Ways To Use This Information For Better Health
What Is The Best Intermittent Fasting Window To Lose Belly Fat
If youre trying to lose weight, when you eat might be as important as the foods you choose.
While intermittent fasting is not new, the trend is beginning to gather more attention. As part of a 2019 study, researchers followed 19 adults with metabolic syndrome whose meals were spread over a 14-hour window and found limiting meals to a 10-hour window was associated with weight loss, smaller waist circumference, lower blood pressure and LDL bad cholesterol.
The study also showed time-restricted eating helped decrease visceral fat, the dangerous fat stored in the stomach that has been linked to increased risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. Although participants were not asked to change their diets, they consumed 9% fewer calories.
How To Optimise Intermittent Fasting For Fat Burning
Intermittent fasting has gotten so much hype in recent years that I think people are now becoming skeptical. One of the many benefits of intermittent fasting is weight loss, but it isn’t some fad diet with sketchy science. Actually, it isn’t a diet at all! Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern that breaks the three-meal-a-day status quo and frees our bodies from the burden of non-stop digestion so that they can focus on other tasks, one of which is to burn fat in between meals.
When we say weight loss, what we’re really aiming for is fat loss. Generally, we care more about toning and slimming down our waistlines than seeing a smaller number on the scale. That’s why intermittent fasting has become so popular studieshave found that intermittent fasting for 24 weeks can reduce stubborn belly fat and shrink waist circumference by as much as 4-7%. Without further ado, here are some tricks to optimize an intermittent fast to burn body fat.
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Do Not Fear The Shaker
In addition to fluid loss, a second significant aspect is responsible for physical complaints such as dizziness.
An undersupply of salt is the primary trigger for this. Therefore, even in strict therapeutic fasting, natural salt is allowed in addition to water.
Besides other electrolytes, sodium, in particular, is flushed out of the body while breaking down carbohydrate stores. Since salt has an unjustly unhealthy image, unfortunately, nutrition-conscious people often save with it.
However, we now know that it is precisely those countries with the highest salt consumption that have the lowest rates of cardiovascular disease .
Moreover, salt takes the bitter taste out of food and acts against cravings. Since it also has a negative feedback loop, unlike sugar, your body will tell you when youve had enough salt.
While sugar consumption promotes insulin resistance and body fat storage, salt increases insulin sensitivity and aids weight loss .
Finally, salt is the natural antagonist of sugar. If you want to do intermittent fasting without problems, salt your food as you like.
Furthermore, if you have a headache during fasting, you can dissolve natural Himalayan salt in water or drink homemade sole water.
Female Intermittent Fasting 16/8
You, too, have probably read that there are unique fasting methods for women, such as crescendo fasting.
This method is nothing more than modified 16/8 intermittent fasting. It involves fasting only every other day and limiting the fasting period to 12 hours.
After that, you extend the fasting period step by step to 16 hours, and finally, you also fast every day.
Moreover, sometimes it is even claimed that intermittent fasting would be suitable only for men. Nevertheless, fasting is a natural state that our ancestors usually did not choose.
If only the male body is built for it, we would not exist today. For this, women, in particular, have had to survive food shortages.
However, hormonal and genetic differences exist between men and women, playing a role in intermittent fasting.
However, the fact that intermittent fasting is fundamentally unsuitable for women is a myth.
Accordingly, a randomized clinical trial in humans did not find different health effects of intermittent fasting for women and men. In this study, the researchers examined :
- Blood pressure
These are essential health markers in terms of disease prevention and sustainable weight loss.
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Metabolic Flexibility The Key
After youve done a proper 21 day reset, the end result should be that youre now metabolically flexible.
Youre now fat adapted and you can easily switch fuel sources from the foods that you eat to your own body fat for energy. Thats when you get into what I like to call accelerated fat loss.
If you dont do a proper reset, and you still follow a standard western diet and you just jump in with intermittent fasting, that is the definition of metabolic inflexibility. And youre not going to see the results youre looking for.
This is where a lot of people find themselves. This is where you hear people say that they got headaches from fasting, they were starving the entire time, they didnt feel good, and they say it didnt work for them.
Yeah, no kidding. I couldve told you that.
Now the people whos taken the proper 21 day primal reset inside the Fat Loss Accelerator have all successfully unregulated their fat burning metabolism. Theyre metabolically flexible and they can easily fast for long periods of time without feeling hungry.
Which means that theyre able to burn more fat. Theyve also all been successful at being able to keep the weight off.
Now, how long will it take for you to start seeing results? It really depends how long you fast for, and how often. I always like to say that the longer you fast, the better.
So if youve been overweight for a long time, that means that youve also been insulin resistant for a long time.
