Tag Archives: weight loss

Intermittent Fasting for Weight Loss

August 15, 2019 ThatHelpfulDad Leave a comment

If you’re looking for a diet program that can provide real results to help you lose weight, then you might want to consider Intermittent Fasting. In this article, we’ll discuss the benefits of intermittent fasting specifically from a weight loss perspective so you can decide if this lifestyle is right for you.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series on Intermittent Fasting.

Hi, I’m Mike, That Helpful Dad. I’ve been living the Intermittent Fasting lifestyle for about 2 years now and it’s changed my life for the better. I hope it can help you too.

What is Intermittent Fasting?

Since this article is focused specifically on Intermittent Fasting for Weight Loss, we won’t spend a lot of time on definitions. We have other articles that dive deeper into the science behind Intermittent Fasting and all the various Intermittent Fasting schedules you can use to tailor an IF lifestyle that works best for you.

But, to ensure we’re on the same page, let’s give a simple definition for Intermittent Fasting as follows…

Intermittent Fasting is “a diet plan that cycle between a period of fasting and non-fasting over a defined period.”

A popular schedule for Intermittent Fasting is 16/8 for men or 14/10 for women. What that means is fasting for 16 hours and eating within an 8 hour window (or) fasting for 14 hours and eating within a 10 hour window. But other intermittent fasting schedules are options too – there is basically something for everybody with intermittent fasting.

Intermittent Fasting for Weight Loss

Will intermittent fasting help you lose weight? If so, how does intermittent fasting for weight loss work? Great questions, I’m glad you asked!

Since most of my readers are Average Joe’s like me this is not a high science blog, I won’t bore you with the pathophysiology behind how Intermittent Fasting works at the metabolic level, (however there are some great articles on this I’ll link to in the references section below).

For our purposes, the reason why Intermittent Fasting seems to work for weight loss is basically common sense…

If you are restricting or eliminating calories consistently over time, then you’ll tend to lose weight. It’s not rocket science.

Remember, with intermittent fasting you are not eating for a predefined period of time (for example 16 hours) – during this window you’ll be consuming little to no calories. Now when you put yourself into this ‘fasting’ state, a lot of potentially positive effects are occurring within your body that may benefit you beyond just the weight loss effect of IF, but given our focus on weight loss, the key here is that because you are not eating, you’re by definition restricting calories (at this during this time period) — and if you do that consistently over time you’ll lose weight.

So that’s it? Intermittent Fasting is just caloric restriction?

Not quite.

Myself and other proponents of IF would argue that Intermittent Fasting is much more than just restricting calories – after all history has shown us that diets solely focused on calorie counting, calorie restriction, and other ‘starvation’ diets tend to not be effective over a long period because people can’t (and frankly don’t want to) maintain that type of diet for every long – and when they come off of that type of diet there is a high rebound rate where people tend to put back the weight the lost (and possibly even gain more).

So what’s different with IF?

Intermittent Fasting vs Calorie Restriction Diets.

Will you likely restrict calories when you practice intermittent fasting?

Probably.

Does intermittent fasting REQUIRE you to restrict calories?

No.

Remember, intermittent fasting is basically a preset period not eating (the fasting state ) followed by a preset period of eating (the fed state; not to be confused with the feasting state). There’s nothing in the definition of IF or even in most of the various schedules associated with IF that specifically talk about calorie restriction.

It’s important to understand the difference between IF and basic calorie restriction diets because if you don’t then you may not have success with Intermittent Fasting.

Why?

Because if you gorge yourself on junk food during the time of you eat with IF and you consume more calories then you need each day, then you will GAIN WEIGHT with intermittent fasting.

Intermittent Fasting is NOT a Guaranteed Slam Dunk

Oops!

When I talk to people who are new to Intermittent Fasting I basically tell them that I stop eating around 6pm, skip breakfast and just have black coffee (or coffee with butter), and then start eating again at 10am. (I follow the 16/8 Intermittent Fasting version). Then, between 10am and 6pm I basically eat whatever I want.

While that’s true, there is an important caveat – when I say I eat whatever I want, I don’t eat lots of junk food. Don’t get me wrong, I love chicken wings, beer, nuts, and I can crush a whole bag of Doritos if you give it to me. I DO still eat all those things. HOWEVER I don’t do that every day because, first off I don’t want to, and secondly, I know that Intermittent Fasting isn’t going to overcome poor eating habits.

