It’s important to understand why Intermittent Fasting works, so that you will have faith in the process. If you don’t have faith, you won’t persevere when the going gets tough and you’ll never cross that finish-line.
because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
James 1:3-4
So let’s get started. What do your wallet and your waistline have in common? I’m so glad you asked, allow me to explain.
Let’s say we’re living the simple life and trying to live on cash alone. Therefore, we’ve only got two ways to pay for things: 1) use the cash in our wallet, or 2) go to the bank and withdraw from the savings account. So on payday, we get our check and head to the bank. We cash out what we need for that week’s living expenses and deposit the rest in our savings account.
Similarly, your body also has two places to store fuel: 1) your liver and 2) your fat cells. When you eat, its like payday for your body. It stores as much glycogen as it can in the liver (i.e. cash the wallet), and the rest gets stored as fat into your fat cells (i.e. money in the savings account).
The problem is insulin. Insulin is like a security guard outside the bank that won’t let anyone come in to do their transactions. When Mr. Insulin Security Guard is there, we can’t go do our withdraw from the savings account. Meaning, our body can’t access the fuel it has stored in our fat cells.
So, we have two options. We either have to reduce the amount we’re spending so that the cash in the wallet goes as far as possible OR we have to wait for Mr. Insulin Security Guard to go away so we can get inside the bank and access our savings.
This is exactly what our bodies do. First, it will burn the glycogen in the liver. If you start to run out of that glycogen in the liver, which is what happens when we cut calories in hopes of losing weight, and Mr. Insulin Security Guard is still there, your body will slow down as much as possible to exert the least amount of fuel it can (otherwise known as metabolism slowing down). This is proven in the Biggest Loser study which showed that the contestants on that show now have a slower metabolism than what they should have based on their height, weight, muscle mass, etc.
We don’t want that so we need to go with Option #2 and get Mr. Insulin Security Guard to go off duty. How? The answer is simple. We FAST! That’s the only way. When we eat -> insulin is released. When we don’t eat -> insulin goes down. The body can only exists in two states – the fed (insulin high) state and the fasted (insulin low) state. Either we are storing food energy, or we are burning it. It’s one or the other.
If we start eating the minute we roll out of bed, and do not stop until we go to sleep (as with the common advice that is to eat 6 small meals a day), we spend almost all our time in the fed state. Over time, we will gain weight because we have not allowed our body any time to burn fat. The below graphs shows a typical day of my eating before I found intermittent fasting and the effect it had on my insulin levels.
It’s completely out of balance. To restore balance or to lose weight, we simply need to increase the amount of time we burn fat. After all, that’s what the stored fat is there for. That is how our bodies are designed. That’s what dogs, cat, lions and bears do. That’s what humans ARE SUPPOSED to do. Now, compare the above graph with my new way of eating on intermittent fasting and keto in the below graph.
Ahhh, that’s much better. As you can see, its not the keto part of it that is the most important, its the fasting part. I could choose to eat non-keto foods in my eating window and still have much more time in fat burning mode than I ever did with my old way of eating.
Now, I’m not a doctor, so here’s the same information from an actual doctor who has done all of the research and knows what he is talking about.
It’s also important to realize that this is exactly how our Creator designed our bodies to function. He never intended for food to be plentiful and abundant and accessible with the pop of a top. That is why He makes it a point to tell us not to be anxious about where our next meal will come from, because He designed it in a way that we would have times of fasting and would be hungry.
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
Matthew 6:25-26
His design was for us to be balanced by times of feasting and times of fasting. His design was for fruit to sprout seasonally, not year-round production in manufactured settings. His design was for us to work diligently fatting a calf until the time to feast. His design was for us to allow Jesus to sustain us, not food and things of this world.
So, fast on my friends and let your body do what God designed it to do!
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Blessings,
Ronni
Restore Your Temple 