Take a more flexible approach to your eating for more energy.
Take a more flexible approach to your eating for more energy.
Key #2 BURN - Chapter 6: Flex - Take a more flexible approach to your eating for more energy.
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Step #6 - Flex - Take a more flexible approach to your eating for more energy.
By now, you've eliminated the bad foods from your diet. You've reset your metabolism so that it prefers to burn body fat rather than carbs. So now, we're going to build on that to develop a better pattern of eating that is easier and healthier for you. I call this Flex, for flexible metabolism.
This is the third and the last step for the key BURN of the Forever Runner Method. This is how we're going to be able to increase your energy and clarity by when you eat.
Imagine if food didn't run your life, that you weren't hungry all the time and you remained sharp and focused all during the day. That’s the result of getting off that carb dependency, that sugar addiction, that just constantly reminds you to eat, putting you on that energy rollercoaster during the day.
So in the Flex step, we're going to trigger your liver to produce ketones for clarity and focus during the day without having to go on a keto diet. We can solidify our fat-burning approach and take advantage of those bodyfat energy stores to actually restrict our eating window. By limiting that eating window, that lengthens the time when you're not eating, which is when your body is actually going through its normal process of cleaning up all the junk in your cells and replacing your cells with new ones. When your body is in the eating window, digesting food, that process gets turned off. So what we're doing is we're just narrowing that eating window and lengthening the time where your body can go through its normal maintenance process. That has a huge impact on your longevity and your health.
So I've got a three-step process to do that.
First is just cut out your snacking between meals. You'll find that this is much easier to do once you're off the sugar habit.
Limit your eating window to about eight hours. This will get you used to having a little bit longer fasting time, which is called intermittent fasting.
Then, we'll look at how you can do your meal planning to make this really simple to follow.
Why do runners have problems with this?
Well, first, if you're carb dependent or a sugar craver, you're eating when you're really not hungry. It may be hard to imagine that you don't have to eat constantly throughout the day, and you might be afraid of that. Because you get so much energy from your stored body fat, it's just not an issue at all. You just don't know how to start.
So here are 3 actions to get started.
It’s important to note, I’m talking about flexibility here. These are not hard and fast rules to live by, but merely strategies you can take advantage of as a result of having a flexible metabolism. That being said, it’s ok to have healthy snacks, eat outside of your 8 hour eating window and have 3 meals a day. Don’t obsess over this, just do what works for you.
Flex action #1 – Stop snacking
The first step is pretty simple. When you did the two-week tests, it was okay to have some nuts and seeds and things like that for snacks. But now we want to cut those out. Then, once you feel comfortable with not snacking, we'll go to step number two, which is to limit your eating window.
Flex Action #2 – Limit your eating window
Action step number two is to limit your eating period to eight hours.
Many people wake up, have breakfast, say between six and 8:00 AM. So what we'll want to do is delay that until 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock in the morning. No, you’re not going to die skipping an early breakfast. Your new fat burning metabolism will keep you going in the morning. You may notice that you’re not really hungry after all!
Depending on when you start, say you have your first meal at 10:00 AM, you want to finish your dinner around six. If you start around 11:00 AM, you want to finish dinner around seven.
It's okay to have coffee in the morning when you wake up, but you do not want to take in anything that has calories associated with it. That would be sugar, creamers or any of those additives to coffee that have some calories. Essentially what those do is trigger a little insulin jump and it'll make it a little more difficult to hang out until later on in the morning, when, when you first have your first meal.
Flex Action #3 – 2 meals a day
Once you get comfortable with that, work on just eating two meals a day, making sure that you're getting enough calories and getting enough protein in what you're eating. You can try once or twice a week to get started, then increase from there as you get more comfortable.
Flex Homework
So again, it's decision time here in step three for Flex. You need to make the commitment to go ahead and limit your eating window so you can take advantage of all those health benefits and longevity from intermittent fasting.
1. Stop snacking between meals.
2. Limit your eating window to 8 hours.
3. Eat 2 meals a day, focus on protein.
Thanks for taking a look. I would appreciate some honest feedback on this chapter. This review is not about spotting typos. Instead, the most useful feedback is about stuff like:
Where do you get confused or lost or have an unanswered question.
Where do you disagree, or have different experiences.
Where you start to get bored and feel like skipping ahead or giving up.
Anything you find especially interesting or helpful.
You can leave comments below(paid member) or email them to me at: Herb@foreverrunner.com
Next Chapter: Bonus Section: Why Protein should be your primary focus