As you might remember, I started to follow the intermittent fasting diet back in January (fasting for 16 hours with an 8-hour eating window every day). I’m so amazed by the results that I can’t wait to share with you my experience and learnings over the last ten months.

First of all, if you want to have a summary of what intermittent fasting is and how it works, you can have a look at the article I posted after the first three months here.

Intermittent fasting: it works. It really does.

Intermittent fasting: you’ll love it too

Intermittent fasting has become part of my lifestyle and I’m loving it:

• I feel very energised all day long: I’m never tired in the morning, I never feel like having a nap after lunch and I sleep like a baby at night.
• My immune system is definitely stronger: I did not have a single cold or caught the flu even though Australia experienced the worst winter/spring flu epidemic in decades. I have been constantly exposed to people with the flu over the last 5 months and did not get anything.
• I definitely lost weight and got much leaner.

… But it hasn’t been always the case.

At one stage, I thought I was going to give up intermittent fasting. After the first five months, I reached a plateau: I was finding harder and harder not to have breakfast, I was getting physically tired and I wasn’t losing the weight I wanted to lose.

I reintroduced breakfasts in my intermittent fasting.

It clearly meant that something wasn’t working for me. As always, if you want different results, you need to change the way you do things. So instead of fasting from dinner to lunch, I decided to fast from after lunch until breakfast on the next day (which means that I would have breakfast and lunch, instead of lunch and dinner).

This change had a massive impact:

• I found quite easy not to have dinner and realised how much I loved starting the day in the sun with a gorgeous and nutritious breakfast.
• I found myself fasting for more than the 16 hours required. For instance, when I have lunch at 12 pm and breakfast at 7 am, it means that I fast for 19 hours, which increases the benefits of intermittent fasting on the energy level, cell rejuvenation and weight loss. Bingo!
• I easily and happily lost the stubborn kilos I’ve been trying to shed for months.

I do intermittent fasting my way.

I found out that I could totally adapt intermittent fasting to my lifestyle while abiding by my approach to life and diet: always enjoy food, never feel deprived and stick to my motto: Real Food + Pleasure = Health ©:

• While I don’t have dinner most of the time, I sometimes swop depending on my schedule and have dinner, in particular if I know I’ll have a social dinner or an evening function. I know that I can adjust by fasting until lunch on the next day. Easy as.
• I even allow myself one (two max) cheat days a week where I don’t fast at all. Once again, enjoying life always comes first for me and I would not sacrifice it for a diet, as successful as it might be. Intermittent fasting is actually flexible enough to allow anyone to embrace my approach to nutrition, pleasure and art de vivre without compromising anything.
• 

  Enjoying life always comes first!

  I don’t restrict what I can eat. While intermittent fasting ‘purists’ will disagree, I actually found that I could be very relaxed and enjoy more treats than usual, with no or limited impact on weight loss.

• I, however, have to make sure my diet is highly nutritious in particular in regards to my green vegetables daily intake, which can be challenging when you have breakfast and lunch (and no dinner). Fortunately, after a few tweaks, I now have helpful tricks.
• It works even if I don’t exercise. Since I injured my back and then my right elbow, I had to stop yoga completely and reduce drastically swimming (which is extremely challenging for me). Another proof that all the health benefits I have been enjoying are due to intermittent fasting only. I can’t wait to exercise again and see what difference it can make.
• Intermittent fasting will be the ideal ally during the festive season as it will definitely help balance out the negative impacts of the quantity of food and alcohol we can have during these few weeks or even months. Intermittent fasting is perfect for the liver to rest and restore.

Intermittent fasting can be the solution for you too.

Intermittent fasting: easy as… with a bit of coaching.

Just like everything when it comes to nutrition, intermittent fasting is not a one-size-fits-all solution.

As I discover with my own experience and a few of my clients, you can totally adapt this diet to what you like, how you feel and the goals you want to reach AND have long-lasting results!

All that you need is a bit of coaching and support to find what works for you while making sure you have a nutrient-dense and delicious diet.

Once you know how to make the most of intermittent fasting, you too can get fantastic results.

So… ready to lose weight for good, to be full of energy and feel your best at last?

Have a great end of the week.

Yves

The post Intermittent fasting? It works. appeared first on Healing Nutrition by Yves.

Intermittent fasting? Are you serious? This is something I would never advise my clients to do… Well, until today. When a client of mine asked me to help her optimise the way she was doing intermittent fasting, I was a bit in shock.

Intermittent fasting? No way!

