Marilyn Beuster

I view intermittent fasting as a lifestyle, not a diet, and that includes making healthy food choices whenever you do eat.
Also, proper nutrition becomes even more important when fasting, so you really want to address your food choices before you try fasting.

This includes minimizing carbs and replacing them with healthful fats, like coconut oil, olive oil, olives, butter, eggs, avocados, and nuts. It typically takes several weeks to shift into this mode, but once you do, your cravings for unhealthy foods and carbs will automatically disappear. This is because you're now actually able to burn your stored fat and don't have to rely on new fast-burning carbs for fuel.

Health care practitioners across the board are so afraid to recommend eating less because of the stigma involved in that recommendation, but we are more than happy to recommend that someone start going to the gym. If all I said was you need to get to the gym and start eating healthier, no one would have a problem with it. When the message is not only should you eat less, you could probably go without eating for 24 hours once or twice a week, suddenly it's heresy.

As with anything health related, I took many peoples advice and weighed it up with my own logic and feelings from both gut and heart.
I knew I wanted to start, and was going to at least experiment with everything until I found a balance.
That part of journey alone, the part of experimenting, of finding out what works for you and what doesn't, is a subconscious reward, as you are allowing yourself to gage your progress, you can take your time doing it, and knowing that you are at least doing something makes you feel better about yourself.

Along with experimenting food types and eating patterns, research and knowledge building is what I also found most rewarding. I mean, why only put your body into shape when you can to so for your mind too. So I have done a ton of research!

Aside from removing your cravings for sugar and snack foods and turning you into an efficient fat-burning machine, thereby making it far easier to maintain a healthy body weight, there are many other good reasons to fast intermittently. For example, my research has shown that fasting triggered a 1,300 percent rise of human growth hormone (HGH) in women, and an astounding 2,000 percent in men.

HGH, human growth hormone, commonly referred to as "the fitness hormone," plays an important role in maintaining health, fitness and longevity, including promotion of muscle growth, and boosting fat loss by revving up your metabolism. The fact that it helps build muscle while simultaneously promoting fat loss explains why HGH helps you lose weight without sacrificing muscle mass, and why even athletes can benefit from the practice (as long as they don't over-train and are careful about their nutrition). The only other thing that can compete in terms of dramatically boosting HGH levels is high-intensity interval training.

Other health benefits of intermittent fasting include:

• Normalizing your insulin and leptin sensitivity, which is key for optimal health
• Improving biomarkers of disease
• Normalizing ghrelin levels, also known as "the hunger hormone"
• Reducing inflammation and lessening free radical damage
• Lowering triglyceride levels
• Preserving memory functioning and learning

Some of MY PERSONAL advice (what I practice)

Step 1 – Snip

Cut your carbs and your sugar completely for 2 full weeks.

You need to get all the insulin out of your cells and reduce any insulin resistance you might have, which we kinda all do, as we lead such 'heavy carb/sugar' diets and we eat constantly either 3 times or 6 days a day.

Step 2 - Measure

Go and buy a digital scale, and take your weight and measurements. Make sure you get a scale that measures body fat and water percentages. These can cost you R1000, but are beneficial to understanding your body composition.

You will need to weigh in daily, before you shower, right after waking up. If you're not already in your birthday suit (you're not? Do yourself a favour and research the health benefits of sleeping naked), drop the clothes and take that reading.

A daily pattern is the crucial key here, so that you can start to document your weight loss heartbeat.

Step 3 – Plan

Plan what you going to eat the next day that night. You do not have to have a meal weight plan (although this might come in later), just have a game plan so that you're not on the back foot. You have to spend more time in the kitchen, and this process helps you with that.
Whilst planning, keep biltong, nuts, and/or 1 fruit (like banana, apple or handful of berries - No, not for a G&T, but to eat) in mind.
Nuts should be a good tree nut selection - nuts get packed into your bag to 'break your fast'. The importance of this are summed up in videos in the Fasting and Eating sections of this site.

Step 4 - Educate

I subscribed to and downloaded Dr Eric Berg and Thomas DeLauer on YouTube and started listening to them on their knowledge on intermittent fasting, and key words like Keto, Autophagy, Stem Cell Renewal, and as they have many 10 min videos, its easy to catch up in your lunch break.

All of this is done before you begin your actual fasting. You want to give your body the best chance and be in a favourale condition to hit ketosis.