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Last Updated on April 11, 2024 by Mark
I had struggled for years with diets, but this article is not about diets. It’s about Intermittent Fasting for Beginners and what worked for me to get several serious health concerns back under control. First of all, I am not a doctor. I am just a 55-year-old man who all through my 40s, struggled with Hypertension, Type 2 Diabetes, and being overweight.
When going through my 40s, “I didn’t know what I didn’t know”. What I mean by that is, there was so much more to learn. They say, “Ignorance is Bliss”, and it’s true for many things. But, when it comes to other things, like our health, ignorance can lead to delayed results and wasted time if you want to get right down to it.
Intermittent Fasting for Beginners – The Complete Guide to Intermittent Fasting!
Table of Contents
What is Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is any of various meal timing schedules that cycle between voluntary fasting and non-fasting over a given period. SOURCE: Wikipedia
What this means is that we make a voluntary choice to not eat at certain times and choose to eat at certain other specified times. Some people refer to the times they choose to eat as, “Eating Windows“. I currently use the 16:8 Intermittent Fasting for Beginners schedule which means I eat within my 8 hour “Eating Window” and then fast (not eat) for the next 16 hours.
Intermittent Fasting for Beginners: Fasting Schedules
There are many variations of Intermittent Fasting for Beginners but I’m going to go into detail on the three most popular options.
12:12 Fast
This is considered the easiest of the time scheduled fasts. You simply pick your eating window to coincide within your 12:12 fast. 12 hours of normal eating, 12 hours fasting. This is the recommended schedule to begin with. Allow your mind and body time to adjust to this lifestyle change.
- The time you sleep counts as fasting time. Therefore, if you choose to stop eating at 7pm and wake up at 7am, you’ve already fasted for 12 hours.
14:10 Fast
Considered “moderate in difficulty”, the 14:10 fast would be for the “intermediate” Intermittent Fasting for Beginners. A good example would be, if you stop eating at 7pm and wait to eat breakfast until 9am, you’ve fasted for 14 hours.
- This is a great option; one you could also consider starting with.
I believe much of the benefits of Intermittent Fasting for Beginners come from sleeping on an empty stomach. You’ll sleep better and have less risk of acid re-flux from undigested food. Keep in mind, the earlier you stop eating in the current day, the earlier you can eat the next day.
Sometimes you will go to bed hungry. I have found the degree of hunger can fluctuate greatly day to day. At least for me, I’ve found that most of the time if I power through the hunger, I wake up the next day Not Hungry.
- Consider it a reward for the discipline you showed by not giving in to the cravings.
16:8 Fast
The “Big Daddy” of fasting and the most aggressive. This one is not for everyone but holds the potential for achieving the most from Intermittent Fasting.
This one involves sacrificing an entire meal to be successful. You’re either skipping breakfast or dinner. No other way to look at it. I personally prefer skipping breakfast; it gets it over with and I can reap the reward of waking up not hungry.
In this one, you could choose to stop eating at 7pm, wake up at 7am, but wait until 11am to eat lunch. Boom! 16 hours. The alternative could always be stop eating at 5pm, wake up at 7am, wait until 9am to eat. Technically you could eat all 3 meals, but dinner would have to end earlier than usual.
Intermittent Fasting for Beginners: Where to Go from Here
As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t know what I was doing in my 40s, so I decided to get more serious in my 50s because nothing was changing. I still had all of those health concerns. That’s why I’m writing Intermittent Fasting for Beginners. I want to help others learn from my mistakes.
Once I got down to business, things finally started changing for the positive. I had learned to turn knowledge into action with eating right and I started exercising. This was a great first step! I say that it’s a first step because it takes more than just exercise and eating right to transform your health concerns.
I’ll never forget a lesson I learned in High School. One of my teachers taught me to “Practice Perfect”. He said, “You can practice all day long, but at the end of the day it will still be wrong, unless you Practice Perfect”. He didn’t mean to literally practice it perfectly, but you get the point. You have to do it right. More info on those things can be found by reading some of my other posts.
Diet and exercise had made a difference, but the results were discouragingly slow. It was very hard for me to put in so much effort, and a month later only be down a pound. All the while, my Hypertension and Type 2 Diabetes stayed the same.
You need to exercise and monitor your heart rate. Monitoring your heart rate ensures you are benefiting from the exercise. It also prevents you from overdoing it. Safety first, right? I recommend a good smart watch that can monitor and track your heart rate, my favorite is the Garmin Venu 2.
You need to eat right. Learn what your body needs by using an app like My Fitness Pal, or Live Strong. My Fitness Pal app has everything you need to track your diet. Link it to a smart watch and it can track diet and exercise.
Why You Need Intermittent Fasting
After everything I’ve mentioned above, I wasn’t seeing results with my serious health conditions until I started Intermittent Fasting for Beginners. I had reached a point where I was angry with myself that I had wasted so much time and I aggressively started with the 16:8.
Talk about fast results, my resting blood sugar was dropping 10 points a week. My resting blood sugar ran in the high 300’s for years and within 6 months it’s under 100. My A1C at its highest, reached 13. I was a stroke/heart attack waiting to happen. Now it’s 4.9 and my blood pressure is normal.
I can’t promise that anyone else will have the same results. I can only speak on what Intermittent Fasting for Beginners did for me, and I’m a Believer!
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