My thoughts on IF (Intermittent Fasting) for weight loss for women

Good morning, good morning to the Lux Life community. I wanted to pop on here real quick and answer a question that I have been receiving a lot. And most recently I was teaching my virtual masterclass, my meal prep masterclass to a group of women and it was great last week. And one of the questions at the end was like, what do you think about intermittent fasting? And I, or IF as it's also known, and I have my own experience with intermittent fasting and I will share with you my thoughts on intermittent fasting for weight loss, specifically for women, right? So men lose weight in a completely different way. If you are a woman and you're listening to this video, this is what I think about intermittent fasting or IF. For you. Now, before I get into that, I'm Jennifer Dent-Brown. I am a life coach and I help women learn how to stop dieting forever. Now, there are pros and cons to IF, and if you're not familiar with intermittent fasting, it is essentially compressing your eating window into a period of time, so you are only eating for like 8 hours during the day, or you're only eating within a 6-hour period of the day, and for the rest of the time you are not eating. You are fasting. You are with state— with, um, what is the word? You're not eating. I was trying to be fancy and like give you a good word, but basically you're not eating. You're fasting. And what happens is when you allow your body to actually process the food that's already in your body, it actually starts to burn fat. So your body actually starts to eat off of its own fat rather than being focused on eating or digesting and burning the new food that you continue to eat all day. So for some people, this works really well. Here is my experience and what I've seen in my clients and how I actually teach this to my clients. First of all, I do not call it intermittent fasting because that has a diet connotation to it. And if you're like me and a lot of my clients who come to me who are professional dieters, you have that dieter's mindset. Like if you can't do it this way, if you can't follow the instructions exactly to the T, it stresses you out and you feel like a failure. Right. And so what happens is when we put all of this mental stress on following a plan or following a very strict plan and you aren't able to stay on the plan or you are able to stay on the plan, but it's still very stressful. Guess what? You're just creating a chronic level of stress going in your body all day, every day, because you're so focused on like, oh my goodness, I have 3 hours and 34 minutes before I can eat again. Right? Or you're in your eating window and then you start eating more calories than you actually need to consume because you're like, oh my goodness, I need to start eating more because my eating window ends at 8:00 PM. I got, I got to eat, eat, eat, eat, eat. So it can be very detrimental if you're looking at it in that way. And most clients or most women that I do these strategy calls with are professional dieters. Right. I am a reformed professional dieter myself, so I get it. And that's when I tried intermittent fasting a couple of years ago. It did not work for me. I didn't lose a freaking pound because I was so hyperly focused on the time. And then my eating window would happen and I was like, I got to eat. So I would eat like breakfast, lunch, and dinner and 2 snacks within a 4-hour, 6-hour window. 6-hour, 8-hour eating window, and my body did not need all of that food, right? And if I felt like I wasn't hungry, I'm like, oh my God, but I got to eat now because I'm not going to be able to eat for the next 16 hours or the next 20 hours. And it's just a really uncomfortable and emotional cycle you put yourself in every day. So like I said, there are pros to fasting, right? So when you're not eating, your body is actually able to burn the fat that's already on your body because you're not, your cells aren't trying to digest the afternoon snack you just had and then your dinner that you just had, right? So that actually gives your body a chance to like, woo-sa, and work with what it's got. So that results in weight loss. However, the mind-body connection is so huge. And most diets do not mention what you're thinking will affect how your body reacts to things. So if you are chronically, like I said, stressed and focused on what you're able to eat, what you're not able to eat, you will create that— you will throw your hormones off, right? And so you'll create that stress hormone called cortisol in your body. And especially for women, when your hormones are out of balance, The fat will not go anywhere. It just stays on. And so when your cortisol levels are high, hey Michelle, you are not going to lose the weight. And so you will be doing this intermittent fasting. You'll be like, not eating, not eating, not eating, and then eat, eat, eat, not eating, not eating, not eating, eat, eat, eat. And you're going to be in all these groups and you're reading all these books and all of these blogs and trying to figure out why you're not losing the weight. And it's essentially because the way you're thinking about your approach to the food. What I teach with Stop Dieting Forever and my weight loss program is to completely change your relationship with food. Oh, good. If you have any questions, Michelle, let me know. I teach you how to change your relationship with food so you are actually listening to your body. Your body will naturally tell you when you don't need to eat, and by golly, that's when you're actually fasting. So it is a natural process of fasting. It is a natural process of not eating. So when you wake up in the morning and sometimes, you know, you're just not hungry, sometimes you could go to 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock and not eat breakfast. And that is great because you are intuitively listening to your body and your body's natural hunger cues. Other days you may work up, you may wake up in the morning and be like, I'm starving, I must have some breakfast. And that is great. Go ahead and eat your breakfast, but recognize and honor the fact that you were listening to your body's natural hunger cues. When you try to put— constrain your eating into these like time blocks and these time windows, you are completely ignoring your body. You're completely ignoring what your body is telling you. So a solution to this is to really become more intuitive and with how you are, um, responding to your body's natural hunger cues, right? So that is my take on intermittent fasting. Those are my thoughts on intermittent fasting, pros and cons, right? The actual process of fasting, great. I think it is a wonderful thing to do. However, when you put all these constraints and time blocks and these like the mind drama— that's a good word— the mind drama that goes along with trying to stay on a diet plan, um, you are basically negating everything you're trying to do. So if you find yourself in that camp, in Plan B or Option B, when you're like, have all the mind drama, you're trying to do this intermittent fasting, you're starving, you're hungry, you're starving, you're hungry, you're putting all the stress on you, mental, emotional stress, around these eating windows, you're not seeing the results, then you need to talk to me. I need to help get you out of that cycle and teach you how to fast in a much better way that is much healthier for you. It is so less stressful and you will see the results and at the end of the day still have a great relationship with food. Then you're not like, ah, I gotta go to this party, but I can't eat until, I have to stop eating at 7 o'clock, but the party starts at 9 and they're gonna have chicken wings Fingers and meatballs, and I'm not gonna be able to eat any of that. Mind trauma. Stop it. We don't need to do that, right? I teach you how to be able to go to the party and eat the food at 8 PM if that's what your body is telling you, if that's what you plan to eat. Okay, so I am very passionate about this question, about this topic. If you have any questions specifically, I would love to talk to you If you're doing intermittent fasting and it's not working for you, I would love to talk to you. So just send me a message, a comment below, and then we'll schedule a time to hop on the phone together. All right, have an excellent week and I will see you the next time. Have a luxe day, ladies. Bye.