If you poke around the CrossFit message board, Performance Menu forums or a few other enlightened locales, you are likely to see a few questions regarding intermittent fasting (IF). Some of the questions involve the theory behind IF… what one might expect to gain from tweaking nutrient intake in specific ways. The other questions involve HOW to actually do IF. Theory is great but the how-to is really where it’s at if you want to gain the benefits or simply scratch this nutritional approach off your list of potential Holy Grails. I want to walk y’all through a reasonable progression for integrating IF into your training program and address some common questions. We will not consider the theory in this article (much) as we have peered inside the Black Box of IF in previous issues. This article will just get you up and running while assessing whether or not IF is right for you and YOUR goals.

Why Am I Doing This?

Even though we are not going deep into the theory of IF, it might be helpful to review what benefits one might expect from tinkering with this stuff. Assuming we are correct regarding IF we might see the following:

Increaseed Lifespan. Or, more specifically, effective lifespan. I don’t think anyone is interested in living 150 years with 75 of those years spent on life support looking at hospital walls. We want to live long and well and IF might help us do this.

Improved performance and recovery. Run faster, jump higher, lift more… come back and do it again sooner. Intermittent fasting might help.

Simplification. If intermittent fasting provides no other benefit than simplifying one’s life, it may be enough to warrant at least occasional use of this technique. The bodybuilding turds would have us believe we will waste away in a cortisol hell if we miss one meal. Bullshit. Our bodies are a little more complex than that.

Be Critical

I don’t know about you but I’m pretty busy and I don’t like to fritter away my time. That said, if I try something, be it a new approach to training or nutritional supplement, it’s pretty important to run a cost-benefit analysis. In the case of IF there is a beautiful way to assess efficacy. Do you see improved, decreased or no change to your performance? CrossFit has four related definitions of what constitutes fitness and part of that involves this notion that anything that brings about retrograde performance, anything that decreases your work capacity across broad time and modal domains is bad. Lack of sleep, too much booze, missing an episode of Family Guy… this can all damage you in profound ways. Intermittent fasting should (in theory) improve work capacity, but if it doesn’t, DON’T DO IT! Give it a go if you want, hang in there for a good month, but if it does not work for you we can find an approach that does. Be critical and miserly with your time and efforts.

Bang Fer Yer buck

Before we get into the specifics of how to incorporate intermittent fasting into your program I’m going to share with you a power progression to unleash your genetic potential and realize 99.99999876% of the benefit possible from nutrition… something so powerful you will need to know a secret handshake and recite lines from various Mel Brooks movies just to contain it’s power.

Sorry, I wanted to get your attention and I thought some ridiculous, over the top claims might do it. It is true, however, that the HEIGHT of nutritional science involves a Paleo diet (meat & veggies, nuts & seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar) sliced into Zone proportions. One will follow this base Paleo/Zone until a desired level of leanness is met OR retrograde performance occurs. Then one will increase fat intake between 2-5 times that of the base Zone (this is called the Athletes Zone).

This is the buy-in for the big leagues. If you want to get your food dialed, this is where you need to go and you have NO business messing around with intermittent fasting until you get this stuff squared away. I’ll touch on this topic a bit more later in the “Damn Stoopid Questions” section. For the visual learners here is a schematic:

Paleo Diet → Zone→ Increase Fat (Athlete’s Zone) → Intermittent Fasting (Maybe)

Do y’all have that? Food quality, then food proportions, then we can start thinking about food timing.

Doin’ The Deed

I’m going to look at two different methods of applying IF to a Paleo/Zone diet. The first is the simplest to describe: Eat one day, don’t eat the next day. Kurtis Bowler of Rainer CrossFit has eaten this way for over two years. He competes in strongman competitions, is a cop, dad, husband and business owner. The key is that Kurtis eats the same amount ON AVERAGE in a 2-day period as he would if he was not intermittent fasting. This allows him to maintain activity level and muscle mass. Frankly I’m surprised this works so well for Kurtis, but he experimented, liked the results and has stuck to the program. Genius!

