The ONLY way to introduce Intermittent Fasting to your diet for LONG-TERM RESULTS.
Some of the most common questions I get as a Fitness trainer are directly related to something called Intermittent Fasting (IF). Like most things in the fitness industry, the message you’re getting is deliberately convoluted. The reason is, business-savvy fitness professionals are aware that you can pay that trainer on Instagram to tell you exactly how to do it because her program is the best way to get those goals you want.
The fitness industry does not want you to find things out for yourself. They want to put the knowledge you need behind a pay wall. They entice you with testimonials, transformations and a surfeit of photos of themselves looking at their reflection in the mirror. When was the last time you heard:
You’ve failed trying every other way, but my way is the easiest ever! Only $499 and your first-born child.
Okay, probably never. But the sentiment at least, I’m sure you’ve heard.
Behind the scenes in the fitness industry, one of the key metrics that businesses use is that of Lifetime Value — the revenue a single client will bring to the business over their lifetime. The most valuable clients to a business are those that don’t get results and keep trying. They have a vested interest in keeping you where you are, if you smash your goals, and become empowered enough to do it on your own, they’ve lost a client.
I’ve been losing clients my whole career. Simply because I teach them what they need to know to do it themselves — I have no interest in having clients pay a subscription fee to learn.
So, let’s cut through all the crap you’re being peddled. I will explain exactly what is the easiest way to introduce IF into your diet, and some of the reasons behind my choices.
Your not-so-secret secret weapon
Everybody who has walked away with a nutrition plan designed by me has one thing in common:
They fast. Not fast in the Usain Bolt sense, fast in the “Where’s Dinner?” sense. Intermittent Fasting (IF) is an umbrella term for various meal-timing schedules that cycle between voluntary fasting (or reduced calorie intake) and non-fasting periods. The American Heart Association has stated that IF may cause “weight loss, reduced insulin resistance and lower the risk of cardio-metabolic diseases” and a 2019 review found that IF may help with obesity, dyslipidemia, insulin resistance, hypertension and inflammation. So some pretty big players are on team IF, clearly. But you already knew that, right?
What you need to know is how you’re going to implement IF when there’s a multitude of versions out there.
Lucky for you, that’s what I’m here for. In my time as a Fitness Trainer I have recommended IF to every single person who asked me for diet advice, or a nutrition program. I had to do better than to tell my clients to “Just try it”. Intermittent Fasting is a fundamental piece of The QED Framework — the framework I developed, and the subject of my upcoming e-book The QED Framework — How to Make Any Diet Work For You, to be able to make any diet work, no matter what dietary constraints there are or might be in the future.
To easily introduce IF to a client, I knew that if a new habit we are trying to form is unnecessarily difficult in the beginning, it is almost never going to turn in to a long term habit, and they are the only habits I care to develop.
The key for IF is to start gradually, and the way I suggest that you do it is incredibly easy to implement.
It’s a Matter of Time
The key concept from IF we are going to use is that of time-restricted feeding. All this means is that we have a limited time window to eat all the food we need for that day.
The question you probably have in your head already is “How long should I fast for?”. I’m sure you already know there are internet communities rabidly debating the optimum size of these time windows. Should you fast for 12 hours? 4 hours? 1 day? Is my partner going to leave me if I eat when I’m supposed to be fasting?
Good questions. Now, are you ready for something amazing?
The relative size of the time windows does not matter in this framework.
Hold it right there, Nikki. You’re telling me that I can pick whatever time window length I want? What if I make the wrong choice?
Well, italicised font. Here’s the thing: There are no wrong choices, just educated decisions. Now, I know after reading that statement, some of you are about to be paralysed by choice. So let’s consider two friends, Dian and Jane, who are undertaking the latest Primal diet. Jane will also be adding in IF, and they will be both eating 1500 calories. Let’s see what that looks like across the day:
Dian
Breakfast
Dian: 375 calories
Jane: 0 calories (fasting period)
Lunch
Dian: 375 calories
Jane: 500 calories
Dinner
Dian: 375 calories
Jane: 500 calories
Snacks
Dian: 375 calories
Jane: 500 calories
Total
Dian: 1500 calories
Jane: 1500 calories
Wow, that’s consistency. I knew those two would do well on a Primal diet.
There’s two important observations that we can make here:
- The only change made is that Jane skips breakfast and has her first meal at lunchtime.
- They are both eating the same number of calories across the day, yet Jane is eating more calories per meal.
This, Dear Reader, is the reason why IF works in practice for so many. All that Jane did was skip breakfast. Previously, she had heard through conventional wisdom that breakfast was the most important meal of the day so she would force herself to eat it, even though she is never hungry in the morning (sound familiar?). Well lucky for Jane, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day” was a marketing strategy developed by John Harvey Kellogg to sell his new breakfast cereal called Corn Flakes in the 19th century, and has no significance for us (3).
After making this small change, Jane can now have larger meals across the day! How many times have you been on a poorly designed diet and not just been hungry, but damn hungry, and that is the thing that eventually breaks your willpower and makes you inhale that pint of ice cream that’s been calling your name. Imagine if, in that moment of weakness, I said to you:
“If you diet my way, you can both eat that ice cream AND eat more of it per meal if you wanted”
I think for most, that would be a resounding YES.
BREAKFAST WAS NEVER MY FRIEND: A How To
Alright! Let’s get practical. These are the steps we are going to take to place IF in our framework:
- Combine breakfast with lunch. Eat this brunch whenever you feel hungry around lunchtime and continue eating normally for the rest of the day
- There is no step 2.
Wow, a one-step process! I told you early on that this wouldn’t be as hard as you thought.
No timers, no apps, no ratios. No more mental castigation when you ate before the clock struck 4pm.
This is how you best introduce IF into your life in order to maintain such a beneficial habit up indefinitely.
I fast every day, but on any of those days, I have no actual idea how long the fasting phase lasts. I fast until I want to eat. Doing it my way is absolutely friction free. No more staring at the clock until 2pm rolls around. No more pushing your body into places of deprivation where it doesn’t need to be.
Just skip that first meal and eat the combined breakfast & lunch whenever you feel like it.
That’s it. Just try to gradually add IF into your day. Nothing massive at first — it’s tempting to start strong because you’re motivated. Motivation is your enemy, we want to set up a habit that we can do when motivation inevitably disappears. The only thing we have to rely on is discipline.
And as the saying goes,
“Discipline equals Freedom” — Jocko Willink.
Addendum: After receiving the same question from a number of people after publishing this article, I need to clarify that adding liquid calories to your fasting phase does not constitute fasting. The only liquids you can consume DURING YOUR FASTING PHASE are water (and plenty of it), black coffee and black/green/white teas — all of which are unsweetened with nothing ELSE added.
About the author:
Nikki Thomas — My mission is simple: To empower people through fitness education to take their lives into their own hands, for FREE, forever. I want to spread my message to as many people as I can, so join me on the following platforms:
Instagram/Facebook/TikTok/Patreon/YouTube: @QEDfitness
The QED Framework — How to Make ANY Diet Work for You will be available in e-book format soon, for FREE, for everyone on all platforms where good, FREE e-books are found.
