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Episode Overview
Intermittent fasting has gained a lot of popularity in recent years, but is it really as effective as everyone says? Does it actually lead to sustainable weight loss?
We decided it was time to sit down and give you the straight facts about intermittent fasting and why it may or may not be the best approach for weight loss or better health.
And don’t forget! We have a free resource for you to download now: 5 Reasons You’re Craving Sugar. Click the link to get it sent straight to your inbox and start learning how to manage your sugar cravings today!
Key Points
- What is intermittent fasting and why is it so popular?
- Why intermittent fasting is different for men vs women
- What the science shows (and doesn’t show)
- Jen’s experience with intermittent fasting
Mentions:
Related Content:
- Episode 165: How To Break Free From Emotional Eating
- Episode 136: 3 Strategies To Manage Stress Eating Urges
Transcript
ANNIE BREES (INTRO)
Welcome to Balance365 Life Radio, a podcast that delivers honest conversations about food, fitness, weight, and wellness. I’m your host Annie Brees along with co founder Jennifer Campbell. Together we have a team of personal trainers and nutritionists who coached 1000s of women daily and are on a mission to help women feel happy, healthy, and confident in their bodies on their own terms. Join us here every week as we discuss hot topics pertaining to our physical, mental and emotional well being with amazing guests. Enjoy.
ANNIE
Hello, my friends, today we are talking about intermittent fasting. Have you heard of it? What is it? Why do people do it? Does it work for fat loss? Internet searches for intermittent fasting peaked in early 2020, and thankfully have been on the decline since then. But we still get asked about this diet constantly. So today we’re going to be covering what intermittent fasting is, what can work for you and what our concerns are with it. Before we get started, make sure you head over to the show notes though to grab our free guide, “The 5 Reasons You’re Craving Sugar and How to Address It.” Enjoy this episode.
ANNIE
Hi, Jen, how are you?
JEN CAMPBELL
Good. How are you?
ANNIE
I am golden. So great. So happy to be here. So happy to be talking about this very popular topic.
BOTH
[Laugh]
ANNIE
Today, intermittent fasting. Have you ever done intermittent fasting Jen?
JEN
Yeah. And we’re gonna talk all about it.
ANNIE
Your own personal experience. This is one of well, you know, I joke that I was not, I tried a lot of diets, I was never great at them. I could not stick with them. This was definitely in that category, just was not sustainable in any way, shape or form for me. But we’re gonna dive into what it is, why people may do it and the truth behind it, right?
JEN
Yeah.
ANNIE
Okay, so you want to tell us, what is intermittent fasting?
JEN
Yeah, so it comes in many different forms, actually. But essentially, it involves spending windows of time eating, and the rest of the time fasting, or not eating. And the windows of time you can eat while participating in intermittent fasting vary depending on who you’re working with, I guess, or what protocol you’ve decided to follow. So some protocols are sensible, and some are extreme. And examples include what is called 16/8, which is 16 hours of fasting followed by eight hours of eating. But then there’s 20/4, which is 20 hours of fasting followed by four hours of eating. And then you know, just the deeper you go into these communities, the more you find, like the one meal a day club, so essentially fasting for you know, the whole day, except for your one meal. And but then, you know, there’s people fasting for a whole day, every second day for a few days, a whole week, in some instances. Yeah, many different protocols, but essentially, lots of not eating.
ANNIE
And to be clear, when you talk about some of those ratios, that eight hours of eating, the four hours of eating, there is a lot of eating I would imagine in those hours, but it’s not like you’re eating every hour necessarily. It’s, you have permission to eat within that time, right?
JEN
You have permission to eat within that window of time. Yeah.
ANNIE
Yes. Okay. So why would people do this?
