Fasting Quotes

You may wonder who else has fasted.

In the weight loss industry, celebrities always talk about how they stay slim, stay young, stay healthy.... Whether they've been paid to say so, I don't know.

However I've just come across some fasting quotes from some previous fasters. I don't think they've been paid to say what they said. Here they are:

"I fast for greater physical and mental efficiency."--Plato, 428-348 B.C., Greek student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle; helped lay foundations of Western philosophy

"The best of all medicines are rest and fasting." --Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790, American founding father, statesman and inventor (bifocal glasses, iron furnace stove and lightning rod)

"America badly needs to go on a diet. It should do something drastic about excessive, unattractive, life-threatening fat. It should get rid of it in the quickest possible way, and this is by fasting." --Allan Cott, M.D., author of Fasting-The Ultimate Diet


Intermittent Fasting Success Report - Fasting Quotes

Intermittent Fasting For Beginners

Intermittent fasting for beginners has two rules for success: (1) Make fasting pleasurable and NOT stressful. (2) Keep fasting simple and NOT rigid.

From an experienced faster’s standpoint, I have a few suggestions for beginners. You may want to do intermittent fasting (IF) for two reasons – weight loss or health or both. In any case, it’s good to observe these two formulas:

More rules = more complicated = low chance of success

Less rules = less complicated = high chance of success

According to Brad Pilon, a nutrition professional, a 24 hour period off of eating is very healthful, it helps you reduce calories without sacrificing what you like to eat on your non-fasting days, and maybe even more importantly it stimulates your body to produce more growth hormone. Yes that’s right growth hormone, the same one you hear about the celebrities talking to ‘stay young’. Growth hormone has many anti aging benefits, and one of the most interesting being fat burning! For more information about IF benefits, visit Brad Pilon's website.

How to do Intermittent Fasting?

In an ideal situation, 2 sessions of 24-hour fasts in a week will be good enough to produce significant health and weight loss benefits. However for beginners, I don't think you should jump start with a 24-hour fast, unless you are absolutely sure that you can do it.

There is no standard rule of doing IF. You are the rainmaker. Try it out and make it work for you. Let simplicity and flexibility be your fasting motto. Don’t make it stressful for yourself.

As a beginner to practice intermittent fasting, I would say ‘clear your mind from any other weight loss methods and focus on IF’. This is your first step towards IF success. Think how many times you’ve been told that breakfast is the most important meal in a day or you need to eat 6 to 10 small meals a day in order to lose weight. I’m not saying these rules are wrong. If these rules work for you, stay with them. But if you are setting your feet onto the route of intermittent fasting, better put these concepts aside at least for the period you are trying out IF.

Having your IF mindset ready? Then begin with ‘skip meal’ and see how your body responds. I would say this is the simplest and easiest way to begin your intermittent fasting journey.

Pick a day to try skip breakfast. Have fresh juice, water or tea instead. No coffee please. If that works out fine, try ‘skip lunch’ and move on progressively. A 24-hour fast shouldn't be difficult for any normal healthy adult. One useful tip is not to think of food. Avoid social talk at the pantry over lunch hour. Go out for a walk or do some simple exercises.

You can also explore these IF options.

• Condensed eating window, e.g. eat ONLY between 11am and 5pm;
• Skip meal on an unplanned basis, as far as it is natural and not interfere your daily work;
• Early and late, i.e. skip lunch;
• One meal a day, ideally dinner only when you are relaxed and really have time to enjoy food.

For more ideas of how to skip meals and arrange your fasting window, check out 2 Meal Solution. You may even enrol their FREE e-course to learn more about IF.

To repeat, fasting has to be pleasurable and not stressful. Don’t press hard on yourself. Be flexible. This is very important. Don’t upset your boss when you are called upon a business lunch by telling him that you are fasting. Do it as you see fit and your schedule permits.

Once you find a way that works for you, I'm sure you'll love it and stay with it. And you don't have to worry about weight loss again in the long term.

Happy fasting!

Anna

Intermittent Fasting Success Report - Tips For Beginners

Overcoming Binge Eating By Fasting

For a period of time, I failed to overcome binge eating by fasting. I think it may happen to you even you are an experienced faster like me.

Chinese New Year holidays were just over here in Hong Kong. I just couldn’t resist eating. Food is for celebration and festival is for family members, relatives and friends to get together and share fun. If I refuse to eat, I’ll make myself extremely unpopular. I used to have a dilemma of loving to eat but afraid of bloating, indigestion and gain a bigger belly. Of course, this dilemma does not exist any more. When I resume fasting, my life goes back to normal.

