4 of the people I work with will be doing Ramadan soon. No eating or drinking for about 15 hours a day.
And where some of them have said “I’m going to lose so much weight because I’m not eating”, others have asked “Is this going to make me gain weight?”
Same situation…completely different view of what might happen?
And what’s interesting is how they’ve said that hunger comes in waves but then disappears. Have you ever felt that?
When you’re hungry, but then get distracted by work / kids / emails etc? All of a sudden, 3 hours pass and you’re still alive lol
And this is – in part – due to a hunger hormone called ‘ghrelin’, which although sounds like a gremlin, isn’t 👹
It spikes and tells you to eat.
But what’s really interesting is that when scientists told people that a low calorie drink was ‘full of calories’, their hunger hormones LOWERED…making them less hungry.
^^^ Power of the mind..
And it begs the question:
What actually is hunger?
I mean, one thing that I noticed last year when I did a day of fasting with one of my clients doing Ramadan was how habitual a lot of our eating is.
“Oh it’s 12 o’clock, I best eat”
“Oh, I’m having a cup of tea, where’s the biscuits?”
But anyway, can skipping meals make you gain weight because you go into starvation mode?
Well, not quite.
If that was actually the case, you wouldn’t see anorexic people and starving people wouldn’t be skinny.
THAT SAID…
1) Not eating and losing weight can actually LOWER your metabolism which means you burn less calories whilst doing every day tasks, like reading this 😉 which ‘could’ make it more difficult to maintain your weight loss by doing the same things that helped you lose weight
^^ This is why I recommend some type of muscle strengthening work to help you tone up and feel fitter (so you do more without really knowing…😜)
2) By not eating for long periods and then be faced with a family gathering with loads of food (like in Ramadan), you may make some pretty poor food choices and overeat to the extent that you are stuffed full of higher calorie foods.
My advice?
Before you go to the buffet, the family meal, the bbq, instead of starving yourself completely, right before just having something with some protein in to tell your hunger hormones to go down, stabilise your blood sugar levels and help you make better-informed decisions about your food choices. For example:
* A greek yoghurt
* eggs / small omelette
* Half a bagel with some soft cheese and smoked salmon
* Some cooked meats / sandwich ham on a few rice cakes
Simple!
Give it a try!
Matt
PS. Just a week and a half left to apply for your free trial on my Fit For Life Body Transformation Programme.
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