So I’ll say again, if you eat more calories than you need each day, then Intermittent Fasting isn’t going to be a weight loss solution for you and, more likely than not, you’ll probably gain weight with IF.

That would be disappointing. I don’t want to see that happen to you.

Intermittent Fasting for Weight Loss – a Plan for Success

If you really want to succeed with using intermittent fasting for weight loss, then you do yourself a favor and find out how many calories you need per day to maintain your weight. To do this, use a caloric calculator (Healthline has one that’s free and easy to use here).

As Healthline notes “an average woman needs to eat about 2000 calories per day to maintain, and 1500 calories to lose one pound of weight per week. An average man needs 2500 calories to maintain, and 2000 to lose one pound of weight per week.”

So if you are looking to lose a pound a week, shoot for the daily calorie target associated with your personal situation. For me, the goal is APPROXIMATELY 2000 calories a day.

I say ‘approximately’ because I don’t actually count calories, I just estimate them roughly throughout the day. In that sense, Intermittent Fasting is a fairly forgiving diet plan (so long as your estimates are not way off!).

OK, I know my daily calorie goal, so now what?

Once you know your daily calorie goal, then use Intermittent Fasting to help you achieve it.

This is the real beauty of Intermittent Fasting – it makes is a LOT easier to achieve a daily calorie goal because you’re limiting the time period in which you are eating and from there it’s simple math.

The less time you spend eating, the greater your chances of consuming less calories. This is the real key behind using Intermittent Fasting for Weight Loss.

STOP RIGHT THERE – so basically you’re saying you still want me to starve myself? , Mike, this sounds even worse than a starvation diet because now I have to starve myself for longer periods of time. That sucks. No way!

Intermittent Fasting = Starvation?

WRONG!

While it’s true that you won’t be eating for extended periods of time, you’re definitely NOT starving yourself. So long as you’re not eating a bunch of junk food, and you follow your normal healthy diet, you can eat whatever you want.

Look, here’s the bottom line with IF – if you simply skip the after dinner snacks and skip breakfast, you’ll probably have a pretty easy time with Intermittent Fasting for weight loss.

Seriously, is it really that hard to stop eating around 6pm and then not eat the next day till 8am (14 hour fast) or 10am (16 hour fast)? It’s not hard. I can do it and so can you.

Eat what you want (within reason), but just eat that food during the intermittent fasting schedule that works for you. Do it consistently over time and watch the pounds (and your waist line) melt away.

Intermittent Fasting for Weight Loss Resources

One of the goals of our site is to curate quality content from other sites and share it with you. The following articles on intermittent fasting for weight loss may be helpful to you:

Harvard School of Public Health – Diet Review – Intermittent Fasting for Weight Loss
Medical News Today – How to begin Intermittent Fasting
Healthline – Intermittent Fasting 101 – Beginner’s Guide
Wikipedia – Intermittent Fasting Resources

Intermittent Fasting for Weight Loss Books

What to Read Next?

Health and Fitness

How 1 Pat of Butter Helped Me Lose 10 Lbs and 3 Inches from My Belly!

May 20, 2018 ThatHelpfulDad 5 Comments

Butter – The Magic Bullet of Weight Loss?

What you are about to read is a true story. Nobody’s names have been changed and there are no witnesses to protect. In fact there isn’t even mystery to solve. The fact is, if you want to achieve the same results as me, then all you need to do is mimic what I did and use a single pat of butter to lose weight. It really works!

Share this article with this Pin-Friendly Image 🙂

If you are in a rush, here’s a TLDR Summary of this article…

Put a pat of grass-fed butter in your morning coffee and skip breakfast as part of an Intermittent Fasting Routine and watch the weight fly off and your waistline go down!

If you want to know more to my story, get a great recipe for your morning coffee, and understand WHY using butter to lose weight really works, then keep reading.

The Backstory

I’m in my mid-40’s and for the last few years I was getting more and more horrified to see my waistline expand (it got up to 37.5 inches!) and my energy decrease. So about 6 months ago I read Tim Ferris’ Tools of Titans book and heard about the benefits of Intermittent Fasting. Since I gained like 100+ useful tips from Tim’s book I decided to try his recommendation for Intermittent Fasting too — boy am I glad I did!

