Could fasting help you lose weight, boost energy, and improve your overall health? Get the facts on the five most common intermittent fasting methods. Intermittent fasting helps remove your cravings for sugar and turn you into an efficient fat-burning machine, making it easier to maintain a healthy body. Fasting is an age-old practice, often done for religious reasons, but fasting for weight loss is still capturing the public imagination. You can find dozens of do-it. In the spring of 2010 I started experimenting with the Warrior Diet by Ori Hofmekler and it forever changed the way I approach nutrition. Without that diet, and. Physiological And Psychological Effects Of Intermittent Fasting. In a fed state, the human body uses insulin to bring glucose into cells to manufacture energy. In particular, I'm talking about not. You get: Intermittent Fasting weight loss plan, sample diet schedules, Success stories with before & after results of using intermittent fasting. Two Meals a Day Are Ideal. By Dr. Mercola. How many meals a day is ideal? There are many answers to this question, but if you want to optimize your lifespan and decrease your risk for developing chronic degenerative diseases, the answer is becoming very clear. Other less obvious risks are biological changes that result in metabolic dysfunction, subsequent weight gain, and diminished health. In fact, a number of beneficial effects take place when you go for periods of time without eating. Valter Longo,1 director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California, where he studies meal timing and calorie restriction, even three meals a day may be too much. As reported by Time Magazine: 2. They often look only at the short- term effects of increasing meal frequency. While your appetite, metabolism, and blood sugar might at first improve, your system will grow accustomed to your new eating schedule after a month or two. When that happens, your body will start expecting and craving food all day long instead of only around midday or dinnertime. More recently, I have refined my views on skipping breakfast. The key to remember is to only eat within a window of six to eight consecutive hours each day, and avoiding food for at least three hours before bedtime. As long as you restrict your eating to this window, you can choose between having breakfast and lunch, or lunch and dinner, but avoid having both breakfast and dinner. I have recently appreciated that this is another important factor that can help optimize your mitochondrial function and prevent cellular damage from occurring, which I'll review in the next segment. That said, none of this probably applies to normal weight teens or growing children. They likely need three square meals a day unless they're overweight. For kids and teens, the type of food they eat would be a primary consideration. Ideally, all of their meals would revolve around eating REAL FOOD — not processed foods, fast food, and sugary snacks. Drinking plenty of pure water and avoiding sugary beverages is another key consideration. This is due to the way your body produces energy. Many don't realize that your mitochondria are responsible for . Your cells have between 1. When you don't have insulin resistance this energy transfer works quite nicely, but when you are insulin resistant or you eat excessively, dysfunctions tend to emerge. These excess electrons leak out and wind up prematurely killing the mitochondria, and then wreak further havoc by damaging your cell membranes and contributing to DNA mutations. Simple: resolve your insulin resistance as soon as you can, and do not eat for AT LEAST three hours before you go to sleep. Personally I stop eating around 4 PM or even earlier and typically go to sleep around five to six hours later. This is one of the reasons why I now believe skipping dinner may be an even better strategy than skipping breakfast. Clearly skipping dinner is more difficult to implement from a social perspective, but it might be a superior biological strategy. Obese participants who . All participants, including the control group, received a weight management consultation on how to improve their diet and exercise. Those who ate three meals a day and drank water prior to each meal lost an average of nearly 9. Those who only pre- loaded once a day, or not at all, lost just over 1. In all, 2. 7 percent of the treatment group who pre- loaded with water lost more than five percent of their body weight, compared to just five percent of the control group. This makes logical sense, as thirst is often misinterpreted as hunger. Drinking water before settling down to eat will also make you feel fuller, so overall this strategy could result in eating less. Interestingly, research. So one reason why calorie restriction may lengthen lifespan appears to be due to the positive effect it has on gut microbiota. Earlier research has demonstrated that calorie restriction helps extend the lifespan of animals by improving insulin sensitivity and inhibiting the m. TOR pathway. This was demonstrated in a 2. Research included in that review, and other published studies, indicate that intermittent fasting can help: Limit inflammation, reduce oxidative stress, and cellular damage Improve circulating glucose Reduce blood pressure Improve