Dear Mark: Women and Intermittent Fasting
Many differences exist between the two sexes. We look different. We sound different. We dress differently from each other. We like different things. Different genres of movies cause men and women to cry (differently). And although society, media, and culture drive and/or inform many of our differences, some are inherent and physiologically-driven. For example, men and women have different biological equipment – both external and invisible to the naked eye – that change how we interact with and respond to our environments, our exercise, our sleep, and our eating habits. Nowhere are these gender differences more evident than in the realm of health and nutrition, and yet it seems that I’ve overlooked a big one: different sex responses to intermittent fasting.
Let’s take a look at a couple recent reader emails:
Hi Mark,
I’m a woman (28 years old) who followed your recent fasting series with great interest, gave it a shot, but had mixed results. Then I read this post, which mentioned your series and questioned the suitability of intermittent fasting for women. Is it true? Do we respond differently than men? What do you think of that post? Thanks!
Claire
Dear Mark,
Paleo for Women blog says that fasting may not be for women: that it’s more suited for male physiology. I have been fasting for three years and never experienced any missed periods/sleeplessness, etc. Moreover I got a handle on my mindless eating. Can you give your word on IF for women?
Varsha Tiwary
Thanks for writing in with your questions.
First of all, I really, really liked Stefani’s post. I should say “posts,” actually, since Stefani Ruper (who wrote the post linked in the reader question) also just did a guest post on Free the Animal, in which she discussed the treatment of women’s issues in the community at large. While I don’t agree with everything she said, both were quite well done.
Even though her articles – for lack of a better phrase – “called me out” (in a completely non-confrontational way), I was actually quite happy to read them. Heck, I was happy to read them because of it. After all, I’ve always encourage people to be critical about what they think they know about nutrition and fitness, and to be skeptical about what they read on the Internet – my articles included. The beauty of MDA is that it isn’t one-sided. I get constant feedback from readers that send me down new paths of inquiry, and it’s through this kind of crowd-sourced effort that the Primal Blueprint message grows and becomes stronger than it already is.
I also appreciated Stefani’s articles because they do highlight a blindspot – not just in my own series of posts, but in nutritional science as a whole. In the push to eliminate the confounder known as inherent endocrine gender differences, they’ve forgotten that real life is a series of confounding variables all pushing, pulling, poking, and prodding at the results we get. They’ve forgotten that while their results may represent fodder for publishing and accolade accumulation and hypothesis confirmation (or rejection), real live humans in normal living situations are not placebo-controlled. That women are not the same as men and respond differently to stimuli and stressors isn’t a “confounder”; it’s a fact deserving of further study! Because what are we ultimately trying to do here – put together nice, neat, peer-review-ready trials, or help real people living real lives?
Since I’m trying to do the latter, I happily accept constructive criticism. So should we all.
So, what did Stefani’s research find?
Fasting has different endocrine effects on male and female rats.
In male rats:
No matter the duration or degree of nutritional stress, male rat brain chemistry responds with similar changes. Nocturnal activity and cognition stay fairly stable, regardless of the intensity of the fast. If you push the fast long enough, males will get a little wonky and frantic, but overall they maintain pretty well. It’s like they’re equipped with the ability to handle nutritional stressors.
In female rats:
Any degree of nutritional stress (fasting or mere caloric restriction) causes increased wakefulness (during the day, when they normally sleep), better cognition (for finding food), hyper alertness, and more energy. In short, female rats become better at finding and acquiring food when they fast, as if their bodies aren’t as well-equipped to deal with the stress of going without food. They also become less fertile, while the males actually become hornier and more fertile (probably to account for the females’ plummeting fertility). Ovary size drops (bad for fertility), adrenal gland size increases (which in rats indicates exposure to chronic stress), and menstrual cycles begin to dysregulate in proportion to the degree of caloric restriction.