She was already a big fan of my approach to food (Real Food + Pleasure = Health©) and wanted to know how she could apply it to intermittent fasting. She was using the 16/8 method (fasting for 16 hours with an 8-hour eating window every day). I actually was totally against this ‘diet’, which to me was the best recipe to triggering eating disorders, nutrient deficiencies and weight gain.

I, however, have one principle in life: to be always open to considering new ideas, new ways of thinking and approaches, even if it is challenging at times

This client insisted. So I took up the challenge and replied: “You know I don’t like the idea of intermittent fasting. However, given you don’t want to give up on it, I’ll do my best to help you do it in the healthiest and most enjoyable way”.

I did a lot of research, asked my nutrition mentors for guidance, attended workshops and training. I looked at the nutrition literature, met with experts and interviewed people doing intermittent fasting.

I actually was blown away by what I found out: while fasting is not for everyone, many recent studies suggest it can drastically improve your health, from helping lose fat (and not muscles) to optimising metabolism and even extending your lifespan by preventing chronic diseases, reducing inflammation and slowing down the ageing process!

Who can say no to this… even if it sounds too good to be true?

I was so intrigued that I decided to go even further: to try intermittent fasting myself so I would be even better equipped to guide my client in the very best way! I decided to do it for four weeks, and then to go back to my normal diet. I thought a month would be perfect.

So here’s my own experience of intermittent fasting during these last four weeks.

Before starting intermittent fasting

Bye bye breakfast!

The first thing to understand: intermittent fasting is not about skipping breakfast at all. Many people already do it but they don’t get the benefits as they often eat something by 10 pm and therefore break the fast. Intermittent fasting means fasting for 16 hours minimum for your body to use your body fat as energy.

When you fast for 16 hours straight, you have to decide what meal you won’t have anymore. You clearly have to choose between breakfast or dinner. For me, the choice was quick as not having dinner would have had too much of an impact on my social life.

However deciding not to have breakfast anymore wasn’t easy either. I love breakfast. I simply love it… The idea of not enjoying this delicious and nutritious meal was literally heart-breaking and against all my nutritional principles. This idea was so unbearable that I delayed the start of my fasting every day for at least 10 days!

One day, I was finally ready! Ready not to eat for 16 hours from after dinner (8 or 9 pm) until lunch (12 or 1 pm) on the next day. During the window of eating of 8 hours maximum, you can (have to) drink as much filtered water as you can (3 litres minimum) and coffee or tea – black with no sugar.

The first few days and week of intermittent fasting

I chose to start on a day when I knew I did not have too much on. Enough not to be inactive and not to think too much.

On the first two days, I was fine. Hungry but it was manageable as I, as advised, I drank a lot of water (and coffee!). I had to give up on my latte though (because of the milk in it), which for me is huge!

3 litres of filtered water a day!

I was fine until 11 am: the last hour was actually awful. I could only think of anything but eating. A totally out-of-control obsession. I was feeling dizzy, convinced that I would not be able to wait until 12 pm. I actually did and ate like a monster… This feeling, fortunately, disappeared from day 3.

The afternoon until dinner was very easy. The only unusual thing was to remember to have dinner before 9 pm if I did not want to have my lunch later than 1 pm on the next day.

I was so ready to suffer, feel deprived and miserable that I actually found week 1 much easier than I thought.

I realised that managing hunger is not the challenge (2 glasses of water STOPS hunger each time!), it’s actually totally doable. The challenge is the idea of not eating that can become very overwhelming. It was all in my head (and not in my stomach).

week 2 and 3 of intermittent fasting

Proteins and vegetables are critical.

It became easier and easier.

I was still hungry in the morning but less and less. I was surprisingly looking forward to my long black (actually a large black filtered coffee) and wasn’t missing my latte anymore. A huge beautiful surprise for me!

The key here was to drink a lot. As you soon as I was feeling hungry or obsessed by the idea of eating. Another critical rule was to eat enough proteins and vegetables so I could get as many nutrients as I needed not to feel hungry.

I found myself being much more alert and focused in the morning. I was not tired at all, with a lot of energy. Very impressive!

I could also feel that I was losing some body fat. Even if I did not have much to loose, I was feeling much lighter – a fantastic feeling!

week 4 of intermittent fasting

I weighed myself for the first time: I only lost 2kgs when I should have lost 4 kgs (the weight loss with intermittent fasting is usually 1kg a week). I was a bit surprised…

However, some friends at the beach, who did not know I was doing intermittent fasting, asked me if I was going to the gym as I was definitely leaner, with better muscle definition (always nice to hear!).

I actually stopped doing any exercise for the last four weeks as I was scared of not being strong enough. Once again, the power of the mind: to me, the idea of fasting could not go with exercising… with no good reason as I never experienced this level of energy before!

