Intermittent Fasting

For most of human history, food was not consistently available. Therefore, our bodies have evolved to be able to handle short-term fasts during periods of famine. These “intermittent fasts” are no longer necessary for most of us, given our abundance of food. However, voluntary intermittent fasting is gaining popularity as a technique to sustain healthy weight and promote metabolic wellbeing.

We believe that regular 12– 16–hour fasts can be useful for people who want to stay in nutritional ketosis (i.e. those who are eating a properly designed low-carb diet in order to remain in a fat-burning state) and/or who are trying to maintain their weight loss.

We recommend that you start by trying five days of intermittent fasting (though feel free to do seven if you want).

1. Stop eating after 8 p.m. at night.
2. The following day try one of these two options:
   • The 12 hour-fast: after eating an early JumpstartMD-compatible breakfast, skip lunch and then resume eating at dinner time
   • The 16-hour fast: skip breakfast; then have a low-carbohydrate, JumpstartMD-compatible lunch and dinner.

Feel free to fine-tune and adjust as needed.

Whenever you are experimenting with intermittent fasts, you can avoid the likelihood of unpleasant side effects by drinking more water than normal and making sure to replenish electrolytes, particularly salt— for example, by consuming one or two cups of low-carb broth per day. (It’s fine to drink this during your fast, since your body will not treat broth as food.)

If you’re intermittently fasting, watch out for compensatory binging (or overeating) behaviors post-fast, particularly around dinnertime.

You can drink coffee or tea (unsweetened) between meals; small amounts of whole cream may also help alleviate hunger.

For some people, FDA-approved weight loss medications can help to control appetite between meals and prevent overeating after the fast is over.

We do not recommend regularly fasting for more than 16 hours at a time, due to concerns about safety and muscle-wasting. (Fasting for up to 16 hours should not cause muscle-wasting, especially if you continue to eat the recommended amount of approximately 0.8 to 1 gram of protein per kilogram of body weight per day—which most people already are.)

Our recommendations may change as further data emerges but, to date, we have not found data that would support us encouraging regular fasts beyond this length.

It may take time to see benefits in biomarkers, hunger and quality of life from intermittent fasting. For maximum effect, we recommend trying it for five days a week.

Be patient and persistent, replenish fluids and electrolytes, and speak with your health coach or clinician to continue to fine-tune and individualize your approach.

Over time, you may find that you simply don’t need as much food as you’d assumed, and that the benefits of brief bouts of daily fasting make it easy to sustain.

And if not, no problem: it’s not for everyone.