Free The Fast Diet: The secret of intermittent fasting � lose weight, stay healthy, live longer by Michael Mosley, Mimi Spencer Page B
Authors: Michael Mosley, Mimi Spencer
don’t fancy it, not because you are denying yourself a treat.
This is the baseline power of Intermittent Fasting: it encourages you to recheck your diet. And that’s your long-haul ticket to health.
How your attitude will change
So, yes, you’ll start to lose bad habits around food. But if you continue to fast – and feast – with awareness, all kinds of other changes should occur, some of them unlikely and unexpected.
You may, for instance, discover that you’ve been suffering from ‘portion distortion’ for years, thinking that the food piled on your plate is the quantity you reallyneed and want. With time, you’ll probably discover that you’ve been overdoing it. Muffins will start to look vast as they sit, fat and moist, under glass domes in coffee shops. A maxi bag of crisps becomes a monstrous prospect. You may go from Venti to Grande to wanting only half a cup, no sugar, no cream.
Soon, you’ll come to recognise the truth about how you’ve been eating and the wordless fibs you’ve told yourself for years. This is as much a part of the recalibrating process as anything else; you’ve changed your mind. Occasional fasting will train you in the art of ‘restrained eating’; in the last instance, this is the goal. It’s all part of the long game of behavioural change that means that the Fast Diet will ultimately become neither a fast, nor a diet, but a way of life.
After a while, you’ll have cultivated a new approach to eating – thoughtful, rational, responsible – without even knowing you’re doing it.
Intermittent Fasters also report a boost in their energy, together with an amplified sense of emotional wellbeing. Some talk of a ‘glow’ – the result, perhaps, of winning the battle for self-control, or of the smaller clothes and the compliments, or of something going on at a metabolic level that governs our moods. We may not yet know precisely why, but whatever it is, it feels good. Far better than cake. As one online devotee says, ‘Overall, fasting just seems right. It’s like a reset button for your entire body.’ 25
More subtly still, many fasters acknowledge a sense of relief as their fast days no longer revolve around food. Embrace it. There’s a certain liberty here, if you allow it to materialise. You may find, as we have, that you start to look forward to your fasts: a time to regroup and give feeding a rest.
The Fast Diet in reality: tales, tips and troubleshooting
How men fast: Michael’s experience
A lot of men have contacted me over the last few months to let me know how much weight they have lost and also to say how surprised and delighted they are that Intermittent Fasting turns out to be so easy. They like its simplicity, the fact that you don’t have to give things up or try to remember complicated recipes. I also think they rather like the challenge.
The actor and comedian Dom Joly recently wrote that he’d lost two and a half stone after watching my
Horizon
programme and felt it was an approach he could imagine sticking to for the rest of his life. 26 The attraction for him is that he knows he will be able to eat what he wants the following day. He even added that he now rather enjoys the fasting days, something I have heard from anumber of men. One of the things that men seem to like particularly about fasting is that they can fit it into their lives with minimal hassle. It doesn’t stop them working, travelling, socialising or exercising. In fact, some find it fuels performance (see page 121 for more on fasting and exercise).
In one Belgian study, men asked to eat a high-fat diet and exercise before breakfast on an empty stomach put on far less weight than a similar group of men on an identical diet who exercised after breakfast. 27 This study adds support to the claim that exercising in a fasted state makes the body burn a greater percentage of fat for fuel. At least it does if you are a man.
For me, a fast day now follows a familiar routine.
This is the baseline power of Intermittent Fasting: it encourages you to recheck your diet. And that’s your long-haul ticket to health.
How your attitude will change
So, yes, you’ll start to lose bad habits around food. But if you continue to fast – and feast – with awareness, all kinds of other changes should occur, some of them unlikely and unexpected.
You may, for instance, discover that you’ve been suffering from ‘portion distortion’ for years, thinking that the food piled on your plate is the quantity you reallyneed and want. With time, you’ll probably discover that you’ve been overdoing it. Muffins will start to look vast as they sit, fat and moist, under glass domes in coffee shops. A maxi bag of crisps becomes a monstrous prospect. You may go from Venti to Grande to wanting only half a cup, no sugar, no cream.
Soon, you’ll come to recognise the truth about how you’ve been eating and the wordless fibs you’ve told yourself for years. This is as much a part of the recalibrating process as anything else; you’ve changed your mind. Occasional fasting will train you in the art of ‘restrained eating’; in the last instance, this is the goal. It’s all part of the long game of behavioural change that means that the Fast Diet will ultimately become neither a fast, nor a diet, but a way of life.
After a while, you’ll have cultivated a new approach to eating – thoughtful, rational, responsible – without even knowing you’re doing it.
Intermittent Fasters also report a boost in their energy, together with an amplified sense of emotional wellbeing. Some talk of a ‘glow’ – the result, perhaps, of winning the battle for self-control, or of the smaller clothes and the compliments, or of something going on at a metabolic level that governs our moods. We may not yet know precisely why, but whatever it is, it feels good. Far better than cake. As one online devotee says, ‘Overall, fasting just seems right. It’s like a reset button for your entire body.’ 25
More subtly still, many fasters acknowledge a sense of relief as their fast days no longer revolve around food. Embrace it. There’s a certain liberty here, if you allow it to materialise. You may find, as we have, that you start to look forward to your fasts: a time to regroup and give feeding a rest.
The Fast Diet in reality: tales, tips and troubleshooting
How men fast: Michael’s experience
A lot of men have contacted me over the last few months to let me know how much weight they have lost and also to say how surprised and delighted they are that Intermittent Fasting turns out to be so easy. They like its simplicity, the fact that you don’t have to give things up or try to remember complicated recipes. I also think they rather like the challenge.
The actor and comedian Dom Joly recently wrote that he’d lost two and a half stone after watching my
Horizon
programme and felt it was an approach he could imagine sticking to for the rest of his life. 26 The attraction for him is that he knows he will be able to eat what he wants the following day. He even added that he now rather enjoys the fasting days, something I have heard from anumber of men. One of the things that men seem to like particularly about fasting is that they can fit it into their lives with minimal hassle. It doesn’t stop them working, travelling, socialising or exercising. In fact, some find it fuels performance (see page 121 for more on fasting and exercise).
In one Belgian study, men asked to eat a high-fat diet and exercise before breakfast on an empty stomach put on far less weight than a similar group of men on an identical diet who exercised after breakfast. 27 This study adds support to the claim that exercising in a fasted state makes the body burn a greater percentage of fat for fuel. At least it does if you are a man.
For me, a fast day now follows a familiar routine.
Similar Books
Protected by the Major
Anne Herries
Mad Dog Justice
Mark Rubinstein
Italian Billionaire's Black Love (BWWM Interracial Romance)
Mya Black, Nicki J.
The Driver
Alexander Roy
Hercufleas
Sam Gayton
The Hudson Diaries
Kara L. Barney
Bride Enchanted
Edith Layton
Damascus Road
Charlie Cole
Fire Raiser
Melanie Rawn