metabolic efficiency and body composition, including significant reductions in body weight in obese individuals Reduce LDL and total cholesterol levels Prevent or reverse type 2 diabetes, as well as slow its progression Improve immune function,1. Improve pancreatic function Improve insulin and leptin levels and insulin/leptin sensitivity Reproduce some of the cardiovascular benefits associated with physical exercise Protect against cardiovascular disease Modulate levels of dangerous visceral fat Boost mitochondrial energy efficiency Normalize ghrelin levels, known as . Fasting can raise HGH by as much as 1,3. HGH plays an important part in health, fitness, and slowing the aging process. It's also a fat- burning hormone Lower triglyceride levels and improve other biomarkers of disease Boost production of brain- derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), stimulating the release of new brain cells and triggering brain chemicals that protect against changes associated with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. For starters, it's a lot easier to comply with, and compliance is everything. The calorie restriction route is also extremely dependent on high quality nutrition — you want to sacrifice calories without sacrificing any important micronutrients — and this can be another hurdle for many who are unfamiliar with nutrition and what actually constitutes a healthy diet. Most people fail to appreciate that there are many intricate biochemical dynamics that occur that are unaccounted for when you just count . As pointed out by Fight Aging: 1. Thus only the mouse evolves a relatively large plasticity of life span in response to food scarcity. Ancel Keys demonstrated this in the mid- 1. Thirty- six young healthy male volunteers were placed on a 2. They also had to walk for about 4. But instead of resulting in continuous weight loss, at 2. The men became obsessed with food to the exclusion of everything else in their life, and when the calorie restriction ended, they all over- reacted. Within a few weeks, they regained all of the lost weight plus about 1. Other studies have come to similar conclusions. So starvation- type diets may not be ideal for the average person. Your body will tend to shut down various processes in order to survive. For example, by reducing thyroid function, your body will not burn as many calories. On the one hand, calorie restriction promotes beneficial biological changes that tend to extend life; on the other, there are built in mechanisms that when triggered by chronic calorie restriction can trigger other health problems. These are complex issues, and any extreme measure is likely to cause more problems than it solves. The best we can do is come up with some general guidelines that replicate ancestral patterns. In my view, daily intermittent fasting and avoiding eating for a number of hours before bedtime has many advantages over general calorie restriction and other radical diets, while providing many of the same benefits with a minimum of risk. It's important to recognize that, with few exceptions, you cannot burn body fat if you have other fuel available, and if you're supplying your body with carbohydrates every few hours, your body has no need to dive into your fat stores. When you apply intermittent fasting you not only avoid this but also will typically decrease your food costs and increase your health. If you're not insulin resistant, intermittent fasting is not as crucial, but may still be beneficial. If you're among the minority of Americans who do not struggle with insulin resistance, then my general recommendation is to simply avoid eating at least three hours before bedtime. That automatically allows you to . To that, I would add avoiding sitting, engaging in non- exercise movement throughout the day, and getting regular exercise. Exercise will not produce significant weight loss without addressing your diet, but when done in combination it can be significantly beneficial. Intermittent Fasting Weight Loss Diet 1. Quick Tutorial. Well When you do intermittent fasting?*You. But what exactly is body fat? Well technically Your body fat is just the accumulation of all the excess calories you overate so every time you eat too much..*Your body takes those excess calories, stores it as body fat and uses it as a backup source of energy and you start to use that backup energy or you start to burn bodyfat when you exercise more and/or eat less on a diet (like in any normal weight loss plan) when you create a calorie or energy deficit but like I already said..*Your body is also forced to mostly only burn body OR MAKE YOU LOSE WEIGHT when there. Your insulin and blood sugar levels are lower making it easier for your body to release more HGH to burn more fat and I don. Start off Slowly*You want to Begin by fasting 1. Once you. The Best way to schedule Intermittent fasting. Go to Now. Loss. com/ifsched to see more sample Intermittent fasting schedules. Tip #3. How to deal with the initial hunger and cravings*If the hunger & cravings gets too intense Then break- your- fast, eat something, don. Drink water and maybe coffee & green tea because..*You can drink all the water you want during your 1. ZERO calories so..