Is Fasting Good For Weight Loss?

For many people, yours truly included, fasting is an effective way to lose weight. Overeating or eating too fast, feeding cravings and emotions not hunger, eating calorie-concentrated foods with lack of physical activity, all lead to unwanted weight-gain.  

Much of what we eat feeds cravings and addictions rather than nutritional needs.  The problem with feeding a craving is two-fold: we crave all the wrong things, fat, salt and processed sugar.  When is the last time you had a “big carrot attack”?  The second problem is, cravings cannot be satisfied, hence we overeat far too much of the wrong kinds of food.   

This is where fasting can help and is a great new beginning.  

My own experience was no exception. I still remember when I was starting on my diet many years ago where I was having problem to stick to it.

 

As I love food so much, refraining from eating and forcing myself to eat something else (you know like the greens and in small portion) was really a gargantuan task.

Finally I decided to fast. Somehow, as I grew up fasting constantly due to my religion requirement I find fasting rather easy. I fast I did and in no time, I started to lose weight.

One thing for sure is fasting provides a tangible starting point for any of us to kick off our weight loss program. It’s probably like a marriage where there must be a divorce before there can be remarriage. Interestingly, most people are more intimately involved with their eating than they are with their spouses. 

So, fasting effectively serves the ‘divorce papers’ to your former food-lovers. There is remorse, yearning, some testify to loneliness, as if an old friend has died.  Makes sense, addiction is always there, waiting to comfort empty emotions, a comfort that comes at a great price.   

Clear starting points are important to change.  Over years of compromise you may have effortlessly fallen into physical disrepair.  Moving toward health is an uphill climb, demanding a strong exercising of your will-muscle.  Fasting is a great way to start working that muscle out.

And fasting will build powerful momentum, from a dead standstill to exciting motion. We all need a push in the right direction, fasting is just that. 

Having said that, never use fasting as your primary source of keeping weight off.  The secret is to learn how to fast healthy and eat healthy.  You fast to lose weight, than you eat in a way to keep the weight off.  That's balance.

Happy Fasting!