another video on that, and talk about what I do with the Wim Hof Method, on the channel and on the site, so you can look at that if you want. But the Wim Hof Method with the breathing concept and the cold exposure, which I'm still doing, it not only has health benefits, but the improvement in your willpower and your mental clarity to make decisions, and make clear decisions, and just not procrastinate, is quite phenomenal, and I think that's had a really good impact on the way I fast.

So fasting is not as difficult as it was, even though my body's telling me I've got to eat, just like it is when you hop in a cold shower, your body is telling you, you don't want to hop in a cold shower, or your brain is, and you do it anyway and you just make it happen because then you know it's good for you. So if you're going to do the 5:2, the proper 5:2 Diet, here are some of the foods that they say you can consume on your fast days. Vegetables, obviously, a small amount of yogurt with berries, boiled or baked eggs, which is interesting because it's such high protein. A bit of fish, cauliflower, rice, soup, low calorie soups, black coffee, obviously as I mentioned, tea, and water.

I can't emphasize enough the importance to drink a lot of water on the fasting days. When I don't, and sometimes I'll be working late in the day. My job is quite intellectual, so it takes a lot of thought and process. And if I'm on a fasting day and I haven't had enough water, all of a sudden I'll realize that I'm not thinking clearly and I haven't got what I wanted to get done, and I'm procrastinating, and all those sort of things. So, lots of water on your fasting days, really important. And that's what I see.

So just before we finish up, here's another really good article. And I like this article by James Clear, because he talks about how it's benefited him. And again, what I like about fasting, just like the Wim Hof Method is, you don't need to spend huge amounts of money on anything. You don't need to purchase any equipment. Everything that you need to do this, it's in your life already. So it costs zero, and it's going to save you money as well. So, we'll just talk through and read a little bit about what he says here.

"Why is it worthwhile to change when you're eating? Well, most notably it's a great way to get lean without going crazy on diet or cutting your calories down to nothing. In fact, most of the time you'll try to keep your calories the same when you start intermittent fasting. Most people eat bigger meals during a shorter time frame. Additionally, intermittent fasting is a good way to keep muscle mass on while getting lean."

Fitting Fasting Into Your Life

Now I do do a little bit of workout training, mainly on the kids' jungle gym, which is out the back. I might do a video on that at some point. But I don't have any gym gear or fitness gear. I do do pushups, and situps, and pullups, and a bit of DPP yoga as well. That's how I try and keep in shape, along with my bike riding. So here's an interesting point, and probably relevant to me. "When you're in the fasted state, your body can burn fat that has been inaccessible during a fed state. Because we don't enter the fasted state until 12 hours after our last meal, it's rare that our bodies are in that fat-burning state. This is one of the reasons why many people who start intermittent fasting will lost fat without changing what they eat, how much they eat, or how often they exercise. Fasting puts your body in a fat-burning state that you rarely make during a normal eating schedule."

So the way I do it, I might have my meal in the evening the night before, and then the 12 hours goes while I'm sleeping, and then I wake up and then my body will go into that fat-burning state for the rest of the day. So, one reason why I'm becoming leaner much faster. So he also talks about here, the benefits he sees in intermittent fasting. "It makes your day simpler." Yeah, I'd agree. It certainly saves you money, and you don't have to cook. But feeling hungry is not always the most appealing part of the day. "Intermittent fasting helps you live longer. Who wouldn't want that? There's this one problem, who wants to starve themselves in the name of living longer?" That's a good point. "Intermittent fasting may reduce the risk of cancer. This one's up for debate because there isn't a lot of research and experimentation done on the relationship between cancer and fasting."

"Intermittent fasting is much easier than dieting." I've never dieted, so I don't know. But certainly, looking at how you would diet properly, I think fasting is much easier. So that's fasting, or intermittent fasting in a nutshell. Just wanted to talk about my experience with it and the benefits I'm seeing. With fasting and like everything, a lot of this has to do with willpower, and it helps you in everyday life. It's why as I mentioned I think the fasting has become much easier since I've been doing the Wim Hof Method, because it's all about willpower, and doing things in your life because you know it's good for you.

So yeah, if you haven't looked at the Wim Hof Method, hop on over and have a look at that on our other videos, or do a bit of research yourself. So just to clarify, the things I'm doing that's costing me zero money and basically zero time, although there's a little bit of time with Wim Hof with your breathing. But all this stuff is stuff you do every day. So, the Wim Hof Method I take 10 minutes to do my breathing per day. I have a shower every day anyway, so I can do my cold exposure there. Obviously you're always going to be eating on the days you're not fasting, so when you don't eat, it makes your day simpler. So it's actually in that respect easier.

So really, there's no excuse. You've just got to have that willpower, and know you're doing it for the right reasons. Once you get into it, things become a lot easier. Okay, there you go. A bit about intermittent fasting. So there you go, some information on fasting, how it works. It's not such a difficult thing to get your head around, and not such a difficult thing to do. Especially when you combine it with other concepts such as the Wim Hof Method, where you can use your willpower and the clarity that you get with your mental state to actually go ahead and fast and do it properly. It has some really, really cool benefits as you've seen in the video. Thanks for your time, we'll catch you later.

Back to blog

Leave a comment

Please note, comments need to be approved before they are published.