JEN
Well, okay, there’s some valid reasons that people might do this. They might be instructed to do so to help manage a medical condition. They may have religious reasons that they fast, and then maybe less valid ones like health claims, most which are not founded in science, such as jumpstarting your metabolism, prolonging your life, detoxing your body is another one. Other claims, it improves your gut health, it’s superior for weight loss is another big claim. And so for these ones, there are a lot of people fasting, believing in these benefits and the truth is that none of them are, none of them are conclusive claims. Yeah, and most research done on intermittent fasting has been on rats, mice, and men. And the same conclusions cannot be drawn for women.
ANNIE
Which the whole research done on rats, mice and men is true across the board and research in general. So, like women just haven’t been subjects of study, right? Until pretty recently. Let’s talk about what we do know, what what can we say for certain
JEN
What we can say for certain is eating a healthy well balanced diet, getting regular exercise, sleeping, and stress management can all improve your health. We also know that overeating consistently, I’m not talking about once in a while here, can be detrimental to your health. And so we also know that having boundaries with food can be helpful. But we’ll get into that a little bit more in a little bit here.
ANNIE
Yeah, but let’s be honest, a lot of the chatter we hear about intermittent fasting is from people who are jumping on this like trend, right?
JEN
Yeah. And you know, it’s, I don’t think people jump on board diet trends because of the health claims, right? Like, “Oh, it’s going to improve my gut health, I have to try this.” I think that they jump on board these trends the weight loss, is why they’re doing it. I mean, that’s my guess, and why the vast majority of people do it. And they share the health claims. I think the health claims are shared to make themselves feel better about doing it, or maybe to convince themselves it’s not a fad diet. And I don’t want to speak for anyone here, this is a feeling I have, and also lived experience of someone who used to do this.
ANNIE
Mm hmm. And I think that’s just true of people in general, they want to justify or plead their case for why their decision is the right decision. They want to feel like they’re making a good choice. A very human thing to do. But if that’s you, or if that has been you, or maybe that’s someone in your life, and you’re thinking like maybe I should join them, let’s give them the truth.
JEN
Yeah. So the truth is, there isn’t one study that’s shown that intermittent fasting is a superior way to achieve fat loss. And not to mention, there’s no conclusive evidence around all of these health claims, right? So eating a healthy well balanced diet, getting regular exercise, sleep, and stress management. These things can all help you produce a calorie deficit, and the sustainable fat loss that you’re looking for. Right? While allowing flexibility. So essentially, what I’m saying here is, and we’ve said this before on the podcast, any diet that produces a calorie deficit is going to lead to fat loss. Right? And so you can do that in a very rigid way with a lot of rules. Or you can do that in a balanced way with a lot of flexibility. Those are the choices. [Laughs]
ANNIE
Yeah, and it’s also not news on this podcast for us to share things like eating a healthy, well balanced diet, and getting regular exercise and sleep and stress management. But I think it really comes down to what kind of experience you want to have in a fat loss process, right?
JEN
For sure.
ANNIE
If you want to be rigid and strict and super hyper focused and have this be the center and the focal point of your life. that’s an option on the table, certainly. There’s a lot of people out there willing to sell you that choice. But we work with a lot of women who don’t want that, they’ve got other [bleep] to do, and that’s not how they want to spend their time. So with the intermittent fasting protocols, though, there are some concerns.
JEN
Yeah, for sure. So intermittent fasting, it’s been shown to impact women differently than men. And that’s because we have a totally different hormonal profile than men. And in general, women are just more sensitive to extreme diets, I guess, right? Because of that hormonal profile. And Amanda Howell, who’s actually been on our show before to talk about keto, she’s a public health educator who specializes in women’s health, she talks about how intermittent fasting can impact women, which is poor blood sugar control, increased belly fat, loss of period, which, of course, can result in infertility and decreased athletic performance, among other things. And it’s important to note that long term use of intermittent fasting will increase your cortisol levels, which can cause all kinds of things. And one of those things is it can increase cortisol levels, can increase your hunger and cravings, which only leads to more urges to eat. Right?
ANNIE
Right.
