Intermittent fasting when working from home
How intermittent fasting can help you stay fit and slim
The thing I love most about working from home is the freedom it gives me. And one of its many freedoms is the ability to prepare healthy, simple meals at home rather than eating expensive takeaway sandwiches and snacks with hidden amounts of fat and sugar. Which is also helpful if you want to try out an eating plan, such as 5:2 intermittent fasting.
There’s been a huge amount of interest in intermittent fasting since the BBC documentary about it a couple of months ago. The idea is that you eat less – 500 calories for women, 600 for men – two days a week and normally for the rest of the time.
Not only might you lose weight, but levels of something called IGF-1 hormone drop when you eat less, considerably lessening the risk of heart attack, stroke and diabetes.
I’ve heard from a number of home workers who are trying intermittent fasting, as are A and I. We eat lots of fruit on fast days and at the beginning of the week make double quantities of a very simple vegetable or pulse-based sauce to eat with rice, couscous, bulghur wheat or wholewheat pasta.
That means on our second fast day our main meal just needs to be heated up. We have both lost a few pounds but more importantly we enjoy the discipline of a very simple diet a couple of times a week.
Because let’s face it, it’s hard to eat consistently well these days. Although I risk sounding like a Monty Python character, when I was a little girl in the 60s food was far less varied than it is now. Supermarkets were a relatively new invention, with much smaller stocks than nowadays, and most people ate the same meals week in, week out. There wasn’t the availability of delicious, addictive high calorie, nutrition-free snacks and drinks which are thrust in our faces everywhere now.
Intermittent fasting removes that temptation for two days a week (and even someone greedy like me can manage it for 24 hours, knowing I can eat what I like tomorrow), which is actually quite pleasant. Lots of people are afraid they’ll get fat if they work from home, so it’s nice to know you can actually get slimmer and fitter.
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I’m trying it and have lost about half a stone in three weeks but more importantly for me (although my GP will welcome this and further weight loss) I actually feel a bit better, less sluggish and soforth.
Much of the science has yet to be really tested but well-being and weight loss (unless you’re already the right weight) have to be good things. And if it *does* turn out that by Christmas I’ll still be 47 but less prone to stroke, certain cancers and diabetes than I was at 45, I’ll learn to live with that!
Well done, Guy, that’s a great result in not much time. Cutting the risk of nasty illnesses was my main reason for giving it a try. I expect surgeries have been flooded with people wanting to test their IGF-1 levels – don’t suppose it’s available on the NHS!
I’ve been using a form of intermittent fasting called 5:2 for the last 3-4 months. It really does seem to work well…and I’ve lost 12lbs.
I’m busy writing up my own recipes and how it works for me…and yes I do work from home. I think this is actually easier if you can tailor your working life around when you fast.
Brilliant result, Fiona, congratulations! You are obviuosly more disciplined than me in that I gave up when the days got shorter, the weather got colder and I started to crave comfort food. I’m actually looking forward to starting again in the spring, though, and I can’t say that about any other eating plan I’ve tried!