As someone who has to pay close attention to their weight
in order to fully prepare for their sport, I am always looking for different
ways to maintain my weight while building muscle (or even a safe/healthy way to
cut weight). Now, lets look into intermittent fasting.
- Biologically
and evolutionarily our bodies were not designed to eat 3 or 6 meals
daily; but rather our bodies are designed to go for a surprisingly long
time without caloritic consumption due to the
obvious struggles of having to find and or kill our food. There are
plenty of studies to support this (which is not surprising), but what is
surprising are the biological activities our bodies go through due to this intermittent
fasting. In men, intermittent fasting resulted in a 2,000% increase in Human
Growth Hormone (HGH) secretion, which helped build muscle while also losing
body fat. This is because once our bodies sense we do not have food for
energy it begins to use stored fat cells for energy, which in turn helps lose
tricky body fat, and also helps detoxify your body. Now, lets take a look at
what fasting is and how it works.
Here are the two
biggest benefits of intermittent fasting:
· Alternate-day
fasting encourages fat oxidation as well as providing clean energy from fat as
opposed to sugar.
· Alternate-day
fasting helps lower body weight, LDL, and triglyceride levels.
Intermittent
fasting is not a diet, but rather a dieting
pattern. Simply: it’s
making a conscious decision to skip certain meals.
By fasting and then 'feasting' on purpose, intermittent
fasting means eating your calories during a specific window of the day, and
choosing not to eat food during the rest. To take it to an evolutionary
standpoint, a caveman wouldn't wake up and look in his fridge; he would get up
drink some water and start the hunt.
Now, there are a few different ways to take advantage of
intermittent fasting:
- Regularly eat during a specific time
period. For example, only eating from noon-8 PM, essentially
skipping breakfast. Some people only eat in a 6-hour window, or even
a 4-hour window.
- Skip two meals one day, taking a full 24-hours off from
eating. For example, eating on a normal schedule (finishing
dinner at 8PM) and then not eating again until 8PM the following day.
What I like to do is drink water and coffee in the morning
of my fast and not eat until about 1-2 in the afternoon. I drink water for
the obvious reasons but I drink my coffee for several reasons:
- Coffee is a powerful
antioxidant
- I use either coconut oil
or grass-fed butter instead of cream and sugar
·
Coffee can improve exercise
performance
·
Long-term coffee consumption is associated
with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes.
The more coffee you drink, the lower
the risk
·
People who drink six or more cups of coffee
per day are 50% less likely to develop diabetes.
·
In a study on 47,911 Americans, there was a correlation between
coffee drinking and a lower risk of prostate cancer. Men who consumed the
most coffee (six or more cups daily) had a 20% lower risk of developing any
form of prostate cancer.
(See sources for more information)
Using fat in your coffee is good whether you're fasting or
not but it is especially helpful when you are.
Our bodies, particularly our brain, run on water and fat. With you consuming water and fat you help
keep your cognitive function high while your body is using stored fat cells to
give your body energy.
Now, you might be thinking: “okay, so by skipping a meal, I
just eat less than normally overall, and thus I will lose weight,
right?”
Well, that’s partly true.
- Yes, by
cutting out an entire meal, you are able to eat MORE food during your other
meals and still consume a caloric deficit (which is an important for losing
weight). However, as we already know, not all calories are created equal,
the timing of meals can also influence how your body reacts.
- With intermittent
fasting, your body operates differently when “feasting” compared to when
“fasting”: When you eat a meal, your body spends a few hours processing that
food (burning/using what it can from what you just consumed). Because it has all of this readily available, easy to
burn energy in its blood stream (due to the food you ate), your body will
choose to use that as energy rather than the fat you have stored. This is
especially true if you just consumed carbs
or sugar as your body prefers to burn sugar as energy before any other source.
- During the “fasted
state,” your body doesn’t have a recently consumed meal to use as energy, so it
is more likely to pull from the fat stored in
your body, rather than the glucose in your blood stream. Resulting in loss of
now ‘unneeded’ body fat. The same even goes for working out in a
“fasted” state. Without
a ready supply of glucose to pull from (which has been depleted over the course
of your fasted state, and hasn’t yet been replenished with a pre-workout meal),
your body is forced to adapt and pull from the only source of energy available
to it: the fat stored in your cells.
So, why does this work?
- Our bodies react to energy
consumption (eating food) with insulin production. Essentially, the more
sensitive your body is to insulin, the more likely you’ll be to use the food
you consume efficiently, which can help lead to weight loss and muscle building.
Along with that, your body is most
sensitive to insulin after
fasting.
- Your glycogen
(a starch stored in your muscles and liver that your body can burn as fuel when
necessary) is depleted during sleep, and will be depleted even further during
training, which can further increases insulin sensitivity. This means that a
meal immediately following your workout will be stored most efficiently: mostly
as glycogen for muscle stores, burned as energy immediately to help with the
recovery process, with minimal amounts stored as fat.
Now lets compare this to a regular day
(no intermittent fasting).
-With insulin sensitivity at normal
levels, the carbs and foods consumed will see full glycogen stores, and see enough
glucose in the blood stream, and therefore be more likely to get stored as fat.
- Not only that, but growth hormone is
increased during fasted states (both during sleep and after a period of
fasting). Combine this increase in HGH and the decrease in insulin
production, and you’re essentially priming your body for muscle growth and fat
loss with intermittent fasting. In other
words, intermittent fasting
can help teach your body to use the food it consumes more efficiently.
For many different physiological reasons, fasting can help promote weight
loss and muscle building when done properly.
My average fast day:
6-8AM
-Tall glass of water (occasionally putting a pinch of pink
Himalayan salt in my water bottle)
-Coffee with coconut oil or grass-fed butter only
1-2PM
-Protein and greens for lunch. Maybe some eggs and kale
5-7PM
-If I swing my
kettlebell I eat a small meal or no food at all or I consume a krill oil (I
personally do this to simulate the failed hunt/kill)
-If I train I eat
(to simulate a successful kill/hunt)
7-8PM
-Protein or greens for dinner
Now, I do
not suggest doing this if you are not comfortable with this dietary
pattern. The key is to do it
intelligently in order for your bodily functions to react properly. If at all you feel light headed, drowsy or
sick EAT! Listen to your body. No one knows it as well as you; some people will
react differently to fasting and or working out and fasting.
The best advice that I can give is to PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOUR BODY IS TELLING YOU.
Sources:
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