From CNY eve on Feb 2 through Feb 6 (day 4 of CNY), I have been busy eating for a continuation of five days. I felt overloaded, to be honest. On Feb 7-8, I had only one meal of regular portion. That fast was around 42 hours and I had two meals on Feb 9 and then I continued with my normal one-meal day. Yesterday at the gym, I didn’t notice any weight gain. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I’m extremely disciplined on work days but not on holidays. Once I go back to work, resume daily swimming and intermittent fasting, I’m not afraid of gaining weight.

So have you been binge eating over Easter weekend, Halloween or Thanksgiving? Don’t worry. Simply overcome binge eating by fasting.

BTW, have you read the book The Modern Diet Review? It reviews and compares several weight loss methods including Low Fat, Balanced Nutrients, Cleansing, Low Carb, Intermittent Fasting, Blood Type and Detox. It’s interesting to know that people on IF manage to keep their weight off by adding in a fasting day when they felt like they were starting to over eat and gain a bit of weight. Well that was exactly what I did.

If you want to take a look, I have the author John Barban’s permission to give away this ebook to my readers for free. Right click this link and choose 'save target as' and download The Modern Diet Review. It’s just a 24-page short ebook which you may finish reading in 15-30 minutes.


Enjoy reading and happy fasting.

Anna

Intermittent Fasting Success Report -

Overcome Binge Eating by Fasting

The "Eat" portion of Eat Stop Eat

My friend, Brad Pilon, author of Eat Stop Eat send me this video which I can't wait to share with you. I really love it. I laugh, because it really reveals a lot of the myths in the weight loss industry. I'm sure you'll agree with me while viewing this video.

The Anything Goes Diet - sounds like a strange name, so as Eat Stop Eat. As Brad name it: This is the "Eat" portion of Eat Stop Eat. If you want to lose weight in an enjoyable way, you must love this video. Get ready to have a new look in 2011? Here you go.

Click Here

Anything Goes Diet Video
Intermittent Fasting Success - Anything Goes Diet

10 Intermittent Fasting Tips

Looking for some fasting tips to kick start your fasting weight loss program? Here are some of my personal tips that I want to share with you.

1. Identify the tips provider. Many give warnings and horror stories about fasting had actually never fasted. Best to look for tips from someone who has the real fasting experiences.

2. Be well prepared. Forget about some traditional eating rules that you might have been told a million times, such as breakfast is the single most important meal in a day, eat breakfast like a king, eat 6 to 10 small meals in a day is completely necessary to lose weight…and so on. These rules are true to food companies and restaurants but not you.

3. Stick with short term intermittent fasting. Researches have proven that short term fasting does not slow down the metabolism or cause any physical damage. You won't even lose an ounce of muscle while losing weight. If you want to find out the scientific facts, I would encourage your reading Brad Pilon's Eat Stop Eat.

4. Do not binge on food. This is one of the most important fasting tips I would ever give. Short term fasting is a good opportunity to start off with healthy eating habits along with losing weight. Eating crazily before and after will destroy your fasting effort and can be dangerous. Read more about breaking a fast.

5. Start slow, work progressively. Try skip breakfast to begin with. Extend your fasting window gradually until you feel comfortable doing a full 24-hour fasting. For beginners, you may find it hard to go through your first or second attempt of 24-hour fast. You may feel irritated, experience headaches and feel a little of hunger. Believe me, the more fasts you do, the less these problems will bother you and you'll feel better.

6. Start with juice fasting. If you have no fasting experience and want to give it a try, go for juice fasting first, as it is easier than water fast. Also juice fast provides most of the nutrients and calories that solid foods provide. You just give your body a chance to experience a period without solid food. More juice fasting tips.

7. Keep busy. Food is sometimes a psychological need rather than a physical need. To withstand hunger, simply don't think about it. Do something (non food-related) that engages and therefore distracts you as much as possible.

8. Keep silent. Seek support only from people with fasting experience. If you tell everyone that you are fasting, you're sure to receive discouraging comments such as people warning you that you will pass out at any moment and starve to death. As for myself, someone even satirized me of saving food money by fasting.

9. Keep fasting simple and natural. Stick to juice and/or water. Forget about supplements, vitamins, protein drinks, adding egg white powder or mineral salts to your water…and any other fancy little things to complement your shortage of food. If you do all these, you are not dedicated to fasting and I'm sure you'll quit pretty soon. Eat normal in between your fasting days.

10. One slightly longer fast per month. While 16-24 hour fasts are easy to do, try to include one slightly longer fast such as 30 hours once a month. For example my 30-hour fast looks like this: breakfast on day 1, dinner on day 2. That way I'm still eating everyday. However you can opt to do dinner on day 1 and breakfast on day 3. Do it when you feel comfortable and your schedule permits.

You may find lots of other fasting tips. Even real fasters may have different views. For instance, some even don't consider juice fasting as a real fast. After all, there isn't a single fasting bible that has been approved by all. Make your own sensible judgement as to follow fasting tips that sound sensible and work well for you.

I wish you best.

