Here’s How to Intermittent Fast (and how NOT to) for Midlife Women

Are you feeling bloated or inflamed and you're wondering what's happening and how to fix it? Well, I'm going to show you when and how to do intermittent fasting. If this is how you're feeling and when you shouldn't do intermittent fasting. So stick with me today. Hi, I'm Nagina Abdullah and I have a degree in molecular and cell biology from UC Berkeley and a graduate degree from NYU. I spent over 20 years working for large healthcare companies like Aetna, Cigna and Kaise. And I personally went through a massive weight loss transformation where I felt like I had uncontrollable sugar cravings. I couldn't lose the weight. And even though I tried to eat healthy and I exercised so much, I knew all the calorie counts. And I have tried everything from Weight Watchers to Nutrisystem to Noom to eating less and exercising more. Well, after I started accessing scientific research that I had access to because of my degree, I learned that there are foods that we can add to our diet and ways that we can increase our metabolism. Metabolism instead of decreasing the food intake that we're, that we are having. And as a result of nourishing my body, increasing my metabolism and adding foods, I lost 40 pounds in nine months. And it has been over 13 years that that weight has stayed off. And I'm here to share everything with you now. I want to let you know when it's not okay to do intermittent fasting and when it is okay to do intermittent fasting and the actual benefits you're going to get from it. And let me start with a quick about myself now, though I had lost that weight, I found that when I hit my mid-40s, all of these changes started happening to my body. Even though I was doing the same things that I had been doing for over 10 years and having a flat stomach, a lean body, and, and, and my dream body. But everything started shifting even though I didn't do anything differently. And what I found was I was starting to get inflamed in my belly. Now let me know in the comments if you are feeling inflamed, especially in your midse. So I started finding that no matter what I was doing, my stomach was round and it was, it was just, it wasn't budging no matter how much I worked out and no matter how little I ate or no matter how much I ate even. And so after doing a lot of research, I found out that what was happening is that starting in perimenopause we are starting to have more inflammation. And this is because we, our estrogen is decreasing and estrogen has been shown to inhibit the effects of inflammation. So once our estrogen starts declining, usually in someone's mid-40s, but it can happen earlier than that. Women can start to have an enhanced secretion of the pro inflammatory adipocytokines, which are being released more often. So there is something actually different that's happening in our bodies. And as a result of this additional inflammation, we start feeling and experiencing things like insulin resistance, things like gut health issues. And even if you're healthy and eating extremely healthy like I was, this can still affect you because your hormones are declining and creating this inflammation. Okay? So, so now if you are, if you are experiencing this, you got to listen in, okay? Because I have a solution for you. I personally went through this and I was wowed because I never heard about this from anywhere or anyone else and start until I started doing my own detailed research. Now, let me start off by telling you when it isn't okay to do intermittent fasting, and then I'm going to share when it is and why it is okay to do intermittent fasting. So it's not okay to do intermittent fasting if you are a woman in midlife that is eating less than you should be. And let me tell you why this is so important, because this is most women in midlife, we have been taught over the course of our lives that restricting food helps us lose weight. And so in midlife it's very common that we start to gain weight. And this is a result of our declining hormones as well as some lifestyle factors. And, and so when we start experiencing this addition weight gain right away, the first thing that comes to our mind often is, well, I need to eat less or I need to cut calories or I should skip breakfast. And sometimes you may have heard about your friend's cousin's sister who lost 30 pounds from intermittent fasting. And you heard about your best friend's college roommate who lost 50 pounds from intermittent fasting, and you're thinking, oh my God, I gotta try this. It seems like it's working. But here's the thing. If you are already under eating, which most women in midlife are, because we've been hearing those messages for our life that we need to undereat to lose weight, intermittent fasting is simply going to cut your calories further and it's going to cause you to actually be less nourished and less healthy because you're not getting in the amount of food and calories that you need. Now, we actually do need to eat so that we can increase our metabolism and that we can give our body the micro and macronutrients that it needs to carry out the processes that are normal. Now, when we withhold food from our body, we go into starvation mode, and then we're not giving our