WHY YOU SHOULD CONSIDER INTERMITTENT FASTING

Intermittent fasting is a widely popular nutritional fad that has gained notoriety over the past couple of years, with people using it to fight obesity, diabetes, and achieve their fat loss goals.

It has been used by Hollywood actors needing to lose weight in a short amount of time before a new movie, by internet personalities on Youtube, and by me personally as well.

I’ve given intermittent fasting a try, and I was quite impressed with the results (for the short time I stayed disciplined enough to stick to it, HA).

With this recently developed nutritional fad out there, it is important that we look to the research to see how it works, and if it really can be as effective as the traditional 3-4 small meals per day, low calorie food diets that have been used so religiously over time.

HOW DO YOU DO INTERMITTENT FASTING?

There have been numerous ways proposed as the correct method to intermittent fasting.

Some say that you should alternate “fasting days” with “feeding days”, in which 2 or 3 days of the week are dedicated to eating very little calories within a very short time frame, while the other 4 or 5 days are set as normal eating days.

For example, 3 days of the week you should eat less than, say, 1500 calories between the times of 2:00 pm to 8:00 pm.

All other days, you can eat with no calorie restrictions at any other time of the day. This was the initial way that intermittent fasting was proposed, and this is the way that many studies out there have used as their testing methodology.

However, people all over the internet (as well as me) have asked the question, “If you can do this 3 days per week and it be effective, wouldn’t it be just as, if not more, effective doing it every day of the week? Or at the least, 6 days a week with one unlimited feeding day?”

Well, in my opinion, and as we are about to see ahead, the answer is most likely yes.

After watching many videos and reading about ways people say to fast, it seems as if the most popular way to use intermittent fasting these days is by eating in roughly 8-10 hour periods every day of the week (with one feeding day, of course).

For example, and similar to the way I did it, for 6 days of the week you should only eat from 12:00 noon to roughly 8:00 pm. This leaves you with 16 hours of a 24 hour day to be left towards fasting.

Now, it is key to note a couple of things. Water and coffee, as long as it has NO added sugar or cream or milk to it, are not considered to be calorie-drinks and thus can be consumed outside the window.

Additionally, if you are someone who just absolutely cannot function without breakfast, then you may want to set your hours accordingly to where you can eat a good breakfast or “brunch” and still be able to enjoy dinner…though it would have to be a slightly early dinner.

Either way, you should aim for roughly 15-17 hours of fasting per day, with one day of the week set aside to eating whatever you want whenever you want (within reason, please).

MAJOR HEALTH BENEFITS OF INTERMITTENT FASTING

1. Reduced cholesterol and total body triglycerides (1).

Intermittent fasting has been shown to effectively reduce the amounts of cholesterol in your body, as well as the total number of triglycerides in your bloodstream.

Total triglyceride level is a fancy way to say the total amount of true fats that are circulating around your bloodstream.

Now, this may be essentially due to the fact that you might be eating less if you are intermittent fasting, therefore there is less total fat to possibly consume, rather than there being some magical chemical workings going on.

But, personally, I am fine with that.

If intermittent fasting helps you eat less, therefore reducing your cholesterol levels, then by all means I am in support of it.

2. Effective increase in weight loss, specifically fat loss (1, 2, 3, 4).

Numerous studies showed that intermittent fasting was a great way to lose weight, specifically, fat-mass.

For those of you not privy to exercise science and how the body is constructed, there are many different body mass substances.

There is fat mass, fat-free mass, and bone/visceral mass.

Fat-free mass is anything in the body that is not fat…wow, simple huh. Things like muscle, blood, water, etc. make up fat-free mass.

Visceral mass and bone mass essentially constitute the weight of the organs and bones in the body.

Fat-mass is the absolute mass of all the fat in your body. This is the one that we are most concerned about when it comes to weight loss.

Fat can be present in many places, whether that is in or around muscles, in the bloodstream, surrounding organs, or subcutaneously under the skin.

This subcutaneous fat is what we all see when we look in the mirror, grab our waist, and say “yikes, the holidays were not good to me” (c’mon now, I’m not the only one that’s been there).

3. Reductions in blood sugar levels (5).

Blood sugar levels are a substantial piece in the puzzle of regulating weight gain and risk for diseases.

When we have lots of sugar in our blood, our body gets put on high alert and calls upon insulin to lower these levels. However, if there is too much blood sugar, insulin can’t handle all of it. Additionally, this will cause more issues with diabetes, as we will see later on.

When insulin can’t handle all of the sugar in our blood, the excess sugar will begin to take its toll on the cardiovascular system.

Elevated blood sugar for an extended period of time can damage the blood vessels, resulting in major cardiovascular complications such as atherosclerosis, increased risk of heart attack, increased weight gain, obesity, and eventually will lead to diabetes.

4. Reductions in insulin resistance and improves insulin sensitivity (1, 3, 6).

As mentioned above, when blood sugar is in excess for too long, this can lead to diabetes (Type 2 only).

