I tried intermittent fasting for three months, and while I lost a few pounds, I’ll never be going back – here’s why
After three months of intermittent fasting, a dieting method that extends the time between meals and forces your body to burn fat for energy, I managed to shed a few kilos. However, I won’t be repeating the experience, and the lessons I learned may be more valuable than the weight loss itself.
Like many others at the start of summer, I was keen to lose a few extra kilos before jetting off on holiday. But as anyone with PCOS and thyroid issues will tell you, this can be an uphill battle when your metabolism is working against you, rendering mainstream diets largely ineffective, trust me I’ve tried.
So, I turned to intermittent fasting, a dietary approach where you leave a significant gap between your last meal of one day and your first meal of the next. Most beginners start with a 12:12 split – 12 hours of eating followed by 12 hours of fasting – but it’s flexible, with some extreme practitioners opting for just one hour of eating and 23 hours of fasting.
In my research, I found most experts recommending a 16:8 or 18:6 ratio for weight loss, where you only eat for eight or six hours respectively. I chose the former. So, I set my eating window from 8am to 4pm, limited myself to 1,400 calories a day to avoid overeating during my eight-hour food window, and embarked on this experiment.
The initial weeks were a revelation. As a typical Gen Z, I was partial to ultra-processed snacks, often indulging late into the night. Cutting this out almost immediately improved my sleep, even during intense heatwaves. Despite hearing experts discuss the impact of such foods on our bodies, I hadn’t truly grasped how bloated and inflamed I constantly felt until I allowed my body time to digest what I was consuming.
Everything began to regulate, including some of my PCOS symptoms. My energy soared and my motivation surged as I noticed early weight loss and the disappearance of these symptoms. This diet was easier than any other I’d tried.
As long as I didn’t overindulge during my eight-hour eating window, I was fine. This boosted my confidence as I no longer felt guilty if I succumbed to a doughnut temptation. However, I did encounter some challenges in the first few weeks. One rarely-discussed issue was how to fit exercise into a fasting routine.
Hitting the gym on an empty stomach can be as harmful as not eating afterwards – a surprising Catch-22. Bearing in mind that health experts recommend a high-protein meal post-workout, I shifted my eating hours to 12pm to 8pm. This meant my evening gym session coincided with my last meal of the day.
One of the things I loved most about intermittent fasting was this flexibility. If I had a social dinner one day, I’d start eating later to extend my hours or if I had an early morning, I’d stop sooner the day before so I could grab breakfast in time.
Yes, it does involve a lot of quick calculations and I’ve become much more familiar with divisions of 24 than I ever thought I would be, but it was all going well. By the end of the first month, I had lost 1.5kg (3.3lbs) but this is where things started to go downhill.
I began to feel mentally exhausted from trying to organise my life around my eight-hour eating window, every meal started to feel like a race against time to plan, prep and eat. I’m also notoriously forgetful, so it wasn’t uncommon for me to only remember two or three hours into my eating window or forget to make my final meal of the day in time.
As a result, I wasn’t struggling to stop myself from eating too much during my eight hours, instead I was struggling to get near the 1,400kcals a day I had planned. I could feel this in my energy levels and I just couldn’t find the motivation to go to gym or out nearly as much, as well as a growing discontentment whenever I even thought of food.
The initial weight loss began to plateau, with only a further 0.5kg (1.1lbs) shed by the end of the second month. This started to dent my motivation as I was growing weary of the routine, but I decided to persevere for one more month to see if I could push through the slump.
Regrettably, the third month saw no further weight loss, despite my continued struggle to adhere to the fasting regime in a healthy manner. I found myself increasingly turning to takeaways and ultra-processed foods for a quick dopamine fix.
Some experts suggest that consuming more than 50 calories during your fasting hours will break your fast, and sadly, most coffees, teas and even some sugar-free energy drinks exceed this limit, leaving me utterly drained of energy.
In retrospect, I don’t regret attempting intermittent fasting as it provided valuable insights into how my body metabolises food and how I can leverage this knowledge. However, I can categorically state that I won’t be trying it again for more than a fortnight at a stretch.
It’s also crucial to remember that everyone’s response to intermittent fasting will vary. Some versions of the diet involve fasting only on specific days of the week or month, which is something I’m considering trying next. But I’m immensely relieved that I no longer have to clock-watch before I can enjoy an apple.
