Fasting for Weight Loss

Using fasting as a tool for weight loss can be successful and is beneficial on several accounts.

Firstly, there is the deeper psychological effects. We as a population are so obsessed with having 3 meals (not including mid-day or night time snacking) so much so that even Doctors look down on skipping a meal.

But remember one thing, Humans have for the most part of their existence lived in conditions that did not guarantee a steady stream of food and water. Over hundreds of thousands of years, this has been the case and only in the last 100 years, actually in the last 40-50 years has food security for the most parts of the world been achieved. In fact, I have seen noted several (albeit) anecdotal instances over the last few years that around 50-60 years ago, even in relatively affluent families, most people didn’t have more than 2 meals a day (maybe some tea time snacks), thereby mimicking a natural 16:8 intermittent Fasting Schedule.

So where did it all go wrong? Firstly, let me be clear that I don’t think eating 3 times a day is wrong per se. But you have to understand that as a population, we are much less likely to "burn" this food off as compared to our earlier generations simply because we have better living facilities (from better public transport to private vehicles to less physically stressful jobs for most college educated people).

What this creates is an individual who has been conditioned over generations to eat like there could be a food shortage but lives a very physically stress free life. Yes, I admit that this is not the entire population but I wouldn’t be wrong to guesstimate that this is still 40% of the population if not more.

Is it then surprising that we have so many overweight people all over the world and this number is only going to increase.

Hence we come back to mimicking situations from centuries ago. When we say we want to Fast so that we skip meals and hence go into a caloric deficit, what we actually mean is that we are going back to eating how our grandparents or great grandparents lived and ate.

Specifically, for the weight loss part, I will share my own experiences with a One Meal a Day schedule through a twitter thread. Using a strict fasting method, I ended up losing 8-10 Kg over 30-45 days. I hope you find it informative, useful and easy to follow