Sep 28, 2021
Get you free video course Five Ways To Make Fasting Easier
I first tried intermittent fasting (IF) in 2018 during a month off work. I loved how it reduced my mobility issues, but felt at the time that it would be difficult in my usual working life. It lay forgotten for three years, an interesting - but ultimately unsustainable - experiment.
Fast forward to spring 2021. I had just been through a year of increasingly compulsive eating, a not-very-fabulous COVID coping mechanism. This was aggravated by the fact that I was a binge eating coach with a popular podcast, The Eating Coach. Those 200,000 plus downloads felt like a big lie.
I got to this day in February 2021 where I simultaneously admitted my compulsion to myself (as well as my audience) AND made a decision that something had to change. I had to do something different. I decided to try IF again.
My First Day Intermittent Fasting
I remember the fear I had beforehand: the terror of being hungry. I gave myself a get out clause: if it is too terrible, I can just eat.
But a strange and rather marvelous thing happened: about four hours in, I noticed I was hungry, but it was a new kind of hunger. Flat, abstract. A hunger that I had absolutely zero interest in.
I had never felt like that in my entire (almost 50 years) life.
In this episode, I talk about
Turning Food Compulsion on Its Head
This was an inversion of how binge eating urges operate. When you are compulsive, you are not hungry - but your urge to eat is overwhelming. But here I was, hungry but with no interest in eating whatsoever.
The Progression From Intermittent To 24 To 36 Hour Fasts and Beyond
This inner game, this low-commitment experiment, this careful navigating of my fear of hunger - thus set me in a trajectory for falling in love with fasting.
In March, I did my first 24 hour fast.
I have gone on to longer fasts of up to 100 hours (just over 4 days).
Turning Fasting Into An Inner Gym Membership
I realised pretty quickly that fasting is a skill. It is a skill to tolerate hunger until it recedes – a skill you can develop.
Results So Far
Huge improvement in mobility
Big reduction in my food compulsion
Looser clothes
Improved cognitive function
Improved wellbeing
Harriet Morris
Info {at} theshiftinside.com