*Coffee & green tea are okay during your fasting period as long as it. Now Im not saying you have to workout while intermittent fasting but you will lose weight faster doing so but if you don. Better Health via Intermittent Fasting and a Low- Carb Diet. I’ve been on a low- carb diet now for about two- and- a- half months. This has consisted of eliminating all breads, potatoes, and starchy foods from my diet (Regarding fruit, I pass on bananas with only the occasional apple while still eating berries and other colorful fruits). Furthermore, it has involved intermittent fasting. Through this diet and with minimal exercise, I have reduced my body fat percentage from around 2. Weight change from approx. This weight loss was the easiest, most satisfying change in my health and body composition I’ve ever experienced. As this post is extensive, here is the general breakdown: Intro and Intermittent Fasting. Low- carb diet. Implementation and Conclusion. Additional Reading. Footnotes. Here are the details: Intermittent Fasting. Yes, you read correctly, I used the “f word”: fasting. And I can read your mind: What? You starved yourself? Is that for religious reasons? Yeah, that’s called anorexia! No, no and no. And if I missed any others, no to them, too. I first got turned onto Intermittent Fasting (IF) via Richard Nikoley over at Free the Animal who had been practicing Art Devaney’s evofitnesssans fasting for about a year. Upon trying IF, Richard immediately noticed results in the form of both significant weight loss as well as change in appetite. Richard’s successes seemed interesting enough from a distance (Fasting? Fascinating but not for me!), but what catalyzed a personal trial in IF and low- carb came after watching a lecture. Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories (“GCBC”). The big takeaway from the referenced lecture was that insulin, not overeating or under- exercising, is the chief culprit in why people become fat. Since eating carbohydrates causes the pancreas to secrete insulin, there is a direct correlation between carbohydrate consumption and insulin secretion. Ipso facto, the argument is made that eating carbs makes you fat. GCBC. Could it really be that simple? Dieting and working out had failed to reduce my weight effectively — it certainly seemed like something else was affecting my weight. Richard’s success and Taubes’ conclusion sufficiently piqued my interest. Admittedly without knowing all the data, I chose to do an IF, low- carb experiement. What exactly is intermittent fasting? Intermittent fasting is choosing not to eat for a set period of time, which unlike your daily sleeping fast, is a sustained break from regularly occurring feeding. Translated into some bright line rules, I’d define an intermittent fast as going at least sixteen hours without eating (call that a “short” fast) or going for as long as 3. As defined here, a fast requires there be no dietary caloric load on your body. Fasting for longer than 3. Most obviously, all fasts must be broken by eating. Completing one to two long fasts per week so long as they are separated by eating a few meals can result in some drastic health benefits while causing no harmful effects on metabolism so long as you are completing some form of regular high- intensity exercise. What happens when you fast? Some interesting biological things, apparently. For one, the body moves to mobilize fat stores from the adipose tissue (the fat under your skin) to consume the fat as energy. It accomplishes this fat mobilization as a natural extension of reducing insulin concentrations in the blood as well as an increase in fat mobilizing hormones such as adrenaline, noradrenaline and growth hormone. Interestingly enough, growth hormone is also released to conserve protein from catabolism. Protecting the proteins in your body during a fast is important because your body needs its lean tissues to survive (be they muscle or organ). A benefit of fasting (for your mind) is that it alters your perspective on eating. At the end of a 3. You don’t want to gnosh on some french fries, slam a sugary soft drink and eat a bowl of ice cream. Even more, via abstaining from food even when it is available for consumption, you are putting your mind in control of your behavior. Taking back a bit of control over your life is an empowering feeling that leads to improved self- image and confidence. Biologically, whether fasted or fed, your body is going to take measures to maintain adequate energy flows to demanding muscles and organs. Your body gets this energy from dietary sources or from storage within the body. The key here is that your body is always working to strike an appropriate balance (homeostasis) given the current demands. Were it not managing this process, both eating too much or eating too little would result in your untimely demise! The ability of our bodies to regulate energy during times of feast or famine is evolutionary engineering. It is reasonable to posit that homo sapiens have only recently lived in such abundance that they could expect to eat food throughout the day, three times a day or more. Go back 5. 0,0. 