Ways To Burn Even More Fat While Intermittent Fasting
If youre reading this post right now, at least one of the following is true. Either a) youve been intermittent fasting for a while and want to learn how to burn more fat, b) youve never heard of intermittent fasting before and are wondering what its all about, or c) you just want to lose weight by any means possible.
Well, Ive got great news for you, my friend!
Wherever you are on your weight loss or intermittent fasting journey, this post will help you out!
Today youre going to learn all about how to lose weight so much faster and burn even more fat than you thought you could, with intermittent fasting.
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Can You Lose Weight Just By Intermittent Fasting
There are some studies conducted which claimed intermittent fasting is helpful in your weight loss.
As per this article in the link here, it states that intermittent fasting can reduce weight by 4 to 8% and fat loss by 11-16% over 3 to 12 weeks.
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How To Lose Body Fat Effectively With Intermittent Fasting
There are hundreds if not thousands of different methods and diets to lose body fat in a short period. Many people swear that particular diets are working effectively, but when others try it, they dont see the wanted results. Whats the reason for that? You know that were all different and one thing may work well for me, but wont work for you at all. The thing with diets and losing body fat is experimenting. You must try different things to see whats working and what isnt working for you.
In this article, I will talk about a fascinating way of building muscles while losing body fat at the same time. Its not a diet rather the schedule of eating. I bet you heard of it already, but its called intermittent fasting.
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Intermittent Fasting 16/8 And Weight Loss
People successfully lose weight with intermittent fasting for a good reason: fasting is the best way to lower insulin levels.
Insulin is responsible for signaling cells to take up glucose from the bloodstream and store excess energy as fat.
Accordingly, researchers can already predict 75% of the gain and loss in overweight people using insulin levels .
Moreover, high insulin levels prevent the breakdown of body fat .
The 16-hour fasting period stops nutrient intake and lowers insulin levels, ending the bodys storage mode.
For this reason, the body can deplete carbohydrate stores . Once these are empty, it can tap into body fat for energy.
This natural process is called ketosis. After most people want to lose weight, ketosis is the essential goal of intermittent fasting 16/8.
Consequently, our bodies build up fat reserves during times of abundance to burn for energy during food shortages.
Because we now eat during all seasons around the clock, we gain weight. In contrast, intermittent fasting can restore the natural balance between eating and fasting.
Accordingly, fasting corrects the hormonal imbalance that causes obesity .
How Calories Are Stored
As I mentioned earlier, calories that are not used immediately are stored as either glycogen or fat.
Glycogen is an easily accessed storage container because it is essentially stored glucose, which is easy to burn. But the glycogen container is small. You only have about 2,000 calories of available energy stored as glycogen.
Fat, on the other hand, has a lot of energy. Just one pound of fat has about 3,500 calories worth of energy, but fat is hard to access.
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Losing Weight With Intermittent Fasting And Keto
The keto diet is defined by an essential rule that specifies the macronutrient intake as follows:
- Fat: 75-80%
- Protein: 20-25%
- Carbohydrates: 5-10%
When you reduce your carbohydrate intake for a more extended time and replace these calories with healthy fats and proteins, the body has to adapt to these circumstances.
This way, you can reach the metabolic state of ketosis, a completely natural mechanism that has ensured the survival of our species.
When carbohydrate stores were empty in times of food shortages, the body had to tap into fat reserves as a primary energy source.
And ultimately, food shortages are nothing more than extended periods of fasting that are involuntarily completed. The inability to preserve fresh foods, in turn, represents nothing else than natural intermittent fasting.
Therefore, both diets aim to lower insulin levels to enable fat burning.
Accordingly, the keto diet attempts to put the body into ketosis by depriving it of carbohydrates, which can otherwise only be achieved by fasting for 2-5 days .
A key synergistic factor now comes into play. Those already on a ketogenic diet can get into efficient fat burning more quickly with intermittent fasting and thus lose weight faster.
Calorie Restriction & Cyclical Under
Since the 1930s, animal studies have been telling us that restricting calories improves health and longevity. Until recently, we believed that it was necessary to starve yourself to reap the benefits.
But you can actually trim your waistline, improve your biomarkers of health, and increase your longevity without the pain, suffering, and hunger that comes along with restriction. Fasting works, too, but since its difficult for Big Food to profit from people going without their food, most of the benefits of skipping meals dont make it into common wisdom.
Theres a monumental difference between common and normal, however. Today, more than 67% of us in the United States are overweight or obese. Being overweight is common. But its not normal.
Fasting, on the other hand, is historically quite normal but isnt common in a world abundant with drive-thrus, meal-replacement shakes, and eating 6+ times a day is healthy dogmatism.
For millions of people across the world, regular fasting is commonplace and has been part of spiritual practice for thousands of years.
