In my quest to maintain a desirable weight without having to track every calorie I consume, I've been experimenting with a low carb high fat (LCHF) diet. (The Diet Doctor has lots of good information about this, along with nice recipes.) Do I want to do this my whole life? Well, I don't know; I do love the bread in France. But it seems to work, and goodness knows it would be nice to have a way to quickly shed those pounds that sometimes accumulate during travel or holidays.
To make it even easier - I hope! - I've just started tossing in intermittent fasting. This has become a thing of the past couple of years, with lots of books tossed into the ring. They all say basically the same thing - fasting is a really good way to lose weight.
Dr. Jason Fung's book The Complete Guide to Fasting has a really good explanation of how fasting works. In essence, fasting reduces insulin levels. Insulin is what stores away sugar as fat. Insulin rises after eating, and then drops several hours later. When insulin levels are high, you store fat. When they are low, you burn it as fuel. The longer you go between meals, the longer insulin levels stay low and the longer you are a fat-burning machine.
He debunks lots of the myths about fasting, in particular the notion that not eating will cause your metabolism to drop. Apparently that does not happen; reducing calories will drop your metabolism, but irregular fasting won't.
My biggest worry was that I wouldn't be able to do it. All my life I've heard that we have to eat three meals a day, plus snacks in between. Nutritionists still tell us to eat frequently to "keep up our blood sugar." Back in law school I worked with a trainer using an adapted Zone diet, and she had me eating three meals plus two snacks every day - with carefully balanced carbs, fats, and protein, and every single bit recorded and added up to hit a calorie count around 1630. It worked - I lost a pound a week easily - but was it really necessary?
I really don't want to have to track every calorie. Been there, done that, it worked, but I just don't feel like it.
So... a month ago I started skipping breakfast occasionally. Just to see if I could. It was a leap of faith, I tell you. After all, my whole life I've heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It kick-starts your metabolism! Skipping breakfast could lead to a dead brain, low energy, weight gain - who knows?
And the thing is, I used to always be hungry in the morning. I WANTED to eat breakfast.
I know lots of people supposedly are not hungry first thing. It would be nice to be one of them.
But Dr. Fung says you can "fast" by drinking coffee with a teaspoon or so of cream in it. So I tried that one day. I got up, drank coffee with cream, and then went to a 10:00 yoga class. I was shaky, but I didn't die. At lunchtime I ate a no-carb lunch. And that was that.
So I kept doing it. The mornings when I went to yoga at 9 or 10, I just had coffee, and then lunch. We eat dinner pretty late, around 8:45, but that still makes for a 15 or 16-hour fast, especially if I can push lunch til 1.
And you know what? It's okay! Doing yoga has gotten easier. Some days I try to fit in an hour of walking before lunch too - really maximize the fat-burning machine benefits, ya know! The keto crowd insists that we can use our stored fat as fuel - and my goodness, isn't that what it's for? Even the leanest of us supposedly has enough fat to power a marathon. So I should be able to manage an hour of hot yoga and a 3.5-mile walk without breakfast.
And I can. It's not even hard. I don't feel weak or shaky. I'm not even hungry much of the time.
I find it impossible to believe that I'm in some way harming myself by skipping breakfast.
Oh, and the mornings I don't do yoga? I eat bacon and eggs. It's awesome.
