I've been practicing intermittent fasting for almost a year now. It works fine for me. I generally eat no breakfast or lunch. I drink only water throughout the day. I run a 5k every morning on an empty stomach with no ill effects. It really helps keep my body fat low and makes me conscious and deliberate about what I eat.
The only exceptions are meals I eat for social reasons (e.g., work lunch meetings) and mornings on which I run a road race and want to ensure I'm at peak performance. I find that when I do break the fast, I'm more hungry sooner.
One thing that doesn't get talked about very often is the social aspect of fasting. I've learned to just shut up about it because more often than not, people generally think you're crazy.
Anecdotally, low blood sugar only seems to bother me when I am not physically fit. Similarly, I only get hunger pangs when I've eaten too much and haven't exercised. After a few weeks of steady endurance training both of these things went away. If I am really hungry, it presents less as pain or weakness than a very empty stomach. If I'm not training regularly, my stomach is rarely ever that empty. I'm always hungry, which leads to constant snacking and eating big meals. Exercising even lightly on a regular basis, there's a much stronger feedback loop where your body has an opportunity to let you know you've over eaten or eaten a poor mix of nutrients.
All of this is probably limited to light resistance/endurance training. This sort of goes out the window while lifting weights, at least for me. Then its very hard for me not to eat a ton. I think the fascination with protein is totally misguided though. Some people think they need 200g/day when probably 30g is sufficient.
One thing I really embraced in college was ketosis. I hardly ate, aside from a few well earned feasts. But its extremely hard to maintain if you don't have the freedom to work out multiple times a day and carbs are a convenient and cheap source of calories.
That's something I should probably try. I've been trying to eat smaller portions on the days I have multiple meals. That's actually difficult for me. One of the advantages of IF is that it allows one to worry less about portion size.
definitely. I've tried to do smaller meals but found it difficult too so I eat a decent sized lunch and eat a relatively big dinner and it's worked out well for me so far
No, I run 5k every day, either on the road or the treadmill, but not necessarily in a race. I have been running a 5k race almost every weekend for the last five months. I live in Orlando, Florida. We'll have plenty of races to choose from every weekend until the summer.
Because I intentionally set my workout run to be 5 kilometers so that it matches an actual road race. Yes, I'm an American and we generally use miles as a distance unit, but the vast majority of our road races are 5ks.
Yes, but there's only a difference of an eighth of a mile -- less than a minute of running -- and you're going against convention. The very fact that someone was confused in the first place should tell you something is wrong saying "5k."
It's a big difference to me when I'm doing my morning run to put in that extra tenth of a mile beyond 3 miles at the end as I'm measuring my time against my PR. Your experience may vary, especially if you run longer distances.
The only exceptions are meals I eat for social reasons (e.g., work lunch meetings) and mornings on which I run a road race and want to ensure I'm at peak performance. I find that when I do break the fast, I'm more hungry sooner.