body the nutrients that it needs. And so this impacts our detox pathways. It also impacts our gut health and digestion pathways. And you're also not fueling your hormones, such as your thyroid hormone. And so that could be underperforming. And your thyroid hormone is the cause of much of your metabolism. So in midlife, if you are a woman, that is undereating, which many, many women are. And I know that because I've coached over 1500 clients who are in midlife to lose weight. And almost all of them come to me and they feel like they're eating okay, but they're actually under eating okay. So I want you to know, if you want to try intermittent fasting and you don't see results, it's because you're already undereating, and it's not going to help you further. In fact, it's going to hurt you because you're going to cut your calories more. Now, let me share when intermittent fasting can be helpful for you. Like it was for me when I was having massive amounts of inflammation as I was going through perimenopause. Now, when I was in my mid-40s, I mentioned I started experiencing a lot of belly puffiness that was happening, and that puffiness was also coming into my face. And I really didn't understand what was going on until I started exploring further. And then I found out that due to inflammation, there are a lot of benefits of intermittent fasting. And so I'm going to tell you what those benefits are. But let me tell you what happened to me first so you can understand how powerful it can be in the right situation. Now, I started making sure that I was eating enough, and I actually started needing to eat more to increase my metabolism even more during perimenopause. And this is because partly our bodies are not absorbing the nutrients as much as it was when we were decades younger. And so we need to make sure that we're eating enough so that we can get those nutrients in a healthy way. And so what I started doing is I started feeding myself up, making sure I was eating enough. And then I introduced two intermittent fasting days in the week where I ate less. During those two days, to balance out me eating more on the other days. And the process of intermittent fasting had such amazing benefits that I'm going to explain right now that after the first day of me doing intermittent fasting, I dropped like one or two pounds that I hadn't been losing no matter what I was trying. And then when I did the second day, I lost two to three full, you know, total pounds in that one week. And so after almost two years of my weight loss not budging, I started the cycle of feeding myself up and then intermittent fasting for two days in a row and my weight just dropped. And so I continued to do that every single week. And as long as I was consistent and very close to the foods that I was needed to eat on the days that I was feeding myself up, my weight kept consistently falling. And this was totally different than anything else that had happened to me prior to perimenopause. And so I really wanted to understand what was going on. And I want to share that with you right now. Now, intermittent fasting can have anti inflammatory effects on our body at the cellular level. And that's by triggering a process called autophagy. Now autophagy is where the body basically cleans up damaged cells which leads to a restriction in inflammatory markers and potentially protects against chronic inflammation. Related dise research that was published in a journal called Cell Reports. The team talks about how fasting raises the levels of a chemical in the blood known as arachidonic acid, which inhibits inflammation. The research also shows that fasting can reduce inflammatory cytokines, which I mentioned earlier, can be increased when our estrogen decreases. So as a result of going into perimenopause and menopause, our body doesn't have the protective anti inflammation effect from in from estrogen. And so as a result cytokines are released that are inflammatory. But when you fast, it's been shown that it can reduce these inflammatory cytokines. And there's also more regulation of immune cell function. What that means is that fasting can modulate the activity of immune cells. And this is really important because as we're going into our 40s, 50s and beyond, our immune system is not as strong as it was. And sometimes we may be experiencing things that we didn't. Or for example, if you've ever had thyroid issues, they may come into play even further. And if you are not regulating your thyroid hormone or if you are experiencing antibodies that called Hashimoto's or any other antibodies in your body, they may be upregulated because your because your hormones are not protecting you anymore and as a result you have inflammation and your immune system is being regulated by doing a little bit of intermittent fasting. Now let me explain to you how intermittent fasting can actually work because we see that there are all those benefits. What is so important is that you're eating enough of the foods that increase your metabolism. So in order for you to lose weight from intermittent fasting, you still want to make sure that you're eating the right kinds of foods. This is not only about calories in, calories out, but you actually want to focus on eating foods. According