In humans, the male-female fasting literature is quite scant, but Stefani also found considerable differences beween the sexes, when data was available:
- One study, which I’ve cited before as evidence of a benefit to fasting, found that while IF improved insulin sensitivity in male subjects, female subjects saw no such improvement. In fact, the glucose tolerance of fasting women actually worsened. Ouch.
- Another study examined the effect of alternate day fasting on blood lipids. Women’s HDL improved and their triglycerides remained stable; men’s HDL remained stable and their triglycerides decreased. Favorable, albeit sex-specific results.
- Later, both obese men and women dropped body fat, body weight, blood pressure, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and triglyercides on a fasting regimen. These people were obese, however, and perimenopausal women were excluded from the study, so the results may not apply to leaner people or women of reproductive age.
I figured I’d look through my other recent fasting posts for data on female (preferably pre-menopausal) responses to fasting. Here’s what I found:
- In the only heretofore extant human study on fasting and chemotherapy, seven females (including a 44-year old woman who was likely premenopausal, given when menopause usually onsets, though it wasn’t explicitly stated) and three males found that IF improved their tolerance to and recovery from chemotherapy. Takeaway: male and female (mostly middle aged, though that’s the population that generally gets cancer and undergoes chemotherapy) chemotherapy patients appear to benefit equally from IF.
- Although both men and women displayed greater increases in VO2 max and resting muscle glycogen concentration in response to fasted cycling training, only men showed greater skeletal muscle adaptations when fasted. Women had better muscle adaptations when fed. Takeaway: fasted endurance training, then, may work better for women than fasted weight training.
As it stands right now, I’d be inclined to agree that pre-menopausal (and perhaps peri-menopausal) women are more likely to have poor – or at least different – experiences with intermittent fasting, at least as a weight loss tool. That said, it appears to be a potentially gender-neutral therapeutic tool for chemotherapy, cancer, and age-related neurodegeneration patients.
As I alluded to earlier, this is what I love about this open forum we call the Internet: the fact that if you leave something out, or overlook a key point, someone will call you out on it, most likely publicly. When that happens, you grow despite yourself. If not for Stefani’s posts, I may never have taken a closer look at the inherent differences in men’s and women’s metabolic responses to fasting. I certainly receive enough feedback from female readers for whom fasting has been helpful, so it’s good to see another side.
To sum things up – if such a thing can even be done – and answer the questions in the intro, men and women have inherent metabolic and hormonal differences, and it’s evident that these differences in part determine how we respond to a stressor like intermittent fasting. I’ve never prescribed intermittent fasting as a requisite piece of the Primal lifestyle, but rather as an adornment, a choice, a potentially therapeutic strategy that each individual must test for him or herself. Although my recent series on fasting might have thrown some people off, I want to reiterate that I am not a huge IF guy. For myself, I generally fast when it makes sense – if I’m traveling and good food isn’t available, if I’m just not hungry, stuff like that. I periodically do 16/8 or 14/10 (i.e. eating in an 8 or 10 hour window) and find it works great for me because I am fully fat-adapted. But even I don’t hold rigidly to that. It’s not for everyone. And that hasn’t changed.
So who should and shouldn’t consider fasting? Have my recommendations changed?
If you haven’t satisfied the usual IF “pre-reqs,” like being fat-adapted, getting good and sufficient sleep, minimizing or mitigating stress, and exercising well (not too much and not too little), you should not fast. The pre-reqs are absolutely crucial and non-negotiable, in my opinion, especially the fat-adaptation. In fact, I suspect that if an IF study was performed on sugar-burning women versus fat-adapted women, you’d see that the fat-burning beasts would perform better and suffer fewer (if any) maladaptations.
I would also caution against the already lean, already calorie-restricted woman jumping headfirst into IF. I mean, fasting is ultimately sending a message of scarcity to your body. That’s a powerful message that can get a powerful response from our bodies. If you’re already lean (which, depending on the degree of leanness, arguably sends a message of scarcity) and restricting calories (which definitely sends a message of scarcity), the response to fasting can be a little too powerful.