The second method to implement IF into your schedule is what I call the compressed feeding window. Hold on to your hat: You limit the time you have to consume your normal amount of food. A simple way to do this is to make your last meal finish an hour earlier than normal, let’s say 6:00 pm and make your first meal happen a little later than normal, lets say 9:00 am the following morning. That’s 15 hours and a great place to start things off. If you feel good, try pushing this up to 12:00 pm, which will make it 18 hours. Start small and work your way up if you like the results and how you feel. Give each transition a good week to see how it feels. Tinker, observe and keep in mind the idea that performance and work capacity should increase!

Damn Stoopid Questions

Not all of these questions are stooopid, just most of them. Be that as it may, they are still frequently asked, so here are a few pithy responses.

How many days should I intermittent fast each week?

This is actually a pretty good question but my response may not be uber-helpful Implement IF as much as YOU want. Kelly Starrett of San Francisco CrossFit reported benefit (improved body composition and recovery) from a Tuesday/Thursday fast that lasted 15-18 hrs. Scotty Hagnas does fasts of varying lengths and does it nearly every day to great benefit. There are no set answers on this. Do what works for you.

I want to get HEYYYUGE! Can intermittent fasting help?!

Easy tiger! Step away from the Myoplex and let’s talk. You need to be really clear about your goals here. If you want to gain weight, you need to eat… possibly disgusting amounts of food. If you want that composition to be good you will need to be particularly diligent with regards to food quality. Most people have no idea how hard it is to eat the food necessary to affect a good upwards scale shift. All that considered intermittent fasting might be something you use very sparingly, one to two days per week at most to enhance insulin sensitivity and to encourage your body to be miserly with calories.

The literature clearly illustrates that a post-workout meal with a high glycemic carb sources in conjunction with a micellular processed casein-whey-aqueous solution…

OK Poindexter, I got’cha. Post workout nutrition is important. Want a million dollar solution for just a PMenu subscription? Make your post workout meal like thus: normal large-ish protein meal (3-5 blocks) and ONE HALF of your day’s carb requirements. Just shift the carbs and fat from your other meals to adjust for this. Make the carbs for the post workout meal consist of non-fructose containing items like yams and sweet potatoes. If you want the whys to all this, dig through my previous writing, it’s in there. Oh, and Poindexter, why don’t you ditch the casein, whey, albumin shake and drink some whole milk. You knuckle head.

I feel REALLY Dizzy when I do intermittent fasting… my chakras were misaligned… (or, in a similar vein) I want to fast for 22 hrs each day because I’m fucking neurotic with my food! But I can’t fit all my food in during that 2-hour window and I keep passing out in the elevator…

Do this stuff to the degree it works for you. If you missed a bunch of sleep, have major stress in your life or are passing out at hour 12 of fasting, then eat something! Remember that Paleo/Zone progression? Default to that and stick with it. Intermittent Fasting should be a FAVORABLE stress, not something that makes you incapable of driving.

I'm skinny and I wanna be BIG! Do I train while fasted? Do I continue my fast after training? If so, how long?

Priority and focus should provide some answers here. If your priority is gaining muscle mass you need to EAT. Like I mentioned above, a few days per week of IF may help with insulin sensitivity, but I think a little food pre workout, say 10-15g of protein and a similar amount of carbs, should really help mental focus and keep intensity high. Post-workout, strap on the feedbag and take in the lions share of your carbs and a good size whack of protein. Capich? Oh yeah, steer clear of shakes and crap like that... just eat food.

I'm a little portly... Well, my step daddy called me "lil' Shamu"... but I'm mainly just big-boned... and i really want to get below 28% body fat... should I eat before and after my training... and before I go to bed? I'm a big guy and i need a lot of fuel to fire the furnace!

I think I may need a shot of tequila... So if your issue is too much body fat we need to bring insulin levels DOWN. Start with Paleo and keep the carbs on the low side—less than 100g per day. Do your training fasted and don't eat for at least an hour after you train. You will lose fat at a stunning rate AND folks will quit calling you Shamu.

Additional Resources

If you have more questions I recommend you direct them to Greg Everett. He is a world-renowned expert on intermittent fasting, Chia-pet landscaping and Mexican food in the greater San Diego area.