00 years and you’ve still got mostly the same genetic footprint for human beings, but an entirely different supply of food. These were times when “foraging for food” meant more than a run to the pantry. In other words, our genetics have been engineered to allow us to go without food for longer than ten hours without resulting in our bodies failing. For a tidbit more on the evolutionary aspects of intermittent fasting, see footnote 7. The bottom line: by reducing insulin in the body and up- regulating fat mobilizing and protein- protecting hormones, IF naturally turns your body into a fat burning machine. During a fast, your body will use whatever energy necessary, which will be similar to the amount of energy required were you eating normally. Over a long fast, if your body requires 2,5. Thus, the combination of IF with exericse is an effective way to reduce fat stores and work towards a leaner body composition. Now, the astute reader asks, “Couldn’t you switch your body to being a fat burning machine by cutting out carbohydrates from your diet? If you only ate fat and protein, your body would have to burn the fat for energy, right?”Good question! Low- carbohydrate diet. And the answer is, of course, yes! The metabolic pathways while on a fast are the same processes when on a low- carbohydrate diet. GCBC (Also see Eades here). This is because in both states (fat/protein- fed or fasted) your body is going to rely on free fatty acids as its main source of energy. Does it really matter that the fat comes from dietary sources or from your cells? Apparently, not. 3. If you want to know a ton more about this, and I reiterate this in the footnotes, pick up Gary Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calories, an exhaustive book about the science and history of the low- fat- is- healthy hypothesis, the varying research studies behind low- fat diets, the research behind low- carbohydrate diets, obesity, diabetes, insulin, caloric restriction, exercising to lose weight, metabolic syndrome, some biochemistry and more. GCBC is a fascinating and eye- opening read. As noted before, Taubes concludes that insulin is uniquely fattening. And again, since insulin is released after eating carbohydrates, carbohydrates are fattening. Insulin is a hormone produced by your pancreas that regulates blood sugar, or glucose. Glucose comes from carbohydrates either directly or upon digestion. The presence of insulin downregulates fat mobilizing hormones (Human growth hormone, adrenaline, noradrenaline, glucagon, for example). Upon the introduction of insulin into the bloodstream, free fatty acids are driven back into fat cells for storage as they are now deemed unnecessary given the newfound energy. When all this energy leaves your bloodstream, you get hungry! In this manner, consuming carbohydrates not only shuts down fat mobilization but it can even spur hunger. Furthermore, insulin tells your liver to take glucose and make triglycerides or fat for storage. Even more, if you note the “glyc” in triglycerides — that is for glycerol phosphate which holds the long fat chains together. Guess where your body gets glycerol phosphate? From metabolizing glucose! Thus, not only does the presence of insulin spur hunger and fat manufacturing by the liver, but the glucose facilitates fat creation by providing the molecule necessary to build the fat! Insulin, by way of carbohydrates, is like the triple threat to being lean. It follows logically that by reducing insulin concentrations in the body, you can curb hunger, stop fat storage, and maintain the fast- induced fat mobilization process discussed earlier. You reduce insulin concentration by fasting and avoiding carbohydrate- dense foods. Though it is unnecessary to fast while on a low- carb / carbohydrate restricted diet, fasting speeds things along via caloric restriction overall while still allowing you to eat normal meals when you do eat. Taubes contends that a fast effectively accomplishes the same thing as Atkins’ induction phase, which is a two- week period of eating twenty grams of net carbohydrates a day or less. Implementation: Though this is by no means the way to implement this diet, this is my semi- specific methodology. You must pay attention to your own results and customize a system that works for you. Fasting: On a day when I plan to start a fast, I eat breakfast and lunch. Then I eat nothing else until dinner the next day. During the fast, I am free to drink water, tea and coffee so long as no creams or sugars are added. Some even say diet soft- drinks are ok but I universally avoid artificial sweeteners. All said, this results in anywhere from a 2. I make it a point to do about twenty to thirty minutes of high- intensity exercise about an hour or two prior to breaking my fast (typically some combination of multi- joint weight- lifting like dips, pull- ups, squats, kettlebell exercises, etc.). Whether you do your high- intensity exercise while in a fasted state or not, the exercise must be done! It is not optional. I break the fast with a nutritious meal with normal- sized portions. Eat - STOP - Eat. In the last few years a lot of diet gurus have tried to argue that calories don. Some of them may be true. Some completely bogus. And others so weak they don. But it MUST happen, no matter what the diet gurus pretend. However.. Even though you NEVER have to . The trick is knowing what your level of calories is and getting below it.
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