If your weight loss strategies and habits are not working or if you are ready to do something new, consider Intermittent Fasting. Jumping in fast is not recommended. I love it and wholly endorse it for weight loss and, most importantly, weight maintenance.
A lot of your morning hunger will drive what you ate the evening before. Fasting begets fasting as your body learns to turn to other sources for energy… like fat. If you give your body fast sugars first thing in the morning your body recognizes it as sugar, the pancreas releases insulin for that sugar to be taken into the cells and blood sugar falls. The message goes to the brain: “Give me more sugar because we have stored the energy you gave us as fat.” The cycle begins again. I call this the “sugar graze” and it can drive your entire day of intake. It can also drive energy and mood.
As you enter a fasted state overnight your muscles and liver will release stored sugar to get you through the night. If you eat late into the night and eat upon waking, you never enter this fasted state and your body never adapts to burn other sources of fuel. It stays in fat storage mode.
While doing IF, you delay your first bite in the morning until you feel real hunger coming on. The key word here is REAL hunger. It is not shaky hunger or angry hunger. It is real hunger that, on a scale of 1-10 (1 is starving and 10 is Thanksgiving) is around 3 or 4. Then eat real food: some fruit, some nuts and seeds or a few eggs or whole grains like oatmeal. Stay away from sweetened yogurt, sugared cereals, pastries, juices, bagels and protein bars. They are processed and full of sugar and will send you on the 90-minute sugar graze.
If you typically eat at 8 am, delay it to 8:30 for a few days then extend it to 9:00 am and after a few days extend to 9:30 am. You are going to grow your fasting window and decrease your feed window. Ideally, try to get to 10 am, 10:30 am or 11 until your first bite and stop eating at 6 – 7:00 pm. This means your fast window will be 16 hours and your feed window will be 8 hours. Perhaps you will be able to get it to 17:7. If you do it slowly you will find your hunger gnawing at you less and less and you will lose weight.
The food choices you make in this feed window should be unprocessed plants (fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, whole grains), and lean proteins. Period. These foods will give you sustained energy and nourish your body. Garbage in/garbage out rules the day. Junk and processed food does not serve you and your life goals.
It is also vital that you do not make up for calories not eaten in the morning. IF does not work if 2500 calories are taken in between 4 and 9 pm when a lot of people are likely to overeat. IF works by creating a calorie deficit by shortening the feed window. It also honors intuitive eating which means you eat when there is real hunger and you don’t when there is not.
Wendy Wesley is Nutritionist Near me verified and specializes in weight loss, emotional eating, food addiction, meal plans, menopause nutrition, digestive disorders, diabetes, cardiac disease, vegan/vegetarian diets and kidney nutrition.