And now, what?

Intermittent fasting is challenging but eventually very manageable.

Enjoy your meals!

I don’t even miss having breakfasts, I gained in clarity and focus and I feel so much lighter. Very importantly I enjoy my 2 meals a day more than ever before. I eat what I love, with always a glass or 2 of my favourite red wine, while making sure I have enough proteins.

I’m so positively impressed that I have decided to do it for 6 months (at least).

It will give me enough time to form my own comprehensive view, assess the pros and cons and impact on my body, my mind, my life. Enough time to provide me with an in-depth knowledge and experience to guide my clients if they are interested in this approach, while still having a lot of pleasure with food and optimising their health.

I will now resume exercising as I need it for my well-being but also to experiment the impact of exercising on body fat loss and muscle gain, which is supposed to be drastically optimised by intermittent fasting.

I’ll share with you how I feel very soon.

Have a beautiful end of the week.

Yves

PS1.What do you think? Should I develop an online programme on intermittent fasting for my clients?

PS2. Did you like this article? Sign up to my nutritious tips here and you’ll get them straight to your inbox. It’s FREE.

Important: Nothing in this article or in my practice is intended to diagnose or treat any disease. My nutrition coaching is not a substitute for any treatment that may have been prescribed by your doctor or qualified health professional. If you suspect that you have a medical problem and/or before taking any supplement, always seek professional medical help. 

The post Intermittent Fasting? appeared first on Healing Nutrition by Yves.

Do you feel like you over-indulged a little… A LOT? You’re not alone! Who wouldn’t, after so many work functions, Christmas parties, New Year’s celebrations…?

No wonder everyone is now talking about starting a detox or living off green juices or raw kale for a while! Well, think twice… As you know, I’m not a big fan of detoxing and other tough cleansing programs. While the detox industry generates billions of dollars, it is however clearly proven that detoxing is literally a scam.

In ‘You Can’t Detox Your Body, It’s A Myth’, a brilliant article for the Guardian, the excellent health writer Dara Mohammadi demonstrates that there’s no such thing as ‘detoxing’. In medical terms, it’s a nonsense. Detox products, colonic irrigation, colon-cleansing tablets and hard core diets are simply a waste of money, time and energy. As Edzard Ernst, emeritus professor of complementary medicine at Exeter University explains: “There are two types of detox: one is respectable – the medical treatment of people with life-threatening drug addictions- and the other isn’t: what is hijacked by entrepreneurs, quacks and charlatans to sell a bogus treatment that allegedly detoxifies your body of toxins you’re supposed to have accumulated.”

“The healthy body has kidneys, a liver, skin, even lungs that are detoxifying as we speak,” Ernst says. “There is no known way – certainly not through detox treatments – to make something that works perfectly well in a healthy body work better. It’s criminal exploitation of the gullible man on the street and it sort of keys into something that we all would love to have – a simple remedy that frees us of our sins, so to speak. It’s nice to think that it could exist but unfortunately it doesn’t.”

The take-home message of the Guardian article? “The ultimate lifestyle ‘detox’ is not smoking, exercising and enjoying A HEALTHY BALANCED DIET LIKE THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET.” I couldn’t agree more. As you know I’m a big fan of the Mediterranean diet (see my recent blog here: ‘The Mediterranean Diet Makes You Sexy’), which is very close to the French Paradox principles, paramount to my time-tested positive approach to food and life.

I however believe that if you are in a state of ‘excess’ after too many weeks of indulgence, it can be a good idea to look at a few gentle cleansing options. But no need to deprive yourself. You can support your digestive system and your liver while nourishing yourself and get amazing results. Last spring, I posted about the 10 questions my clients ask me the most frequently about detoxing. Click here to read my answers. One of them was published in Cosmopolitan Magazine (jump to the full article here). For my private clients (and also in week 1 of my upcoming online 6-week program – to be launched in the coming weeks – how exciting!), I also recommend a gentle ‘detox’ for people feeling tired, sluggish, heavy and foggy. It is actually not a detox as such but more a way of giving your liver some rest so it can make the most of the benefits of the nutrition program. And most people like it!

However, if  you  are in a state of ‘deficiency’ (you feel weak, depleted, run-down, fragile, anxious), a detox is not a good idea at all. Or at least not this common type of detox on the market that looks like punishment and goes with cravings, raging hunger, frustration and health damage.

My advice? Listen to your body. Nourish and cherish. Always.

Never punish or you will see rebound effects weeks, months or years later.

Simply charge your diet with highly cleansing vegetables, fruits and fresh herbs and you’ll feel much better very quickly.

