My story
In 2015 I decided I wanted to get hench (a British term equivalent to the term stacked). I spent 6 months eating 5 meals a day and training in powerlifting every day. As a result, I got to the biggest I have ever been. I felt strong, energetic and looked “hench” (or so I believed).
Fast forward to Sept 2015 and I got the call that my brother was in the hospital. When I got to the hospital I was told the news that he had died of a sudden heart attack whilst at work. He worked as the security manager in the National History Museum. His job was active, and he had kissed his family goodbye before he left for work that day. It was a huge shock. His wife, my sister in law, was 7 months pregnant with his son at the time. He was the keystone of our family.
Reeling from his lost and faced with my own mortality, I was motivated to lose weight and reduce the strain on my heart.
I spent 100’s of hours researching the best technique for naturally improving the health of your heart. During my research, I discovered intermittent fasting. I discovered that it does not just help you lose fat, lower your blood pressure and improve your cholesterol, but also reduces your chances of getting cancer and diabetes.
How I did it
I started off small and tried fasting between 10am and 8pm a few days a week (10-hour eating window). Over time 10 hours become 8 hours and a few days become most days.
6 months on I had lost a stone, reduced my blood pressure and had abs. A year later, I was in the best shape of my life and it was largely down to IF.
2 years on IF is indispensable as a tool for maintaining my health and one of the best things about it is that I have maintained the weight loss even when I’ve stopped exercising.
It’s free, available to everyone and has a ton of health benefits.
From an evolutionary perspective it makes absolute sense; never in our history have we eaten all of the time. We’ve also had prolonged periods without food, which has allowed our digestive system (the biggest immune organ in our body) to do its housekeeping, and this ability has been hardwired into our DNA over millions of years (it is more in line with what our body is designed for).
I’ve tried to tell as many people as possible about it and in the process have helped thousands of people implement it. Unfortunately, there are some negative opinions about it on the web, which confuse the public, create doubts and steer people towards fad diets. Because you can’t make money out of someone not eating (intermittent fasting) it has not good the attention it should have.
Conclusion
IF is the most researched diet in the world with over 104,000 research papers on the topic (Google Scholar search 31/10/17). It is also the most underutilised dietary intervention out there. 50 years ago, if you told someone you were going for a run, they would have thought you were strange and now millions of people do it because the benefits are widely known and millions have experienced the benefits. My aim is to get IF into the hands of as many people as possible so it can become as indispensable of a tool for health as running now is.
If you would like more information on intermittent fasting, enter your email address below and I’ll send you the cheat sheet, I have created.
References
Google Scholar Search https://goo.gl/H6hReN
