Keep This In Mind
The truth about diets is that they all work. There is no “best diet.” The best diet is the one that works for you. Regardless if it’s Keto, Atkins, Weight Watchers, etc., they all work. In dieting you have to gain before you can lose. Gain control of what you eat and lose weight. Structuring your diet is a major factor in finding success.
The reason that all diets work is that they all have several things in common.
First, they limit calorie consumption is some way, shape or form. Whether it’s limiting carbs, sugars, meats or plants you are controlling what you consume. And that act of gaining control of what you eat is the first major step in achieving your weight-loss goal.
Second, when you diet you will consume more nutritious foods packed with vitamins and minerals and improve your ratio of macro nutrients (carbs, proteins, fats). In addition, you will limit your consumption of unhealthy foods that have a negative effect on your endocrine system, digestive system, integumentary system and every other system that helps your body perform at its most optimal rate.
Finally, when you make better decisions with your diet you tend to make improvements in your physical activity. People who diet are more likely to workout, go for a walk, take the stairs or perform any other physical activity that will accelerate their intended goal.
Your role in dieting is to find the diet that works best for you and your lifestyle. Find what you like and what clicks in your mind. Some diets come more natural to people while others are an improbable task. Just because someone else find great success at one particular diet doesn’t mean you will. Try different diets until you figure out which one works. You can also combine diets to create a better fit for your lifestyle. For example, intermittent fasting and the Keto diet are a very popular duo, as is the duo of the Keto and Carnivore diet.
Find your diet. Improve your nutrition. Increase your physical activity. That is the secret to losing weight.
Remember this: Successful people have a habit of doing things failures don’t like to do.
Diet Overview
In the world of fasting there are several paths you can take. You can choose from a variety of intermittent fasting strategies ranging from 12 hours to several days. Fasting has been proven to be highly effective in fat loss, as well as other health benefits. A lot of people feel that intermittent fasting makes it easier for them to remain compliant to a diet. However, you should make sure you’re eating plenty of nutrient rich foods within your eating window to ensure optimal results.
First and foremost, fasting isn’t a “diet,” but for the sake of this website we are labeling it as such. The great thing about fasting is its simplicity, and simple diets equal effective diets.
The idea behind intermittent fasting is to restrict your body of food, allowing it to use fat as its fuel source. This is done by setting your eating times between periods of fasting. There is no specification of what to eat, but rather when to eat.
Fasting can be performed in a variety of ways. There is no hard and fast rule because you simply aren’t eating. The main guidelines to fasting are the duration of your fast and the beverages you can consuming during those hours.
Here are some popular variations of fasting:
- 12-Hour Fast – Helps fight weight gain and but isn’t powerful enough to provoke fat loss.
- 16-Hour Fast – Most skip breakfast and give themselves an 8-hour window to eat. Most common among people who fast. More powerful than 12-hour fasts for burning fat.
- 20-Hour Fast – (Warrior Diet) All meals are eaten in the evening during a four-hour window.
- 24-Hour Fast – Most fast dinner to dinner. Recommended doing twice a week. Very effective for fat loss.
- 36-Hour Fast – Done 1-2 days a week. More effective for fat loss.
- 42-Hour Fast – Used more for people with diabetes.
- 3-Day Fast – Fires up your metabolism. Activates ketosis.
The following beverages are allowed during your fast:
- Water
- Coffee
- Tea
- Bone broth
Each one of these fasting options holds plenty of health benefits and can be easily applied to your daily routine and fitness endeavor.
The benefits of fasting include:
- Mental clarity and concentration
- Weight loss and fat loss
- Lowering blood sugar levels
- Improves insulin sensitivity
- Lowers blood cholesterol
- Prevents Alzheimer’s
- Reverses aging process
- Decreases inflammation
Every fasting strategy promotes a high fat, low carb nutrition plan to help aid in its effectiveness and get you to your intended goal at a much faster pace. To be find success in fasting you have to overcome learned behaviors that have become a habit over the years. You have to understand that hunger is a state of mind and not a state of stomach. Fasting helps to regain control of your diet and recalibrates your relationship with food.
