I weighed 211.0 lbs. a couple days ago, way over the control line.
So I did a 22-hour or so fast. I had last eaten about 8pm the day before, so I did not eat again till after 7pm the day after.
By the next day, my weight had dropped a pretty remarkable 2.5 pounds – almost a pound and half below the control line.
I could drive myself crazy trying to figure out why my weight was up so much and why it went down so fast. Doesn’t really matter. What matters is having tools and techniques I can use to smooth out the curve.
Intermittent fasting (IF) is one of those tools. Most of the information I use for fasting I got from Brad Pilon’s Eat Stop Eat e-book. [1]
Pilon’s book goes in depth on the research behind fasting (the bibliography is long and looks thorough) and his recommendations.
His plan is simple: fast for 22–24 hours one or two days a week. That’s it. Make sure you’re sleeping through 8 of those hours. So what happens is you wind up skipping two meals -- either breakfast/lunch or lunch/supper -- on those days, You’ll still eat every day, but you’ll also get the benefits of a 20+ hour fast. There are more specifics in his book.
And what do you on the days you don’t fast? Pilon wrote an excellent blog post on Eating Responsibly that I love for its directness and simplicity.
My view is that we’ve all had our turn being kids, which means we’ve had our turn eating like kids.
We’ve had our ice-cream birthday parties and our stomach aches from eating too much candy at the movies.
We’re adults now. Time to eat like it…
Eating responsibly, he says, is how you eat when your plan falls apart and the world is offering a platter of brownies with no parents around to stop you scarfing them up.
I’m the adult here. Time to eat like one.
- I’d link to the direct order page for ESE, which may be cheaper than the Kindle book, but unfortunately it’s a long sales page with clipart, misspellings, and generally embarrassing design and presentation. Pilon offers up great information and I value his opinions, but I can’t stand his marketing/promotion choices that I have to filter out to get to the good stuff. So I can’t recommend wading through that page. ↩
