Intermittent Fasting for Women Over 35: Does It Work for Weight Loss?

Hey friends, today we’re talking about intermittent fasting for weight loss, specifically for women. I commonly get this question about fasting and intermittent fasting from the clients that I work with who are primarily women

And I know that intermittent fasting is really trendy in the weight loss world these days.

And if you’ve followed me for a while, you probably know how I feel about weight loss trends.

There’s no magic weight loss plan or diet or pill or drink or detox that reduces the effort it takes to lose weight and keep it off for good. It simply does not exist. The diet industry is a multi-billion dollar industry and what we have to understand is that the diet industry is in the business of staying in business and selling you something and getting you to buy things over and over again.

So the truth is permanent lasting weight loss comes from a small calorie deficit and also eating more nutrient dense foods that balance your metabolic hormones, getting your body moving around a little bit more, working on your mindset, including managing your lifestyle and stress and having a support plan and accountability plan.

Look, I am not a closed-minded person. I am totally open to having, you know, real conversations about some of these topics, but I have just coached so many women to lose weight over the years, and I know what works, and I know what does not work for lasting, permanent weight loss. And I know that what doesn’t work are one-size-fits-all diets and diet trends. They’re really never worthy of your time or energy.

But intermittent fasting is something that I’m frequently asked about. And I want to give you the rundown on intermittent fasting today. I’ll first tell you what intermittent fasting is if you haven’t heard of it before. And then we’ll talk about whether or not it’s really appropriate for lasting weight loss.

All right, so let’s dive in. So what is intermittent fasting? Intermittent fasting is basically restricting the hours of the day during which you are eating.

And the idea is to abstain from eating to really maximize your fat burning capabilities in your body. The most popular form of intermittent fasting is a 16-8 schedule, meaning that you fast for 16 hours and then you eat for eight hours.

So for instance, you eat from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. or noon to 8 p.m. You literally design what hours of the day you’re going to be eating and not eating based on your routine and your lifestyle. That works for you.

And there’s some other forms of intermittent fasting out there. Five to three, that usually means eating normally five days a week and then eating five to 600 calories two days per week. The warrior diet, fasting throughout the day, then eating one large meal at night. Eat, stop, eat. This is a 24 fast once per week.

So what we should really understand about fasting is not so much all of these different protocols that are out there, but that every human on the planet fasts every single day already, and that’s when we sleep. Think about the word breakfast for a minute. The word breakfast literally comes from two words, break and fast, which means break the fast. So the word breakfast literally means you’re breaking your fast.

So while everybody’s kind of like out there listening to this intermittent fasting thing that’s really trendy right now, the truth is we’re all really fasting. What is kind of tricky about this is that some people tend to eat food well into the evening right before they go to sleep. And so the amount of time that they’re naturally fasting while they’re asleep tends to be less.

That’s not to say that you can’t eat all the way until you go to bed. It just depends on you and your specific situation. But it just means that the timeframe that most individuals, most humans tend to naturally fast is probably reduced if you’re somebody who snacks or eats really late at night and then gets up and eats right away when you wake up, okay? But what I want you to understand is that fasting is not something new.

It’s been around forever since we were on this planet. And even think back to when there was no electricity. It was pretty rare for humans to eat before sunrise or after sunrise. And many religions have also practiced fasting throughout the years as well. Fasting is not a new concept. But the question really posed for today’s conversation is, is it really appropriate for weight loss for women

And is it worth your time and effort to do it? Okay. So first of all, let’s talk about how you fast. We talked a little bit about what it is, but let’s talk about how you do intermittent fasting. So you first of all implement a fasting window that works for you and your lifestyle, and then you do not eat during that window. And there’s really no right or wrong here. It’s really what works best for you. The science doesn’t say this particular way works the best. It’s not out there.