Diet Rules
The rules to any variation of fasting are simple: don’t eat.
It is important that you stay hydrated during your fasting periods with plenty of water (adults need roughly 90 ounces a day). In addition to water, other fluids can be consumed for hydration or to suppress your appetite.
These beverages include:
- Water
- Coffee
- Tea
- Bone broth
Caffeine acts as a minor appetite suppressant so use coffee and tea to your advantage.
People who should not fast are as follows:
- Pregnant
- Severely malnourished
- Kids under 18
- Breast feeding moms
As always, refer to a health care professional if you want to fast but have issues such as diabetes, gout, etc.
How it Works
When we eat, we ingest food that we use immediately or store for later use. The hormone that is activated to use the food for energy or store it away is called insulin. To clarify, when we eat food, insulin levels rise. Insulin’s job is to use the energy or store it away.
Your body stores excess energy in your liver. Once the liver can’t store anymore it turns the remaining energy into fat. These fat stores can be stored in the liver or in fat deposits around the body. To clarify, eating food raising insulin levels. Eating too much food produces and stores fat. Meaning, your jeans fit a little tighter. Or worse, you traded in your jeans for sweatpants.
When insulin levels are raised, fat-burning production is halted. This is where fasting flexes its heroic muscles.
When you fast, you decrease insulin levels. This triggers the body to burn stored energy and re-engage the fat-burning production. The energy stored in the liver is the most easily accessible energy source for your body, so it turns to the liver stores first. Your liver stores enough energy to fuel the body for about 24 hours. After this period the body starts to breakdown stored fat as energy.
To clarify, your body operates under two states: the fed state where insulin levels are high or the fasted state where insulin levels are low. We are either storing energy or burning stored energy.
Timeline
Six to 12 hours after you begin a fast, blood sugar and insulin levels start to fall. At this point, the liver starts to use up its stored energy to fuel the body.
One to two days after you begin your fast, energy stores begin to run out. Your body then needs to find a new way to fuel itself, so it turns to converting fat to energy for the body to use as fuel.
Two to three days after beginning your fast, the body goes into ketosis. Ketone bodies are used to fuel the brain and body with energy as your body switches from using glucose as energy to using fat. Your body will not use any of its muscle for energy until all the fat stores are depleted.
Here's the Plan
As mentioned above, there are several different methods of fasting. In this section we’ll cover them in more detail so that you can decide which one best fits your life and your goals. And yes, the hours you spend sleeping count.
12-Hour Fast
The easiest variety of fasting. This approach can be performed by simply eating a dinner at 8PM and not eating again until 8AM. The 12-hour fast period creates a 12-hour window for you to eat. It isn’t nearly as effective in provoking fat loss but it does help to fight weight gain, obesity and keep insulin levels low.
16-Hour Fast
This method allows for an additional four hours of fasting and thus is a more powerful approach to fat loss. For this approach, most people skip breakfast every day and give themselves an eight-hour window to eat. When you choose to eat in that window is up to you. Most people opt for two meals within their eating window, while others eat three. Find out what works successfully for you. This is one of the most popular approaches to fasting and, like every other plan, is more effective with a low-carb diet.
20-Hour Fast
This approach is better known as the Warrior Diet. The Warrior Diet is based on the eating patterns of ancient warriors, who consumed little during the day and then feasted at night. During the 20-hour fasting period, you are to consume small amounts of dairy products, eggs and raw fruits and vegetables, as well as plenty of zero-calorie fluids. After 20 hours, you can eat whatever you want within that four-hour window.