I’d also say that daily fasts, a la 16/8 or even 14/10, run the risk of becoming chronic stressors and should be approached with caution by women. Same goes for ultra-long fasts, like a 36 (or even 24) hour marathon. Most of all, though, I’d simply suggest that women interested in fasting be cautious, be self-aware, and only do so if it comes naturally. It shouldn’t be a struggle (for anyone, really). It shouldn’t stop your cycle or make it harder for you to get pregnant. It should improve your life, not make it worse. If you find that fasting has those negative effects, stop doing it. It should happen WHEN (When Hunger Ensues Naturally), if it happens at all.
I’m not going to say that women should or shouldn’t fast. I’ll just echo Stefani’s advice “to look at options, to be honest about priorities, and to listen to one’s body with awareness and love.” Frankly, everyone should be doing that, but with regards to fasting, it looks like women should probably hew a little closer to her words.
Of course, if I had to make one minor quibble with the content of Stefani’s otherwise outstanding posts, it would be her source for the number of unique visitors Mark’s Daily Apple gets each month. Nowadays, we’re actually getting closer to 1.5 million monthly uniques, not 250-300,000… but who’s counting?
That’s it for me, today. What about you? If you’re a woman who has tried fasting, or know someone who fits the description, let us all know about your experiences. I’m intensely curious to hear from as many of you as I can. Thanks for reading.
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Posted By: Mark Sisson
I would have never believed that fasting can come naturally (without forcing yourself to NOT eat). Only two weeks into my experimenting with eating primal, I wasn’t hungry. I skipped eating for one whole day.
Getting over carbs was also interesting. I ate oatmeal with flaxseed for breakfast for over 3 years, so switching to eggs and bacon was wierd. I felt like I was cheating on a diet or something.
22 year old, very lean female. Into weight training, parkour, and general athletics. I tend to, like Mark, use IF as a tool. If I’m traveling, at a non-Paleo dinner party, or don’t have time/supplies to pack my lunch or funds to eat out. Probably once or twice a month. I haven’t had any trouble fasting, it really comes naturally and I even find it a bit rejuvenating. I tend to scale down my workouts but honestly I have plenty of energy.
Side note: I did not lose weight when I went primal (didn’t have any TO lose) put actually was able to build muscle (sleek, not bulky) very quickly and easily.
Once again life made easier by Mark!
I’m not sure that skipping a meal twice a month is considered fasting? The article posted by Stefani from “Paleoforwomen.com” was about the problems females tend to face when regularly fasting and for much longer periods of time. I think she would agree that skipping bad meals is a pretty good call.
Thanks for this insightful post Mark! I’m also grateful for the idea to not eat when you’re not hungry, it makes sense! Several times a week I (47, 5’8 and 150, from the Netherlands) do not eat after 7 pm and then start eating 11 am the next day. I believe that is considered a fast? Only since I started eating Primal I can do this very easily and love the “clear” feeling it gives. Would like to lose 10 pounds, hope this short fasting will help, besides doing more exercise. XOMO
The one and only time I made a conscious effort to IF, my body really wasn’t happy.
I track my body temps and noticed that they really plummet if I’m fasting which can’t be a good thing. Also I’m tired and cranky.
Having said that, if I just don’t eat because I’m not hungry I’m generally fine.
Conclusion: IF is not for me, I’ll continue to just listen to my body and pay attention to its cues.
One way to test and track thyroid ‘operation’ is through temperature tracking. My temps (still) are always well below 98.6… Before I treated my adrenals and thyroid, I was usually around 95-96; and no enzymes work well at that body-temp! Higher now, but still not “normal.” And yes, I’m still taking T3-only thyroid pills (down to one a day though — from six a day at my highest!
