For the past six months I have been practicing Intermittant Fasting. I started at 12/12 – 12 hours of fasting and 12 hours when food was allowed. That is the recommended starting point for women because long fasting periods can affect hormones. Gradually I adjusted. During this period I continued to research IF. It suited me but I wanted to make sure it was a sound practice to follow. I learned that a fasting period of at least 14 hours is necessary to effect metabolic changes.

Gradually I increased the fasting period. The problem was that I had trouble eating during the limited time. Eventually I adapted the pattern. I make note of the last time I eat and then make sure I fast for at least 14 hours. This works for me. I feel good. It suits both body and soul.

Here’s the catch: about every three weeks my body rebels. It doesn’t want to wait. It screams at me, “FEED ME NOW.” Usually my body is craving specific foods such as vegetables. I’ve learned that it is better to listen to my body and go off my eating schedule for a day. IF is more of a guideline.

Yesterday evening my body started giving me commands:

MAKE ME SOUP. So I made a roasted red pepper and tomato soup with chicken bone broth. I had two bowls.

GO TO BED. At 9:45 suddenly I was exhausted. Usually I don’t even head to my bedroom until midnight but I needed to sleep immediately. I was so tired I cut my nighttime routine in half. Horror of horrors, I didn’t even moisturize.

WAKE UP AND FEED ME. This was 2 am. It made sense I was hungry. Two bowls of soup wasn’t going to last long.  So I made a large blueberry/soy milk smoothie.

MORE SOUP. It’s not even noon and my body is clamoring. This time for mushroom soup that I have in my freezer. It is thawing in the microwave as I write this.

So I’ve listened to my body and given it what it wants. I know that I will get back to my regularly eating habits in about a day.

It’s taken me a lot of therapy over several decades to learn to listen to my body. As a child I learned to dissociate from my body. I quit listening. I quit trusting it. It had to scream at me to hear the first peep. Living with chronic conditions makes it hard to want to listen to your body. A lot of the messages are painful. I often still don’t realize how much pain I’m in until I start being unable to function because I’ve used so much energy pushing everything away.

There are a lot of ways to live a healthy lifestyle. Yes, there are definite ways to sabotage your health but when it comes to healthy living there are a lot of guidelines that can help you figure out what works for you. The problem is that you have to listen to your body to figure out what it needs. That’s where the glitch happens.

So now I’m listening. Sometimes it goes against a lifetime of habits but I feel better overall when I listen to my body and meet its needs.