Perhaps if I had read this book early in my journey I would have liked it much better than I actually did. The fact to the matter is that I did not like this book at all.
Actually, it did surprise me a great deal how much I hated this book. I gave it two stars rating in spite of how much I disliked the entire book because it does have very important and correct knowledge about how fasting and fat storage works in the human body. Also, I did learn a couple of things that I did not know before. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have given this book any stars whatsoever.
I try to be very careful about my opinions with regard to diet and nutrition because a lot of it is subjective more often than we’d like to think. But, there are some basic principles that I haven’t found to be untrue at all throughout my own experience and the experiences of other people I know who have struggled with weight management, body image, and the resulting emotional and social issues resulting from all of that.
The one thing that I believe should be understood by everyone who is writing a book about health and nutrition in 2022 is that people are a whole lot better informed right now. A significant part had been dispelled of the old information we had about nutrition, calories, what is a balanced diet (which is something that nobody is able to define AT ALL), and the relationship between cholesterol, blood pressure, and heart disease.
Most importantly, anyone who writes a book about fasting and nutrition needs to have a deep conviction that his or her readers are looking for answers and are on a long journey of self-experimentation looking for something that works once and for all.
Personally speaking, I’m half a dozen books deep, and probably have another dozen on my to-read list to help me figure out whatever I need to know and apply for myself to reach my health goals.
Therein lies the big problem I have with this book as a lot of the advice mentioned here is something I’ve personally tried unsuccessfully and that has proven not to work, AT ALL.
First off, the author is against having coffee during intermittent fasting and is a promoter of what she calls a clean fast. I have nothing at all against that, because for some people that is a real option, alas, not for me. I like the performance-enhancing effects of coffee and also that it helps with revving up the engines of my metabolism during fasting enough to kick my body composition goals into high gear.
The author also says that Bulletproof coffee is a bad idea, which is something that I personally have found to be untrue. Bulletproof coffee absolutely is a great addition to a periodic extended fast, it helps quite a bit with keeping the body and mind in top performance.
But, again, Gin Stephens is against extended fasting longer than three days. THAT is something I cannot agree with at all. From personal experience, Extended Fasting is a fool-proof method to blast through plateaus. Once your body finds its rhythm in Ketosis it taps into your fat stores and rummages them mercilessly.
I have to say that I am the kind of person who will try every possible shortcut and advantage that I can get to reach my weight and body composition goals as fast as possible for many reasons. One reason is that I’ve been doing all sorts of diets for a very long period of my life and I am extremely fed up with the whole thing and want this issue resolved RIGHT NOW.
I know that it will take time. I know it will take months and years. I am well at peace with the idea of adopting certain nutrition and health information as my long-term healthy way of living. I also know that I might feel discouraged if the whole transformation period lingered on for far too long without real progress. Results fuel determination and persistence. And I will attempt every single trick in the book, literally, to get an advantage that will help me reach my goals faster. THIS IS EXACTLY WHY I’M READING BOOKS!
But that’s not a real reason for me not to like this book. It’s a difference in opinions about what works and what doesn’t. And again, this is subjective. It works for other people who are on a different life path and who would go on to reap great benefits from pursuing intermittent fasting as part of their overall health plan in life.
I started getting an uncomfortable itch when the author says that her OMAD, or one meal a day, could be within a 5-hour period. I don’t think anyone can eat for 5 hours straight, and if they do sit down to eat more than one time during their eating window, then it cannot be considered a one-meal-a-day system at all. OMAD is OMAD… like literally, sit down, eat your food, be done with it, eat again the next day. What’s this 5-hour nonsense?!!!
The entire benefit of eating just once a day is to stay in control of your body’s insulin so that it doesn’t spike up too many times during the day which will mess with your Ghrelin hunger hormone and Leptin satiety hormone, which will make your fasting period laborious.
I concede that it’s up to each person to experiment with what their own body will respond to, but it raises an eyebrow to tell people to eat more than once and call it OMAD because you most certainly can not!
I also found it a little kiss-ass-y to say that all ways of eating are ok and you can work out whatever works for you just as long as you incorporate intermittent fasting into the mix. There is some truth to that because people who are eating food that is not good for their bodies will get more healthy if they stop shoving it down their throats all day long every day. But the fact remains is that there are certain things that will make your fasting a whole lot more difficult like eating too many carbs and sugar.
A low-carb diet has never failed anyone I’ve ever known. Sugar and carbs are the slippery slopes that will topple the mightiest of us from their high mountains of achievement. This is the part I had the biggest problem with.
The undisputed fact is that if you eliminate carbs from your diet fasting becomes easy. The more you adhere to a low carb diet, switch to a Ketogenic diet, or go further towards a Carnoviore diet or beyond, the more success you will get from your fasting and the faster you will achieve your health benefits.
But, of course, it is considered “too restrictive” and the author peddles her way of long-term intermittent fasting as the health plan with a side effect of weight loss.
I cannot be on board with that in any capacity, nor can anyone who has suffered their entire life under carbs and sugar addiction that causes metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, and the entire host of chronic diseases both physical and mental.
I make it no secret that I am undergoing my own transformation journey in 2022 and that I’ve been seriously going about it with a Keto/Carnivore way of eating that is heavy on the Carnivore and often goes all the way to the Lion Diet, along with a mix of intermittent fasting with changing periods of feasting before embarking on a period of more than seven days of extended fasting.
I’m mixing it up, for a number of reasons, the first is to alleviate boredom, and the second is to prevent my body from adapting to a certain routine. In short, I know what I’m talking about from personal experience, and from the way my own body had responded to different styles of eating and fasting in the past, and how it is responding now.
This book could have been a good introduction to the intermittent fasting lifestyle if it weren’t for this big fat problem I have with it regarding carbs and sugar. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone even as an introduction to the subject. A better book to read is “The Complete Guide to Fasting” (Amazon.com) (Amazon.ae) by Dr. Jason Fung and Jimmy Moore.
I guess my biggest problem with the book is that it deals with Fasting as the be all end all way to handle managing your health independent of what you consume, which it certainly isn’t. I have tried this exact proposed way of fasting before and crashed with it into catastrophic failure. Watching what you eat, when you eat, and how much you eat are not independent aspects of health. It’s all related and the way to manage your health will need you to be vigilant in your experimentation on what works and what doesn’t for your own body.
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