In my next week blog, we’ll look at the best foods to not only help you feel better but also BURN FAT while eating for pleasure… I know you’ll love it, in particular if, like me, you put on a few kilos over the silly season.

In the meantime, I would like to hear from you… Did you try detoxing? What did you think?

Talk to you next week!

Yves

PS. You liked this content and you want to receive more FREE nutrition tips straight in your inbox? Simple! Enter your first name and email address in the blue box at the bottom of this page. 

The post You can’t detox, it’s a myth… appeared first on Healing Nutrition by Yves.

“What should I eat? Paleo, 5:2 fast diet, juice cleanse, raw diet, no-sugar…?” I know that feeling. With so many fad diets, how not to be confused?  

The team of the Good Food magazine was asked to road-test the most popular diets and it’s proven to be a tough time for the journalists. Here’s their verdict: most of these diets don’t work, none of them are sustainable, some are super expensive and they can leave you cranky, tired, hungry … and bored! 

Interestingly the Good Food team was not allowed to test the olive oil, fish and wine-friendly Mediterranean diet (which abides by the principles of the French Paradox) as it was considered as a walk in the park compared to the other hardcore options.

I bet they already knew there was nothing worth testing: it works, it’s sustainable. It makes you live longer, look younger and puts a smile on your face. These principles make France one of the healthiest and slimmest countries on the planet: 35% of the French are overweight or obese compared to 65% of Australians and New Zealanders. All without having to live off raw kale and green juices and while still enjoying ‘demonised’ foods like bread (yes, grains and gluten!), cheese and butter (yes, dairy!) and wine (yes, sugar!).

If you have missed the Good Food article published this week, here are my favourite quotes (for a comprehensive list of the pros and cons of each diet, you can also have a look at the article by clicking here). Hopefully this will help you answer the question: what should I eat?… Or what NOT to eat!

• 

  No bread is one thing but no cheese either? That’s just rude…

  PALEO

“My main qualm with the paleo diet is that I found it dull… No bread is one thing but no cheese either? That’s just rude… I don’t know how anyone could pull this off with a family of non-paleo dieters.”

However the journalist lost some weight and felt better.

• JUICE CLEANSE

“It’s expensive, time consuming and uncomfortable… How hard is it to eat out? Utterly impossible… I may not eat another vegetable for the next 6 months.”

However the journalist may choose more salads and veggies in the future.

• 5:2 FAST DIET

“Fasting days are so boring…  How hard is it to eat out? On fasting days, don’t even try… Sadly now, I am on the 7:0 diet.”

However the journalist is considering trying to do one fasting day a week. 

• NO-SUGAR

“Expect to spend a large chunk of your Sundays cooking up for the week ahead… I’m easing myself back into sugar.”

However the journalist felt healthier, and her skin cleared up.

• VEGAN

“I’m not quite ready to make the full transition to veganism… Lack of variety when eating out… No more cheese.” 

However it helped the journalist feel healthier, lighter, and had a positive impact on her mood.

• 

  Raw, vegan, juice cleanse… What a life!

  RAW FOOD

“I’m sick of nuts even in a cashew ‘cheese’ cake… It’s time consuming… Not ideal when you prepare separate meals for the rest of the family who aren’t concerned about the ravages of ageing.”

However the journalist’s skin got a little clearer.

• GWYNETH PALTROW 7-DAY DETOX

“It’s a lot of work… Very costly, about $110 a day… My kitchen was a mess… How hard is it to eat out? Impossible “

However from day 3, the journalist felt much healthier, had buckets of energy and her skin looked great.

• 12WBT

“Clean the pantry, plan my meals, shop, measure myself, weigh myself, assess my fitness, gear up, write down what I ate, track my exercise, print out the meal plans, cook. It felt like a second job… No carbs = cranky shrew wife with no sense of humour.”

However the journalist found it was sensible, non-faddish philosophy geared to long-term health.

• LOW-FODMAP

“Time consuming, boring flavours, expensive.”

 However it is designed and works very well for people suffering from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). It can be life-changing for them.

So now, WHAT WOULD YOU PREFER: 

a- trusting the time-tested, no-nonsense, no-BS best-kept secret of 60 million people in France now backed by modern research (and all while eating for pleasure),
or b-  being fooled by the latest boring and non-sustainable fad diets – true tickets to depression?

No-brainer, isn’t it?

Have you tried any of these hardcore diets? Did it work for you? I can’t wait to hear what you think?

Have a great week.

Yves

PS: while you’re on my site, why not subscribe to my weekly newsletter. It’s FREE. Simply enter your first name and email address at the bottom or top of this page.

The post What Should I Eat? appeared first on Healing Nutrition by Yves.