What is Intermittent Fasting?
It is a way to structure your eating schedule where you abstain from eating for a given amount of time and then eat during a certain feeding window. You can fast 14 to 16 hours (usually overnight and then into the next day) and eat for 8-10. Others do 16 hour fast and a 8 hour feeding window. Find what is best for your lifestyle. The current body of scientific research does not demonstrate that IF is better for fat loss.
How to find out your daily recommended caloric needs:
http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm
~~Your Carb, Fats and Protein Ratio:
http://www.freedieting.com/tools/nutrient_calculator.htm
If losing body fat and weight is all about controlling overall calories, then WHY SHOULD I FAST?
1. Controlling calories because our eating becomes more structured.
-- Almost all of us like to eat (and if you don't... I can't be your friend lol) and some of us do not always (or cannot) accurately track calories. By fasting and setting up a structured outline to guide our eating and meals, we can control calories more easily and stick with our diet
2. More fullness
-- eating more frequently can really mess with your hunger and fullness hormones and you never quite feel satiated after a meal. Eat meals that are larger in volume and calories and you can go longer without eating. Hunger is one of the main reasons diets fail and I promise if you eat 1000 calories of lean meats, high fiber vegetables, and some sort of fat source you WILL feel sufficiently filled up.
3. Sustainability and adherence
-- Diets that control calories over the long term lead to diet success. Eating less frequently but with larger meals TENDS to increase adherence to the diet over the long haul.
4. Social Flexibility
-- We are all social butterflies and most of society today likes to build social occasions around food and usually at night. By fasting throughout the day, you enable yourself the freedom of eating the foods served at these gatherings and still staying within your calorie goals for the day. A diet that doesn't promote social flexibility is really hard to maintain (see point 3)
5. Improved hunger awareness
-- Before I started fasting, I would get hungry and it would be an EMERGENCY. Now I recognize hunger is not a big deal and that it can be dealt with and it will come and go. You also recognize that environment greatly triggers your hunger (walk by a bakery and listen to your stomach growl lol). Sometimes, my hunger would be merely psychological. I could be bored, sad, etc and want to eat. Fasting allowed me to focus on things other than food.
6. More productivity.
-- Eating less meals allowed me to get more stuff done during the day. Eating takes up time (especially when eating slowly and enjoying your food) and I use the fasted state to get a lot of things accomplished without having to worry about eating.
The Basics of Weight Loss:
1. You must be in a calorie deficit to lose weight. Your body has a certain level of calories (energy) that it takes to maintain its weight based off your height, weight, lean body mass and activity levels.
2. A calorie is a unit of ENERGY. Therefore, the people that try and tell you a calorie is not a calorie in terms of energy value are lying to you. It is like saying 1 pound of bricks is not the same weight as a pound of feathers.
3. BMR is the amount of calories your body takes just to stay alive and maintain organ function.
4. TDEE is your total daily energy expenditure: a combination of your formal exercise and spontaneous movement as well as BMR
5. Food composition (the quality of food) does not matter in terms of weight loss.
5b. I am not saying to eat Gummy Bears and chocolate bars to hit your calories! Food quality for general health, body composition and energy levels IS relevant and can play a crucial role in long term diet adherence.
Basics of controlling calories and a well-rounded diet:
*A wide variety of unprocessed, whole foods coming from mostly plants*
4-5 servings of vegetables per day (a serving is a fist).
1-2 servings of fruit.
10-15 grams of fiber per 1000 calories you ingest.
Sufficient protein: Half your body weight in grams per day is a good start. If you are resistance training, aim for .6-.8g per pound of body weight. Adequate fats: to avoid micromanaging your diet and creating deficiencies, nutritional experts recommend your diet be comprised of ~.45g per pound of body weight in fats per day.
Hunger sucks when dieting, so eat as much whole foods as possible within your caloric targets to remain full!
The best way to lose fat?
A gradual reduction in calorie intake below your maintenance level of calories while doing a well-balanced resistance training routine to maintain or even gain some muscle mass in the presence of sufficient protein, adequate fiber and lots of vitamins and minerals from whole foods.
Can I have ________ or will it break my fast?
If it has calories, it will break your fast. HOWEVER, fasting is NOT the reason why you lose weight, the calorie deficit you create by abstaining from food for a prolonged period of time is the reason you lose weight. Therefore, if adding a little creamer into your coffee enables you to fast a bit longer and you account for the calories in the creamer, then by all means have it! But, if those “little bites” or “splashes” of creamer add up to 200-400 calories you do not account for, then you may not lose weight. TOTAL calories are king.