JEN
And I think most people probably know, just in general, that elevated, chronically elevated cortisol levels are not good for our bodies. And we actually have a member recently who, she had been doing intermittent fasting for a year, and she was told by her doctor that she must go off of it. It would be essential for her and restoring her health at that time. She just she’d been on it too long.
ANNIE
Yeah.
JEN
Yeah.
ANNIE
I think those health concerns are quite important to note, because as we’ve talked about, with so many diets that we start them for one reason, and they end up taking us in the opposite direction of where we wanted to go. And I think that the list you just provided there, Jen is a perfect example of how many people might start if as a means of losing fat and proving health, but over the course of a long haul, it’s the opposite.
JEN
Yeah. And they can, they’re very difficult to stick to in the real world. And so it just leads to my next point of our concerns about intermittent fasting is binge eating. And so binge eating is often already a problem when people go into diets. And I would say if you have done repeated diets, and you have developed a binge eating problem over the course of trying multiple diets, that every diet you try, you’re really looking for how to get in control of this binge eating, right, like, it’s horrifying. When these binge eating episodes start occurring, right? I’ve been there. Many of our members have been there. And it’s like, you feel like you were out of control. And you don’t know why it’s happening. And dieters don’t realize and, you know, I guess for anyone new to our show, dieters don’t realize that dieting is causing the binge eating. So they’re always looking for these solutions. And I think intermittent fasting is a very attractive diet for binge eaters, because it gives them permission to binge eat. So they’re trying to control this behavior that they just can’t seem to control. And then they find this diet that says, “Hey, that’s okay. We just won’t eat for, you know, 16 hours, 20 hours, and you can eat whatever you want in this window of time.”
ANNIE
And they’re like, “Yes!”
JEN
They’re like, “Yes, cuz that’s all I think about. So now I like, I think about bingeing all the time, I think about food constantly. But now I found a diet where I can just, if I can just hang on for that window of time, then I can eat whatever I want in that window.” So it feels like a solution, that doesn’t, that’s not actually a solution, but means that they can avoid addressing this binge eating stuff that they’ve had so much trouble trying to control.
ANNIE
And what I’ve heard again, as I said, at the start of the podcast, this is not something I could sustain, to even make it one day. But what I’ve heard from members who have had past experience with this, often what I hear is this experience where they eat so much, they overeat in that window, that they’re almost happy to return to that fasting period, because they’re so stinking uncomfortable.
JEN
Yeah, it totally, and I have personal experience with it. So I guess my view could be biased, a little bit biased, but I would say that suddenly this intermittent fasting diet, of course, like every other diet, your fat loss progress can stall because as this binge eating gets out of control, you’re no longer in a deficit, right?
ANNIE
Yeah, that was kind of, again, not intermittent fasting. But my experience with cheat meals as I’ve shared before, I would overeat in that meal so extensively that I would negate any caloric deficit that I worked up through the course of the week. So it’s not like this window is magic, right?
JEN
Yeah for sure.
ANNIE
There still has to be some guidelines in there. In order for it to work, right?
JEN
Yeah, for sure. And then the third concern I have with intermittent fasting is the same concern I have with a lot of different diets and our diet culture in general. And that is, diets as identities. Right? So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full. As we talked about in this podcast extensively, in fact, it’s an eating skill that is essential for anybody’s success, and just sustainability with food period. And so when we attach to diets as identities, I see the negative repercussions of that in our culture, right? So we have, it’s almost like people kind of get behind them, like they get behind a religion. So they are intermittent fasters, or they’re keto, or they’re paleo or you know, or they’re whatever, right? It’s almost like, it’s almost like, these things come up in conversation when you meet somebody new because everybody’s got some diet identity. And when you start identifying with a diet like, this is who I am, it really can block out the importance of some of these things we’re sharing, right? Like, it can really like the negative health repercussions of fasting, or we have another podcast on keto, right, like, it is your identity, and you will pursue information that is very biased, and maybe even not even based in science. Because you are looking to validate what you’ve adopted as an identity, right? You’re not looking to challenge it.
