I HAVEN’T CHANGED MY DIET, JUST WHEN I EAT – I’VE LOST 6KG AND IMPROVED MY SLEEP
I’m sitting on the cold, damp floor of a children’s playground, looking, anxiously, at my watch. 11:54am. My eldest son calls for me to push him on the swing, which I do, dutifully. Once he’s flying, screaming with joy, I check my watch again. 11:56. My stomach growls its protest as the minutes crawl by: 11:57, 11:58. 11:59.
The second the clock hits 12:00pm, I pounce on my lunchbox, ripping open its lid, and devouring the contents with a primal relish: a ham sandwich, a packet of hula hoops, and some cucumber sticks, all gobbled down in an instant. Satiated and licking my fingers, I notice my children watching from the swings with amused curiosity: this is only day one of intermittent fasting and it isn’t going well.
Before I begin, I need to be honest. I started intermittent fasting (for me, this means in any 24-hour window I can only eat within an eight-hour period and then no eating for 16 hours) because I wanted to lose my baby weight.
Now, admitting, especially as a mum – and a feminist one at that – that you want to lose weight is complicated. I’ve gone back and forth over why I felt a burning desire to be smaller, to take up less space, and, so far, haven’t settled on a better answer than: I simply wanted to return to a body that felt like mine. I am aware, though, intensely so, that conversations around weight are often heavy, troubling, and mired in controversy. I sincerely hope that this doesn’t read as a directive to others to follow my lead. You do you, and all that.
I’ve never really been a dieter, apart from a brief period in 2019 when I bought a wedding dress that only just fitted. Almost as soon as I left the shop, I downloaded MyFitnessPal and tried, with limited success, to calorie count. But I just couldn’t commit to it. This time around, I recognised that in order to work with my frantic lifestyle – two small children; two jobs, one of which is freelance; and a social life I’m not willing to give up – I needed an approach that didn’t demand too much brain power. Enter: intermittent fasting.
I was inspired by two friends – one of whom is a doctor and immeasurably sensible – who have been following this method for years. During a dinner party at our house, they explained the approach to me: you eat as normal during your eating window but, while fasting, you stick to water, black coffee, or black tea. Some people, like me, take a 16:8 approach while others cycle between five eating days and two low-calorie or fasting days, commonly known as the 5:2 diet. This was popularised by a BBC Two Horizon documentary in 2012 and the late Dr Michael Mosley, in his 2013 book The Fast Diet. Dr Mosley lost 9kg in eight weeks and reversed his Type 2 diabetes.
The goal is a process called ketosis, a metabolic state in which the body uses – and, thus, burns – stored body fat for fuel instead of carbohydrates. Key to ketosis is the fat storage hormone insulin: in order for ketosis to happen, insulin levels – which rise when we eat, especially carbohydrates – must be low, allowing the body to access and burn fat for energy instead of relying on glucose from food. The key here is that you must give the body enough time to enter this state, hence the reduction in your eating window.
As well as being used as a weight loss tool, intermittent fasting is also thought to lower your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes and obesity, as well as reducing overall body inflammation and lowering cholesterol. A 2024 study by the University of Cambridge found that fasting could help protect against dementia and Parkinson’s disease, by reducing inflammation.
After the dinner party, the idea marinated in my brain for months, occasionally bobbing to the surface as a possibility before being dismissed as too hard, too anti-social, too disordered. Until, that is, one evening in April – the night before the aforementioned trip to the playground – when I found myself pouring a bowl of late-night Shreddies and wondering whether it was worth a try after all.
Fortunately, not every day of my six months of fasting has been as bleak as that very first – sitting, as I was, on the floor of a play park, hunger clawing furiously at my insides.
In fact, the clawing hunger abated after the first two days, something which, according to fasting coach Emma Van Carlen, whose book, Fast Yourself Fit, came out in April, is very normal. “The first few days might be quite challenging physically,” she explains. “This is because your body is getting used to being in ketosis. During this time, you can experience some symptoms like headaches, weakness, and lethargy, commonly known as ‘keto flu’.” These side effects, she tells me, only last a few days. Indeed, that was the case for me.
