I practised intermittent fasting in and our for a couple of years now, but am back to my favorite version of it: 4/20

The concept of intermittent fasting is to decrease your eating window, and increase your fasting window.

Let’s say you usually eat your first meal at 8AM and your last one at 8PM, you have a 12h eating window, and a 12h fasting window. 12/12.

Intermittent fasters usually start to decrease the eating window to 8h, and increase the fasting window to 16h. 8/16.

Practising Intermittent Fasting (IF) is known for number of health benefits, such as activating cell repair, preventing cancer, facilitating weight loss, and dozens of other things you can find online in no time.

I don’t want to discuss those benefits or try to convince you IF is amazing.

I just want to share the 3 reasons why I personally chose to follow this way of eating, and why I even pushed it further by eating during a 4h timeframe only, fasting during 20h.

Actually, most of the time I only do 1 huge, big meal every day, and that’s it.

1. Less time digesting, more time focusing

I don’t know you, but regardless the type of food I eat, I always get sleepy after eating. Super sleepy.

Some say it’s because the digestion is the process taking the most energy in our body. 

So if you eat three times a day, you enter 3 times in digestion process, and have to face 3 moments of sleepiness during the day.

The first meal I skipped was the breakfast.

After a few days to get used to it, and replacing it by 500mL of water and a tea/coffee, I ended up starting my days more energised, and ready to focus right after waking up.

The less time I spend digesting, the more time I spend focusing.

2. Enjoying the food better

Now I am used to it, I am not starving when comes the time to eat.

But one of the great thing about eating less often is how much you are able to enjoy the food once you can eat it.

And, by the way, the idea is not to eat less, but to eat less often.

Which means I basically do a huge meal with all I need, instead of trying to balance my food throughout the day.

The moment when I can eat is not just a simple routine, or something I have to do, but it’s a celebration.

I love the food better this way.

3. Easier and straight forward

The more I grow up, the more I am interested in ways to simplify things I do every day.

Taking less decisions about daily tasks, and transforming them into simple process that take little to zero energy.

Waking up at 5:30AM and training first thing in the morning is one of the most important habit I am learning for a week now.

Because it makes it a no brainer to know when I wake up,
and it makes it a no brainer to know what I do right after.

The ideal eating habit, for me, following those principle, is to get consistently only one huge meal every day.

And having it right after the sunset, so the sleepiness induced would lead me gently into my sleeping routine.

Without any screen, only books and relaxing music.

Now, should you do the same? I don’t know.

I know it sounds a bit extreme for some people, and a lot of limiting thoughts might arise after reading this.

It’s alright, I also had a lot of doubts in the beginning, and I don’t want to convince you to start doing Intermittent Fasting.

However, if you feel like doing it, to get health benefits, simplify the way you eat, or just out of curiosity, well, give it a try.

Start with 16h fasting the first week, then 18h the next one, and finally 20h if you feel comfortable with it.

Don’t starve yourself, it’s not the idea.

But understand that your brain has been used to claim food from you at specific times in the day, for decades, and he might not let go of its habits so easy.

Be ready to fight the feeling of being hungry, and discover how this feeling is actually different from hunger itself.