The Alternative to Counting Calories: Mindful Eating With Intermittent Fasting

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mindful_eating_with_intermittent_fasting_no_calorie_counting

Losing weight without counting calories? It works: with intermittent fasting! Find out why intermittent fasting is the perfect alternative to traditional diets and how to learn mindful eating. First of all, we take a closer look at dieting.

 

Diets Decrease The Metabolism And Increase Hunger

What if all our knowledge about diets was based on faulty assumptions? Well, then all previous dieting efforts might have been doomed to failure from the beginning.⁠

You probably heard this advice: “Eat less, move more. Then you will lose weight!“ Well, it’s not that easy, unfortunately.⁠

The actual cause of overweight is not the nasty calories: It’s your hormone system and metabolism that are responsible for whether and how you absorb and process the energy from food.⁠

Studies such as the Women’s Health Initiative show virtually no success on the scales, even though the participants had reduced calories  over a long period of time and increased their exercise.⁠ Because of the big calorie deficit they just burned fewer calories, their metabolism had simply adapted.⁠

So let’s face it: Diets that only reduce calories mean that you often burn less energy and that you are hungrier. 

 

Healthy Weight Loss With Intermittent Fasting

Overweight is often an imbalance of your hormones, not of calories! So it’s not YOU who has failed, it’s simply that your body has a different logic from the one we have wrongly assumed so far. ⁠

We owe much of this important knowledge to Dr. Jason Fung, who also identified the most important lever for change: insulin.⁠ His motto: Whoever reduces the “fat-storage hormone” lays THE foundation for sustainable success on the way to a feel-good weight.⁠

This is exactly where ⁠intermittent fasting comes into play: By fasting, you give your body a break from the constant production of insulin after eating.⁠ Instead, you set many health-promoting processes in motion, e.g. autophagy and increased fat burning. So you keep your metabolism going and keep your hormones in balance.

Intermittent fasting makes your life easier. Step by step you develop new, healthy habits. Only by eating with breaks! We have two tips on how to determine healthy serving sizes without counting calories and without having to give up anything:

 

Tip 1: Mindful Eating

All you need are your hands. A healthy serving size per meal is when you have…⁠

✋🏼 one palm-sized portion of protein-rich foods such as meat, fish, eggs, dairy products or pulses and⁠

👊🏼 a fist-sized serving of vegetables per meal,⁠

🤚🏼 add a hollow handful of carbohydrates such as pasta, rice or fruit to your meals and⁠

👍🏼 eat a thumb of fat from butter, oils, seeds or nuts.⁠

This rule of thumb applies to women, men double the amount. Our friends from Precision Nutrition, who have established this rule, take four meals a day as a basis. If you eat only two meals, you can simply adjust the amount.⁠

How to eat mindfully

Press here to download the infographic!

 

Easily Customizable to Your Goals

The great thing about it is that it is already “personalized” by nature. Usually, the size of your hands is proportional to the rest of your body. And unlike a kitchen scale, you always have your hands with you. Pretty handy, huh?

The hand rule is a very helpful starting point and can be adjusted very easily depending on hunger, activity and weight goals. If you want to focus on losing weight, try half the amount of carbohydrates and fat.⁠

Of course the method is not 100% accurate, but neither is calorie counting. And that’s exactly what most people don’t need to do, it would be different for professional athletes. You will see how quickly you have internalized appropriate serving sizes and thus intuitively eat correctly.⁠

The most important thing is that it works for you and doesn’t make your life any harder. Just like intermittent fasting, which adapts to your life, not the other way around.

 

Tip 2: A Healthy Diet Without Sacrifice

Proper eating does not mean giving something up! When doing intermittent fasting you do not eat anything at certain times, but one thing is especially important: Losing weight and fasting do not mean giving up on providing the body with the (right) nutrients it needs during the mealtime!

When starting with fasting, people often do not cover their need for essential, vital nutrients altogether. This can work in the short term, but in the long run it can turn into a real problem.

In other words, the eating window is a great opportunity to eat MORE of the good stuff! The best side effect? Not only does it saturate, but it also does not cause the body to respond with a desire for high-energy, unhealthy food.

You will not only notice the positive effects on your health and energy, but also on the scales. Because a healthy body works much better on all levels. This is a promise!

 

You’re not a BodyFaster yet? Click here to download the BodyFast app for free and start your journey to more health and well-being! 

Author: Jenny M.

