As discussed in the presentation entitled ‘Intermittent Fasting’, the concept is very definitely not synonymous with starvation. With intermittent fasting, you are permitted to eat your daily energy requirement, which for most men is 2500 Calories and for most women is 2000 Calories, within a specified period.
For the average person, the 24-hour day is divided into sleeping, working and recreation and conveniently for practical purposes this amounts to about 8 hours for each period give or take an hour or two either side. Superimposed upon this is the traditional meal time pattern which is breakfast just before work, lunch in the middle of the working day and dinner at the completion of the working day.
With intermittent fasting, the optimum times for fasting and feeding is very much open to debate. However, because most of us stop eating around 8 o’clock in the evening and at a variable point after this we go to sleep, by the time we get up in the morning we have already been fasting for about 10 hours. It therefore makes sense to continue this fast because the body has already established this pattern and the whole intention of fasting is to invoke the individual cells to utilise fatty acids as its primary energy substrate.
This can only happen once the glycogen stores in the liver has been depleted and this will happen throughout an overnight fast or very soon afterwards. To help the body to kick into lipolysis mode, you really want to expedite the depletion of liver glycogen and also ensure its completion. This is the rational for doing your 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise first thing in the morning.
It is therefore a relatively simple matter to continue the fast through till 2 o’clock in the afternoon and this gives you a good 8 hours of fat burning opportunity. For most people, an 18 hour fast is eminently achievable. Certainly, when you first begin you will experience quite marked hunger sensations which can be reduced with a regular intake of water, black coffee or green tea. You will notice that the hunger symptoms will decrease fairly quickly after about a week of this regime.
So, an 18 hour fast leaves you a 6-hour feeding window between 2pm and 8pm and conveniently this translates to a very practical time period for you to eat your requisite number of calories as previously defined. If you choose to extend your fasting window by another couple of hours then this obviously allows for further fat burning opportunity. However, a lot of people will probably struggle to achieve those extra two hours and importantly you are then barely leaving yourself a sufficient eating window in order to get in your requisite calories.
There is always the risk that you will get the sensation of satiety fairly quickly and then you run the risk of calorie restricting. As discussed in the presentation entitled ‘Calorie Restricted Diets’ this is neither necessary nor is it desirable. In fact, it will have significant detrimental effects in the form of reducing your basal metabolic rate (BMR) and this will inevitably make you feel cold, tired, lethargic and generally miserable. And this is a sure-fire way for this regime to fail because you will simply start comfort-eating again and you will regain your weight.
For those individuals who work outside of these normal hours - so somebody for instance who does a night shift - it is simply a matter of working out within your own routine as to the best solution that incorporates an 18-hour fasting window and a 6-hour feeding window. Equally there will be individuals who have a variable shift pattern and it is really just a matter once again of formulating the best pattern.
There will be a solution that may not be perfect but in the long-term the Nysteia Formula will still work for you. The secret is not to use your slightly unusual working pattern as an excuse not to pursue the Nysteia Formula. Realistically nobody is going to sympathise with you, so in this regard you are very much on your own.
We entirely understand that a lot of our socialising happens around food, but it is important that you do not allow your social life to dictate your eating pattern. Most of us have a 5-day working week and the weekends are reserved for socialising with friends and family. Under these circumstances it is perfectly acceptable to break your fast somewhat earlier for the purposes of being social to say 1pm and on occasions to extend beyond 8pm.
The important thing is that you stick to your regime most of the time. Humans are creatures of habit and the quicker you can establish a routine that suits you, and you stick to that routine, then the easier it will be for you to achieve your BOW.