What Can You Eat While Intermittent Fasting [And Still Lose Weight?]

Mar 10, 20212 min read

What can you eat while Intermittent Fasting and still lose weight? Can you have anything while fasting and still achieve your weight loss goals? Today, we're diving into the details of exactly what you can eat while fasting and still achieve your weight loss goals.

What Can You Eat While Fasting?

If your goal with Intermittent Fasting is primarily weight loss, the number one factor you'll want to consider is the storing hormone insulin. Intermittent Fasting can be quite effective with weight loss due to the fact that it helps reduce the frequency that the storing hormone is released.(1) While fasting, the storing hormone is naturally low because no food or drink is causing it to be released.

So does that mean you can't have anything during your fasted state? Not necessarily. The goal is to make sure that anything that is consumed during the fasting state won't spike the storing hormone insulin. Foods containing protein or carbohydrates spike the storing hormone insulin (with carbohydrates spiking it at a much greater degree than protein). However, fat has little to no effect on insulin. This is why consuming pure fat foods, such as grass-fed butter, ghee or coconut oil in your coffee is fine in small amounts during the fasted state if weight loss is the primary goal. I'll Keto Coffee cheers to that!

What Foods Should You Avoid While Fasting?

Any foods that contain protein or carbohydrates have the potential of spiking the storing hormone insulin and breaking the intermittent fast. The exact number of grams of protein or carbohydrates that may break a fast will vary from person-to-person.

However, a good rule of thumb is to stick with no more than one gram of protein and carbs during the fasted state to help ensure insulin doesn't spike.