Oh, I’m gonna lose some friends about this one… We’re tackling Intermittent Fasting
Today I’m going to share why intermittent fasting might not be a good idea for weight loss. Remember, here at Health REBELs, we are health coaching that is focused on health first, not athletics. The way we focus on health is with the REBEL oath.
We focus on…
- Reject extremes
- Energize ourselves through healthy habits
- Break free from common standards
- Excite ourselves about our potential, and finally,
- Love ourselves and act accordingly.
Anyway, let’s go create some hate mail today as we poopoo on intermittent fasting a little bit.
One of the one of the toughest experiences in my career has been working with someone who we will call Jason. Yeah, we’ll say his name is Jason. And there was one day that Jason gave me his food logs, right, we recorded what they were eating throughout the day, to kind of find out what habit changes we can make and what suggestions we can make to really move towards their goal.
And their goal was weight loss. And I remember looking at the at the food log. And I was curious about where where the rest of it was. Not that I thought that the person was lying to me. I know there’s a lot of nutritionists out there that accused their clients of under reporting stuff. But I just looked at it and it was, it was tiny. There wasn’t much food in it. In fact, I had commented to Jason, that this looks like my breakfast.
Like this is this is where I start the day at 6am. How do you get all the way through the day like this?
And he started YELLING at me when I encouraged him to eat more food. He was livid. He was angry.
Started, he started shouting, do you know what that’ll do? To me, if I eat more food, I will get fat. Every new else, every extra calorie I go goes straight to my thighs goes straight to my waist. How dare you suggest that I eat more food.
And what Jason revealed was was this really toxic symptom that diet culture is made for us. diet culture has made us terrified of eating food has become the enemy. We think that every new morsel of food that we eat is going to attack us is going to make us sluggish and overweight. And because of our fascination, and it’s there’s there’s a nasty cocktail of factors that contribute to this. But ultimately, diet culture has made us terrified of eating. And you might remember back in episode 93, where we talk about the true purpose behind nutrition. Not that is weight loss. Not that is weight management. But that we get health through food that we get all the resources we need for every function of our body through food.
So that’s why we want to eat and eat a sufficient amount of resources is because it promotes health. But diet culture has made us terrified of food. It’s made us afraid of eating is made us want to not eat. And I had to constantly work with Jason Jason wanted to go on periods where he said, “Hey, I have belly fat. I should just not eat for a month until my belly fat goes away. What do I need more food for? I’ve got it all right here is this. “
That’s just not true. That’s not healthy. That’s not smart. That’s not safe. Don’t do that. But that’s what diet culture has created for us. And it’s been a little bit tougher recently, with the rise of intermittent fasting over the last 10 years. It got really popular initially around 2012, as when intermittent fasting, came up in conversation and started to get really really popular. Of course, it’s it’s recycled. Everything in the industry is recycled with a new name after 20-30 years. But the recent resurge was from 2012. And, you know, I have to be honest, I have to be fair, there are some really good benefits of fasting. I won’t go through them but there are some really interest interesting, even exciting health benefits that occasional fast do give us but
despite there being health benefits to fasting, those benefits are not nearly as impactful as just so Setting up really solid foundational eating habits. Right? If we look at the Western defaults, or what we call in the REBEL of the common standards, when we break free from common standards, when we, when we get away from the Western defaults of eating, we go into some naturally more beneficial stuff. Right?
The natural Western default is a horrid people eat horrifically for our health, both food quantity, food quality, and just timing and relationship. Our hygiene around food is atrocious, our habits around food are really disruptive to our gut health. It’s just everything about the way that we eat is really detrimental.
If we can fix some of those super simple super basic eating habits, we’ll get greater benefits to our health, then what we get from intermittent fasting. So I always want to start off with foundational stuff. Unfortunately, a lot of people start with fasting. And yes, fasting can be a great way to optimize already good health. But starting with fasting is like teaching a young basketball player how to do a crossover before you teach them how to dribble the ball. You can’t teach them how to master ball handling skills when they can’t control it at all.
The same thing with fasting. Fasting is kind of a mastery habit of healthy eating practices. It’s a mastery practice. It’s not where we start, we want to start with the foundational eating habits.
So so we know, we know that diet culture has this fear of food. And there are some health benefits some small but exciting health benefits to intermittent fasting. And what this ends up doing is that we create scapegoating. We create scapegoating. The reason why people are so excited about intermittent fasting, the reason why it caught so much fire, the reason why it got so popular is because we get to create this facade of health habits.
Because there are some benefits of fasting, we create this facade that we’re doing it for health. But really what we’re doing is validating diet culture sphere of eating. When we give someone intermittent fasting, we give them permission to live in that zone of fear of where food is bad for us. And we validate that belief. What that ends up doing is pulling us long term away from having a healthy relationship with food and long term health that we can sustain for a lifetime. The real reason why intermittent fasting is so popular is because it validates eating disorders and fears around food. And that’s why I believe that intermittent fasting, probably unsafe for weight loss.
Intermittent fasting can be good for health. But if your goal if your primary driver, if your first priority is weight loss, you’re probably going to develop unhealthy habits and unhealthy relationships with food. And it’s it’s not the most productive beginning, it’s not the most productive, most healthy, most sustainable way to begin. Most people that do intermittent fasting, usually get like a six to nine month longevity before they start to feel like crap. Because their habits on the back end aren’t supporting them and giving them the health that they need. You have to have a foundational healthy habit.
And if you want to learn what that looks like with nutrition, you can go back to Episode 56, where I talk about nutrition by addition. But you have to have a very healthy foundation, before fasting even makes sense for you. If you’re trying for weight loss, if you’re starting with a healthy journey, it’s not the place to begin, it’s going to set you up for long term failure down the road. And it’s potentially going to invalid or it’s gonna potentially validate some real psychological damage that we have from diet culture. And if you’re looking for some advice, some coaching to get those foundational eating habits to learn how to build that lifelong health routine that can give you that foundation.
I’d love to talk to you about what Health REBELs coaching looks like. You can head over to the website health rebels.us/call To book a 60 minute, consultation with me. I’d love to talk about where you are right now, where you want to be and the next right steps for you. Right you can do that. I’ll post a link in the show notes. And then yeah, but If you also just want to do it on your own, you can check out episode 56 Nutrition by addition, and to validate really what food is all about, check out episode 93 of the Health REBELs podcast, the true purpose behind nutrition. And until I see you again for another episode of the Health REBELs podcast, you know what to do REBEL, keep the oath I hope that episode helps give you some steps you can take to break free from common standards so that you can live a happier, healthier life. I’d love to continue to support you on that path to redefining healthy living. So I want to invite you to join my free Facebook group, the Health REBELs community. There we post daily content to redefine what healthy living means by following the holistic wheel and the REBEL love. You’ll also get community support with like minded Health REBELs. If you’re not already a member, search for the Health REBELs community on Facebook or go to facebook.com/groups/health REBELs. I look forward to seeing you in there REBEL