I’m a woman and I just do it naturally… sometimes I just won’t want to eat for twelve hours or so and not be particularly hungry in general, and other times I’ll just need to eat a lot. I find the latter is dependent on hormones.
I have a circadian rhythm disorder as a confounding factor though, so it’s possible that my eating cycle is not properly in line with my sleep at any given time.
Having found intermittent fasting a massive struggle before committing to Primal eating, I confess I raised a sceptical eyebrow at the notion I might someday find it so natural I’d do it without thinking! But nowadays it really is pretty much effortless. I stick in the occasional timed fast if I feel I need one, but something I love about the “not IF, but WHEN” approach is the even greater freedom from counting – first calories, now hours since last eating! Not sure what the claim is for women not fasting, but considering we have higher body fat to draw on, I’d say Nature neatly planned for the likelihood we, too, may occasionally go without!
I’m with you Rachel.
I am 50, only vaguely aware of my cycle as I don’t have a uterus anymore, but I eat WHEN, and have since I did the Leptin reset, and then went primal, have been for about a year. I usually start the day with a coffee and cream (yum), then eat when hungry, about lunch time. Then cook for the family. I feel liberated from calories routine and guilt, and the kilos are slowly coming away. My PCOS symptoms are gone along with a whole host of other things. My sleep is a bit ordinary at the moment, but I have been a bit addicted to my iPad at the moment, so am going to switch to knitting by the fire in the evenings to improve that. I do have thyroid issues (been bumping along the bottom of “normal” for years), but I think this and liver function is gradually improving.
If I know my day is going to be hectic, I will have eggs for breakfast, to fuel the day. But if the day turns out pear shaped, then like Mark, I simply wait until I can eat. No sugar crashes, no hunger. Some days though I need to eat, so I do. Great discussion everyone, though I think we need to be curious and aware of what we are doing, I wouldn’t over think it too much,
Cheers
I tried fasting with the 10/14 window. It did not go well for me. I was constantly hungry even though being low carb high fat. I gained a bit a weight or stalled completely. Now, the context for me is that I have PCOS ( hormone imbalance) and I did not meet the pre-req in the sleep department. ( waking with baby) My take away is that fasting regularly is not for me right now. With three young children I have plenty of stressors. Now, that said, when circumstances call for it, I can go much longer between meals if I have to. Being fat-adapted has been great for me that way. Thanks for the post, Mark.
I am a guy who stubbornly resisted fasting for 2 1/2 years because I was getting pretty good results. After starting mostly eating in a mostly 11 am to 6:30 pm window, I am getting fabulous results. Fat melting off and twice as much energy. I think IF is essential for guys (after becoming fat adapted, which is also essential.) That’s how we hunter Groks evolved.
But it is wonderful to see some thought about how women differ. Too little of that in medical research.
Crosses off the extra mostly.
I’m a 40 year old female. I’ve been primal for many years. I have to agree that complete fasting has never worked well for me. However I do find that making sure that I fast for 12-14 hours each night from 7 pm on and working out right away in the morning at 60 % of my max heart rate for 30 min before eating anything and waiting at least an hour after my workout to eat a primal breakfast has really helped me on my way to trimming the last of the stubborn fat.
I have dropped double digit body fat percentage by doing this and nothing else had even caused a budge in months.
Great stuff!
Yes, that is a great way to practice IF for many people. Others i know prefer to eat lots at night and eat little or nothing in the morning hours. Both work.
I am glad to hear this! I can naturally IF as long as I allow myself to eat heavy at night. I have trouble shaking the notion that you have to eat your biggest meal in the morning. Maybe my natural window of eating is 1pm to 9pm.
Reading these posts just makes it even more clear there are differences even amoung individuals. We are each so different in how our bodies handles IF.
