How to ‘Feast’ during Intermittent Fasting?
5 FAQs in under 5 mins
Here’s an experiment.
No setup. No lead-in. No personal story. No ‘first-half’. Nothing.
If you’re new to Intermittent Fasting — Just read this.
If you’re already in, then one of these has probably been bugging you.
What can I eat while I’m fasting?
Nothing.
Wait what?!!
Ok I’m kidding.
Nothing with calories
So water is great. Infact, a lot of times our minds confuse thirst as hunger (both sensations are processed by the same area in the brain). So drink up.
Black coffee is good. So is green tea. So are sparkling waters and diet sodas. You get the drift. Zero calories.
If you really want to, then you can add a dash of milk to your morning coffee. But just a dash.
Idea is to ensure that your body’s insulin response system doesn’t get activated. That’ll just kill the fast and the many hours you fasted to get to this point. What a shame!
What should I eat to break my fast?
Unlike what you’d think (especially once you get IF adapted, which takes about 2 weeks in my experience), you’ll not be raging with hunger at the end of your fasting period. Fasting, infact, some studies say, has a hunger depressing effect!
Given that, I suggest you don’t break your fast with a carb heavy meal. You’ve managed to keep your insulin system dormant for a long time. Now don’t crank it up into overdrive suddenly. Ease it in.
So I suggest you start with a salad. Put some pasta in it if you’re craving carbs. But don’t go for a heavy sandwich or a burger or some such.
Unless you workout in a fasted state and break your fast right after. In that case, get in those carbs now. They’ll help with recovery and get used up asap.
A special note for Indians here — don’t break your fast with spicy food. Too much spice on an empty stomach can cause inflammations. Which might manifest as ‘gas’ troubles.
How much should I eat during my ‘feasting’ period?
Remember that at the very basic, IF is a intelligent calorie restriction technique.
So the answer to ‘how much’ is still defined by your calorie goals. IF will just make it easier and more ‘socially convenient’ for you to adhere to this quota.
So the answer is, eat as much as you can to keep your deficit.
OK. But how many times should I eat?
If you’re on 16–8 fasting like me, then you don’t have much option. Especially if you’ve taken my advice and decided to have your biggest meal (~50% of Daily Calories) post-workout.
Those restrictions only leave room for one more large and perhaps another smaller meal in between. That’s three, in all.
But as a rule, I recommend bigger, more satiating meals than small snack-breaks littered across the feasting period. For multiple reasons. The biggest being that you can plan big meals better and make them healthy. Unlike snacks which tend to be calorie-dense and nutrient-poor.
Not to mention, if you allow yourself to ’snack all you want’, just because you’ve just completed a 16 hour fast, that reward can quicky ruin any gains (rather losses) you made.
Can I break my fast a ‘little’ earlier?
I get this a lot. Especially in the first few weeks when one is getting hungry and imagining food as the 14th hour approaches. One can’t help but wonder — ‘What if I just fasted 15 hours today?’
Well, the answer is, go for it.
Remember fasting is a tool to help you keep within your calorie quota. If you break an hour earlier and still manage — Cool.
But I must admit, it will be a sub-optimal choice.
You see, it takes about 12–14 hours for the body to start running out of liver glycogen stores and turn to burning fat. Which is why we do Keto, IF, Paleo etc.
So it’s actually in the 13–16 hour period that you’re body is, hopefully, burning fat. All the work you did in the first 12 hours was to get to the 13th.
Try not to shorten this window. Please!
Elongate it, rather. See if you can push 17. Maybe 18. The fat-burning benefits will compound.
The max I’ve gone to is 19. It wasn’t too tough. Then I ate a nice salad.
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