Breakfast is supposed to be the most important meal of the day, so why am I ignoring breakfast most days of the week? Intermittent fasting is a rising trend in today’s society and wouldn’t you know I have been participating in this without actually knowing. I don’t know about you but the last thing I am in the morning is hungry; it usually takes a few hours after I wake to gain an appetite. Mind you breakfast foods are my favorite, but when I became paleo those breakfast foods became limited real fast. I did a lot of research on this diet and came across intermittent fasting. And since it was already something I was used to I became more curious about how this works. There are a few ways to do this, but my way is to fast between the hours of 8 or 9pm until 1pm the following day. I do this anywhere between 5-6 days a week. My lunches are usually a salad or a portion of what I had for dinner the night before. When I eat dinner I try to eat enough to satisfy my hunger but also to sustain me until the following day. I will confess I have my nights where I need banana ice cream (frozen bananas blended) or I splurge and get frozen yogurt. I do notice that when my last meal consists of sugars I am hungrier the following morning during my fast making it more difficult to hold out.

Here's how intermittent fasting works. When your body is being fed, it goes through a process where it is absorbing the food and digesting it. Depending on your body, it can take a few hours for this process to finish. While your body is in this state, burning fat doesn’t happen because your body’s insulin levels are high. After your body goes through the digestive cycle, it starts a new cycle -- the post-absorptive cycle -- that can last up to 12 hours. Which is why fasting should be longer than 12 hours because your body doesn’t start burning fat until you are past the 12 hour mark or called the fasting cycle. While fasting your body will burn fat, the insulin levels are now lower. On top of this fat burning theory, intermittent fasting is known to increase mental clarity and focus, lower blood sugar and insulin levels, weight loss, increase energy, decrease inflammation and so on. I do not test my blood sugar or my insulin so I do not know if these benefits actually occur when I do this. But I have noticed an increase in energy levels in the mornings and also a more attentive state of mind on my fasting days.

This diet doesn’t work for everyone and it’s important to know your body. My sister doesn’t do intermittent fasting and she experiences a very healthy lifestyle. She follows a paleo diet too and chooses to eat more meals throughout the day to maintain her lifestyle. Some of the other ways to fast include eating breakfast in the morning, skipping lunch and not eating again until dinner. There is the 24 hour fast for 2 days in the week. And there are different hour fasting such as the 16 hour fast or the 36 hour fast. 16 hours is the one I follow, but a 36 hour fast would be eating dinner one day, fasting the entire next day and then not eating until breakfast on the third day. But, like I said, listen to your body. It knows what it needs and when it needs it. I have learned that some days I am far hungrier than others; I am also a girl so some days during the months my body physically needs more fuel than others. But on days where I find myself hungrier and not benefitting from my fast, I break it and eat before the 1pm goal I set. Also when I train for runs, I find that if I am fasting I have to have a more sustainable lunch in order to maintain my energy and body recovery for my runs. It’s all about knowing your own body’s limits and its needs. In my experience, excess sugars have a way of altering my body’s needs. Not just sugar-sugar, I’m talking foods such has carbohydrates that turn into sugar as well as fruits. These alter the way my body digests and when my body thinks it is hungry. The less amount of sugar I put into my body the better my body feels and the more successful my fasting goes. Intermittent fasting is a controlled way of eating in the sense that you control when you eat. It doesn’t have to do with calorie counting, but rather when your body consumes calories. On days where I do not fast I most likely consume the same amount of calories throughout the entire day than I do when I do.