FASTING

While I am a fan and proponent of fasting, I think I need to dispel some myths about it.

Fasting is an amazing tool for your nutritional health but it is not the magic button that makes you lose fat. Actually fasting has very little to do with fat loss. If you do experience fat loss while fasting it is ONLY because you are manipulating your caloric intake to be in a deficit.

I prefer to Intermittently fast at random intervals because it allows me a very fluid way of getting in my nutrition. I can wait to eat and go hiking all day and have one big meal, or I can eat a few smaller meals in the day. It takes all the guesswork and difficulty out of planning my food because I am not worried about my calorie intake over a day. More so I am looking at y weekly intake. I can maintain and even gain muscle while fasting for up to 3 days during a week. As long as myths caloric intake is still in a surplus for the week.

Fasting doesn’t “increase longevity” either, the studies really say that ANY caloric restriction induces the same longevity factors.

YES fasting increases autophagy (the process at which your body removes damaged cells and essentially cleans your cells) But this process happens in a caloric deficit as well.

So, the takeaway here is that no matter how you choose to eat, if you want to be optimally healthy you should try to stick to a caloric intake as close to your daily needs as possible, if you need to lose weight, cut those calories by 200 for two weeks, monitor your progress and adjust accordingly. You don’t need a massive deficit to lose weight.

There are many options for fasting, 16/8, 12/12, 14/10, 20/4, 24/24, It all depends on what YOU can stay consistent with. That IS the magic pill… Consistency and Adherence. 

Cheers all,

Adam