4 Ways Fasting Every Day Can Change Your Life
In my previous article, I spoke of some of the enormous benefits that comes from incorporating Intermittent Fasting into your fitness arsenal.
But many of those benefits were physiological ones and were primarily relevant to fitness goals. The benefits of fasting extend far beyond that and can cross over into your everyday lives.
Fasting can change your life.CLICK TO TWEET
#1 You can enjoy food again
I’ve dabbled with different eating protocols through the years. Most notably, I got sucked in the whole six meals a day nonsense.
When you’re stuffing yourself with small meals every few hours, nothing tastes satisfying.
I began to take food for granted. I ate not because I was hungry but because that’s what the plan called for.
Once I started fasting and cutting my meal frequency down, I began to appreciate food again.
After fasting throughout the morning and getting work done, that first meal felt like a reward.
Everything started tasting good again. Even “boring” healthy foods like the classic grilled chicken, brown rice and broccoli combo tasted like heaven.
Trust me when I say this, very few things in this world are as gratifying as the first bite you take to break your fast.
#2 Things Begin to Clear Up
Your face for one thing. If you (like me) have suffered from acne problems, fasting may be your solution.
Recall in my previous article that fasting induces autophagy, a process where the cells repair themselves and rid your body of waste.
This process essentially detoxes your body and when you supplement your fast with antioxidant-rich beverages like coffee and tea, you’re eliminating the stress inside your body that can manifest as acne.
You also begin to exhibit mental clarity. (I meant the subheading to be both literal and figurative)
If you start your day off with a carb-heavy breakfast, you’ll more than likely begin to feel sluggish by mid-morning. Carbs trigger the release of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that can make you sleepy.
Fasting keeps you alert, focused and productive.
The caffeine in coffee and tea will blunt hunger pangs and give you the jumpstart you need to take on the day.
#3 It Saves Money
Even though you’ll be trading in frequent meals for larger meals, you’ll still spend less money on food overall.
Rather than having to frequently run to the concession stand or your nearest convenience store to buy small snacks, invest in big, hearty meals.
Sure, those smaller snacks might not cost as much as a steak dinner, but costs can add up over time.
To really illustrate this point, take a gander at the table below detailing the average costs of a day of eating from my 6 meals a day tenure vs. now.
6 Meals a DayIntermittent FastingMealPriceMealPriceMuscle Milk Protein Shake
$5
Chipotle Steak Burrito
$7.50
Protein Bar
$3.50
Random home cooked meal (estimated)
$8.50
Panda Express — One Entree
$5.80
Subway — 6 Inch
$4.50
Protein Bar AGAIN (Jeezus)
$3.50
Random home cooked meal (estimated)
$7
Total
$29.30
Total
$16.00
Even though the individual meals from the right column are more expensive than the meals in the left, all in all I ended up spending less money on food.
#4 It Fits Your Lifestyle
Just think about the busiest day you can have and how frequent meals can hamper that. Do you truly have the time to prepare and cook several meals a day with everything else you have going on?
Especially if one of those meals is breakfast. Breakfast’s role as the most important meal of the day has evolved out of a social need, not a physiological one.
Think back to our caveman days. Do you think our ancestors had a bowl of Cherrios to greet them when they woke up?
Heck no.
They had to rely on their fat stores for energy while they hunted throughout the day. Then at night, they would bring back the spoils of hunting and feast like kings.
We can learn a lot from our cavemen ancestors’ lifestyles.
Not their hygiene nor their fashion choices obviously, but more so in the fact that they used the early part of the day to get shit done and left the eating for later on.
Now back to the present day…
Even if you were to go with the food prepping route where you set aside a few hours of your day to cook the upcoming week’s meals, carrying around food containers all day long may not be the most practical option.
Not to mention food that’s been sitting in the refrigerator for a while and has been reheated tend to taste blander than if it were cooked fresh.
The takeaway from all this?
Even if you’re not a believer in IF’s fat burning capabilities, there are a lot of benefits you can derive from incorporating this eating pattern into your lifestyle.
To determine if IF is right for you, do a one week trial to allow yourself to adapt. If at the end of the trial you still don’t feel completely fine, move on and try something else.
You have nothing to lose by trying.
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