I think that too many women interpret “IF” for “intentional starving”. I tend to go a day without food – or IF after a big food day as a result of a large family gathering or Sunday football or whatever- basically a cheat day. Honestly, I am not hungry the next day and IF just makes sense for me. It also gets me right back on track with my diet and weight. I strongly believe that some women read about IF and they’ll under eat overall and then not eat for a full day or more than a full day and they’ll do this repeatedly.
I’ve never taken IF to mean that I should intentionally starve myself. I have used it as a tool to recover from a “bad” day or sometimes to help me get out of my own way so to speak. I think we have all said -”but I’m not eating that much” and well, we are. Sometimes IF helps you re-adjust your stomach capacity and get it to a more reasonable volume.
Eat when your hungry. Don’t overeat. If you overeat, you’ll need to compensate. Enter IF. I think it’s fairly simple.
And I should mention that I 46 and Peri-menopausal.
I’m 62, post-meno, diabetic (no meds), pcos, met syndrome. I have good blood sugars, labs and have been IF between 14/10 and 16/8 for more than a year. I start the day with coconut oil and have a good protein lunch around noon. Between five and seven I’ll have a bowl of berries and nuts with more coconut oil.
I feel fine on that schedule, but I haven’t lost any weight for ten years. I could lose 50-60 pounds yet but everything stopped at menopause. :p If this is hard on adrenals, I’ll start eating a light breakfast again!
Sleep is compromised by arthritis pain, which I know doesn’t help.
Till last year, I was fasting ~16 hours everyday for 45 days on a sugar adapted body. I never experienced any side effects. I am very lean with body fat around 17 – 20%(keeps varying every year). I usually let go of exercise completely during fasting because my sugar level drops too low.
I have to fast every year because of religious reasons(I’m a Muslim….and we fast for an entire month called Ramadan). This year I’m more paleo than before, so I’ll be on the lookout for what changes occur in my body while fasting.
Forgot to mention I’m 29 and a female
I follow most of Mark’s advice but in 2 years haven’t really done IF. just did not come to me naturally and I wasn’t comfortable when I did force my self to try it. So I guess it really depends on how you feel and the results you’re getting and if you feel you really need to push your self enough to try it. If you’re happy with what you’re doing and the results you’re getting you may not want to push yourself that far.
I’m a nursing mother and with my first child I was concerned about the fasting requirements of my faith (Catholicism) during the season of Lent (every Friday no meat and only two small meals that when combine do not equal a full meal). I had no idea what a fast would do to my already taxed body. Then I found a fellow mom blogger who posted her results which were not good: http://awomansplaceis.blogspot.com/2011/03/nursing-and-fasting-just-dont-do-it.html?m=1
The Catholic church does abrogate children, pregnant moms, nursing moms, and the elderly from participating in a fast.
I think it is important to know what will happen or has the potential to happen to a woman who chooses to fast. There needs to be studies done on the male/female differences. We are not the same.
I’ve never had much faith in rat studies because rats are rats, not human beings.
After quite a bit of experimenting, I find that what works best for me, a female, is a light breakfast, a light lunch, and having my main meal unfashionably early in the evening, say 5:30 p.m. or so. I don’t snack or eat again until around 8:00 a.m. the next morning. As far as I’m concerned, this is enough of a fast.
Well I’m a 43 year old female (5’6″ 135 lbs) and I’ve dabbled in IF over the past three years. It does work best for me when I am totally random. I am fat-adapted and always do my workouts first thing in the morning in a fasted state. I’ve had really good strength gains this way and some weight loss. Most of all though I just try to pay attention and eat when I am actually hungry. I will say that it is is much easier in the winter time, when I generally am less active and sleeping more. In the summer time I barely fast (maybe 14 hours a couple times a week) since I am a lot more active. I’ve tried the 24 hour every other day type fasting also but that did not work very well for me. The best scenario for me is just a shortened eating window – maybe from 9-10am until 5-6pm or so. I also still eat the same amount of food/calories that I normally would – it definitely does not work when I try to restrict calories also.
How do you know when you are “fat adapted”?
