Food coma: are you an intermittent fasting bore?
It is still January — how? — which means that people are still clutching your wrist, and urgently (and hungrily) telling you about the merits of intermittent fasting and how it has transformed them, specifically from someone who used to be good company into someone who talks about intermittent fasting.
A recap for those at the back: intermittent fasting is a voguish diet — followed by celebrities including Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, pictured, Jennifer Aniston and Gisele Bündchen, as well as loads of people in your office. It essentially means eating all your meals within a specific window over a 24-hour cycle.
The window tends to be eight, 10 or 12 hours, depending on how hardcore you are. The rest of the time you “fast”, or “obsess”.
It can be hard to engage with zealots, as they are too busy watching the clock, calculating how many meals they could squish into the last 52 minutes (and 40 seconds!) before they have to give up eating (also: joy) for the day. Know a disciple? Present them with the below quiz, in order to ascertain where on the scale of “intermittent fasting bore” they fall.
According to self-imposed diktats you are supposed to eat only between 9am and 7pm. As the clock strikes 7pm, you are only three mouthfuls into your dinner. Do you:
a. Put down the fork and step away from the bowl. Compromise is for the weak.
b. Make the last mouthful huge, then chew it at a glacial pace. At 7.10pm, swallow, then Google pictures of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley while a single tear rolls down your cheek.
c. Keep eating. Tomorrow you’ll just start an hour later!
You are at a dinner party. Despite the host’s assurances before you agreed to come, dinner is 40 minutes late, and you are no longer allowed to eat. Do you:
a. Tell them so. Politeness is for the weak.
b. You don’t care! You can be flexible! When no one is looking, you feed your portion to the cat.
c. You are too drunk to notice the time. Wait — are you supposed to drink on this thing?
You’re hungover and won’t make it to work without a pre-commute Greggs vegan sausage roll. Do you:
a. Refuse to buy. You are never hungover. Excess is for the weak.
b. Buy the sausage roll, but save it until 9am, when you are allowed to eat it.
c. Buy three sausage rolls. Eat them on the trot on the Central line, spraying pastry crumbs everywhere.
What word would your friends use to describe you?
a. Controlled.
b. Conflicted.
c. Concerning.
Mostly As
Full bore.
Mostly Bs
Wannabe bore. The most boring of all.
Mostly Cs
Not certain you’re doing this right