Tips for starting?
Start off slowly. Wake up and have water. Find ways to stay productive and busy. Zero calorie drinks can kill your appetite for a while as well. Pre-plan your first meal so that you do not get too hungry and overeat when you do break your fast.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TYPES OF INTERMITTENT FASTING:
~~Find what kind of IF fits your lifestyle, goals and do ability:
* ADF (alternate day fasting, 36/12 hrs fast/feed). See also The Alternate-Day Diet, which is a milder form of ADF. While I don't think The Alternate-Day Diet is an optimal approach for the fitness enthusiast, Johnson's book is surprisingly good and scientifically accurate. Everything about the title ("turn on your skinny gene") screams faddishness, but I was pleasantly surprised after finishing it. Having read all the quoted studies on ADF myself, I could not find any major misrepresentation of the findings apart from a few too optimistic blurbs about fasting and life extension. I can easily recommend this book for it's summary of the ADF findings. And while the nutritional advice might not be cutting edge, it's certainly not bad or misleading either.
* The Warrior Diet (20/4 hrs fast/feed). WD is actually not intermittent fasting in the strictest sense of the word, since the author allows small meals during the fast (vegetables, fruits). The WD book is somewhat of a cult classic, but the book prefers to quote stories and myth instead of scientifical evidence to supports it's (sometimes ridiculous) claims.
* Eat Stop Eat (24 hrs fasting, 1-2x/week). You can read my review of Eat Stop Eat here. This is a book I highly recommend for those interested in fat loss and the physiology of fasting. Eat Stop Eat has a strong following with many success stories.
* The Fast-5 Diet. (19/5 hrs fast/feed). Fast-5 should be available for free on the Fast-5 website. I shouldn't critique a book that is given a away freely. But let's just say I don't consider reading it the greatest investment of time you can make if you have the most basic understanding of how weight loss works.
* Leangains (16/8 hrs fast/feed)
Within each of these systems, there are more or less specific guidelines regarding nutrition, ranging from the very vague (ADF) to the strict (Leangains).
It is a way to structure your eating schedule where you abstain from eating for a given amount of time and then eat during a certain feeding window. You can fast 14 to 16 hours (usually overnight and then into the next day) and eat for 8-10. Others do 16 hour fast and a 8 hour feeding window. Find what is best for your lifestyle. The current body of scientific research does not demonstrate that IF is better for fat loss.
How to find out your daily recommended caloric needs:
http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm
~~Your Carb, Fats and Protein Ratio:
http://www.freedieting.com/tools/nutrient_calculator.htm
If losing body fat and weight is all about controlling overall calories, then WHY SHOULD I FAST?
1. Controlling calories because our eating becomes more structured.
-- Almost all of us like to eat (and if you don't... I can't be your friend lol) and some of us do not always (or cannot) accurately track calories. By fasting and setting up a structured outline to guide our eating and meals, we can control calories more easily and stick with our diet
2. More fullness
-- eating more frequently can really mess with your hunger and fullness hormones and you never quite feel satiated after a meal. Eat meals that are larger in volume and calories and you can go longer without eating. Hunger is one of the main reasons diets fail and I promise if you eat 1000 calories of lean meats, high fiber vegetables, and some sort of fat source you WILL feel sufficiently filled up.
3. Sustainability and adherence
-- Diets that control calories over the long term lead to diet success. Eating less frequently but with larger meals TENDS to increase adherence to the diet over the long haul.
4. Social Flexibility
-- We are all social butterflies and most of society today likes to build social occasions around food and usually at night. By fasting throughout the day, you enable yourself the freedom of eating the foods served at these gatherings and still staying within your calorie goals for the day. A diet that doesn't promote social flexibility is really hard to maintain (see point 3)
5. Improved hunger awareness
-- Before I started fasting, I would get hungry and it would be an EMERGENCY. Now I recognize hunger is not a big deal and that it can be dealt with and it will come and go. You also recognize that environment greatly triggers your hunger (walk by a bakery and listen to your stomach growl lol). Sometimes, my hunger would be merely psychological. I could be bored, sad, etc and want to eat. Fasting allowed me to focus on things other than food.