Fast forward six months, and I’ve lost just over a stone at a rate of around half a pound a week. It has been slow but steady progress and all I’ve really done is change when I eat.
Over time, I have adjusted my fasting rhythm to fit my lifestyle: I eat my final meal of three with my two children at 5:30pm and then don’t eat breakfast until 9:30am. It is, dare I say it, easy. I’m surprised by how hungry I don’t feel. I still go out with friends (I just alter my windows accordingly) and, pleasingly, still enjoy as wide a range of foods as before, including things I may have “cut out” had I been calorie counting.
In fact, I can count on one hand the number of time I’ve broken my 16-hour fast early and it’s always because circumstances (breakfast plans with friends; needing to buy something in a cafe in order to work there and refusing, on principle, to spend cash on a black coffee) have dictated I must, not because I’m hungry and desperate and end up caving in.
Intermittent fasting has probably made me more mindful of the meals I consume (incorporating more protein, for example, that I know will sustain me for longer than carbs and sugar because I know I’ll have to go longer without getting hungry) but I definitely still have pastries and pizza and lattes and wine as part of my diet.
Crucially, I have not done a single second of calorie counting and nor have I felt the need to: this approach feels far more like a lifestyle change than a diet. I eat, essentially, the same foods I ate before – curries, chilli con carnes, pasta dishes, jacket potatoes, sandwiches, salads – with the only notable difference being a change to what I eat for breakfast: overnight oats, usually, instead of the toast and marmite I used to have.
In terms of how I manage it, well, my current lifestyle, I think, lends itself to routine. (I do wonder whether I’d have found this method harder pre-children, a time when my life wasn’t quite as regimented.) In the first few days, as my body adjusted, I found monitoring my hunger pangs curious and, actually, a helpful incentive to spur me on: why was I hungry just half an hour after having lunch? What did this say about my eating habits?
Now I’m six months in, eating in a fasting window simply doesn’t cross my mind: it’s as though my body has learned when – and when not – to send me hunger signals. Plus, snacking after dinner, for example, was never, actually, about hunger; it was out of habit (I always have a treat while I watch TV!) or boredom (there’s nothing good on TV, let’s go and look in the fridge!).
Almost more gratifying than the weight loss, though, are the other benefits I’ve noticed. I have fewer energy crashes throughout the day, better sleep (I’ve previously struggled with insomnia but, since fasting, my sleepless nights have reduced), and am less than a minute away from running my quickest 5k in 10 years. I also, recently, had a full blood count and noted that everything is exactly as it should be.
Without a doubt, intermittent fasting has changed my life, helping me read and understand my body and its processes in a way I couldn’t before. Of course, though, fasting isn’t for everyone: it’s not recommended if you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, for example. “If you are underweight or close to being underweight, intermittent fasting is also not safe as it is a powerful weight loss tool,” says Van Carlen, adding that anyone with a chronic health condition should check with their doctor to make sure intermittent fasting is safe.
Safety is always on my mind, too. I worry, sometimes, my approach will slip into disordered eating, a concern which Marcelle Rose, nutritionist and author of The Binge Freedom Method, shares. “Intermittent fasting can normalise restrictive behaviours under the guise of ‘health’,” she says. “People may begin skipping meals to hit fasting targets, feel guilty for eating when hungry, or become preoccupied with food and meal timings.”
Certainly, it’s true that my approach is inherently restrictive. I’m mindful that restriction, while not intrinsically unhealthy (one might restrict oneself to a couple of glasses of wine, for instance, as opposed to unlimited bottles), can become obsessive. I also know I have an obsessive personality; I recognise that potential slippery slope. But I think – I hope – this understanding of myself bodes well. So, too, does the fact I’ve found a rhythm I enjoy but am happy to adapt – and even break – when needed.
Six months on, I’m no longer that ravenous animal, driven mad by hunger but never fully satiated. (Less than an hour after my playground packed lunch I was starving again: a classic blood sugar spike and crash.) Now, I’m stable, satisfied, and self-aware. In the end, of course, it’s all about balance: on my plate and in my head.
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