I recommend starting with 12 hours. That’s generally doable for most people, especially if you’re sleeping eight of those hours. So if you finish eating at 8 p.m., you would start eating again around 8 a.m. During your fasting window, you could consume water, herbal tea, and black coffee. But note that if you add any cream or sugar to your coffee or your tea, technically you’re breaking your fast. There’s a lot of misconception around that.

Now during your feeding window, you eat your meals and your snacks and you get to choose what you eat during that window. But as I’ve stated many times, if you’re not eating to keep your hunger hormones balanced, keeping yourself in a fast could be really difficult.

Or if you’re eating a lot of fast foods, convenience foods, high calorie foods, high fat foods, high carb foods, then any potential weight loss or health benefit from fasting will really be eliminated. So that’s just a caveat, and I’ll get more into that in a second.

So let’s talk about a few benefits of intermittent fasting because there are a few of them out there and there’s some great studies to support them. And I will link the studies in the show notes for you guys so you can go check those out if you’re interested. So here’s a few. First one is increased insulin sensitivity. Insulin resistance basically means that your blood sugar is less stable, which can lead to long-term health conditions like type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, and other metabolic disorders.

And most individuals who are overweight are insulin resistant. And fasting has been shown in studies to improve insulin sensitivity. But the majority of these studies are done on men, not women.

There’s really very few studies done on women. And actually, this insulin sensitivity increase with fasting, you can achieve it just as easily with eating more nutritious foods and being in a calorie deficit. You get the same benefit. So there’s really not a huge difference with fasting.

The other benefit you can get with fasting is improved digestion. It’s theorized that eating less frequently can be better for your gut and for your overall digestion. The theory is the gut never has a chance to repair when you’re constantly eating, but there’s no scientific evidence I could find to really support this theory.

The other benefit is improved body composition. So once the body uses available energy, the idea is that with fasting, the body will turn to fat as energy. And this is known as ketosis, where the body utilizes stored fat as fuel. And many studies show that fasting may not decrease overall body weight, but it could decrease body fat and change your body composition. Interestingly, most of those studies are once again done on men, not women.

And then last benefit of fasting is possible disease prevention. So there are certain diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer that may get improved slightly with fasting. And this is believed to be due to the improved insulin sensitivity and consequently the reduction of inflammation as a result of less insulin. But remember I said earlier, you can achieve improved insulin sensitivity by
just by getting more nutritious foods in your diet as well as being in a calorie restricted diet. Okay, so those are some of the benefits of intermittent fasting.
Here’s some of the drawbacks of intermittent fasting. And unfortunately, there’s quite a few of them, especially if you’re a female.
The first one is your metabolism may slow down. And research actually shows that the metabolism adapts downward with any type of long-term caloric restriction. So fasting can be a way to achieve calorie restriction.

And especially if you’re somebody who skips a meal with fasting, if that’s your approach and you’re not fueling your body properly, then your metabolism will slow down to conserve energy, which means you’ll burn fewer calories and you’ll actually start gaining weight long term. And this leads me to the second drawback of fasting, which is weight gain.

If your metabolism does slow down, this can cause changes in your hormones, insulin left and ghrelin, which can then signal the body to force you to increase your cravings and your fat storage so you eat more food. And the hunger will be so intense that no amount of willpower or motivation will allow you to resist it.

And when the body gets to this state, the body will crave high calorie foods, high fat foods, and over consuming your total daily calories will be really easy.
The next drawback of fasting is that females are less likely to be successful at fasting for weight loss. In fact, the majority of studies have been done on men, not women, and I mentioned this earlier. So the female body is highly sensitive to stress because of the reproductive nature of the female body, and it tends to get worse as females get older.

So calorie deficits, fasting, too much exercise, too frequent dieting, too much life stress, et cetera, are really perceived by the body as threats. And so the female body is desired to protect the reproductive nature. So any of these type of stressors can very easily shift the female body into fat storage.

