Does It Work For Weight/ Fat Loss And Muscle Gain
Several studies show that intermittent fasting may boost fat loss and muscle gain via several mechanisms.
Restricting your meals and snacks to a strict time window may naturally decrease your calorie intake. This might aid fat loss and muscle gain with right exercise. According to one research, it may reduce body weight by up to 8%. And decrease body fat by up to 16% over 312 weeks.
Intermittent fasting may also increase levels of norepinephrine, a hormone, and neurotransmitter that can boost your metabolism. Thus increase calorie burning throughout the day. Furthermore, this eating pattern may reduce levels of insulin, a hormone involved in blood sugar management. Decreased levels can bump up fat burning to promote fat loss and muscle gain.
Some research even shows that intermittent fasting can help your body retain muscle mass more effectively than calorie restriction, which may increase its appeal.
Do I Have To Track Calories On If
As stated before, fasting or not, the only way to lose fat is by eating in a caloric deficit. If youre in a negative energy balance, youll lose weight, period.
To answer the question, however, it depends.
If youre someone who is looking for an easy way to maintain or lose weight, achieve good health, or just drop a few pounds, then more than likely youll be in enough of a deficit by simply reducing your eating window. On the other hand, if youre someone who weight trains regularly, and/or are looking to better your body composition in order to build muscle mass, drop body fat, and perhaps perform better in the gym then I would recommend that you do track your intake.
Heres why
For fat loss, a calorie is a calorie however, when were talking about performance and overall body composition, its a bit more complicated.
If the goal is to lose weight, then tracking calories and ensuring youre in an energy deficit will suffice. But if the goal is to build muscle mass, get stronger, and burn fat, then we have to be a bit more strategic with the macronutrients that make up our caloric intake.
Protein
Fats
The benefits of a healthy fat intake are seemingly endless, but in terms of building muscle and burning fat, a few of those benefits really stand out. For example: a healthy fat intake has been associated with decreased inflammation, faster muscle growth, increases in anabolic hormone levels, and reduced body fat mass,
Carbohydrates
Find The Best Time To Exercise
If you dont exercise, you may not reach your weight loss goals. Failing to exercise and remaining active during intermittent fasting can plateau your success.
Remember: Intermittent fasting is not just a diet but an actual lifestyle, so treat it as such. Apart from eating healthy food, you should also remain hydrated, get good sleep, and exercise regularly. Only if you follow these tips will you see success with intermittent fasting.
Recommended Reading: Fasting From 8pm To 12pm
What Foods Should You Eat
As I said there are no strict rules on your food choices or macros, but there are some general pointers Id like to mention.
Obviously, if youre eating junk food in your 8-hour window, not only are you going to struggle to lose fat over the long-term, but your health and energy levels are going to suck too.
You need good food choices on your intermittent fasting bodybuilding journey.
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A Modified Fast For Max Muscle Growth
It’s becoming clear that while your daily protein intake is important, so is how much you consume per meal and how those meals are distributed. But while most people use this realization only to argue for more protein per meal, there may be a point of diminishing returns that is important for intermittent fasters to take into account.
Research from our lab concluded that when it comes to optimizing muscle protein synthesis, overconsuming protein at one time of the day couldn’t make up for low protein at another time of the day. So just as there is a defined protein threshold to initiate anabolism, there also appears to be a maximal anabolic cap. In action, this means that if you only eat a small amount of protein most of the day, but then you eat a ton of protein at one meal, it’s not going to “balance out.”
For example, let’s pretend that this anabolic cap is 40 grams protein, and the minimum protein required to initiate anabolism is 15 gramsâthis is all theoretical, to be clear. Obviously, you wouldn’t be anabolic during your 16-hour fast. But then, to get your 200 grams of protein in that eight-hour window at three meals, you could be consuming around 65 grams of protein at each meal. This is almost 50 percent over the theoretical anabolic cap.
References
What Can I Eat While Intermittent Fasting
During the times when youre not eating, water and zero-calorie beverages such as black coffee and tea are permitted.
And during your eating periods, eating normally does not mean going crazy. Youre not likely to lose weight or get healthier if you pack your feeding times with high-calorie junk food, super-sized fried items and treats.
But what Williams likes about intermittent fasting is that it allows for a range of different foods to be eaten and enjoyed. We want people to be mindful and take pleasure in eating good, nutritious food, she says. She adds that eating with others and sharing the mealtime experience adds satisfaction and supports good health.