But before that, fasting was simply a way of life. With no storable grains, and few other foods that stayed fresh for very long, most of our ancestors experienced both feast and famine on a regular basis. When game was scarce, seasons changed, or the pickings were slim, hunter-gatherers did without.
To reap the full rewards of the Wild lifestyle, you might consider going without occasionally, too.
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Why 3 Pm Is A Key Time To Start Eating Less Food
Peeke also recommended that I stick to having lunch be my biggest meal of the day. Theres a study that a majority of Americans eat over the course of 15 to 16 hours out of the day, with the majority of their calories coming after 3 p.m. Its a recipe for disaster, she says, referencing a study published in November 2015 in Cell Metabolism.
Peeke suggested that rather than having my banana protein shake as an evening dessert and not eating anything before exercising, I instead drink it first thing in the morning. This way, the carbs from the banana would give me an instant source of energy to fuel my workout and my body would be processing the carbohydrates at an optimal time of the day.
The switch immediately paid dividends. I had way more energy throughout my workout. Because my body was working at a higher intensity, I was burning more calories than I would be even if Id been doing fasted cardio. Peeke recommended that I try to stay under a 12-hour window of restricted eating, but I was able to manage my dinnertime to keep my eating in a 10-hour window. Although my weight drifted up by 2 lb, it was because I was adding muscle mass instead of fat. The additional muscle in my arms and shoulders were noticeable. And as my body fat percentage got lower, I started to see some veins popping out of my biceps, forearms, and calves.
Mistake #: Breaking Your Fast With A High
At the end of a 16-18-hour fast , you may be feeling pretty hungry and tempted to splurge with a high-carb meal like pizza or a burger and fries. Id suggest not doing that if you want to maximize fat loss.
IF allows you to be somewhat loose with your eating, but that doesnt change the fact that high protein intake is important along with healthy, wholesome food choices. Coming off of a fast, I recommend a high-protein meal as opposed to one loaded with carbs.
Research supports my advice. One study found that when subjects consumed a high-carbohydrate meal, levels of a critical uncoupling protein decreased within an hour after the meal subjects who consumed a low-carb meal, however, maintained elevated levels of the uncoupling protein an hour after eating.
Why is this important? Because IF is effective for fat loss in part because of uncoupling proteins. When you fast, it turns on genes that encode for certain uncoupling proteins and for enzymes that increase fat burning. The uncoupling proteins basically poke holes in the mitochondria inside muscle cells. The mitochondria are where most of your energy is derived from, especially at rest. By poking holes in the mitochondria, they produce less energy, so they have to burn far more calories to produce the same amount of energy in the form of ATP.
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How Does An Intermittent Fast Burn Fat
Assuming youve never gone on an intermittent fast before, you may be fascinated with how this works. How does the body burn fat while fasting? Is it simply by calorie restriction alone?
Actually, no. To understand how your body torches fat, we first have to talk about the bodys energy source.
From the moment you wake up until when you go to sleep , your body needs energy. This is what allows you to get up, go about your daily routine, and enjoy your life rather than feel like youre dragging through it.
This energy comes from glycogen, a polysaccharide of glucose. Bacteria, fungi, animals, and humans alike all rely on glycogen to fuel our daily activities. When our systems receive glucose, a simple sugar, we can synthesize it to glycogen for energy through glycogenesis.
Where does glucose come from? Mostly in the foods we eat. The foods with the highest quantities of glucose are fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. Thus, if you eat a diet rich with olive oil, avocados, peanut butter, cheese, meat, fish, dairy, fruits and vegetables, pasta, rice, and bread, you get plenty of glucose.
If your body has more glucose than it needs, it holds onto it for later. This can increase your insulin, meaning your body will always burn glucose, even if given the chance to burn fat instead. Should you develop an insulin resistance and this becomes chronic, your body increases insulin production when youre full.
Intermittent Fasting Fat Loss And Muscle Gain
Although intermittent fasting is great for fat loss, its incredible formuscle gain as well. Not directly but the hormonal benefits are still there.
- Short-term fasting hasbeen shown to increase Luteinizing Hormone , which is a precursor totestosterone. In a study done on obese men, LH increased by 67% after 56hours.
- Another study found that obese men saw a 26%increase in GNHR , which is anothertestosterone stimulant.The same study found that men who were working out saw a 67% increase inGNHR, which led to a 180% boost in testosterone.
With cleverintermittent fasting you can effectively promote lean body composition by burningfat while intermittent fasting and building muscle when eating. The key is todo resistance training, eat enough protein, and time your food intake into thepost-workout scenario when youre most anabolic.
If you want to know how to build muscle and burn fat for longevity and performance with intermittent fasting, then check out my new book Metabolic Autophagy.
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