Anna

Intermittent Fasting Success Report - Fasting Tips

Top Tips To Lose Belly Fat

As I lose belly fat significantly, many consult me for tips. Here are my two top tips:

Fasting and Exercising.

Simple enough that everybody knows. But I have some tricks behind. My belly shrank 3 inches by doing these.

Fasting

To begin with, go on a 3-7 days of water fast or juice fast. This will shrink your belly by about one inch or so. Allow some individual differences. A good start is for sure to encourage your going on. Right? Shift to intermittent fasting (IF) for as long as you are happy with your belly size.

Warning: once you see the IF benefits, you may not want to give up the IF way of eating.

IF Suggestion: skip breakfast and lunch twice a week. I.e. Eat dinner only on two days in a week. No need to fix a date. Do it flexibly in order not to interfere your work/life balance.

Exercising While Fasting

Daily exercise of 30 minutes is a minimum. I have been doing this for many years but still suffering from a big belly. Why? The time to do exercise is important. The trick is to do it without food.

Do exercise as soon as you wake up. This is the best time in a day to exercise and burn fat, for two reasons. One you are calling your stored fat as energy. Two food releases insulin which blunts fat burning. When you wake insulin is at its lowest allowing the most fat to be burnt. If you plan to eat breakfast, eat only one hour after exercising.

Fasting Exercising vs Traditional Wisdom

You may find my suggestions contradict some of the health rules which you might have heard of a million times. Listen, something you think is right and that you’ve been told a million times that it is right, may not be right, or may not be completely right. Check out the term ‘factoid’ and you’ll know.

Eat before and after exercising may be necessary for athletes but definitely not for people looking to lose weight. Breakfast is the single most important meal in a day had no scientific support, so as drinking 8 glasses of water a day. These may only be the bibles of cereals companies and water selling companies. To me, they are factoids.

In fact, there are many factoid strange eating rules promoted by health gurus. I have a short report about the top 12 and how to break them. Email me at annafasting(at)yahoo(dot)com(dot)hk with a headline ’12 Strange Eating Rules’ and I’ll email you a copy.

To lose belly fat or lose weight in general, doing morning exercise without breakfast is a very effective fat burning method. Jogging outside if possible, otherwise same-spot jogging at home is also fine. If it is boring, alternate with hula hoop.

Intermittent Fasting Success - Lose Belly Fat

My Health and Fitness Rules – Exercising

To repeat, I’m one of the few individuals who manage to lose weight and stay fit.

How I do it? I’ve mentioned my eating rules in my previous post, here are some of my workout rules. Again, you don’t have to follow, but if you do, you’re likely to benefit in one way or another.

In fact, my eating rules and workout rules in some perspectives are quite consistent. Let’s see.

1. Morning Exercise
An apple everyday keeps doctors away. My ‘apple’ is the exercises that I do in the first 20 minutes of every morning. It does not keep me away from doctors permanently, but once I started, I didn’t see my doctor for two years. I have been doing this for many years. If you want to minimize your medical bill, try it.

2. Natural Exercise
I eat fresh and natural. Likewise, I workout naturally.

I have a gym membership, but I go there mainly to use the pool. I won’t do treadmills or row a stationary boat. That’s too boring. Instead I do jogging in a park or rowing a real boat. You see what I mean.

Enjoy a natural breeze and breathe well in the nature while working out.

3. Concentration
Seriously, have you ever read or watch TV while doing any exercise at your luxury gym? If so, you're not concentrating enough on what you're doing, plus you're probably not working out hard enough to see any real results. You won’t talk on a mobile phone while swimming, will you? Do exercise that requires your full attention and you’ll see real results. Here is a very insightful article on this topic: Do You Really Need Cardio?

4. Do What You Enjoy To Do
Do you enjoy jogging or playing hula hoop? Personally, I enjoy playing hula hoop more than jogging, though both exercise spent the same amount of calories. I also enjoy swimming, so I do both exercises alternatively. I’m never tired of the exercises that I do. Because I only do whatever I enjoy to do. See how much fun I am having. You will only stick to doing something that you enjoy and continue doing it. If you don’t, you’ll soon quit.



5. Do It Over The Long Run
How often do you do exercise? Once a week for a couple of hours or 3 x 30 minutes per week? Both are fine, provided you don’t do it for a month and quit. If you do it for a month or so, it’s just better than not doing. Want to see the real results that your workout contribute to your health and weight loss, you must do it over the long run. I have been doing morning exercise over the past 20 years and I’m sure I won’t give up. Likewise for my weekly 3 x 30 which I started 10 years ago.

Finally, my two golden rules for health and fitness are:

Rule #1: Eat Less
Rule #2: Workout More

Eating Rule: 2 Meal Solution and Eat Stop Eat
Workout Rule: Truth About Abs and Workout Without Weight

Intermittent Fasting Success - Health and Fitness Rules