ANNIE
Right. And beyond that, you’ve probably developed a culture, a community, excuse me, of people who share that identity, and everyone’s just raving in the same way that you’re raving and sharing the same supportive studies, quote, unquote, that affirm your choice is the right choice versus being open to entertaining the idea of like, here are some other possibilities.
JEN
Yeah, and when you get into these communities, where everybody’s maybe a bit obsessive, nobody’s pumping the brakes, and it’s just kind of a spiral into madness at times. I know that sounds extreme. But have you been in a Facebook group lately? [Laughs]
ANNIE
Ours is, ours is the exception. [Laughs]
JEN
Ours is the exception. But there is, I mean, the cold culture of a group can spiral. And I mean, over the years, I’ve seen it. I’ve heard stories from our members, Facebook groups full of people doing 28 day water fasts, and just stuff that’s not right. So like, and nobody’s pumping the brakes.
ANNIE
There’s a lot of power behind that community, whether it’s in real life, or it’s online. And there’s a reason why we have a community, why so many other programs, services, experiences have communities because it manifests like more and more and more of this energy, right? Like, yeah, and James Clear has talked about this, like, one of the best ways to change your identity is to join a community where the culture aligns with who you want to become, right?
JEN
Yeah.
ANNIE
Which can be such a great tool, if it’s in alignment with your values, and it’s a really healthy and holistic approach, if it’s in the pursuit of something that’s potentially harmful, it can be it can be a dangerous asset.
JEN
Of course, and really my exit from diet culture and realizing, “Hey, this has to stop” really had to do with the Facebook community I was in and it had to do with, I could finally see that things were going too far. And there were women in that community being impacted negatively, like their mental health. And I remember one day pointing this out. So it was actually a macro counting community of women. And it was a, it was fairly obsessive as macro counting can become for a lot of people. And a lot of women with a lot of anxiety in there, and they would post about it. And finally I said something like, “Hey, I don’t think this is healthy for you to be this preoccupied.” And other women in that community jumped all over me. And in that moment, I just realized this community has lost its compass here, like, and I can’t be a part of this anymore. And so I would say seeing the extremes that these communities end up going to is really kind of what pushed me to to leave them I guess. Yeah.
ANNIE
Do you want to talk about your experience with intermittent fasting?
JEN
Yeah, so this is years ago, I did it before it was cool –
ANNIE
[Laughs] Of course you did.
JEN
– in 20…Yes. [Laughs]
ANNIE
Diet trend setter. [Laughs]
JEN
I was doing it in 2004. I was in my first year of university, I don’t even think there were Facebook groups back then. But I was slowly descending into diet madness in those years. And one thing I found was a website. And I believe the website was, or at least this person claimed to be a medical doctor. And now I know as a person with a lot of experience with diet culture, that, to be honest, when I see medical doctor and diet protocols, red flag, like I just can’t wrap things. I can’t think of any that are sensible. And so it talks about all the health benefits of dieting, including detoxing, which I now know is total BS. And I fell in love with the health claims. But if I’m being honest, I was very obsessed with weight loss and dieters that are really down the dieting rabbit hole, they’re sort of a mesh with health and weight loss and what that’s about, I don’t know, it’s about healthism, fat phobia, you know, all these things. But I think that you, I think when you’re kind of deep in there, you got to keep telling yourself to keep things to keep yourself going. And one of them is that this is so healthy, right? But really, it’s about weight loss. And so I started fasting at a time when it would be very bad to fast. So first of all, I’m a woman and as we just talked about, fasting is not a good idea for women. And I also was under a lot of stress, which would also be a very bad idea to try fasting when you are very stressed because it will only stress out your body more. First year of university exams, all of that. And the fasting protocol I did was two days of not eating a month, just drinking water. And I felt awful. I would…Yeah, it just, I felt awful. I would do it with a friend –
ANNIE
No way. [Laughs]
JEN
Yeah. Can you believe that? [Laughs]
ANNIE
I am sorry. I’m just, I’m shocked that you did not feel good after not eating.
