My 18:6 Intermittent Fasting Routine on Low Carb
In short
I’ve started 18:6 intermittent fasting: 18 hours of nothing but zero-calorie drinks, then a 6-hour eating window from about midday to 6 or 6:30pm, still eating low carb. Our bodies were built for feast and famine, not feasting three or four times a day, 365 days a year. Fasting can help you get off a plateau, and the way I understand it, it switches on autophagy and goes after the visceral fat around your organs first. For me low carb was how I dropped 23 kilos and got my blood sugar and blood pressure back to normal, and fasting is the extra gear on top.
Key points
- Built for feast and famine. For most of history we’d eat well for a few days after a kill or a fruit season, then go without. Now we can feast three or four times a day, every day of the year.
- What 18:6 looks like. 18 hours of nothing but zero-calorie drinks, then a 6-hour window to eat. For me that’s roughly midday to 6 or 6:30pm.
- Still low carb in the window. Lunch, maybe some beef jerky through the afternoon, then steak with salad or veggies, or a bit of roast lamb for dinner.
- What I drink while fasting. Black coffee, black tea, green tea and water. Diet drinks at a pinch, but I try to avoid the chemicals in them.
- Lemon instead of milk. Black tea with a dash of lemon is really nice. My nightly glass of milk was a blind spot, because there’s a lot of sugar in milk.
- Longer fasts if you want to go faster. Some people do a 24 to 48 hour fast every week or so. On multi-day fasts, add a bit of salt or electrolytes to your water. My 72-hour fast had me feeling it by the end, so I prefer 18:6.
- Ease into it. You can start with 12:12 if you like. I reckon the harder you can go, the better the results.
- Why it helps. As I understand it, fasting brings on autophagy, where your body cleans up worn-out cell bits and uses them for energy, and it goes after the inflammatory fat around your liver, heart and kidneys first.
- The knock-on effects. Less inflammation, less brain fog, better joints, and blood pressure and blood sugar coming back towards normal. That’s what happened for me.
So I’ve gone and started intermittent fasting. Yeah, I know. A few years back I was 123 kilos and an undiagnosed type 2 diabetic. Going low carb got 23 kilos off me pretty quickly, normalised my blood sugar and brought my blood pressure back to normal. Intermittent fasting is something that can help with all of that too, so in this video I walk through how I do 18:6 and why I reckon it works.
I’m not a doctor, dietitian or nutritionist, just a bloke telling you what works for me. Talk to your doctor before you start fasting, especially if you’re on medication for blood sugar or blood pressure.
Built for feast and famine
We’re built as hunter gatherers. For most of history, food came in bursts. A fruit would come into season and then disappear, or you’d spend three days stalking a mammoth, and when you finally got the kill the whole tribe would eat really well for a few days before going back to nothing. That’s just the way we were designed.
Nowadays it’s feast, feast and more feast. You can eat three or four times a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, eat a lot more than you need, and a lot of the wrong stuff. Intermittent fasting is basically just eating between certain times of the day, and it restores a bit of that natural balance.
What 18:6 looks like for me
It’s an 18-hour window of nothing, then 6 hours where I can eat. When I say nothing, I mean zero-calorie drinks: black coffee, black tea, green tea and water. Diet drinks are fine to some extent, but I try to avoid them because of the chemicals in them.
Around 12 midday I’ll think about lunch. Through the afternoon I might have some beef jerky or other snacks, then an evening meal. It’s still low carb, so steak and salad, steak and veggies, or at the moment some roast lamb. Once 6 or 6:30 comes around, I’m back on the zero-calorie drinks. If you’re not sure what fits in the window, what can you eat on a low carb diet? has the full rundown.
Swapping the milk for lemon
What I’ve found is that a black tea with a dash of lemon is really nice, and I don’t miss the milk at all. Milk was a blind spot for me. I always thought dairy was okay, and it is on keto and carnivore, but there’s a lot of sugar in milk, and I’d been having a big glass before bed out of habit. Late at night I’ll have lemon water rather than tea, because the caffeine in tea can make it harder to get to sleep. I wrote more about that in lemon water for fat loss.
Going longer, or starting gentler
Once you get into the rhythm, 18:6 is fairly easy. If you’re really overweight and want to drop a bucket load quickly, you could look at longer fasts, say 24 to 48 hours once every week or nine days. If you’re going for multiple days, they reckon you should keep your electrolytes up by adding a bit of salt, like Celtic salt, or some packet electrolytes to your water once a day. When I did a 72-hour fast I was pretty well feeling it by the end, so I prefer sticking with 18:6 as a nice, steady intro to fasting.
You can do 12:12 if you just want to ease into it. That’s up to you, but I reckon the harder you can go, the better the results. And when you’re in your eating window, stick to low carb. There are low carb versions of the things you’d miss, like fries, pizza and ice cream.
Why fasting helps
The obvious benefit is speeding up weight loss and getting you off a plateau. When I got stuck, eating only between midday and 6pm is what got the scale moving again, which I also talk about in how I lowered my blood sugar after 50.
There’s also some physiology going on. The way I understand it, there’s a process called autophagy. When the glucose stops coming into your bloodstream, your cells start wrapping up worn-out or dead cell components, getting rid of them and using them for energy. Fasting also promotes ketones, which is what the keto diet is built on, and it seems to go after the inflammatory fat first: the visceral fat around your liver, heart and kidneys, the stuff that gives you a big beer belly. With plain calorie cutting, the way I see it, the fat comes from everywhere and you can lose muscle too.
Getting rid of that fat reduces inflammation, so your joints feel better, the brain fog goes, and your blood pressure and blood sugar come back towards normal. When you’re in ketosis your insulin isn’t being spiked to store more fat, which helps with insulin resistance. That’s what low carb people report, and it’s what happened with me. My full story is in how I lost 20kg in 4 months at 55, and if you want the basics of the diet itself, start with what is LCHF?
Give it a go
You’ve got nothing to lose apart from some belly fat, inflammation, and a few points off your blood pressure and blood sugar. For more on fasting at my age, have a read of intermittent fasting over 50.
Grab the free Carb Guide, the list of foods that are safe and good to eat, with a bit of my backstory too.
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Not medical advice. I'm not a doctor, dietitian or nutritionist, just a bloke telling the story of what worked for me. Check with your doctor before changing your diet or medication.
