Since I work out every day and perform strenuous exercises that involve strength training, I give immense importance to diet as well. We break your muscle in the gym and build the muscle outside of the gym. Now the time we spend in gym is around 5% of the day and it is other 95% of day that makes the difference and builds the muscle. We have two important activities in this 95% of the day which are diet and rest. Taking healthy balance nutritious food as diet and sleeping properly for rest.
As per standard bodybuilding guidelines :
- We need to have food at regular intervals for optimum protein synthesis.
- If we do not have food with high protein within 1 hour after workout , there could muscle catabolism.
- So we need to keep our body in anabolic state all throughout the day for to repair muscle and rebuild them.
- Muscles could get into atrophy if we do not eat enough protein and carbohydrates in regular intervals.
- Have less fats compared to carbs and protein.
- And so on….
Now all these statements that most of us follow to build muscle have nothing wrong in them and we can follow them with proper guidance and information to attain good results. 99% of the bodybuilders and fitness models swear by these conventional rules for effective muscle building results. Good for them.
But it makes sense to follow these practices for the people whose life and profession is based on their physical aesthetics or who are in the field of sports / athletics. Even if it is difficult routine to follow to eat regularly, counting calories, making sure we have right macro nutrients of protein, carbs and fats in right ratios, preparing them, packing them where ever they go, spending a lot of money on supplements. Because all these tasks are linked to their career and future as there are intertwined with their professional job. They go hand in hand with their aspirations.
For people like me who does regular stressful 9 to 6 jobs with other life obligations , adhering to all these bodybuilding stipulations is a burden and a daily chore that adds stress to already tedious daily routine. On the top of this for us to stick to this route and food habits when we have to go out with family on weekends, it is a huge task and uncomfortable to carry protein shakes and other stuff to get our required food intake at that particular time.
When our main profession and job is not associated with fitness or glamour industry, it is highly impossible to stick to this routine consistently even with all our commitment. In order to stay on our course we would stress ourselves , we get agitated if we miss some activity, we would irritate our family with all our antics in house and in public when we go out, we could feel little uncomfortable to take out all these food and protein shaker in malls or public spaces. This process consumes a lot of mental and physical energy, it takes a lot of productive time, money expenses. It is also possible that we have these processes running in background of our mind which could prevent us from giving our 100% to our family outing and make our partially absent minded.
With all this I felt I am not making my body more sustainable and optimal for peak performance. I felt my body is highly dependent on external energy for sustaining. If I need food and protein to keep my body up and running, always keep in the rebuilding mode, then when am I going to use my body and mind efficiently for other important responsibilities and tasks in job and personal life. In this process I felt I am not making my body adoptable and self-sustainable by always depending on food at least for 14 hours. This way my body will not function optimally when it is deprived of food after 2 to 3 hours of feeding.
In order to overcome all these challenges, to make myself self-sustainable, to be independent of external food fuel, to make myself fat adoptable instead of carbohydrate adoptable, to make myself a more performant, to optimize my energy and time expenditure for more important tasks that are more aligned with my aspirations, to reduce the amount of money spent on food and supplements I embraced intermittent fasting. With IF I am able to achieve Metabolic Flexibility. In layman terms my body became efficient in relying on my fat reserves for energy during fasting and be in the state of ketosis. During the times when I do not eat, my body switches to fat burning mode and provides me with energy. When I am feeding my body is carbohydrate dependent for energy. So I am able to reap the benefits of ketosis without doing a keto diet and also getting the benefits of carbs and high protein during the feeding window which allows me to rebuild and repair the tissue.
With this lifestyle of following a time restricted feeding window or intermittent fasting protocol . I am able to improve my overall health, I have better perspective on food and can control food cravings, improve brain functioning, lost 8 Kgs of fat, built 6 pack, improved strength, less concerned about calorie counting.
Now I don’t worry and never even think of having food when I am out with my family or when I am on urgent and important tasks like attending to our family members urgent needs. Now I don’t fret about not having a protein shake immediately after a workout. Now I do not worry about food for at least 16 hours in a day. Now I am confident and stress free even if I skip a meal or delay a meal because I know that my body is capable to switch its energy sources. Now I either have healthy nutritious food or just choose to drink plain water and no random food snacking just to fill stomach in between the meals. My body is fat adopted and self-sustainable with or without food.
I realized that as long as we eat a high quality nutritious food in a time restricted window and cover the required amount of calories as per our needs, it does not matter when you have the food. It only matters how much we eat and what we eat at the end of the day. Of Course we need to remember the laws of thermodynamics which means , we need to be in calorie deficit to lose weight and calorie surplus to gain weight (or muscle). Just doing IF does not make you lose weight naturally. If you over eat or binge eat during the feeding window, you will gain unhealthy weight.
*Do read the Disclaimer