Intermittent Fasting for Women: The Quick and Dirty Guide
If you pay attention to the health and wellness world at all, even in the slightest, chances are you’ve heard the term “intermittent fasting” passed around A LOT over the last few years - but especially in 2019.
Why wouldn’t it be the hot new thing? A “diet” where you can eat whatever and however much you want without gaining weight?! Does it get any better than that?
Well, actually, it’s really not a diet at all. It’s a bit more complicated than that. Intermittent fasting is a lifestyle and there are a lot of misconceptions about what it is, who it’s for, how it’s done, etc. So in today’s blog, I’m going to unpack everything you need to know about intermittent fasting if you’re a beginner and are wondering if it’s right for you!
Before we start, if you are interested in starting intermittent fasting, it’s important that you’re getting your information from sources that are specific to women (if you’re female). Or at least that differentiate between men and women. Men and women’s bodies react much differently to fasting. Men can go for much longer in the fasted state with no repercussions. Numerous studies have shown that women’s body’s have protective measures in place to protect their present and future children, so when the earliest signs of famine crop up (i.e., less food than usual), women can experience extreme feelings of hunger and cravings (in comparison to men), which is essentially a sign of hormone imbalance. Other symptoms can include abnormal or complete cessation of periods, increased anxiety levels, and difficulty sleeping.
The really weird thing is even though you might feel a lot more energized after starting intermittent fasting, these hormone imbalances can still occur which we really want to avoid. So there are strategic ways you can get started with intermittent fasting that don’t put your body into shock, and we’ll get into those in a moment.
First, I want to explain what exactly intermittent fasting is and is not, and the difference between intermittent fasting and time-restricted eating, another less popular but still prevalent wellness buzzword that you should know about if you don’t already.
What are intermittent fasting and time-restricted eating?
Intermittent fasting (IF) is basically a catch-all term for a lifestyle in which there’s deliberate fasting and eating period, which will vary hugely depending on who’s doing it and why they’re doing it. Intermittent fasting is NOT a diet. When you’re intermittent fasting you are NOT counting calories; in theory, you don’t even need to pay attention to what and how much you’re eating (although obviously natural, good-quality, whole foods should be favoured). IF is all about the “when”.
Time-restricted eating (TRE) is simply the deliberate spacing of meals to ensure a specific amount of time in between feeding, which allows the body to take a break from digestion and focus on other important tasks. If you’re following a TRE protocol, it essentially means you’re sticking to a two-or-three-meal-per-day schedule (although some people only eat one meal per day - which, if you’re a beginner, I do not recommend!) without snacking and grazing between meals to allow the body to take a break from digestion and allow insulin levels to regulate.
So IF and TRE are not the same things, but they go hand-in-hand. To maximize the benefits of fasting and disease prevention, TRE is a must. Why you ask? Because the major health effects of fasting come from the regulation and re-sensitizing of insulin, which can only occur if you give yourself long enough breaks in between meals. If you’re intermittent fasting and therefore only eating for, say, 10 hours per day, but you’re grazing throughout the day and you never really stop eating, your body never stops pumping out insulin. Your body needs to be in that fasted (rather than fed) state to get shit done.
Why should you care about intermittent fasting and time-restricted eating?
Higher energy levels. Better endurance. Improved sleep quality. Lowered inflammation levels. These are all things that have been observed in both animal and human studies on intermittent fasting. Studies have even shown that people can lose 5% of their body fat by simply changing when they eat - with no changes to what and how much. There is also evidence that intermittent fasting can help those with digestive disorders such as heartburn, acid reflux, and irritable bowel syndrome. Pretty awesome, hey?
It gets even better than that. There’s evidence that time-restricted eating actually slows the aging process. IF and TRE together lead to a function in the body called autophagy, which is essentially the body’s way of eating up and clearing out the damaged cells in your body, replacing them with new ones. Simply put, the more new cells and the less damaged old cells your body is made up of, the more optimally your body can function.