That said, this is not an article about Intermittent Fasting — I’ve already done that and you can read it here…

https://thathelpfuldad.com/intermittent-fasting/

Butter for Weight Loss – This Story

This IS an article about how I used grass-fed butter to lose weight as one of the key pillars of my success with Intermittent Fasting.

And the best thing about this idea is that it’s so freakin’ simple!

The basic premise is that you put 1/2 Tablespoon of Grassfed Butter in your black coffee in the morning. Then you skip breakfast, complete your 14–16 hour fast period, and happily move on with your day. Honestly it doesn’t get any easier than that.

Using this technique I lost 10 pounds (and counting) and more than 3 inches off my belly!

Butter for Weight Loss and YOU

If you try what I am suggesting, it’s very possible YOUR results could exceed mine.

After all, I started at a relatively healthy 5’8″, 166 pounds at baseline so there wasn’t a lot of weight for me to drop.

My main goal was to decrease my waistline — and that’s exactly what I did. Using a loose tape measure I am now at 34.5 inches around my belly, but from a practical standpoint I can now comfortably wear 32 inch waist pants again — Woo Hoo!

Common Questions about Butter for Weight Loss

Why Butter? How does this work?
Because butter is a fat and while we are in the Fasting State our bodies are burning fat for energy— we want this to continue as long as possible so we can lose weight, lower our waistline, and experience all the benefits of Intermittent Fasting. Butter essentially becomes an energy source (read: brain food) that we can use for fuel during the Fasting State. What we don’t want is to trigger an insulin response by eating carbs or protein during our fast — if we do that we move out of the Fasting State and into the Fed State.
Why GrassFed Butter?
Because we want to feed our body with healthy fats. My favorite options here are Kerrygold Irish Butter (no salt) and Vital Farms, but there are lots of choices here.
Why just 1/2 Tablespoon?
Because a full Tablespoon of butter has about 100 calories and, while there is a LOT of debate about this (which I compiled in my Intermittent Fasting article), many sources seem to agree that if you can stay under 50 calories while eating only healthy fats, then you’ll increase your odds of staying in the Fasting State.
What about Ghee, Coconut, or MCT Oil like Tim Ferris talked about?
Those may all work too, assuming you are choosing healthy, organic options. Last I read Tim actually uses some of these in his now famous Titanium Tea. As for me, while I’ve tried other options here, from a taste perspective, I just like the grassfed butter choice.
Why Black Coffee?
Because black coffee has no calories and won’t break your fast. Additionally, the caffeine is a source of energy that can compliment the healthy fat energy source from the butter.
Is this just the same thing as “Bulletproof Coffee?”
Definitely NOT. Bulletproof coffee does use ‘good fats’ in it’s recipes but it is full of so much fat calories that many suspect it breaks your fast. It’s a bit like overkill in my opinion but I guess it depends on your goals. If you are not practicing intermittent fasting and not trying to lose weight and therefore don’t care about all the calories in bulletproof coffee and just want the energy from it (as part of your Ketogenic Diet for example), then bulletproof coffee is potentially a great option for you. BUT for what we are trying to accomplish here (I.E. using butter for weight loss via intermittent fasting), bulletproof coffee is not a good choice for us.
Do you have a recipe for your version?
As a matter of fact I do! I call it my CinnaBUTTER Coffee Cup and you can read it here…

https://thathelpfuldad.com/cinnabutter-coffee-recipe/

Butter for Weight Loss – The Bottom Line?

Look, I’m not scientist here and I can’t tell you with medical research certainty why grass-fed butter in your coffee is so beneficial (or not). All I can tell you is that I tried one of Tim Ferris’ ‘self guinea pig’ experiments and put the idea to the test on myself — and in my experiment consistently using 1/2 TBSP of grass-fed butter in my morning coffee helped me achieve results that I am super stoked about.

I’m grateful that Tim shared his ideas in his book. I’m hopeful that by sharing my ideas with you it will inspire you to consider this lifestyle change. After all, I’m just an Average Joe and if I can do it, so can you.