Are You Intermittent Fasting or Having an Eating Disorder?
By: Anna Bohonek
Tags: Productivity, Life Lessons, Intermittent Fasting, Life Hacking, Eating Disorders

Source: Image by the Author

Are You Intermittent Fasting or Having an Eating Disorder?

Intermittent fasting saves times, improves your well-being and helps you look good — we’ve all heard this already. But don’t confuse an order in your eating habits with an actual eating disorder. How do you know if you have an eating disorder? Here’s a story by an intermittent faster with an anorexic history. Anna Bohonek Jun 8·5 min read

“I was so busy in the morning I didn’t even have time to have breakfast.” Stop right there. Ain’t cool anymore. Now you gotta call it intermittent fasting.

The entire Silicon Valley is obsessed with fasting. Not because of weight but because of the time you free up. “In Silicon Valley a new type of fasting is becoming popular, the purpose of which does not seem to be to lose weight, worship or claim any rights, but to improve productivity.” — (Entrepreneur Europe) One example for all — Jack Dorsey not eating for days.

Is intermittent fasting the new excellent cover for having an eating disorder and obsessing about food? What are the signs of having an eating disorder?

Intermittent fasting (IF) and eating disorders (ED) are two different worlds. I struggled with ED a decade ago. It took me a couple of years to find a balanced approach to food. I had a couple of ups and downs. So, when I started IF, I wanted to make sure that I am NOT going back to hell again.

You can starve yourself to death

I used to eat a tomato a day. Sometimes I ate corn. It got nothing to do with healthy eating. I weighed 45 kg (99 pounds). I was tired. Simple acts like climbing stairs required an extra willpower. Yet, I forced myself to run. I ran 7–10 km (4–6 miles) almost every day.

No wonder that all I could think about the entire day was food. I started to cook. I cooked for all of my family, baked something sweet every week. I was obsessed with recipes that were high in sugar and high in fat. In my head, I was cooking 24/7. Simply said, I craved calories.

Then, a friend slapped me in the face and told me to wake up. I finally woke up when visiting the exhibition Bodies. I felt so tired walking through the information panels. One of them shocked me: eating less than sustaining the basal metabolism (for a couple of weeks) will cause your brain cells to die, and you’ll decrease your IQ.

Tipping point: I’d rather be bright and fat, than slim and dumb.

So, I started to eat again. I didn't know how. It took me years to find a balanced approach to food again.

And now you can fast yourself to better health

Fasting doesn't mean starving. You fast for couple of hours, then you break your fast and you eat. You eat enough to feel good. You eat enough to feel full. You eat enough to be healthy, happy, strong and sane.

ED is about obsession with food, while IF is precisely the opposite. Fasting is not starving. If you catch yourself thinking about food for hours and restraining yourself from eating, then you got a problem. ED means spending all of your mental capacity on food, while IF means the opposite: it's about spending less of your mental capacity on food.

I can’t speak for health benefits, but here is what I learned:

During my daily fasting windows, I really can’t tell whether I’m currently burning fat, decreasing my sugar level or renewing my brain cells. (Or whether any of this is actually even happening.) I log my fasting windows through an app called Fastic, and I like how it educates me on the fasting phases. I’d love to believe that my brain cells renew every day after I had spent years killing them by not eating enough, drinking alcohol and not sleeping.

According to the app, IF helps brain cells to renew better because they need to have the uninterrupted time to do so — that is, when you fast:

Currently, I oscillate somewhere between 16 to 20 hours of fasting per day. Image Source: Screenshots from my Fastic app April dashboards

I dismissed habits, trade-offs, and I gained clarity

I no longer eat when I am not hungry.

I don't plan around food anymore. It freed up time, it made life simple.

I rather stay hungry than compromise on the quality of the food just because it's dinner time.

I no longer have the habit of opening the fridge and just peeking inside.

It helped me to connect with myself. I understand now what my stress eating triggers are or when I tend to eat out of boredom.

I have more energy and sharper senses.

Hunger triggers my creativity.

I crave healthy unprocessed food.

I digest better.

I sleep better.

Fast because you want to take good care of yourself. Fast because you want more clarity, awareness, and focus; not because you want to suppress your emotions with hunger or lose weight.

Source: Image by Author

But Anna, don’t you feel hungry?

I do. I feel hungry from time to time. And it's ok to feel hungry. I know it's not a deadly hunger. I know I'll get good food when I break my fast. Like cold showers in the morning: most of the days it's fine, but once in a while it hurts.

People struggle to get their heads around the fact that you got a different routine than them. Sometimes, they discourage me. Or they even get upset.

When I lived in Lisbon, I experimented with 24 hours fasts once or twice a month. When I told my friend, he got angry with me: “Anna, you need to stop, it is not healthy!” I am fascinated by how upsetting this was to him. I mean, he wasn't the hungry one.

Lockdown made experimenting with food easy. I didn't have to explain to anyone. I did not have social distractions or temptations. And now I know that even if things start getting back to normal, I’ll keep fasting. Sure, occasionally I'l break my fast in favor of lovely social events where I just feel like eating even later in the evening. But otherwise, the benefits of fasting outweigh — for me — the benefits of not fasting.