If you’re really interested in serious intermittent fasting, check out my best selling intermittent fasting 101 eBook!
What is intermittent fasting? Check out Part one! In part two, we’ll be discussing my techniques on how to not be hungry.
Also be sure to check out my favorite brands of fasting tools, directly from Amazon.com!
How to not be hungry? Teach your body to use stored fat!
Like I mentioned in the previous article, I used the paleolithic way of eating to help curb my voracious appetite. That was my first big step in the right direction. By simply avoiding most man-made foods and refined carbs/grains, you give your body the chance to flush out a lot of the pseudo-toxic crap that they put in most processed foods. These highly addictive and unnatural chemicals are a big part of what makes you so hungry. They’re literally engineered to make you want to keep eating, even if you’re full!
The other big step I had to take was learning about carbohydrates and how they work in the body. (Not sure what a carb is? Click here for my free ebook!) Long story short, we over-eat carbs like crazy and our bodies eventually learn to ONLY run on the glucose that comes from the carbs. This is not how the body is meant to be. The body needs periods of fasting to be able to use the stored fat. The ketogenic diet is a way to stimulate this response without starving yourself. You’re essentially “hacking” the body to burn fat automatically.
Once you’ve eaten low carb for enough time, the body RE-LEARNs to use stored fat in times of no food. Your body will literally learn to FEED itself! You’re hacking your metabolism to burn fat automatically!
What is hunger like when you’ve “hacked” your body?
This may sound crude, but the best way I can describe it is like… having to fart… Seriously. Suddenly, you feel a slight rumbling in your lower region. You know something is going on down there. Over the course of a few minutes, it starts to grow and makes itself apparent, but it’s not overly discomforting or painful. You can feel a “pressure,” but not a pain. After so long, the pressure gets a little uncomfortable.
Here’s the kicker, let’s say you can’t just release this fart right at the moment. Perhaps you’re at the wedding altar, about to say “I do,” and now is reeaaaaallly not a good time, so you hold it in. What happens when you hold in a fart? Eventually it has to do something, so you hear a weird noise in the nether regions, feel a little rumble and internal movement, perhaps some discomfort, and… it’s gone. Vanished. That’s all it was.
It may come back in 10 minutes, maybe 2 hours, perhaps not even for most of the day. That’s how my hunger works most of the time! It comes and goes pretty fast, makes a little grumbling noise, feels a little uncomfortable, then vanishes. This is because your body is using fat stores to “feed” yourself. That’s the way the body is supposed to work!!
My stomach used to be my ruler, telling me what to do. Now it has no control over me. If ignore it, it will go away. I’ve trained my body to do this. I almost have to think as if I’m telling my stomach: “No. Screw off, you don’t need any food. You’re fine, eat some of that yummy adipose tissue you’ve been hoarding, you greedy little shyit!”
How to not be hungry? Intermittent fasting. It just disappears and I go back to whatever I was doing. Simple!
This is not starvation. You’re still eating something.
Needless to say, as the day goes on, the hunger will become more frequent and more powerful. Obviously you’ll need to eat something eventually, but that’s what I love about intermittent fasting. If you show a little willpower and fortitude for most of the day, you earn one big delicious meal at the end of the day.
So long as you eat good dietary fats and proteins, this meal will easily keep you full for the rest of the night and part of the next day. While intermittent fasting by itself is not inherently used for weight loss, it is much harder to overeat calories in 8 hours than it is in 16. On days when I’m planning a big cheat meal like a buffet visit, intermittent fasting helps to take the caloric load off. On vacations when I’m not paying as much attention to what I’m eating, this is a must!
How do I start intermittent fasting?
For those of you wanting to try intermittent fasting for the first time, it’s very simple to do. However, you may need to train your body beforehand. As a prerequisite, I would strongly suggest trying the ketogenic diet for at least a good month or so, as it will help reprogram your metabolism to better burn the stored fat and will make dealing with the hunger much more manageable.
To begin using intermittent fasting, just skip breakfast and monitor your hunger levels. Do it once or twice for a week, push your comfort levels and see how long you can hold out. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. Once you feel like you no longer need a daily breakfast, try skipping lunch too. Drink lots of zero calorie liquids like water/tea/coffee and keep busy. (Check out my FASTING TOOLS here!)