Ditto the question. It would be great to have a page of definitions/brief explanations of the jargon used on this site.
Finally! I can’t tell you how many times I would read a discussion or get involved in a conversation and some well meaning man will tell me how my body is suppose to work. I am a 46 year old woman, 8 years of perimenopause. What works for me one month is no guarantee it will work the next month. I have done the IF. I can’t do it regularly..although it would be very easy for me to do so. In fact I would prefer to skip breakfast altogether, but when I do my body puts weight on. I have to shake it up. Go some days with IF and other days force myself to eat breakfast, even though I am not hungry. I can eat mushrooms for days in a row then sudden start gaining weight and have to drop them from my eating plan. I do like how I feel after IF…I feel lighter, cleaner, but in truth it doesn’t really affect my weight. I might drop a pound or two, but it doesn’t stay that way. Frankly, I am convinced it all has to do with hormones and how erratic they are in this time of my life, but it sure makes it hard to feel healthy when there is so much inconsistency with weight. Would love to see some posts about women in their 40′ and 50′s perimenopause and primal lifestyle. there is just not enough information and experiences to help navigate this crazy time of our lives. Thanks Mark and I hope to see more!
brick
brick – there is a thread on the forum for women over 50, but anyone can chime in. You may find some other women going through the change with advice or at least sympathy for you!
Awesome! thank you…I didn’t know of that forum..
brick
Hey Brick! I’ve had posts stewing in my head on paleo, womanhood, and menopause for quite some time. They’re coming on my end, promise.
Stefani
32 yo, f, I start the week with a 24 hr fast followed by 16/8 (usually 9:00/9:30 – 1/1:30pm), primal for 3 years, at the gym at 6:30 5 days a week for intense training then off to desk job for 11/12 hours, cycle has been away since I started this program of IF…. At this point my body usually gets hungry around the 14/15th hour, usually I wait until the 16th to eat, perhaps I should scale back a little but it’s tough when I’m trying to lose the saddlebags
I tried AD fasting for four weeks. It wasn’t unbearable, and I didn’t have any bothersome side effects. However, I didn’t get much in the way of results, either.
At first it seemed really promising. I lost six pounds in the first week and a half. But I was tired and spacey on the fast days, and when my weight stayed the same for the rest of the month, I returned to normal eating. Four of the six pounds returned almost immediately, which makes me think some of my weight loss was water.
All in all, not a big success.
Female, 38. Oops.
I’d also like to add this: no one but my husband even noticed I wasn’t eating every other 24 hours. I’ve never made a dietary change that met with less resistance. I found this creepy.
Creepy, agreed!
I’ve been doing IF for years. While coming from a background of PCOS and infrequent, irregular periods, it hasn’t been an issue with me for many years. Adopting IF made no difference, and quite possibly improved the situation. My periods are perfectly regular.
I also never have weight issues while eating my optimal primal diet and doing IF and have absolutely no issues with energy. The only possible side effect is that I don’t sleep much – 6 hours a night. But this might just be optimal for me since I always feel great.
Occasionally I have noticed feeling a little panicky after not having eaten for too long. This is likely due to my body trying to regulate blood sugar with cortisol. The occasions in which this has happened I have eaten and recovered within minutes. I think I may have gone too long without food for my particular body and needs.
“I think I may have gone too long without food for my particular body and needs”.
I think this to be correct.
Another way to mute this panicky feeling besides eating is with intense exercise. Intense exercise can blunt hunger and many of its side effects.
Looks to me like she feels as though her body is asking for nourishment, not more stress. If she worked out she’d just have to eat more eventually.
I tried IF for a while, going with a 10 hour eating window. My experience was what Stefani describes. I felt alert and energized. BUT, then I would crash after 5-6 days and feel my adrenal fatigue symptoms return. When I went back to eating breakfast I started to wake up in the morning feeling like I had actually slept, something I haven’t felt for years while battling fatigue. My breakfast varies, quite often it is just bacon, blueberries and a handful of walnuts. It doesn’t need to be big, but it does need to be part of my day.
