Fasting Facts Uncovered: The Pros and Cons of Intermittent Fasting | Ep.60

This show is about freedom. Freedom from your constant struggle with food and letting the size of your thighs determine your worth. Join me weekly for no hope back unfiltered girlfriend kind of conversations that will inspire, teach and empower you. As we tune into our own body's wisdom and tune out of the diet industry blinds, we can live our most radiant, pleasurable and fulfilled lives. My name is Chanci Dawn. I'm a non diet nutritionist embodiment and mindset coach. But most importantly, I'm a woman on a mission to grow a deeply connected and conscious relationship with food and my body. And I'm here inviting you to do the same. Let's go.

Hello, and welcome to today's episode. Today, we're going to be talking all about intermittent fasting. And the reason I chose this, I actually can't believe that I haven't talked about this yet on this podcast, because it's such an important thing. It's like such a buzz lately, right. It's such a part of the latest fad diets that people are using in effort to lose weight. So I'm really looking forward to digging into the facts around intermittent fasting, the pros and the cons because there are both. And in order to make powerful decisions for our bodies for ourselves, it's really important to have very, a very clear idea of what the evidence what the facts are. And a couple of days ago, I saw an ad usually if I see diet ads, I just like I actually usually report them as offensive if they're on social media. But this this particular day, I was really like what the hell, you know, there was this ad for different age groups talking about intermittent fasting for weight loss. I went in there and I said something along the lines of why don't we just learn how to listen to our bodies eat when we're hungry, dark when we're full, and find the freedom in that. And then I went on to say that quite often intermittent fasting can unfortunately lead to binge eating and regaining your weight, and then some total fact there. Okay, but Oh, my goodness, the backlash was like, Whoa, not what I was expecting. And I make it a habit not to get in arguments on the internet, I just don't go there. So the people were, you know, writing all these things. And I just one person said, Read the facts, read the studies and blah, blah, blah. And I just wrote back I have, thank you. And this is true, okay. And I also said, Maybe this isn't what happens to everyone, but for many people it does. So I just left it at that. And I haven't responded and it just kind of faded away. But I'm like, Oh my gosh, obviously, this is something so important that we need to talk about this on the podcast. So grab a cup of tea, a cup of coffee, some ice, cold, lemon water, whatever suits your fancy, get cozy. Let's talk about fasting.

So when we're talking about long term weight gain, this really goes back also to the fact that intermittent fasting is not sustainable. It's not something that we want to do for a long time, you know, emotionally and mentally right because it is depriving and it is hard and life happens. We have families, we might have children, we might have partners who are eating in front of us. There's parties there celebrations, there's nights out, right like intermittent fasting is something that you definitely have to structure your life around in order to be able to do, and it's like the all or none and all of a sudden, if you're not, then you're off the wagon. And quite often that can lead to a start again on Monday mentality, which just leads into that nasty diet cycle we're all really familiar with on this show. So when we're looking at this, if you want long term sustainable health, intermittent fasting for weight loss purposes, is not the way to do it. Just like any diet isn't, we really want to get that in there. Okay. And a lot of times what will happen is if like, you're intermittent fasting, and you're not eating, and you're thinking about food, and maybe you're reading cookbooks, or you're baking and stuffing your fridge full of food, like these are all things I know people do. And I have done when I've been fasting, because you're feeling deprived, and your brain is like, I want to still be dealing with food, I want this. So so many people say that's when their meal planning and when they are, like I said baking and sitting there and reading through all of these cookbooks, just so that they can still feel like they're having food. And this is a total red flag because that shows that your brain is feeling very deprived. And what often happens is that people will then eat much more in their eating window than they would have if they had just eaten sustainably right, three meals, couple snacks throughout the day, following their body's signals.