Intermittent fasting, a relatively new approach to diet and nutrition, has been getting buzz lately because of its success battling chronic inflammatory conditionsâand helping with weight management. Here, Shana Hussin, RDN, a registered dietician and author of Fast To Heal: A 5-Step Guide to Achieving Nutritional PEACE and Reversing Insulin Resistance, outlines how she came to embrace intermittent fasting, what it entailsâand whether it might be right for you.Â
How Shana discovered intermittent fasting
Shana spent nearly twenty years recommending traditional dieting and nutrition strategies to her clients, and they helpedâinitially. âWe would see progress for a couple of months,â Shana recalls. âThen the client would fall off and Iâd lose track of them.â Frustrated by the lack of long-term improvement, Shana transitioned from being a dietician to what she calls a âhealth coach.â The new position was still in a hospital setting, but involved counseling employees and creating a healthy work environment for them. Even then, however, Shana found herself working with the same employees over and over as they struggled with weight and wellness issues. The traditional tips and strategies just didnât seem to create long-term change.
âThen I started to have health issues myself, my son got ill with digestive problems, and none of the standard approaches or conventional medicine helped,â recalls Shana. âThis made me question, even more, the recommendations Iâd been giving, and I quit the nutrition and dietetics field and became a substitute teacher for a few years.âÂ
In 2019, Shana decided to try counseling again and took a job helping in a weight loss clinic. There she discovered Jason Fungâs book, The Obesity Code. âHe was the first to bring the idea of fasting into the mainstream. I read the book and thought, âWhy wasnât I taught these methods as a practitioner? Theyâre simple to implement.â It made so much sense. I started doing intermittent fasting myself, not for weight management, but to see if some of my other health issues could be helped. And I was pleasantly surprised that my body composition changed for the better even though I wasnât working toward that,â says Shana.Â
âI decided to do a small pilot program with twenty people at the clinic. We began right before Halloween and ended after New Yearâs, and people did fabulously, even during that stressful time of year. Not only did everyone lose weight, many also said they slept better and their chronic aches and pains went away too. At the end of the pilot program, I was like, âThis is what I want to do. Iâm passionate about this.ââ
So, Shana left the clinic in order to see clients fulltime and help them incorporate intermittent fasting into their lives. She also wrote her book on the topic (link above), started a companion podcast, Fast To Heal Stories, and runs 28-day challenges online at FastToHeal.info. âI have seen more progress and healing with the people Iâve introduced to intermittent fasting than I saw for the twenty years I recommended standard approaches,â says Shana.
What exactly is intermittent fasting?
âIntermittent fasting focuses more on the when part of eating and less on the what,â explains Shana. âWhy do you want to limit the time frame when you eat? Traditional nutrition counseling says to eat all day long: Eat your breakfast within an hour of when you get up, eat at least three meals a day, and eat small snacks to keep your metabolism up. However, what Iâve learned is all-day eating can cause an insulin buildup.â
When insulin builds up, the surplus of energy it creates has nowhere to goâŚso it ends up in your fat cells. âAll that eating means we are perpetually storing fat, rather than burning it. Itâs that simple,â says Shana. But, when you donât eat for longer periods of time, you can keep insulin levels quiet and low, causing your body to have to look for a different fuel source. âWithout the overload of insulin, your body is forced to find other sources of energy, and it pulls from stored carbohydrates or stored sugar in your muscles. And when thatâs gone, it goes into what I call the deep freezer in your bodyâfat,â says Shana. âYour body doesnât want to go there. Itâs like, âI want the carbohydrate to burn because thatâs easy.â But when you donât eat for long periods of time, your body has to finally tap into the fat.â
In addition to weight loss, Shana says there are also myriad health benefits from intermittent fasting. âGiving your digestive tract a break for sixteen to eighteen hours at a time can help support autophagy, a process during which the body cleans out and recycles substances that shouldnât be there anymore,â she says. Autophagy also allows the immune system to more capably fight a virus or bacteriaâand to get rid of waste that might be causing inflammation, the root cause of all disease.Â
Other benefits Shanaâs clients have seen:
- Relief from Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (high insulin is a cause of this condition)
- Clearer skinÂ
- More energy
- Improved fertility
- Better management of diabetes, high cholesterol, and heart disease
If youâve never tried intermittent fasting before, Shana suggests starting with sixteen hours of fasting. âStop eating after an early dinner, then sleep, and you can get in a good twelve to fourteen hours of straight fasting right there, without skipping any meals,â says Shana. To extend from sixteen to eighteen or even twenty hours, just slowly start bumping the time back that you eat your first meal. Then, in that afternoon-to-early evening window, eat two full meals. Shana says most people follow this protocol five to six days a week, with a seventh day called a âfeast day,â where they expand the eating window and eat three full meals.Â
When you are fasting, Shana says to keep things clean. That means plain, carbonated water (no flavor), black coffee (caffeine is fine as long as youâre not adding sugar or creamer), and plain teas. âIf you add anything, even if itâs just Stevia, it may stimulate a hormonal or insulin response because you drink it and your body says, âSomething sweet is coming. I better release insulin.ââ
When you are eating, Shana says not to bother counting calories. âI try to get my clients away from calorie counting because your body doesnât recognize calories. Your body is not like, âIâve had 1,500 calories. Anything more that I eat now Iâm going to start storing it as fat.â What your body does recognize are foods that are nutritious, filling, and promote satiety,â she explains. Similarly, your body doesnât recognize foods that are ultra-processed, so feeding yourself a steady diet of processed items can leave you feeling perpetually hungry. âWhen you sit down to a meal, it should have a healthy fat, a natural protein, and a fruit or vegetable. Those are the foods our bodies have nutrient sensors for,â says Shana. âIf you focus more on foods that are giving you nourishment and fullness, youâre naturally going to eat what you need and stop when youâre full.âÂ
Is there anyone who shouldnât fast?
Shana says nearly every adult can try intermittent fasting, but she doesnât recommend it for children and pregnant/nursing women. âIf kids want to work with me, and they are suffering from childhood obesity, I will focus more on eliminating snacks and not eating in the evening after dinner. Just eating three square meals a day, balancing those meals, and getting the processed foods and sugary drinks out can work wonders for kids,â she says. Teenagers, she says, are a case-by-case basis. âIf they are sixteen or older, sometimes they can do a bit of fasting,â says Shana. âMy daughter is seventeen, and she usually doesnât eat until lunchtime because sheâs found it helps her acne.âÂ
Want more scoop on intermittent fasting from Shana Hussin? Check out Episode 3: The New Un-Diets on The Beauty Construct podcast, now available for download download on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. You can also follow Shana Hussin on Instagram, @shana.hussin.rdn, or visit her website at FasttoHeal.com.