It has been shown that using self-imposed deadlines have a psychological effect on motivation. Perhaps tell yourself something like “I will try to skip at least 1 breakfast for the next week. Then I’ll be able to skip 2, then 4, then no breakfast for a whole week.” Start somewhere and keep going from there. Just slowly push your boundaries and monitor how your body reacts. Push yourself, but don’t drive yourself crazy.
Keep your mind and mouth busy!
Drink lots of water/tea/coffee while you’re doing this. If you have to, chew low calorie gum or drink zero calorie pop. While stuff with aspartame and sucralose won’t kill you, don’t eat it every day. Keep your mind occupied, don’t sit around thinking about food. Keep yourself busy and don’t worry about it. Once you get good at it, try to wait until the later part of the day and reward yourself with a decent sized meal or two.
Over time, I will discuss more about the health benefits, the psychology of hunger, and the other methods intermittent fasting. I will also make special posts about intermittent fasting for women, since their bodies react differently than men’s. In the meantime, check out Mark Sisson’s intermittent fasting series for more details. For the weightlifting folks, check out Leangains and give the protocol a try. Good luck and let me know about your experiences in the comments!
If you’re really interested in serious intermittent fasting, check out my best selling intermittent fasting 101 eBook!
-Your friend,
Yossif
Imgs:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stomach.png
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stomach_diagram.gif
About Yossif
What you have mentioned is very true, I have been IF’ing for a month now. I wish I could start the Ketogenic diet but I can’t because because I am not an adult and I can’t control my dinners so therefor it won’t really work (or at least not very well). I think that I will try occasionally letting my body peek into starvation mode then pull out, hopefully this will kick start a reaction that will get my body burning fat. Some strange things I have learned while IF’ing is that I feel more hungry on eating days than on fasting days. It is very strange. My best guess is that my body understands that it will get no food today so even the idea of eating is pushed aside. But on eating days I will eat a large meal, then I will get an overwhelming hunger (like you mentioned in part one) and then I figure why “oh why the hell not, I deserve a treat”. Well I don’t deserve it because I do it everyday, that is probably why it is not working as well as I had hoped, I can’t get the fats burning because I keep cheating and my body keeps running off new fuel rather than the reserves I would like it to. I think that on eating days I get more of a “hormonal type hunger” not a physical hunger. I almost find it fascinating how much I have learned about my body in 3 months, I have learned it is VERY hard to say NO! The first couple weeks but then whenever you see those delicious snacks on-top of the microwave they are easier to turn down because you get used to it. You can train yourself to where a subtle no will be the end of it. Yeah, sure you will feel a little put down but it won’t be a big deal. I find the best way (but rather difficult to do when your hungry and alert due to it) is to take a nap. I wake hunger free if I do. The other thing I like to do is whenever I feel like cheating I go and read about fasting online and I feel more dedicated afterwards and no longer have the urge to cheat. I have learned so much more about my body and the way it functions than I ever could have in any science class or a health class. I never until now understood the difference between what I call hormonal hunger and physical hunger. My hunger never 100% subsides but is instead sort of watered down. I becomes weak and not like any hunger I have ever felt. It is more of a feeling of emptiness than a hunger. I have sensitive blood sugar so sometimes I become very dizzy. It happens and lasts about 20 minutes. After that (which happens around noon) my eating schedule is eat until 6pm. Then wait till the next day at 6 pm eat until tomorrow at 6 pm. I don’t know how much I like though. I am not worried about stunting my growth ( I’m 5’9 and I feel tall enough that if my growth is stunted so be it, I don’t really care. I’m also 14 yrs old) I have done proper research, and know that it will more than less likely activate growth hormones, if I am wrong I don’t mind. I am the same height as my dad and an inch less than my mom. I weigh too much as of now and am more worried about weight than height. I weigh 180 and am going down a poor path before this. I will not make the mistake both of my parents made. It is purely genetic. I eat healthy and my body still feels the need to squeeze out every carb, convert every gram of sugar into fat. Same with my teeth. Brushing twice a day wasn’t enough for me and I already have eleven cavities. My step brother who never ever brushes his teeth has had two. It’s a shame but I am working with what I have got. I have also noticed that I become very irritable when I am fasting. I feel a little more stressed when someone orders me to do something. I think it is funny how mad I get when I think back on it. I’m working towards 160 because I am probably no getting taller so I won’t just grow into my body. I will drop my weight then just maintain it. It has been very beneficial to me, I see things differently than I did before I used to be one of the people that complained after I had been hungry for five minutes. I find it hilarious when a friend tells me that they are hungry (they don’t know that I am fasting because I would rather not deal with any potential drama because I would rather just keep things simple and to myself) They say “oh I skipped breakfast I’m so hungry!” I laugh at them and pity them. I find it pretty damn funny hearing them complain. Little do they know I probably haven’t eaten in some 14 hours. Another thing I find beneficial I that everything tastes so much better and you no longer take food for granite like you probably did before. Overall I think It is a great diet. What schedules would you recommend for me because I don’t really like the current diet. Sorry for leaving such a long comment!
