I don’t know yet.
I will explain. But before I do here are two snapshots (selfies I guess) that I took about an hour ago. These are taken at noon before my first meal for the day and after I’ve just come back from a 3-mile run, preceded by a few sets of pull-ups and hand-stand push-ups. In short – 15-hour fast + physical activity to top it off before I finally have something to eat.
I started fasting in the fall of 2012. I wanted to try Intermittent fasting for two weeks only and it’s been close to two years since then – I haven’t had the need to return to having another solid meal at breakfast (now that I think about it, ‘breakfast’ literally means breaking the fast and in my case that’s lunch since it’s then when I actually break the fast). When I tried Intermittent fasting I came to it from having six meals a day to about two.
I have to say that sticking with something for that long requires that whatever that ‘something’ is you don’t make it an ‘absolute must’. If you do, you are asking for trouble – you tend to want to ‘get back to normal’ – it’s just in human nature. I said back then, “I’ll try this for two weeks just to see what the heck could possibly happen to me. Will I waste away? Will my muscles just get eaten up by my unchanged high requirement for calories? What could possible my reaction to such a complete U-turn to all I’ve believed and taught others to believe in (you know, the eating every 3 hours deal, avoiding starvation mode, etc)?”.
And, here I am now more than a year and a half later and still not feeling compelled to return to my old ‘correct ways’ of doing human nutrition.
A part of it is that I have the option to do what I want – and I simply choose another option. In other words I don’t feel obligated.
But, a bigger part is that I can’t find a single benefit to going back to my old ways. So, why should I? I’m not saying that I’ll never ever in my life have another calorie before noon. In fact on a few occasions I’ve had something to eat in the morning. But, in all but one of these occasions I did that mostly because I wanted to be silly and prove myself that I’ll be fine either way I choose. On one occasion only I felt that I had to do it and that was before I ran a 10K. I think this was a very smart move.
And, what about the benefits of fasting for 15-16 hours? What is it that makes me still not want to eat breakfast (or rather an early meal that breaks a semi-fast)?
Here are a few benefits – many of them I’ve learned based on my own experience:
- I feel lighter during the day
- I feel that I have more energy
- I train better
- My strength has not decreased – quite the opposite
- My efficiency during non-conventional movements seems to have improved
- It’s cheaper – I eat less food
- I assimilate proteins better (this is evident to me from the fact that I have no problem maintaining muscle mass on 60-80 grams of protein a day – coming down from 200+ grams a day)
- I don’t have to think about what to eat in the morning. I can go straight to doing something productive (most of the time)
Are there any negatives of Intermittent fasting? I’m still trying to make sure I should attribute this to the fasting, but I’m not 100 percent convinced yet. Still, I started noticing early last year that when I have to be in an air conditioned room that is maintained at what seem to be normal levels for most people – about 72 F – I feel pretty uncomfortably cold. I’ve noticed that other people (especially during the summer) feel just fine wearing short-sleeve one-layer clothing and slippers… Me? I’m shivering if not wearing long-sleeve and closed shoes.
I suspect the reason for this is my internal ‘furnace’ isn’t producing much heat because of not much food digestion going on. I’ve noticed also that I don’t feel as cold in such environments in the afternoon (after I’ve broken the fast). That leads me to believe that this is a nuisance side effect of Intermittent fasting. I’m not sure yet, but even if it is it’s something I can live with.
Will I ever go back to eating 3+ meals a day? I don’t know. For the moment I do what I what works for me – and Intermittent fasting works for me just great.