6. More productivity.
-- Eating less meals allowed me to get more stuff done during the day. Eating takes up time (especially when eating slowly and enjoying your food) and I use the fasted state to get a lot of things accomplished without having to worry about eating.
The Basics of Weight Loss:
1. You must be in a calorie deficit to lose weight. Your body has a certain level of calories (energy) that it takes to maintain its weight based off your height, weight, lean body mass and activity levels.
2. A calorie is a unit of ENERGY. Therefore, the people that try and tell you a calorie is not a calorie in terms of energy value are lying to you. It is like saying 1 pound of bricks is not the same weight as a pound of feathers.
3. BMR is the amount of calories your body takes just to stay alive and maintain organ function.
4. TDEE is your total daily energy expenditure: a combination of your formal exercise and spontaneous movement as well as BMR
5. Food composition (the quality of food) does not matter in terms of weight loss.
5b. I am not saying to eat Gummy Bears and chocolate bars to hit your calories! Food quality for general health, body composition and energy levels IS relevant and can play a crucial role in long term diet adherence.
Basics of controlling calories and a well-rounded diet:
*A wide variety of unprocessed, whole foods coming from mostly plants*
4-5 servings of vegetables per day (a serving is a fist).
1-2 servings of fruit.
10-15 grams of fiber per 1000 calories you ingest.
Sufficient protein: Half your body weight in grams per day is a good start. If you are resistance training, aim for .6-.8g per pound of body weight. Adequate fats: to avoid micromanaging your diet and creating deficiencies, nutritional experts recommend your diet be comprised of ~.45g per pound of body weight in fats per day.
Hunger sucks when dieting, so eat as much whole foods as possible within your caloric targets to remain full!
The best way to lose fat?
A gradual reduction in calorie intake below your maintenance level of calories while doing a well-balanced resistance training routine to maintain or even gain some muscle mass in the presence of sufficient protein, adequate fiber and lots of vitamins and minerals from whole foods.
Can I have ________ or will it break my fast?
If it has calories, it will break your fast. HOWEVER, fasting is NOT the reason why you lose weight, the calorie deficit you create by abstaining from food for a prolonged period of time is the reason you lose weight. Therefore, if adding a little creamer into your coffee enables you to fast a bit longer and you account for the calories in the creamer, then by all means have it! But, if those “little bites” or “splashes” of creamer add up to 200-400 calories you do not account for, then you may not lose weight. TOTAL calories are king.
Tips for starting?
Start off slowly. Wake up and have water. Find ways to stay productive and busy. Zero calorie drinks can kill your appetite for a while as well. Pre-plan your first meal so that you do not get too hungry and overeat when you do break your fast.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TYPES OF INTERMITTENT FASTING:
~~Find what kind of IF fits your lifestyle, goals and do ability:
* ADF (alternate day fasting, 36/12 hrs fast/feed). See also The Alternate-Day Diet, which is a milder form of ADF. While I don't think The Alternate-Day Diet is an optimal approach for the fitness enthusiast, Johnson's book is surprisingly good and scientifically accurate. Everything about the title ("turn on your skinny gene") screams faddishness, but I was pleasantly surprised after finishing it. Having read all the quoted studies on ADF myself, I could not find any major misrepresentation of the findings apart from a few too optimistic blurbs about fasting and life extension. I can easily recommend this book for it's summary of the ADF findings. And while the nutritional advice might not be cutting edge, it's certainly not bad or misleading either.
* The Warrior Diet (20/4 hrs fast/feed). WD is actually not intermittent fasting in the strictest sense of the word, since the author allows small meals during the fast (vegetables, fruits). The WD book is somewhat of a cult classic, but the book prefers to quote stories and myth instead of scientifical evidence to supports it's (sometimes ridiculous) claims.
* Eat Stop Eat (24 hrs fasting, 1-2x/week). You can read my review of Eat Stop Eat here. This is a book I highly recommend for those interested in fat loss and the physiology of fasting. Eat Stop Eat has a strong following with many success stories.
* The Fast-5 Diet. (19/5 hrs fast/feed). Fast-5 should be available for free on the Fast-5 website. I shouldn't critique a book that is given a away freely. But let's just say I don't consider reading it the greatest investment of time you can make if you have the most basic understanding of how weight loss works.
* Leangains (16/8 hrs fast/feed)
Within each of these systems, there are more or less specific guidelines regarding nutrition, ranging from the very vague (ADF) to the strict (Leangains).