Thanks Mark!
I think you were fasting too regularly. Do it when you are not hungry.
If i eat a meal composed of a lot of fat plus good carbs, i am satisfied for a long time and can easily skip meals.
41 yo pre-menipausal f. Primal since April 2011. I drop a lot of weight early in my Primal journey. I leveled off after about 6 months.
I found that over the summer last year, IF was doable even though I was changing lots of things in my life. I skipped many meals just because I wasn’t hungry.
As summer waned, I found I couldn’t maintain the same IF routine. I had to eat more over the winter. Weight however, maintained.
Now that summer has returned, my appetite is going away again. So far, no more significant weight loss.
I am a 37 year old breast feeding mom of two. IF has been incredibly variable in terms of comfort and efficacy. Most of the time, I would have coffee with cream (or butter) in the morning and then a late breakfast or early lunch. My husband does very well fasting. We’ve often remarked at how differently we respond to IF. I think the ultimate point is that we need to learn to listen to our bodies, fast when appropriate, and not fast when we are under stress.
It is also true that women who conceive in a fasted or protein/fat restricted state will be more likely to have girls than boys, as girls are more likely to survive infancy than male babies. Of course, that is on average, not absolute!
I am a 35 year old woman and have been fasting once a month as a part of my religious practice for over 20 years. Hence, fasting was not a foreign concept.
I am new (3 months) to the primal lifestyle and have added IF into my routine once or twice a week. I have four children, and am no longer worried about fertility, so that is not a part of the equation for me.
I have had a very positive experience with IF. I feel great during and after. I do 24 hour fasts and find that, it not only resets my body, but it brings me mental clarity, a general calm and a greater awareness of habitual/stress eating that I tend to do.
Perhaps this comes from my years of fasting with a religious intention.
I have also noticed a huge difference in fasting, now that I am a fat burner. I used to get headaches and obsess about food early in my fasting. I have not had any headaches during or after and I only get hungry at about hour 22.
I tried fasting 24 hours once a week last summer for about 2 months, convinced it would be healthy for me. I was 38 yrs old and at a healthy weight at 130 pounds and had been fat adapted for at least 5 years. I felt fine while fasting, plenty energetic, clear headed, up until about the 20th to 22nd hours, when I got low energy and unmotivated. The fasting in combination with high stress, being very low carb (30 grams a day) and a lot of exercise resulted in intense carb/sugar cravings and subsequent adrenal fatigue, both of which led to weight gain. I will never fast again! I suspected there must be gender differences and am happy to have this issue addressed.
I am guessing you fasted too long, that is all. It is not necessary to not eat for that long. Simply skip a meal or two when you are not hungry and that will do the trick.
I’m pre menopausal, fat adapted and I was happy to see this article. I know guys how have had great results with IF but it has honestly done nothing for me. It hasn’t improved weight loss but made me very hungry which I normally am not.
A long term fast however is a different story. I have done 10+ days water fast with great results.
How does one know for sure when they are fat adapted?
I am a 44 year old female and started IF about 5 weeks ago. I do 3 – 24 hour fasts per week.It seems to agree with me quite well; I`m more alert, energetic and have also dropped a bit of weight. The main difference though has been nothing short of miraculous and here`s why. I have suffered with peri oral dermatitis chronically for the last two years and had tried everything to get rid of it. I had more or less given up any hope of getting rid of it and was reluctantly learning to live with it. Well, about a week and a half into the fasting routine I noticed a significant improvement in my skin and by two and a half weeks in I had a 75% improvement. Now, I would say that my skin is 95% better and I couldn`t be happier. I`m assuming that since my body is getting a rest from constant digestion, it can perform other healing duties. I hope that this may help someone else suffering with some sort of skin condition.