You know how it goes. You have never heard of a thing and are quite blissful not knowing about it. Someone mentions it once in your vicinity and, suddenly, it seems as though the world is obsessed with it going by how often you hear of that dratted thing over the next few days.
This is exactly how it went with me and intermittent fasting. Over the past few days I could hardly spend a minute without 'intermittent fasting' poking me in the nose from somewhere or the other. I go to a function and there it pops up in a feverish discussion among people who have just taken it up. I go on Youtube and there it appears again making it seem like half the world is trying to make a living teaching the other half about intermittent fasting. I go on Facebook and...ah, well, don't yawn, I can take a hint.
So, apparently, there are ways and ways of doing it. You can opt for the so-called 5:2 method where you eat normally for five days of the week and fast for 2 days i.e. consume about only 500 calories. You can opt to fast for a longish period of time every day. The 14:10, 16:8 or 12:12 methods where, unfortunately, the bigger number denotes the consecutive hours of fasting every day. (Yeah, yeah, in 12:12 it is all the same, so?) So, you fast for 16 hours and eat only in the other 8 hours if you opt for 16:8. You have alternative days, the 24 hour fast where you eat only once a day, the warrior diet...
So, when this feverish discussion was happening in that function, I piped up saying that I has been doing it all my life. I mean, like, it was not like I was shovelling food into my mouth every minute of the day. Between breakfast and my midmorning snack, I fasted; between my midmorning snack and lunch, I fasted...I mean I WAS fasting intermittently all day for all my life, so what was the big deal. There was such a concerted set of sneers in my direction that I shrivelled to a tenth my size (now if THAT does not show you how intermittent fasting helps reduce weight...). There was such an outpouring of how the long fast periods reduced insulin resistance and improved insulin sensitivity, about something called the Human growth hormone, about improved metabolism, yada yada, that I fled the battlefield in utter defeat.
But, you know what, the thing is all these great health changes was not why people wanted to go in for intermittent fasting. The primary...and, I daresay, sole...purpose was to lose weight. All the rest of it were only talking points. If the rest existed and weight loss did not happen, or was not needed, Intermittent fasting would only be as popular as a dose of castor oil in the morning.
Me, I fast intermittently. When my body threatens to outgrow my current wardrobe (Which, by the way, I keep as flexible as possible to circumference by using tracks for all purposes), I go on a crash diet and bring it down. Then it is business as usual till the next time the stitches on my tracks threaten to give way.
What was that? Yo-Yo dieting? Keep that for the kids. At my age, I cannot associate myself with marbles, tops and yo-yos. I need a more...dignified...name for what I do, so it shall be called fasting intermittently.
What's in a name? Really? When this self same 5:2 was being called a Vrat by my Mom, it was silly superstitious nonsense which I would not be caught dead talking about. But Intermittent Fasting? THAT I can write blog posts about. THAT is the importance of names. After all, we live in times when the product is less important than the label!