Opinion

Fasting your way

What does the word fasting mean to you? A religious habit? A starvation mode? A detox nourishing act for your body? Or maybe it’s everything at once! Fasting can create an incredible chemical healing response in the body that helps you to lose weight, improve brain clarity, increase your energy levels, and prevent disease. 
 
However, when you consider a fasting lifestyle, you may jump without any guidance and assume that all you have to do is stop eating. But the more I study this topic, the more I realise how complex it is and the more I need to understand about food chemistry and what happens in my body both during and post fasting! 
 
To grasp all the benefits of fasting, there are specific strategies around what and when you eat, because if not done properly (we are all individually different and most importantly men and women cannot do it the same way), the results can be far more negative than positive.  
 
So here is my free advice to you. If you are a woman, with or without a regular cycle, perimenopause, or menopause: Sister, you better do this the right way!
 
And there are many other variables to consider too: Are you an athlete? Do you have a sedentary lifestyle? Are you trying to lose weight or only prolong your longevity? 
 
Ok, so now fasting just got complex! Wasn’t it simply just a matter of narrowing your eating window period by skipping either breakfast or dinner? Well, yes and no. 
 
NO: Writing this in a month in which we celebrated International Woman’s Day, I can’t lose this chance to shout out to you women (or you men as husbands and fathers) to acknowledge and accept the fact that women’s hormone levels change on average four times throughout the course of a month.  
 
Women, cannot eat (or fast), train, and recover by following protocols and studies that were tested on men. If you’re a woman and want to be at your highest performance and compete fairly for your place in the world, then there’s so much information and care that your body demands from you. 
 
What if I told you that in a month, there’s a specific week you should fast longer, train your favorite cardio sweat session, hit weightlifting personal records, and still, glow and get that job promotion? 
 
On the other hand, there will be some days when all those hacks could harm you and all you will want to do is sit and binge on Netflix. Then you will simply blame this horrific thing called ‘your period’. 
 
But what if I told you that understanding your cycle is the most powerful and advantageous tool of knowledge you could possibly have? Wouldn’t you be happy if I told you that before your cycle starts again, if you eat those nice fibrous healthy carbs, in the right portions, it will help you become more fit? 
 
Wouldn’t you be happy to know that there are some specific days that you will rock the gym and others when you will be just as amazing by simply going for a long walk? 
 
How do women’s cycles relate to fasting? An opinion column (or even the whole magazine) wouldn’t be enough to explain it all, so my goal here is just to make women alert to these issues and encourage you to start researching if want to be at the top of your game all the time! 
 
Throughout each month, women need to be in and out of different fasting protocols (when to do up to 13, 16 or even 36 hours), different foods and different lifestyle choices to be able to produce the correct hormones properly. Whether you’re a woman who’s trying to get that promotion, conceive or hit a world record, you must learn to work with yourself… Fighting against all odds and your competition is stressful enough. See your cycle as THE TOOL!
 
Since I was young, I have had a so-called “genetic predisposition to hormonal imbalance”… But thanks to this label that doctors wanted to stick on me, I never accepted such a fact and simply gave up following conventional and non-individualistic protocols. For the past seven years, my passion for understanding hormones, food, and their relationship to women’s cycles has grown… being my own guinea pig in this particular subject, I’ve been altering my perception of my cycle, to see it as the key rather than a curse. 
 
Women can be and do so much more when we understand what is going on with our bodies. Our body, skin, energy, appetite, and confidence can all be at their peak if we spend some time bio-hacking ourselves! 
 
But it’s not a puzzle that you just solve once. You’ll need to be patient and love yourself. You will need to be more aware and be truthful to your fitness/health goals (not to Instagram). 
 
You will also need to open up! Rather than sharing your latest fad diet, share your ‘cycle diet’ that will bring you lifelong benefits! You’ll be surprised at how many women suffer quietly and simply accept how messed up their cycle is (athletes, coaches, successful women, and unfortunately, teenagers). The more I open up about this subject, the more I find women sharing issues and feelings about their cycles: feelings of anger, frustration and a lack of support. 
 
Now, the YES: and here comes my piece of practical advice.  If all this is new to you, just start small.  Start pushing your breakfast back one hour later each week. There will be no harm if you do a simple 13 to 15-hour fast… that can be beneficial to anyone because you are simply giving your gut some rest after the hard work of digesting your food. This will also naturally create a lifestyle of having earlier dinners or burning some fat (instead of sugar) after you wake up, so get active and work out before your first meal. 
 
I wish you a happy and nourishing fasting!
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