Williams, like most nutrition experts, regards the Mediterranean diet as a good blueprint of what to eat, whether youre trying intermittent fasting or not. You can hardly go wrong when you pick complex, unrefined carbohydrates such as whole grains, leafy greens, healthy fats and lean protein.
Also Check: How Much Fasting Is Too Much
How To Make Leaner Gains With Intermittent Fasting
If youre bulking very slowly, gaining just a pound or two each month, then your calorie surplus doesnt need to be very high. In this case, with such a small overall surplus, you miss out on the extra testosterone, nutrients, and cellular signalling, so your growth potential slows down, like so:
You wont be able to build muscle as quickly, but you may still prefer this approach. For example, if youre a fitness model trying to maintain yearlong leanness, and youre happy making very slow gains, you might prefer this method.
Guys like Martin Berkhan and Gregory OGallagher do a good job of this. They might be able to get results that look something like this:
However, to say that their programs are designed for this would be to sell them short. Even the LeanGains intermittent fasting protocol is designed for fat loss and muscle maintenance, not for bulking. To quote the guy who created it, Martin Berkhan:
The gain in Leangains can therefore be a bit misleading, as most of my clients wants to lose fat, while retaining as much muscle as possible in the process.
Martin Berkhan, creator of LeanGains
Longer Studies On Protein Intake
We have additional data to help us answer the more clinically relevant questions: does eating more protein help us preserve muscle over the long term, and can we get this benefit by consuming all that protein in just one or two meals during periods of intermittent fasting?
One study reported that older women retained their muscle mass when eating 80% of their daily protein at lunch and the remaining 20% spread over breakfast and dinner. However, those who ate equal amounts of protein over all three meals lost muscle mass.24
Looking more specifically at intermittent fasting, one eight-week trial studied subjects doing time-restricted feeding four days per week and compared them to subjects eating a normal diet. All subjects did resistance training three days per week. Despite eating 650 fewer calories per day, the time-restricted feeding group did not show a significant loss of lean mass.25
A similar eight-week study looked at time-restricted feeding compared to a normal diet in resistance-trained males, but this time the groups were matched for calories and macronutrient intake. The time-restricted feeding group lost more fat and showed no difference in lean body mass compared to the normal-diet group.26
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What Is The If Bulk Approach
Essentially, this approach combines a popular form of intermittent fasting, called time-restricted eating, with a muscle building diet and exercise program, to maximize muscle gain while minimizing fat gain, as you bulk up to your desired size .
Another way to think of it is that this approach involves mimicking the traditional bulking and cutting phases BUT does so on a daily basis, and in a much healthier way. By breaking the day up into cutting and bulking periods, you can simply adjust the timing or amount of time of each window in accordance with your goals.
For example, if the goal is to bulk more, than the eating window can be expanded so that more food can be consumed during the window.
Study On Intermittent Fasting For Cutting
A new intermittent fasting study just came out, and what makes this one special is that its one of the largest and longest ones ever conducted, improving the strength of its findings.
Both the intermittent fasting and the control group were given instructions about how to eat a good diet. Both groups lost a similar amount of weightaround 2 pounds. And both groups lost a similar amount of fat. The differences werent dramatic. But the intermittent fasting group started to subconsciously move a little bit less, slightly reducing their metabolism.
The main finding, though, was that the intermittent fasting group lost more muscle mass. Protein wasnt tracked, so maybe the intermittent fasting group lost more muscle because they were eating less protein. Maybe it was because they were moving less, stimulating their muscles a little bit less. Its hard to say for sure, and so its hard to say how these findings might apply to you.
Whats interesting is that the lead researcher, Ethan Weiss, was a fan of intermittent fasting. Up until running this study, he was doing intermittent fasting himself. But after seeing these results, he decided to go back to eating more meals.
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Intermittent Fasting And Cutting
Lets take a look at at this 2016 study on 16:8 intermittent fasting on athletes.
- 34 young men who had been lifting weights for at least five years.
- Half of them did 16/8 intermittent fasting and they ate three meals within an 8 hour period. The other half did regular dieting.
- Both groups lifted weights 3x per week with the exact same program.
- Both groups had 20g of protein from a whey shake after lifting.
- They ate the same amount of calories and the same macros.
After eight weeks, they got a DEXA scan to find out the results. So, what happened?
Both groups made minor strength gainsbut the fat-loss is whats interesting.
Those doing the 16:8 fasting burnt burnt 5x more fat in the same amount of timewhile eating the same amount of foodand gaining the same amount of strength.
