Every expert was once a beginner.
If you’re thinking about starting intermittent fasting and you want do it right Or maybe you’ve tried it before but it didn’t work. These 7 intermittent fasting for beginners rules I’m about to give you are going to put you on the right track.
In this video, I’m going to show you 7 intermittent fasting for beginners tips to set yourself up for success.
7 Intermittent Fasting For Beginners (7 Golden Rules)
1. Control your environment
Habits are really hard to change. There’s a popular saying out there that it takes 21 days to make of break. I don’t really know where that number came from but it actually takes more like 66 days or two months.
Here’s another stat. Did you know that 80 percent of New Year’s resolutions fail by February and only 8% are successful at achieving them.
I don’t know about you but a 92% failure rate seems pretty tough to overcome. That’s not even 1 out of every 10.
Which means that more likely than not, you’ll be back to your old habits by next month.
The reason why most intermittent fasting for beginners fail is that they want to make a change. They’re committed. Which is great. But they don’t really adjust their environment.
Let me give you an analogy. Once upon a time, I owned a fish tank. One day, one of the fish got sick. If you treat the fish, it may or may not get better. But if you treat the water. If you treat its environment. The fish will get better.
You can have all the willpower on the planet but if you don’t change your environment, you’re not gonna succeed.
Let’s talk about a couple of levels here and it starts at home. We are not wired for self control
If you have trigger foods littered all over your house, you might be able to say no to it a couple of time but eventually, you’ll cave.
This is such an easy fix that’s why we’re starting with this and there’s only one rule. Don’t stock bad foods. Don’t stock trigger foods at home. If you just take out your stash of chips, cookies, ice cream, candy, soda, or whatever food triggers you. And you replace it with better alternatives? I guarantee you, you’re automatically going to lose weight.
Next is your social environment. You are the average of the 5 people you spend time with the most. If you hang out with people who eat like crap, you’re most likely gonna eat like crap as well. You’re the average weight of the 5 people you hang out with the most.
If you’re trying to make a change for the better and your friends make fun of you, then you need better friends. You want to start hanging out with people who already have what you want because they’re going to make you level up your life.
So it goes both ways, right? This is a very important intermittent for beginners tip. If you hang out with the right people, you’re going to start adapting their healthy habits.
This is why doing group classes like CrossFit, Barre, or bootcamp style workouts is so effective.
Next up is your family environment. This is a bit of touchy subject but I’m going to take a stab at it.
What I’ve learned lately is you can love your family from a distance. For example, if you come from an overweight family. You have a family history of diabetes and heart disease.
If you’re actively trying to improve your health but your family isn’t on board, then you need to start spending less time with them.
I know that that’s an unpopular opinion but I don’t care. Listen, you need to look after yourself first. You need to save yourself first There’s the plane analogy that you need to put on your oxygen mask first.
If you have family members and friends that you want to help, I firmly believe that the best way to help them lose weight is to inspire them.
Listen, you can’t choose your family but you can choose how much time you spend with them. Remember, you always sink to the current level of your environment. If you’re in a toxic environment at home, or at work, your friends, and family, it’s almost virtually impossible to lose weight. And this is such a big intermittent fasting for beginners tip. That’s why I wanted to start with this.
Again, I’m a numbers guy and it’s all about stacking the odds to your favour.
Your environment determines your success. If you change your environment, your life will change.
2. Pick a schedule that works
Pick an intermittent fasting for beginners time frame. then do your best to hit that intermittent fasting schedule every single day.
The easiest way to do this is look at your schedule. Are you single? Do you have a kids? Do you need to have a sit down meal with your family in the morning? Or can you do it over dinner? What kind of work do you do? Is your work flexible with when you eat? Things like that.
Once you figure that out, then pick an intermittent fasting for beginners schedule that works best with your current schedule. I always like to say that the minimum effective dose of fasting is the 16 hour fast because it’s the most flexible and easiest to follow.
For a lot of people, that is as simple as skipping breakfast and just having tea of coffee then having your regular lunch and dinner. Other people, they’re okay with having a 4 hour eating window. For others, they’re okay eating once a day.
What you don’t want do is pick an intermittent fasting for beginners schedule that works against your schedule. That should be obvious but it’s worth mentioning anyway. And be flexible about it.
