My Intermittent Fasting Experience

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Let me start by saying I am not well versed in the science of intermittent fasting (IF).  There are plenty of people out there who can give you a lot more information in regards to what is supposed to happen when you fast, so I would ask that you direct those kinds of questions elsewhere.  What I do know about, though, is how my body has responded to condensing the amount of time I eat every day from about 17 hours to right around 8 hours, effectively having a 16-hour window every day where I "fast".

I've been following this IF regimen for just under two weeks now.  Not a huge amount of time for sure, but nevertheless I have already noticed some pretty drastic changes, particularly in the stability of my blood glucose levels.  For years my blood glucose levels were usually maintained between 140-160 throughout the day.  If I got below 100 I would start feeling like I was dropping into hypoglycemia.  This was contrary to the standard recommendations that stated my blood glucose level should be between 80-120.

After about 5 days of IF I noticed my average blood glucose levels had dropped throughout the day and I was right within the recommended 80-120 range throughout most of the day.  The other thing I noticed was that I could keep my blood glucose levels in the 80's and 90's not feel like I was going to drop lower, which is always a concern I have had.

Because of these lower blood glucose readings I am taking less insulin throughout the day due to both fewer blood glucose spikes requiring additional insulin and a lowering of the basal level of insulin I receive consistently throughout the day.

As far as my weight goes, the first three days I was following the IF process I went from 238 lbs to 231 lbs.  Now, for someone like me who has traditionally had a difficult time putting on weight, this was not pleasing to see.  But once I figured out how to effectively eat more in that 8-hour window I have put back on four pounds.

So up until now my eating schedule has been trying to start at 12 noon every day and concluding around 8 PM.  There is usually an hour or two kind of mid-morning where I get really hungry, but otherwise I feel fine.  I have also noticed that, despite feeling completely depleted the first time I tried to train while fasted, exercising usually helps take the edge off, as does tea and water.

The idea of IF had been proposed to me before, but I wasn't really sure what to make of it.  In Engineering The Alpha the authors talk a bit about IF and they brought up some interesting points as far as increasing growth hormone and improving insulin sensitivity.  I'm not sure if insulin sensitivity can be improved in a Type-1 diabetic, but I figure it is worth a shot so I decided to try it out.

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I'll post updates on my IF experience every few weeks to this blog so be on the lookout if you want to follow along.  Additionally, if you want to try out IF for yourself, check out Engineering The Alpha as well as the multitude of other resources online.

Your body.  Your training.

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Engineering The Alpha

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"All men were meant to be heroes of their own tale."

--Engineering The Alpha

This past Friday I was sitting at dinner enjoying a double double-double (two pounds of ground beef plus cheese and bacon) when I saw a commercial come on for an FDA-approved testosterone boosting gel that was applied like a deodorant.  The ad wasn't trying to appeal to bodybuilders or guys who wanted to improve their rec league performance.  It was targeting middle-aged men who quite simply want to feel like men again.  This commercial is not the first of its kind that I've seen.  In recent years there have been more and more ads popping up asking the question, "Is it low T?".  That's where Engineering The Alpha comes in. 

Engineering The Alpha by Adam Bornstein and John Romaniello is specifically targeted towards men who want to optimize their hormones, including increasing testosterone, growth hormone, and insulin sensitivity.  Bornstein and Romaniello head the fitness division of Schwarzenegger.com and have helped hundreds of personal training clients achieve better physiques and better lives through diet and exercise regimens specifically designed to improve certain hormone levels.  After years of trial and error, Engineering The Alpha contains the workout advice and nutrition plans that they have found to yield the best results.

In addition to the diet and exercise advice, Engineering The Alpha gets into the psychology of boosting testosterone and what it means to be a man from a basic, primal perspective, in particular discussing the idea of the monomyth as proposed by Joseph Campbell.  Essentially, what the monomyth says is that all great stories of good versus evil follow the same plot line with only the characters and location of the story being changed.  This general story is what Campbell called the Hero's Journey, which he describes in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces.  The purpose behind Engineering The Alpha is to show all men that they too can live their own Hero's Journey.

Engineering The Alpha is not about becoming the top dog of your group of buddies or the people you know, it is about becoming the best version of yourself, the alpha version of you.

An easy read, I enjoyed the ideas proposed within the book.  Bornstein and Romaniello discuss intermittent fasting (IF) and the importance of sleep as they play to optimizing male hormones and I have found the former concept very interesting.  Currently, I am performing some IF trial and error on myself as well as going through the training program (with appropriate modifications) found in the book.

Engineering The Alpha is not about building huge muscles or becoming a testosterone-infused jerk.  It's about presenting basic diet, exercise, and lifestyle changes that can be made to have the greatest opportunity of optimizing specific hormones in order to become the best version of yourself.

Your body.  Your training.

Enjoy this review?  Get a copy of Engineering The Alpha in the Self Made® Book Store!

Want to use this article in your blog, newsletter, or other platform?  You may, but be sure to include all of the biographical information found in the yellow box below!