Thanks for the comment! Wow, you’re impressive to be learning and experiencing all this at such a young age. Good for you, the earlier the better. Since you can’t 100% control the foods you eat yet, my best suggestion is trying to lean towards lower-carb foods and asking for more meats and good quality veggies. If you can’t do a ketogenic diet, the next best thing is the paleo diet. It helped me when I first started losing weight by killing my voracious appetite! Also, keep in mind that your body “remembers” when you eat every day by the hormone Leptin. Try to keep yourself on a scheduled as best you can and you’ll notice that the hunger gets easier to deal with over the course of a week or so. Either way, good for you! Keep me updated as you keep going, I’m rooting for you. -Yossif
Thanks for the advice Yossif. I signed up for your newsletter and I will keep you updated, I think the paleo diet sounds good, I control 95% of the other foods I consume other then dinner, so it won’t be too hard to accomplish. I will have to cut out cereal (but sometimes I will eat it because I’m not going to cut out my favorite food!) i will just keep it simple. From what I’ve heard it sound pretty sweet and not something that throws off my entire eating lifestyle. Like I mentioned earlier genetics have a big play in me, 95% of the meat I eat is chicken. Not fried but cooked in a crock pot or baked in the oven. I also eat basic green vegetables with almost every dinner. So even before I ate rather healthy, before I normally had a bowl of cereal in the morning, ate a modest lunch, snack when I got home then the dinner I described. I just have a slow metabolism and that made me gain weight. Thankfully I decided to research and stopped listening to people saying what is good for me, the whole wheat thing is partially true. Yeah it is a little more nutritious , and white has some additives but it is not a big deal and they probably even each other out because whit bread tends to be smaller than whole, haha. It is funny way to think of it but it is true. Anyways I already eat healthy, for several calories difference I would rather eat whit because whole tastes like dust and dirt to me( not like flour but like dead skins dust) I actually like the taste of flower. I will also drop down on eating carbs which will be the hardest challenge, I have a HUGE craving for them but still actually rarely eat stuff like French fries and have pasta about once a week. So between paleo dieting, wile intermittent fasting and occasionally excersizing ( hopefully several times a week) I should be able to reach my goal! Thanks for the support and I hope you do well in 2014 on the 5k!
Everything in moderation is the best approach. If nothing else, you could try giving something up for about 30 days and seeing what happens. That’s about how long it takes for your body and mind to shift when you try something new or remove something from the diet. The Paleo diet isn’t easy to stick with, but a month or two of it really got me going in the right direction. Either way, good to hear you’re making progress. Thanks!
Hi – In the last paragraph you state : “I will also make special posts about intermittent fasting for women.” Where is this? ( Sorry, can’t find it. ) I would like information on how IF affects the “cycles” in a female body, if it does. Thank You <3
Hey Christine, I haven’t yet written much about fasting for women specifically yet. I know there are some effects that are different for men/women, but I think unless it has to do with cycles or pregnancy, you probably don’t need to worry too much about it. For now I would recommend getting a feel for how it works with you personally and try not to go overboard with it. More than anything, it should help simplify your life in the long run. Thanks!