Let’s say you always do a 16 hour fast but you’re only able to do 14, that’s okay. And this also goes the other way, if your fasting window is up and you’re not hungry, don’t eat. Feel free to extend it.
And that’s kind of the golden rule of fat loss. Eat when you’re hungry, don’t eat if you’re not hungry.
3. Track your macros
Intermittent fasting frees you from having to eat 6 meals a day or just scheduled meals in general. It also gives you a little bit more freedom when it comes to food.
But this doesn’t give you the green light to just hit up your all you can eat buffet once you break your fast,
It’s easy to blow all the benefits of intermittent fasting if you pair it with the wrong diet.
For example, if you eat 6 meals then just eat 2 meals, you automatically create a caloric deficit which is amazing.
What you want to do is pair it with the proper diet. You want to eat whole, mostly unprocessed nutrient dense foods. You wanna revolve your diet around plants and animals.
BUT more importantly, you need to be in a caloric deficit especially if you have a lot of weight to lose.
You need the hormonal aspect of intermittent fasting paired with a caloric deficit to work together.
I’m gonna use cheese for example because it’s become a popular healthy treat. It’s highly in healthy fats. And who doesn’t love cheese?
You can’t just gorge on mozzarella balls and expect to lose weight just because it’s healthy. And I want you to think about it this way, if you have weight to lose, would you rather eat fat from foods or would you rather burn your own body fat for energy?
4. Adjust your lifestyle
I personally believe that there are 5 different aspects of health that you need to take care of: mindset, sleep, exercise, and nutrition, and lifestyle.
Nutrition is just once piece of the pie and they’re not all weighed the same. You can’t just start intermittent fasting for beginners and ignore the rest. They need to work in unison.
You need to get your head in the right place. It starts with finding your ‘Why?’
You need to get adequate sleep every night. This is a big one. I don’t care what kind of intermittent fasting schedule you follow, if you don’t get adequate sleep, it’s gonna be almost impossible to lose weight.
You need to get your nutrition in check. 80% of your results will come from this, assuming you get adequate sleep at night.
You want to make sure you’re always moving your body and I’m going to talk about this in further detail coming here,. You want to make sure your stress levels are in check. And you want make sure that you’re living an overall lifestyle that’s geared towards health.
Don’t just do intermittent fasting and ignore the rest. Again focus on a complete lifestyle change.
5. Don’t rely on crutches
Some “experts” are advocating that it’s okay to drink diet soda and artificial sweeteners. Somebody always puts in the comments that, “Oh, I drank diet soda and I lost weight!” And that’s fine. But, you gotta those people. Are they at their target weight? Are they healthy?
It also depends how insulin resistant you are whether your body can tolerate some artificial sweetener in your system.
Here’s the general rule with artificial sweeteners. You want to use it as a training wheel to start. I’m talking maybe a week or two especially if you’re extremely addicted to sugar. But eventually, you’re just gonna want to go without it completely.
Remember, the whole point of intermittent fasting for beginners is to take a break from eating. Not to see what can get away with and cheat the system. You’re only going to be cheating yourself in the long run.
6. Pair intermittent fasting with exercise
Here’s the only thing you need to know about it. One of the best things you can do for your health and fitness is to be as physically strong as humanly possible. Having a lot of lean muscle mass is also a very strong indicator of lifespan.
Just think about elderly people who don’t exercise. But then you see the outliers out there like Mark Sissons. He’s the author of the Primal Blueprint, one of my favourite books, is a great example of this. He’s 67 years old and looks amazing.
I want you to think about exercise differently. You do it to compliment intermittent fasting. Remember, exercise is for building muscle. Intermittent fasting for beginners is for fat loss.
Working out also creates a positive feedback loop because you just feel good about yourself and you make better decisions. And it’s addicting. As to what kind of workout should you do? Just pick one that you like.
7. Give it some time
This is a big one. More likely than not, it probably took you months, if not years to put on all the weight that you’re trying to lose. Which means that you can’t expect to just magically lose it overnight.
Be brutally honest with yourself. Asses your situation. But more importantly, give it some time. If you’ve never fasted before, you are literally going against a lifetime of bad eating habits.
But if you follow all 7 of these intermittent fasting for beginners rules, it’s not a matter of if you’re going to lose weight. It’s only a matter of when.
As always, if this was helpful, share it with a friend who could benefit from it as well!
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