Fasting has a wide variety of benefits including reducing stress and inflammation and promoting repair and fat burning in the body.
Gain the habit of fasting every day for at least 13 hours. For example, stop eating at 8pm and then don’t have your breakfast until 9am, or if you can make your fasting window longer.
The potential benefits may include weight loss, improved mental state, improved fat burn, increased growth hormone production, lowered blood pressure and cholesterol and a reduction in inflammation.
And one of the reasons why intermittent fasting is thought to be brilliant for weight loss is because it increases the body’s responsiveness to insulin. Insulin is a hormone that is released when you eat food. It causes your liver, your muscle, and your fat cells to store glucose. In a fasting state your blood glucose levels drop which leads to a decrease in insulin production levels signalling to your body to start burning stored energy which is known as carbohydrates.
After a 13 hour fast, your body will run out of stored energy and start burning fat. You will wake up hungry so try to fuel your body during the next 11 hours until your next fast begins with a lot of healthy fats, a little fruit, maybe some nuts. An eating pattern of high fat and low carbs really works for many people.
Anyone can gain the habit of 13 hour fasting and the benefit is less eating late at night which is typically better for our waste line. People who do it say they are sleeping better, they are losing weight because they are not snacking in the evening, and they are generally feeling much more alert and energised.
Nutrition
Develop the habit of Carb Cycling for several weeks, followed by the long-term habit of Flexible Dieting.
Carbohydrates provide energy so it makes sense to consume them when we need them most which is before, during, and after workouts. The flipside to this is restricting carbs when your muscles least need them, say when you’re having a rest day or light workout, this habit encourages the body to use stored fat as its source of energy instead.
So, Carb Cycling will help you get rid of those stubborn areas where your fat is stored. Then, when your muscle is starting to show through in the way you want it to, you introduce the Flexible Dieting Method to maintain your body at the weight you want.
The common alternative people use to lose weight are the unsustainable crash diets that cause our body to switch into something called Starvation Mode. In this mode the body starts storing fats even though we feel like we’re starving all the time. When this happens our metabolism crashes down to a screeching halt, causing our body to stop burning calories and start storing the little bit of food we do eat as fat.
These types of diets burn off our muscle, not our fat. We may lose weight in the first few weeks, but the starvation will soon kick-in. Asking somebody to stop eating the foods they love is a recipe for disaster. The best thing about the habit of Flexible Dieting is that you can eat all your favourite foods, if you keep in certain ranges that match your ideal weight. The most important thing with this habit is it won’t kill your metabolism, and it won’t bring on that starvation response that causes the body to store fat.