JEN
[Laughs] And I would do it with a friend. I would continue to exercise on those days. I had heard about this, like euphoric state you could reach while fasting. Never reached it. [Laughs]
ANNIE
Like the runner’s high that people talk about.
JEN
Yeah, and you’re like, where? When? Yeah, so I just felt miserable, and I would obsess over food. And of course, I would binge when it was over. And it was just putting myself through a lot of suffering for no reason. So that experience left me with kind of a, I mean, of course, and you know, of course, at the time, I just felt like a failure. Right? Like, how can I be failing this? There’s this doctor and he’s got all these people on this blog, and everybody’s talking about how wonderful it is. But like, I can’t, you know, usually by the end of the second day, I was just, I felt panicked, anxious. Like, I have to find food, like almost like an emergency. Like my brain was going crazy.
ANNIE
Yeah, well, I’m sure it probably was I mean, a normal response, right? Like, but all jokes aside, when you said you felt like a failure. It really does break my heart when I think about women, and they’ve been in our community, who’ve said, “I thought weight loss was impossible, because I couldn’t do it in this manner,” right? Like talking about previous diet trends and how they felt the sense of despair, hopelessness, that they would never be able to improve their health, they would never be able to lose weight, do the things that they wanted to do, because they couldn’t do it this way. And it’s like, gosh, right. I don’t want women to feel like that.
JEN
Yeah. And so to summarize our concerns, it’s number one hormonal health, this just isn’t a healthy way to eat for most women. Number two is this just disguising binge eating…Tendancy? Habit? What are we calling it? Issue? [Laughs] It gives people permission to binge eat, so they’re never really dealing with these deeper layers of why they’re binge eating. Number three, adopting the diet as an identity, as happens with many diets. And number four is just talking about my experience with intermittent fasting and how disordered it was. And how I, you know, I can’t say for sure what it was doing to my physical health. Clearly, I wasn’t feeling that great, but I can say, it was a major emotional psychological challenge for me.
ANNIE
Yeah. But true to Balance365, you know, we don’t really have failures, right? It’s always just like, experiments. What did I learn?
JEN
Yeah.
ANNIE
Was there anything that you could take away from your experience, Jen?
JEN
Yeah. So I would absolutely encourage anyone listening to look at all of their diets. And think about if they learned anything helpful in any of them.
ANNIE
And that could include what doesn’t work, right? Not what doesn’t work as well.
JEN
Yeah, and we’ve got it a saying in Balance365. It is, take the cherry and spit out the seed. So here’s what I think about intermittent fasting. If you’re, if you’re doing it, like intermittent fasting light, if you’re, so for example, the 16/8 protocol, that obviously is going to be less challenging than what I was doing, two days of not eating a month, or the one day of not eating a week that people do. But let’s talk about why it works. And then let’s move away from this identity stuff. The reason it works for most people is because it puts time boundaries on when you’re eating. And that can be helpful.
ANNIE
Yep.
JEN
And so, for me, I am eating when I’m hungry, stopping when I’m full. And for me, that’s pretty regular now that I’ve been doing that for years, I can predict when I’m going to get hungry, when I’m going to get full. It does change if my exercise routine changes, or at the time of day that I’m exercising changes. But you know, I’ve been in the same routine for a long time now. And I know that I don’t get hungry in the mornings. So when I get up, I have a couple cups of coffee and I just have a late morning breakfast. I eat three to four times a day. And really on some days, you could call me an intermittent faster. 16/8. Why I would never identify as that, it’s just because of the diet politics, right? And diet rules. So what I can see there is that, hey, what works for me is having time boundaries around when I’m eating. So I’m not eating all the time. And a lot of people who struggle with nighttime snacking, that’s probably where they saw a lot of success with intermittent fasting is they’re not eating at night anymore. I mean, there’s studies that show that people that stay up late, like, that’s why sleep can be an issue with fat loss. It’s not just the sleep deprivation, it’s the amount of food people eat in the evenings.