And if you’ve done fasting and gained weight, even in a calorie deficit, this may mean that your body is really trying to protect you and it’s telling you this is not right for you. So the next drawback is low blood sugar. Blood sugar sensitivity really differs from person to person. But for those who have difficulty regulating their blood sugar, like diabetics, they can really experience a lot of low energy, fatigue, brain fog, cravings. And this leads to hormonal changes that really increase your hunger, increase your cravings for high sugar foods, high fat foods.

And as I mentioned earlier, fasting research does show improvement with insulin sensitivity. However, improved insulin can be achieved with any regular calorie deficit diet focusing on nutrient dense foods.

The next drawback is that hormone imbalances can actually be exasperated for women. So if you’re a female and you already have imbalanced hormones, or maybe you’re going through menopause, maybe you’re in perimenopause, or maybe you’ve got some estrogen dominance going on, it’s likely that any type of fasting you do is gonna make that worse.

Because too much calorie restricting, too much fasting, too much dieting for too long can put a lot of stress on the body. And it actually can lead for some females to amenorrhea, which is a lack of a period. And studies actually have been shown in rats that fasting leads to everything from decreased ovary size to reproductive shutdown.

Now, that is a rat study, so it’s not the same as in humans, but it does kind of tell us that there is something there, right? Hormone imbalances, I just want to clarify, are not the case for men with fasting. And that’s what’s so interesting is that all these studies are really focused on men and not women.

So the next drawback, exercise and fasting may lead to muscle breakdown. So when you’re exercising and you’re fasting, this can be really tricky depending on what time of day you exercise and how you feel for that exercise and what your blood sugar is like. And, you know, research shows that fasted exercise is really great for promoting fat burn. But there’s a couple caveats to that. So the body can’t build muscle fast.

If you are in a fasted exercise state, unless you are really intentional about refueling soon after that fasted workout, and I’m talking about within 30 minutes to one hour max, not refueling properly when you’ve done a fasted workout is going to lead to muscle breakdown. And obviously, you don’t want to lose muscle because more muscle means better metabolism.

So being really smart and intentional about how you work out, how you fast, how you refuel is really the key to whether or not you’re going to get the benefits of a fasted workout. But if you’re somebody who’s an endurance athlete and you are really burning a ton of calories with your workouts, it’s probably not ideal for you because generally speaking, the more exercise you do, the more calories you burn with your exercise, the more food you have to eat because those two always have to go together.

So the last drawback with fasting is that fasting can promote unhealthy eating behaviors in many individuals. So if you’re somebody who has a history of disordered eating, emotional eating, frequent dieting, or excessive exercising, you should not impose a fasting window.

Instead, I really encourage you to listen to your body, fuel your body with as much nutrient-dense food as possible, and try to stay away from restrictive diets, try to stay away from any type of fasting, okay? So let’s get to the meat of this.

Um, we talked about what fasting is. We talked about some benefits. We talked about a lot of the drawbacks for females. Um, let’s talk about, does it really work for weight loss? Okay. Cause that’s the golden question. So here’s what you must know. Weight loss is achieved by being in a consistent small calorie deficit. Fasting only works for weight loss if you are eating in a calorie deficit.

Listen to that again. Weight loss is achieved by being in a consistent small calorie deficit. Fasting only works for weight loss if you are eating in a calorie deficit. So if you’re somebody who fasts for 16 hours and then you feel so ravenous that you binge and snack your way through your feeding hours, fasting is not helping you.

In fact, it may be creating a disordered relationship with food. And what I commonly see a lot of women doing is skipping breakfast and calling it fasting. That’s not fasting. It’s skipping breakfast. So we got to call it what it is, okay? You still have to fuel your body properly, even if you’re going to fast. You still have to get in the right amount of calories. And if your goal is to lose weight, then you got to be in a calorie deficit.

And that doesn’t matter if you’re fasting or not. If your goal is to lose weight, the calorie deficit is key. So there was a study done on women and it compared women fasting versus women in a caloric deficit. And what was discovered in this study was that the women fasting experienced increased hunger and cravings due to the effect on their hunger and metabolic hormones that fasting had on them.