Whats crazy is some guys on the regular diet *gained* fat. And some guys doing intermittent fasting got even better results than the averages, with over 3kg of fat burned off.
These are guys who have been lifting weights for at least five yearsand suddenly, one group is getting 500% better results just by one little trick.
Now, intermittent fasting doesnt work for everyone.
Intermittent Fasting And Exercise
Fasting and exercise help with muscle building, and body weight loss, and affect hormones in your body. It increases HGH and makes your cells more sensitive to insulin.
During a fasting period, glucose is depleted from your muscles. So when you exercise, your performance depends on how efficiently your body burns fat for energy .
When your muscle cells have improved insulin sensitivity, the pancreas produces less insulin. Lower insulin levels make our bodies more prone to burn fat as fue and store glucose as muscle glycogen.
So if you are doing a heavy weight lifting session and do not eat enough calories, your body will use your muscle cells to break down amino acids for fuel instead.
Recommended Reading: What To Know About Fasting
Does Intermittent Fasting Slow Down Your Metabolism
Contrary to common myths, probably not. Meal frequency does not impact how many calories you burn.72 A calorie deficit, eating fewer calories than you expend over an extended time, slows down your metabolic rate.73However, intermittent fasting might not, at least throughout a couple of months.74 A short-term fast, up to three days, boosts your metabolic rate quite a bit.75
Unfortunately, no real long-term studies compare intermittent fasting with continuous calorie restriction. Weight loss always lowers your metabolic rate a bit, but nothing suggests that intermittent fasting is worse than regular dieting. If anything, research indicates the opposite.
Intermittent Fasting Is Extreme Calorie Cycling
Intermittent fasting doubles down on calorie cycling. During the feeding windows, you have more than enough calories to build muscle at full speed, and during fasting periods, youll actually dip into a calorie deficit, losing fat. This creates the misconception that you can lose fat even while youre bulking up.
The misconception comes from the fact that in order to gain weight you need to be in an overall calorie surplus, and that means that during your feeding periods, you need to make up for all the calories you missed while fasting. This means eating so many damn calories that theres no way to invest all of them into muscle growth, causing the extra calories to spill over into fat storage. So what happens is that you lose a bit of fat while fasting, then gain a bunch of fat during the feeding window, like so:
Recommended Reading: 18 Hour Fasting Diet Plan
Does Bulletproof Coffee Break A Fast
Bulletproof coffee seems to be all the rage these days, but Im not a fan.
Its essentially just pouring oil into your coffee, which has calories and therefore does indeed break your fast.
My view is that these are fat calories that should be saved for when youre cooking or meal prepping later in the day. Cooking proper meals like steak or fish or chicken with veggies.
Not for putting in your damn coffee.
/8 Fasting For Bodybuilding
This is the most popular version of IF, and its also the easiest to do.
Its literally 16 hours fasting, 8 hours eating. Most people opt to have an eating window from 12 pm to 8 pm, although it can be any timeframe the best one will be the one that suits your schedule.
Its also the easiest thing in the world to start with.
All you do is push your breakfast back by two hours for the first week, and then after pushing it back by another two hours in the second week, youre good to go.
Another really powerful fat burning trick I recommend is to drink black coffee in the morning when youre fasted. It helps massively with keeping you satiated, while also boosting your metabolism.
So why exactly is 16/8 fasting good for bodybuilding specifically?
The main intermittent fasting benefits in my opinion, are:
- The appetite reduction you experience
- The reduced insulin levels
- The flexibility of the overall system
- You get greater protein synthesis levels with 16/8 than you would with OMAD or 20/4
All of this makes for a relatively easy and effortless journey to sub-10% body fat, which is where you want to be if you want to look your best as a bodybuilder.
Intermittent fasting is a powerful tool that will enable you to look more ripped, more striated, and more chiseled.
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Higher Quality Muscle Growth
For most people practicing the traditional bulk plan or unhealthy lifestyle, this process is unfortunately not very active. This means that the muscle gained may be of low quality .
Unfortunately, as we age this type of eating pattern can lead to increased abdominal fat and muscle loss. Once accumulated, this excess body fat can further disrupt cellular quality control processes and set up a viscous cycle of fat gain and muscle loss.
On the other hand, when you practice intermittent fasting, your cells become healthier. And healthier functioning cells means that there are less bad guys around, which allows your body to use more of its resources to repair and recover from workouts rather than fighting off the bad guys.