to my fat burning food framework, which is where you're eating, 40 to 50% of your plate is protein, 40 to 50% of your Plate is vegetables. And then you're having healthy carbs or healthy fats. And these are both very critical to your health. So on your normal days of eating, you really want to make sure you're eating enough of these. And the portion sizes are key. I've talked in several of my other videos that you definitely want to have 30 grams of protein at least in each meal. In fact, 30 to 40 is better. And then you want to have three meals plus at least one snack. So you're really surpassing over 100 grams of protein a day. But then you also want to make sure you're having enough vegetables for your fiber and also healthy carbs and healthy fats. Now if you are eating enough of these foods, then if you introduce two intermittent fasting days, which could be 16 hour to 18 hour fasts. You know a way that I like to do it is I like to do it where I finish eating around 8pm and then I start eating again the next day at noon. Okay. And that really works for me. So that is a 16 hour fast. The other thing that you could do is that you could stop eating at 6 and then you could, you could start eating at noon. If you eat, if you fast for longer, there could be more benefits. But what is ideal is if you start with a 16 hour fast, you see how that works for you. And then if you see that the benefits are starting to decrease, you could increase that fasting to around 18 hours. Hours. So now the key to intermittent fasting is not to do it every day. Because if you're doing intermittent fasting every day, it's going to be very easy for you to under eat. And when you under eat, you're not going to give your metabolism the boost that it needs. And so you'll stay stuck in your weight though you may be decreasing your inflammation a bit, but your body will get used to it. And you really want to give your body this diet variation for a little bit so that you can surprise your body and you can really clear out your cells with that autophagy process. Now here's a few strategies that I want to give you on your days that you are feeding yourself up, which are the other days other than the two days that you could do the intermittent fasting and the two days in when you're doing intermittent fasting, try to do it two days in a row. You'll find that it's very effective when you do that. Now number one, on your days that you're feeding yourself up, go for healthy fats. This has been one of the most instrumental things that I found to decrease my inflammation was to eat more healthy fats in the form of olive oil. Oils in the form of oils, but also in the form of fish like salmon, tuna and sardines, using things like flax seeds and walnuts and then free range chicken thighs. These are healthy fats that have oils in them and that are going to help soothe your body and create more of an anti inflammatory effect. Secondly, you definitely want to eat different types of fruits and vegetables which are rich in anti inflammatory antioxidants, not to mention very high in fiber. And so they're helping you to, they're helping you to keep stay full by eating more healthy foods. Now a lot of really great high fiber anti inflammatory vegetables are things like broccoli, green beans, cauliflower, carrots, leafy greens, also zucchini and then some, some fruits are apples, berries and tangerines. Now finally, what I want to share with you to really add this anti inflammatory effect into your days that you're feeding yourself up is to spice it up. I recommend that you add turmeric into your diet which has show which has been proven to have many anti inflammatory effects. And add a sprinkle of black pepper with the turmeric because it helps to absorb curcumin, which is the compound in turmeric, 2,000% more. Okay. And so those are a few strategies for you to use as you're feeding yourself up. Now I want you to remember that eating more is the number one way that you're going to boost your metabolism in midlife. And when you introduce a couple intermittent fasting days, if you're eating enough, you can very likely see a reduction in inflammation and you can really wow yourself with how your stomach can start to flatten. Now if this was interesting to you and you want to find out more about how you can lose weight, book a call with me@masala body.com apply this will be a 10 minute connect call where I can hear about your goals and your challenges and I can see if there's a way that I can help you with one of my programs such as my six month Slim Down Transformation program where I help women to increase their fat burning by boosting their metabolism and then I help them reduce their inflammation by doing by feeding themselves up, doing a flush that flushes out their toxins and then also introducing some intermittent fasting days that will clear out a lot of the inflammation that you have and help you be healthier right now, slimmer right now, but help you be but give you the tools to be to have a permanent lifestyle change with low chronic inflammation that is going to last you for the rest of your life. Now I would love for you to check out this video right here where I talk more about how to burn fat in a healthy way when you're in midlife.