24-Hour Fast
Another very popular and effective way to fast, the 24-hour fast is also known as the Eat Stop Eat method based off of the book by Brad Pilon. This approach is done twice a week. You will fast for 24 hours, return to normal eating patterns the next day, then fast for another 24-hour period in the same week. Fasting from dinner to dinner or breakfast to breakfast are the two most common methods.
36-Hour Fast
One of the more intense options to those new to fasting. The 36-hour fast, also referred to as the Alternate Day Fast, is highly effective for burning fat. It promotes your body’s desire to burn fat for energy even on the days that follow the fast when your body has returned to its normal eating patterns. Your body also starts to produce more HGH (Human Growth Hormone) which helps preserve lean muscle mass (both muscle and bone) and burn fat, thus acting as a bit of an elixir from the fountain of youth by slowing the aging process.
42-Hour Fast
This method is the longest variation practiced by those that fast. You will get all of the benefits of the 36-hour fast, while also potentially benefiting from things such as improved cellular repair and maybe even delay tissue aging. Like other extended fasts, you will also get the benefit of an improved metabolism on the days that proceed this fast, even after returning to normal eating patterns.
3-Day Fast
While this isn’t quite intermittent fasting, a 3-day fast allows you to reap all of the benefits of the previous fasts in addition to autophagy. Autophagy is the body’s way of cleaning out damaged cells, in order to regenerate newer, healthier cells and is believed to occur during a 72-hour fast.
Overcoming Obstacles
Hunger pangs are the main obstacle of any fast. The desire to eat is an incredibly powerful feeling that people new to fasting will need to overcome.
Most adults have no idea what physical hunger or fullness feels like. Their appetite awareness is nonexistent. Basic appetite awareness is one of your biggest allies in controlling when and how much you eat. Put simply, it’s how much food you need versus how much you want. When people do not have clear start and stop signals to eating, they end up with a body that they neither desire nor admire.
People believe that hunger is the reaction from not eating. We typically feel hungry approximately four hours after eating. That is when we eat to fill our stomachs and reach a fullness threshold. Later, when our stomachs drop below that threshold, we feel a hunger sensation again. But hunger is actually a learned phenomenon.
Hunger is a conditioned response to the way you’ve lived your life in relation to food. If you wake up and always eat breakfast, then you will be hungry when you wake up. The same idea applies to any other time of day that you have conditioned yourself to eat. You may not truly be hungry, but you eat anyways.
Smells, sounds and other stimulus make us hungry. When our senses are stimulated by the smell, sound or site of food it provokes hunger upon the expectation of food. This response is known as Cephalic Phase Response. For example, when you’re at a baseball game you want a hotdog and crackerjacks. When you’re at the movies you’re likely buying a large bag of buttery popcorn before you take your seat. When you hear the sounds of the ice cream man rolling down your street you suddenly want a frozen treat. When we get triggered to eat, we eat with our minds and not our stomachs.
How Fasting Helps
By fasting we disrupt our eating habits. We break any conditioned responses to eat from our daily routine. Your relationship with food will be recalibrated and you will get hungry because you’re hungry.
There are many reasons why we eat outside of being hungry. These reasons include:
- Being happy
- Being sad
- Excited
- Lonely
- Bored
- Stressed
- Celebrating
In these instances, how we manage our thoughts and emotions determines our ability to maintain focus on our diet. Hunger is more a state of mind than a state of stomach.
Pep Talk
Diets are never easy. At least not at first. It requires you to alter the way you have lived and eaten for years, and sometimes your whole life. But if you’re choosing to diet then it’s for a reason – and that reason makes this change important.
The secret to successfully getting things done are focus and perspective. Nothing else matters. If you can channel your mind to stay focused on your goal and keep things into perspective, then finding success comes easy. Einstein once said, “to look at things differently you have to do things different.” So if you want what you’ve never had, you have to do what you’ve never done.
Change is never easy but it’s never impossible. Humans are wired by nature but changeable by nurture. So this is where you ask yourself … are you willing to stop living the life you’re in and start living the life you’re after?