This works by a phenomenon called insulin resistance.

When insulin is constantly being released in attempts to reduce blood sugar, the body begins to get used to insulin, and thus becomes less sensitive to it over time.

The best real-world example I can think of for this is when you learn something new and challenging at work, yet the more you do it, the better you get at it.

The body is the same way. The more it comes in contact with insulin (or any hormone for that fact), the less sensitive it becomes to it.

As you can see, it is crucial to the maintenance of body weight and controlling of risk for cardiovascular disease that our body is not resistant to insulin, yet highly sensitive to it.

Intermittent fasting has shown to be an effective dietary strategy in improving sensitivity and reducing resistance (1, 3, 6).

5. Reduced risk for cardiovascular disease and stroke (2, 3, 6).

We have already gone over a couple of the physiological reasons for this reduction, such as lowered cholesterol, lowered body weight, lowered fat-mass, and improved ability to detect and use insulin.

From each of the studies I read, there were a multitude of other articles cited showing the effect of an intermittent fasting diet and the reduced risk for heart attack, diabetes, and stroke risk.

As we will see in the next point, cardiovascular disease is not the only pathology that this dietary strategy has been shown to reduce the risk of…however, there is a catch.

6. Reduced risk for neurological disease and neuronal injury (5, 6, 7).

There have been a handful of studies, though roughly 15+ years old or so, that have documented the ability of an intermittent fasting diet to reduce the risk for injury to neuronal cells.

Some studies have even shown that this diet can result in reduced risk of developing neurological conditions like Parkinson’s disease and Multiple Sclerosis.

But, if you are wondering what “the catch” was that I mentioned above, well here it is:

All these studies I read were performed on lab rats back in the early 2000s.

With that being said, take this point with a grain of salt, because rodents are indeed not humans.

7. Stimulates elevated Growth Hormone production (8).

Growth Hormone (GH) is a hormone released by the pituitary gland in the center of the brain, around the area of the brainstem.

People on an intermittent fasting diet have been shown to release GH in greater levels than people on typical diets (8).

When it comes to weight loss, GH is responsible for making fat more available to the body for metabolism, to be used as a source of fuel.

Not only does this hormone make fat burning more possible and more efficient, but it also has a major role in the preservation (and at times even stimulation) of muscle growth.

I am not sure how many of you watch professional baseball, but this hormone is one that has kept so many legends out of the MLB hall of fame.

Synthetic HGH is (or at least used to be) on the “banned substance” lists of many professional sports because of its ability to give players an advantage by making them essentially better, faster, stronger, etc.

This hormone has a multitude of other functions, all of which are too vast to explain for the purposes of this blog.

MY EXPERIENCE WITH INTERMITTENT FASTING

I first heard about this nutritional fad from videos on a famous Youtube channel called Kinobody. The creator of this channel, Greg, makes his living giving health and fitness tips, as well as explaining and documenting his success using intermittent fasting to stay fit.

I adopted his format for fasting.

Every day of the week I withheld from eating until roughly 1:00 pm, and ceased my eating period around 9:00 pm.

This was easy for me, as a college student. I mean, what college student do you know to wake up before mid-afternoon (I'm only kidding mom...mostly).

I rarely woke up before 9:00 am, due to my class schedule, which made it easy for me to skip breakfast and simply push my first meal back until roughly noon or 1:00 pm.

For the first week or two of my trial with fasting, I struggled with the hunger every morning, making it hard to last until lunch time.

However, after those challenging 10-14 days, I found it easier and easier to push back that first meal of the day.

According to some research out there, coffee has been found to have a slight appetite-suppressing effect (9). Because of this, lots of people using intermittent fasting will have a cup of coffee midway through their morning fast, to help stave off the hunger.

Now, unfortunately, as an undisciplined college student, I didn’t stick with intermittent fasting for multiple months and I didn’t track my progress either.

However, what I can tell you is that intermittent fasting works.

It worked for me. Not only was it easy for me to save up spare meal tickets at the local cafeteria by eating less meals there, but it made it so much easier to burn off excess fat without doing loads of cardio at the gym.

Like I said, I was not disciplined, so sticking to a regular exercise routine was tough. But even without the 45-60 mins of cardio everyday, I was still able to lose some fat.

My pants started to fit better, my shirts weren’t as tight around my stomach anymore, and overall I just felt a little bit healthier than before.

Could all of that be down to just placebo effect in my mind? Sure.

Do I think it was? No, I strongly felt like it was a great diet plan to use.

Before I end, I want to make sure you all know that intermittent fasting is not for everyone.

Let me repeat that…

INTERMITTENT FASTING IS NOT FOR EVERYONE.

Before you start any dietary changes, if you have concerns, be sure to consult with your physician, nutritionists, dietitian, or any qualified medical professional that might be able to explain any risks or benefits that this can have for you.

As always, thanks for reading!