ANNIE
They’re simply awake longer. [Laughs]
JEN
To eat more. Yeah. And so taking the cherry and spitting out the seed. Let’s ditch the politics and the identity stuff with diets and let’s say, is having some time boundaries on when I’m eating helpful. So I’m not eating all the time. And it just made me bring some mindfulness of like, when do I get hungry in the morning? Do I get up and eat first thing because that’s a habit, that’s what I do as a person? Do I eat at night out of habit? Out of stress, out of exhaustion, like not because I’m hungry, right? And it helps you kind of start looking at the times that you eat when you’re not hungry.
ANNIE
Yeah. Again, no personal experience with IF, but I know that I’ve shared with you that some days I have two really beefy meals because like you, I don’t, I’m not hungry right away when I wake up. I have some coffee with some creamers. That’s enough to hold me over until maybe a late brunch. I have a huge brunch. And then I’ll eat again at dinner time and like, but instead of saying these are the times I must eat, this is the window I can’t eat, this is the window I can, I am much more following the compass of I’m hungry. I’m now full. I’m hungry again. I’m now full. I’m going to bed.
JEN
Yeah, yeah.
ANNIE
Simple as that.
JEN
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I find on the weekends, especially if I get a chance to sleep in, that the two big meals could happen for me too. Right? I get up, maybe I get up at 10:30, not to brag but my kids are older and [laughs] I sometimes get the opportunity to do that. Yeah, and same thing might have a big brunch and then might eat later and then go to bed and realize, “Oh, I only had two big meals today.” And so yeah, I would never go to anybody and say, “I’m intermittent fasting,” I would say, especially, you know, especially think about just like my environment, my kids, all of that, right?
ANNIE
And I hope that listeners can also hear the tone in our voice that’s like, no, that’s something we enjoy. That’s a way we enjoy eating. Like, when I think about a nice weekend brunch and a fun, like dinner, maybe with a friend or something like, yeah, that sounds great. That doesn’t sound restrictive. That doesn’t sound like ruled by rules. This is enjoyable.
JEN
I mean, and that’s kind of the thing about following a diet or identifying yourself as this type of dieter is, then you’ve got a set of rules to adhere to. And if you’re not following them, you’re failing kind of thing, right? So in general, I don’t snack in the evenings. That’s because I am not hungry in the evenings. What I would do is eat if I was hungry, right? Like there’s no, the rules for me, or the guidelines I follow aren’t about following a diet. They’re about following my body. And that’s really the difference between dieting and not dieting. Right? When people say, “I don’t get it. How do you lose weight without restriction? Or how do you do this? How do you do that?” And it’s like, my body’s my compass, not a set of rules. But like an example would be last night, I did eat last night. And I also wasn’t hungry. I just decided that I wanted some chocolate, and I had it. And so also, nobody’s perfect. I don’t consider that a failure. I just move on with my life when it’s done.
ANNIE
Right. How was it?
JEN
It was good. Yeah, we could unpack it all if you want, but then that turns into an emotional eating podcast.
ANNIE
[Laughs] Okay, well, we’ll save that for another episode. But anything else you want to add about IF before we pop off?
JEN
No, I don’t think so. Let us know. Come find us on Instagram and let us know if this was helpful, if you’ve had experiences, what you’re thinking about.
ANNIE
Yeah, and of course, you know, we should have maybe said this at the beginning of the podcast, but like if you do intermittent fasting, and you are content and happy and it’s not a problem for you, you’re like, “I’m good,” great. Go for it. Like, but if you’ve also done it and feel like you’re struggling, it’s unsustainable. This isn’t gonna work forever. There’s other options.
JEN
Of course, yes.
ANNIE
Yeah. All right. Thank you, Jen.
JEN
Thank you.
ANNIE (OUTRO)
Hey, everyone, if your mind has been blown while listening to this podcast, just wait until you work with us. Let us help you level up your health and wellness habits and your life inside Balance365 coaching, head on over to balance365.co to join coaching