Fitness & Fatherhood Part 7: Intermittent Fasting Update

A couple of months ago I wrote how I was going to begin skipping dinner, or intermittent fast, to save time in the evening. I’ve run through this experiment and ran into some interesting challenges that I caused me to make some adjustments. The biggest challenge I faced was eating a sufficient amount of calories in my food window. To very quickly recap: My plan was to eat a big breakfast and lunch then skip dinner all in an effort to save time in the evening. What I realized very early on was it is very difficult for me to spend the time to sit and eat all of my calories in just those two meals, particularly lunch. I just don’t have the time to eat all of that food during lunch, or to take breaks to have smaller meals in between breakfast and lunch. As a result in the evening I was pretty ravenous because I wasn’t getting in all my calories. Although, I should mention there were some days that I was able to eat sufficient calories, and my plan worked great for those days.

It’s not ideal, but sometimes I have to use protein to supplement my meals. My mantra is that as long the shakes are supplementing and not supplanting whole foods.

So, overall the idea was great we did end up saving time in the evening, but the execution was still off. This reminded me of something I heard in one of renowned strength & conditioning coach Dan John’s audio books where he talks about managing compromises. Because my schedule didn’t allow me to do what I wanted to do I needed to begin to manage compromises when it came to diet. What that meant is that I had to eat in the evening, which is fine. I’m not married to intermittent fasting as a diet plan. I just want to save time. So I still ate a big breakfast and lunch, but I began eating a snack for dinner. A protein shake or a bowl of Greek yogurt. Something quick and easy. Something that would get my calories up to where they needed to be. This new strategy has been working great. Preparation and clean up are a breeze, and I’m not starving my self. Count that as a win.

Something else that started to bother me during this time was the quality of my diet. I feel like my diet should have been significantly better since I consider myself a so called “healthy eater” or whatever. I had to talk to my wife about this and she had to convince me that I was in fact a very healthy eater, but I felt it wasn’t good enough. My family has a long lineage of perfectionist and that gene did not skip me. Again, I had to reflect on Dan John’s idea of managing compromises. I thought to myself: I only have so much bandwidth each day. Work, commuting, traffic, etc…. take up a considerable amount of that bandwidth. What’s left is divided up between my wife and daughter, workouts, chores, and so on. That doesn’t leave a lot room for diet. So I had to accept that I can’t eat perfectly, but I can eat well enough to get where I want to be in terms of health, strength, and body composition. For example, I still eat well balanced healthy meals, however I need something to fill in the gaps when I have no time and just need calories. In busy times like this I rely more heavily on protein shakes/smoothies. This isn’t ideal because meals consisting of whole foods is always better, but it gets the job done and still allows me to accomplish my goals. As long the protein shakes are supplementing and not supplanting my meals, then I feel it’s fine.

So there it is. I ran this intermittent fasting experiment and it allowed me to figure out what works for me for where I’m at this point in time in my life. So now I eat a snack in the evening and I don’t sweat the fact that I only had one serving of vegetables and not three, or whatever I would have been stressing about. Ironically, as I write this I am reminded that I just spent last weekend at my parent’s house where I ate breakfast tacos and cookies like it was nobodies business. Oh well, sometimes you just got to go for it! Hope everyone enjoys reading these blog posts. Please let me know if you do. Your feedback is always appreciated. Take care and thanks for reading!