It was Bobby who stumbled upon intermittent fasting last year in 2016.

Since he shared with me that was gonna do it, I was interested to give it a try. My purpose for doing it was to control weight gain that was most likely to happen during the Hari Raya celebration.

I’ve watched the videos by Dr Jason Fung on his research on obesity.

He mentioned a lot of research and a few things that he shared have stuck with me since.

1. The reason why people put on weight is because certain food activates the release of insulin and the insulin converts glucose to glycogen and then to fats.
2. The timing and frequency of eating activates the release of frequency of insulin.
3. The more frequent insulin are released into the body, the higher the chance of insulin resistance. Insulin resistance can caused diabetes and that will mostly lead to various complicated diseases.

Intermittent fasting works to either control weight gain or weight loss because when the body is fasting, there isn’t any insulin that are released into the body. When there’s no insulin therefore there isn’t glucose​ to be converted to fat. Since there isn’t any food being consumed by the body during the fasted period then the body burns fats for energy.

The best thing that come out of fasting or intermittent fasting is it can potentially reverse type 2 diabetes.

He also shared that the best intermittent fast is best done in 18-24hrs. This gives the body time to make use of fats as fuel for the body.

I personally subscribe to this. With Ramadhan it’s so easy for me to fast for 20-23hrs. I break my fast at 6.30pm and finish my meal at 7.30pm and that’s it, I’m done for the day. I don’t wake up early at 4am to have another meal, instead I just drink water if I do wake up.

In 2016, I was able to maintain my weight at 67kg during the whole raya month. It did go up by 2kg at the end of certain days due to non-stop eating at people’s open houses but it stabilised at 67kg.

Since then based on my own experience, I understand why it’s important for the body to be free of insulin. When I’m fasting, what I’m doing is I let my body to be free of insulin for most of the time. Since the body is free of any food due to fasting, insulin won’t be released and the body will be using up the fat reserves for energy.

This is why I started intermittent fasting. Fast for the whole day and just have 1 meal a day.

During normal days, I rarely have breakfast, sometimes I have lunch at 2pm or 3pm and dinner is at 6pm and then continue to fast until the next day.

If I decided to have lunch, I do so at 2pm or 3pm. This is because I want to make sure that when I eat, my next meal should be in within 4 to 6 hours window. The smaller the time window the better to maximise the fast to burn more fats.

I did this before I started juicing and had been practicing it for about a year now.

I was chubbier about a year ago as you could see from my instagram picture below. This picture was taken on my day one of intermittent fasting.

The picture below is taken today, the same day as I posted this post.

My weight has dropped from 67kg to 62kg. I have to admit not all of it is because of just intermittent fasting since last year. It’s a combination of being active exercising since January 2017 and also juicing since late April 2017.

I will continue to practice intermittent fasting despite me juicing and all. I view this as I’m training my body to access its fats reserves effectively. I kinda appreciate that my body is using its fats reserves when I’m fasting.

To more burning fats!