Season 1, Episode 5- Intermittent Fasting

Written By Madeline Evergreen
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What is Intermittent Fasting? 

Intermittent fasting simply means that you are only eating during a specific window of time. The most basic way to do this is to fast for 12 hours overnight. Only consume water during those 12 hours. For example, if you stop eating at 8pm, you don’t eat or drink anything with caloric value until 8am. 12 hour overnight fasts are very safe and easy for most people to do. 

If you are already fasting for 12 hours overnight, start inching it up to 13, 14, 15 or more hours. It doesn’t matter if you skip breakfast or dinner. Just choose a block of time that sounds most pleasurable to you for fasting. Most people choose to eat lunch and dinner, and skip breakfast. If you prefer to eat breakfast and lunch and skip dinner, go for it! 

What are the benefits? 

  1. Autophagy (means self devouring). During fasting, your body allows damaged cells or damaged components of cells to die. 

  2. Liver detox. When you give your digestion a break, your liver is able to rest and perform better when it is needed. 

  3. Increased ketones. Fasting is one of the best ways to boost your ketone production. 

Troubleshooting trouble with fasting

  • Don’t over-do it… If you feel shaky, grumpy, hangry, disfunctional, or unable to work during fasting, then your fast has gone on too long. Give yourself many months or weeks to work up to lengthy fasts. 

  • Address your stress… Stress is the best way to get OUT of ketosis. If you measure your ketones, you should notice an increase in ketones after fasting. If you don’t notice your ketones increasing, it might mean that you have other health troubles or stresses that need addressing first. Review the Keto Bite episode on stress here: https://projectketopodcast.com/keto-bite-stress/

  • Exogenous ketones… can be incredibly helpful to extend fasts. If you still struggle to get off snacking or to practice intermittent fasting after weeks or months of effort, try using exogenous ketones. Your body might need a bit of a boost for support. (see product recommendations at the bottom of the page) 

  • Try adding fat… for people who struggle with extending their fasting hours. Eating a bit of fat in the morning can allow you to go a few more hours without a full meal. Fatty coffee or tea can do the trick for most people! Here’s my favorite coffee recipe: 

My Favorite Coffee Recipe:

  • 1 cup brewed Four Sigmatic Coffee 

  • 3 tbsp Nutpods non-dairy coffee creamer

  • 1/2 scoop powdered MCT oil from Perfect Keto 

  • NuNaturals Liquid Stevia to taste

  • optional: 1 TBSP grassfed collagen

(Find the links to all these products at the bottom of the page!)

Brew the coffee in a french press (or however you like). Pour into a mug add the rest of the ingredients. Use a milk frother or blender to fully mix the fats. Stirring with a spoon works too… but you might have a few lumps. 

Adjust these ingredients as you need! Some people need more or less fat to satiate themselves until lunchtime. If you like unsweetened… skip the stevia! 

Adding collagen helps with people who still feel hungry, shaky, or fatigued after having fatty coffee. Some people (mostly women) need a bit of protein to help them along. 

Switch it up!

Anyone who has been doing long intermittent fasts daily for at least 6 weeks needs to start varying it up. Do not continue lengthy fasts long term. You can easily go into starvation mode and start storing fat, wrecking your hormones, and end up out of ketosis if you force your body to fast too much. If you are a person in this category, try adding some carbs once per week or so. Also, try intermittent fasting a few days per week, and then go back to 3 meals per day the other days per week. Just give your body a lot of variety until you feel your health getting back on track. We will talk about this extensively in future episodes. 

Links to coffee and ketone products:

Madeline Evergreen
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