22 comentários em “The Alternative to Counting Calories: Mindful Eating With Intermittent Fasting

    • Svenja Taubert Responder

      We are sorry to hear that you are not happy with the app.
      Be sure we are continuously working on further improving BodyFast and there will be some really awesome updates still this year.
      As Apple has a separate system for billing and payment information, we kindly ask that you visit Apple’s problem reports page: http://reportaproblem.apple.com/. There you can claim your refund.

    • Svenja Taubert Responder

      During your fasting periods please only have pure water, tea and coffee without milk, sugar or sweeteners, as otherwise the autophagy process will be stopped.
      During your eating times you can have whatever you like even though we warmly recommend a healthy diet and lifestyle!

    • Valerie Dratwa Responder

      Hello Georgina,

      We recommend to just keep on going. Make sure you are eating nutritious groceries during your eating periods that make you and your body feel healthy. We suggest to keep a food diary in which you can note how certain meals make you feel (energy level, digestion, mood, etc.).
      If you would like to know more about healthy nutrition, recipes, suggestions and more we recommend checking out our Facebook Groups. 🙂

  1. Cheryl L. Cozart Responder

    I am enjoying the IF process and just completed my first week losing 2.5 lbs effortlessly. I do have a question concerning medication. I have been taking all medications during the eating period. I do have medication I must take at bedtime. If my fasting begins at 8 pm, I take my medication around 7:45 pm. Since the medication is time-released, does this interfere with the autophagy process?

    • Valerie Dratwa Responder

      Hello Cheryl,
      Thank you for your positive feedback and congratulations on your success! We appreciate your opinion and are glad that BodyFast helps you to achieve your goals. 🙂
      It is always better to take your medicine with your meals: Some medicine might actually result in a change of your insulin level and therefore effectively interrupt the autophagy process that really begins after 12-14 hours of fasting. If this is not possible, for example, because the medicine hast to be taken at a fixed time, then we advise taking your pills despite fasting.
      Your health has the absolute priority!

  2. Sandra Bradtmuller Responder

    Hi will you ever be allowing us to have profile picures? Or challenges within the app, or let us keep our own progress photos within? Also I use the Fitbit scale called fit track will that ever be synced so we don’t have to put in our own weight as other apps out there that costs dues have those kind of benefits. I love how this choreographs our weekly fasting times to get us to our goals weekly and gradually changes!! Ty for all y’all do!

    • Valerie Dratwa Responder

      Hello Sandra,
      thank you for your feedback and the many amazing ideas you provided! 🙂
      We really appreciate when users give us suggestions on how to improve the App and its features. I am sure we can integrate many of your suggestions into future versions of BodyFast.
      We are working hard on improve BodyFast daily and a lot of new features will be launched in the following weeks! 🙂

    • Valerie Dratwa Responder

      Hello Trudie,
      Thank you for using BodyFast! 😊 We can only encourage you to test the app features, start your first weeks and learn to know the many advantages and positive effects of intermittent fasting. We appreciate your feedback! Happy BodyFasting!

  3. Ursula Responder

    Hi there,

    I have just started the 14/10 fasting. So far I have managed two 14 hour fasting periods! Yey!

    I am a little worried about the final 2 days of 40h fasting. (If I counted correctly)

    Could you please give me some information as to why the final period is over such a long amount of time? What if I cannot manage? Should I just continue going with 14/10 or should I try the 40h fasting again?

    Many thx in advance

    Best regards
    Ursula from Germany

    • Valerie Dratwa Responder

      Hello Ursula,
      first of all congratulations that you got through your first two fasting phases so well. I’m glad to hear that! 🙂
      Regarding your last long fasting phase, I can advise you to please drink enough! That means lots of water, untrained tea and coffee without milk and sugar. Also, it’s important that you keep yourself busy with different things so that you distract yourself a bit and don’t think too much.
      However, if you find that you can’t keep going because your body is giving you decisive signals, please break the fast!
      Your health comes first – because that is the most important thing!
      Happy BodyFasting! 🙂

    • Valerie Dratwa Responder

      Hello Siddharth,
      If possible, take your medicine during your eating periods, as otherwise your fasting period will be interrupted. If this is not possible, for example, because the medicine hast to be taken at a fixed time, then we advise taking your pills despite fasting. Your health has the absolute priority!
      If you are not sure if you can change the time of intake, please ask your doctor about it.

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