However, the women who were just in a calorie deficit, they did not experience the changes in their hunger, cravings, and hormones.

So it’s much easier to lose weight when your hunger hormones and your metabolic hormones are balanced. And this study kind of reminds us that hormones are really key to weight loss. And even something like intermittent fasting does not yield a shorter, easier route to losing weight. So the bottom line is there’s nothing magical about fasting for weight loss.

If you were hoping to hear it from me, I’m not going to be able to give it to you today, okay? There’s nothing magical about it. In my experience working with many, many women, they start losing weight, they get a resurgence of energy, they have less hunger and fewer cravings when they stop intermittent fasting.

And they get real results because they’re eating to keep their hunger hormones and metabolic hormones balanced, and they’re in a slight calorie deficit. The women that I work with have done every diet on the market. They’re frustrated and confused by nutrition and exercise. They have high stress lives. They have imbalanced hunger hormones and are frequently experiencing bouts of eating high sugar, high fat, and high carb foods.

And I’m not going to add more stress to their lives by having them do something like intermittent fasting, which doesn’t have significant scientific research that supports it for permanent weight loss for women. If we were talking about men, it might be different, but I’m talking specifically about women here. So how do you know if intermittent fasting is working for you?

Let’s say you drink black coffee all morning to suppress your appetite so you don’t break your fast. Intermittent fasting is not working for you if that’s you. Let’s say you fast for 16 hours and you can’t stop eating the rest of the day because your hunger is out of control. Intermittent fasting is not working for you.

Let’s say you eat good for a few days on your fast and then suddenly you overeat sugar or a lot of fatty foods or go over your calories. Intermittent fasting is not working for you. Let’s say you fast and you’re eating 1200 calories daily and you’re gaining weight.

Intermittent fasting is not working for you. Let’s say you’re eating above your daily caloric needs. You’re not in a calorie deficit and you’re trying to lose weight. Intermittent fasting is not working for you. So can you lose weight without intermittent fasting? Absolutely. I see my clients doing it all the time.

Here’s three reasons why, and these are the three key things you need to take away from today’s discussion. Number one, weight loss comes from a small calorie deficit, and it does not depend on the time of day you eat or don’t eat. Number two, the benefits of intermittent fasting can be achieved with traditional calorie restriction and eating more nutrient-dense foods.

And last, the most important factors for weight loss are a small calorie deficit and balanced hunger hormones and not when you eat or when you don’t eat because none of that matters.

So listen, if fasting works for you, then yay you. Go for it, keep doing it, okay? But what I have observed is that all the women that I’ve coached over the years, when they start to go into these more complicated nutrition protocols like fasting, which really is an advanced nutrition protocol, it’s not really beneficial because they really haven’t gotten the basics of their nutrition down.

Dialing in the nutrition with the hunger and metabolic hormones is so key. And once you dial that in, then you can get into a calorie deficit almost effortlessly. But it’s really doing that first work of really dialing in your nutrition and getting back to those basics, not cutting out food groups, not going on paleo or doing keto for a while or any of these other trendy things.

It’s really getting down to those basics and learning how to eat real food again for your hormones. And listen, getting into that calorie deficit is so key to losing weight. There’s no way around that.

So if you think that fasting and skipping a meal is going to actually get you there, it can actually cause a lot of problems like I talked about in today’s discussion. It can cause your metabolism to slow down. It can cause you to actually gain weight. And if you’re a female, it can create a lot of problems with your hormones.

So there’s a lot of drawbacks, and I’m hoping that this was helpful for you to help you decide if it’s something that makes sense for you where you’re at in your nutrition and in your lifestyle, because it definitely does not make sense for everyone.

And as always, everyone is individual, and so it always comes down to figuring out what works best for you and what is going to get you the lasting, permanent weight loss results.