But is the “normal” way of eating really all that bad? Unfortunately, yes. Back in the day, eating two or three meals per day without snacking in between was the norm. People could eat their giant sundaes at the ice cream shoppes in the 50s without gaining a ton of weight. That’s obviously a stereotype, but you get my point. These days, people are snacking CONSTANTLY - a habit that isn’t good for anyone, except for the billion-dollar snack food industry. Our bodies need time to rest in between meals to make sure all body systems are performing optimally. In addition to that, when we’re constantly snacking - especially late-night snacks while watching TV - our body’s circadian rhythms are thrown off, leading to shorter, more disrupted sleep. And guess what? The less sleep you get, the more your hunger hormones become dysregulated, leading to cravings and feelings of hunger when your body doesn’t even need food. It really is a vicious cycle.
How to start intermittent fasting
Okay, so hopefully I’ve convinced you to give this a try. My favourite thing about IF and TRE is how simple it is! You don’t need a fancy app, all you need to know is how to count and a bit of basic addition/subtraction. It’s also important while going through the process of starting IF, to be able to listen to your body.
If you’re totally new to this concept, the first step for you would be cutting out snacks and grazing. If you eat snacks because you’re hungry in between meals, eat more at mealtimes. Have three square meals per day. But listen to your body. If you’re one of those people who feel nauseous in the morning and therefore you typically skip breakfast, maybe you only need two big meals per day. A lot of this process is about figuring out what works best for you!
It’s also important that you quit eating three hours before bed, which shouldn’t be too difficult if you aren’t snacking before/after meals. If you find that you’re always hungry before bed, try drinking some herbal tea (you may just be dehydrated) and/or eat more at dinnertime. If you always wake up ravenously hungry in the morning, drink a few big glasses of water before reaching for breakfast, as you may have been confusing hunger for dehydration.
Next, consider your eating/fasting windows. These are simply the amount of time for which you allow yourself to eat or fast. A great place to start is a 12-hour eating and 12-hour fasting window. For example, eating breakfast at 7 a.m. and finishing dinner by 7 p.m. From there, you can slowly work your way up towards a 16-hour fast and 8-hour feeding window. But please remember to do this slowly and listen to your body. When I first started fasting, I jumped straight into a 16 to 18-hour fasting window with surprising ease. I felt really good except I lost my period and even after dialing back the fasting time, it took half a year for it to come back. Take that as a precautionary tale and please just ease into it slowly and take note of what feels good and what doesn’t. Nowadays, I am consistently fasting between 12 and 14 hours per day and my body is happy.
Now, you can start to incorporate TRE slowly as well. Slowly increase the amount of time in between each meal. This phase will take a bit of troubleshooting to figure out how big your breakfast, lunch, and dinner need to be to keep you sustained for at least 5-6 hours. If you’re used to eating lots of snacks throughout the day, maybe you need to start with four meals and slowly start spacing them out so that you only eat three meals a day. Really, it’s all about figuring out what works for you!
Final Considerations
There are a few things I’d like you to consider before you get started in earnest on your fasting journey. First of all, this is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Just because your best friend can skip breakfast every day and fast for 16 hours per day doesn’t mean you need to do that too. Everyone is different. I, for example, need to eat breakfast in the morning but can sometimes skip lunch. However, most days, I eat three meals per day and fast for only 12 hours. It’s not a competition! Find what works for you.
Secondly, if you end up having a hard time implementing this new lifestyle, I want to bring your attention to some of the findings of the research I was talking about earlier. The group of people who used intermittent fasting only five days per week, and went back to a “normal” way of eating on the weekends, still saw some improvements in their energy, endurance, and sleep quality! So if you find it really difficult to stick to, know that you are still getting some of the benefits just by trying to do it most days of the week, so keep it up as you can.
Finally, I also just wanted to mention that there are some people that intermittent fasting is not ideal for pregnant women, women who have a history of disordered eating, or women who suffer from chronic stress or chronic fatigue. These women may do better with a gentler approach to fasting and time-restricted eating. Maybe you can do the 12-hour overnight fast, but you need to snack throughout the day. Or perhaps you only want to fast for 8 or 9 hours overnight, but you feel fine eating only three meals per day. Again, the moral of the story here is to find what works for you - without judgment or comparison to others.
That’s that! I hope you learned a lot about intermittent fasting and time-restricted eating and that this information is helpful for you on your personal health journey. If you think this post would be interesting for any ladies in your life, please share the love by sending it their way! If you have any questions related to anything I covered in this post, please feel free to comment below!
