This post on intermittent fasting is from Olivier Mankondo, our guest in episode 427, watch the video here, listen to the audio or catch both on Spotify.

Is intermittent fasting effective in weight loss?

But before I answer that question, let’s see first what intermittent fasting is.

Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern that cycles between periods of fasting and eating. Common intermittent fasting methods involve a daily 16-hour fast or fasting for 24 hours twice a week.

Fasting has been a practice throughout human evolution. Our forefathers didn’t have supermarkets, refrigerators, or food available year-round. Sometimes they couldn’t find anything to eat. As a result, humans evolved to be able to function without food for extended periods of time.

In fact, fasting from time to time is more natural than always eating 3,4 or more meals per day.

In our culture, we have been brainwashed to believe that we have to eat all the time to be able to function.

A lot of people start eating from the moment they wake up and will only stop when they go to sleep. Other people even wake up in the middle of the night to have something to eat.

Fasting Conserves Energy

What you have to understand is that your body spends 80% of its energy to digest food.

So by eating all the time, you are putting your system under tremendous pressure. Your body can only cleanse and heal when not digesting food. So by eating all the time, you’re not giving your body the chance to cleanse and heal.

The burden that you put on your system will even be greater when you eat animal products. Meat, fish, chicken, and all the rest take 3 days to pass through your system and will start rotting inside your guts.

This will create a high bacterial activity and your body will have to produce even more energy to try and reduce that number of bacteria. That’s why you will see that people are always tired. They can go to sleep at night and when they wake up in the morning, they are still tired.

So even when you are sick, at home or in hospital, they will push you to eat by saying that if you eat you’ll get more strength.

But all of us have noticed that when we are not well, we lose our appetite. Have you ever asked yourself why? This is not just a random fact.

Your body in his wisdom doesn’t want to spend 80% of its energy to digest food. It wants to use that energy to repair itself. That’s why people don’t really understand why they are not hungry when they are sick. So you know the reason now.

And that’s what all animals do when they are ill. They stop eating completely until they are well again. It’s only human beings who don’t listen to their bodies.

So you need to eat less to live longer. If you eat less, your body will have to spend less energy digesting your food and will use that excess energy to cleanse and heal and you’ll be less prone to diseases.

But when I say eat less, it doesn’t mean that you have to starve yourself. You need to eat until you feel satiated and then stop. What I mean, is to eat less frequently so that your body will rest most of the time instead of digesting food.

There was an experiment done with rats in which researchers divided a number of them into 2 groups. One group was overfed, whereas the other group was fed less. By the end of the experiment, the researchers found out that the rats who were fed less lived up to 50% longer than the overfed rats.

So again the less you eat, the better you become.

Here are some changes that occur in your body when you fast:

The levels of growth hormones increase as much as 5 fold and this will be translated into fat loss and muscle gain.

The levels of insulin will drop dramatically and sensitivity will increase. Having too much insulin in your blood will shorten your life.

When you fast, a process called autophagy where the cells digest and remove dead and dying tissues is triggered

The genes related to longevity and protection against disease will express themselves in a better way.

Intermittent Fasting Window

And because of all those benefits, I do intermittent fasting myself but I do it differently. Most people who do intermittent fasting, will fast for 16 hours and eat in an 8 hours window.

But the way I do it, I only eat twice a day and nothing in between. By doing that I give my body even more time to cleanse and heal as my body is not digesting food most of the time. I eat at 12 pm and 6 pm.

Now to answer the question if intermittent fasting is effective in weight loss, I will say definitely YES. And to confirm that, I will take my own example.

In 2016, I adopted a plant-based nutrition where I was eating fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains, nuts, and seeds and I was able to lose 77 lbs in 9 months.

By implementing intermittent fasting, I was able to speed up the weight loss process. By only eating twice a day with no snacking in between, my body was able to quickly and more efficiently tap into my fat stores for energy, hence I lost my belly fat.

Doing intermittent fasting was also a convenient way to lose weight without counting calories.

So if you would like to lose weight fast, I will encourage you to implement intermittent fasting as it works.

The cherry on the cake is that intermittent fasting will also slow down your aging process as it has done for me.

Fasting is also the greatest healing tool, as it enables you to get rid of toxins. When you fast, you become less susceptible to disease.

Fasting increases your degree of vitality and your intolerance to drugs. It helps repair and improve sleep and memory and extends your lifetime too.

Fasting gives the body the opportunity to heal itself.

Fasting WORKS!

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