What if I told you there was a red carpet trick that stars use to prepare for red carpet appearances like the Oscars, and it’s safe, healthy, effective, and free — and You can use it too. That’s the claim of a new book from a diabetes specialist who’s been studying the best way to get his patients off insulin, off all their medications, and leaner — using a technique called “intermittent fasting.” His name is dr Jason Fung and he gave The carrot called a preview of his new book, which he co-authored life on the fast track.
The book is about how to lose weight with intermittent fasting and how to do it safely, healthy and effectively to lose weight in just a few days or weeks depending on how much fasting you want to try. life on the fast track is about to hit the bookstores and make intermittent fasting, or IF, the most followed diet in the country because it’s healthy, it works, and you can use it anytime you need to lose weight fast.
What is intermittent fasting?
Intermittent fasting (IF) is an eating pattern that uses regularly planned alternating periods of eating and fasting to lose weight. There are many different IF methods that vary the periods between eating and fasting:
- Twice a week (5:2): This method mandates consuming less than 500 calories two days a week and making sure those days are separated by a non-fasting day when you eat your normal amount of calories.
- Timed Dining (16:8): This method requires 16 hours of fasting and only allows eating within an 8-hour window. This ratio is repeated for as many or as few days per week as you like.
- Eat stop eating: This method uses a 24-hour fasting period and is typically observed only once or twice a week.
- alternate day: As the name suggests, this method alternates days of fasting with days of eating a normal, healthy diet. On fasting days, alternate-day fasting suggests that you limit your calories to a quarter of what you would normally consume on a non-fasting day.
How does intermittent fasting work?
dr Fung: “If you fast for 12, 14, or 16 hours and don’t eat anything at all, your insulin levels will drop — so your body will switch gears and burn fat naturally. So your body wants 2,000 calories a day, and your body has maybe 200,000 calories stored (as fat). Therefore, even without exercise, your metabolic rate doesn’t drop. You just start burning all those stored calories from fat.
“That’s proven. Take a study – they fasted patients for four days and measured their metabolic rate and ate after four days Zero, they burned 10 percent more calories than if they ate 2,000 calories a day.
“So when insulin falls, the counter-regulating hormones in the body rise. You activate your fight or flight response, your norepinephrine goes up and adrenaline goes up etc. which means you burn more.
“When you eat again, your metabolic rate stays the same. They start burning food for fuel. Your body fat is nothing more than your body’s fuel storage system. But you have to correct the hormone response to food to get energy from storage.
“When we asked patients with type 2 diabetes to fast 24 hours a day, three times a week, they lost weight and got better. They even stopped taking their medication. And it went as fast as 24 hours for this to work for you. You can eat dinner early and then eat in the morning or early afternoon, and you’re essentially doing it by burning fat.
Is intermittent fasting healthy?
Before you shake your head in disbelief and think, “That’s definitely not a good idea,” I was skeptical too, since I’ve always believed in healthy, low-calorie eating. After publishing a health and fitness magazine for over a dozen years and sharing knowledge about how to follow the “fewer calories in, more calories out” path to safe and healthy weight loss, I heard about the science behind fasting and then when I did After reading the book, I was convinced that Dr. Fung is on to something.
In fact, fasting dates back to the dawn of humanity when, no matter how hungry, people needed to be sharp, strong, and energetic to find, forage, or hunt for their next meal. Cycling through feasts and famines was as natural as cycling through sleep. if dr Fung explains how fasting works, he revealed decades of scientific “knowledge” that was dear to my heart. In short, he is extremely convincing. The advantages of IF can be:
“Fasting makes you more focused and helps your mental sharpness. You can think much more clearly when you’re not trying to digest a heavy meal. When you’re not eating everyone thinks you’d have a harder time concentrating, but actually, the opposite is true: you can think more clearly, the lion that just ate is sleepy and harmless – but the hungry animal is is dangerous and can focus on what it needs to eat – all you want to do is lie down and take a nap. So when fasting you are super sharp.”
How to lose fat and build muscle with intermittent fasting
One thing to know before you start: there is a way to do it right, and that will help you lose energy or gain weight without going yo-yo. It has everything to do with the fuel systems in your body and training your energy to pull off fat and keep insulin levels low so they never tell your body to “store excess energy as fat”. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll be burning fat for fuel throughout the day.
“If you never drop your insulin, you are never telling your body to pull calories from fat. So there’s a whole movement among athletes to train while fasted. If you exercise without eating, you must pull calories from storage to survive an intense workout. If you eat in the morning – say you eat a muffin before your workout – you’re using up that source and your body never uses calories from fat and your training was not effective if the reason you are training is to lose fat.
Here’s the great news. Whether you fast for 12, 14, or 16 hours or more, it’s completely flexible — you can increase it up to 16 hours and do it a few times a week. So you eat in an 8-hour window, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and then have a 16-hour fast. Many celebrities have spoken out about IF and how it has helped them, such as Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Hugh Jackman. It’s really easy. Counting calories and carbs is complicated, but timing is simple.
“When people ask me, can you eat while fasting? I say yes. There are variations of fasting. Classic fasting is just water. But there are variations. For example, take tea or coffee with cream, which contains fat, so very little insulin responds to it. Just don’t put any sugar in it. Even if you take something like celery sticks, the insulin would rise temporarily, but fall again We use many fasting aids, mainly tea and other beverages Green tea is very good: the main benefit is the chemical compound called catechin, which helps suppress hunger That Caffeine in coffee and tea helps your metabolism kickstart your metabolism.
I happily recommend Cold Brew Green Tea – or I happily advise patients to try it Green pique tea that comes in crystals; You brew it and dehydrate it, so it’s essentially an instant tea.
“I advise people to avoid snacking [after dinner], so you come to 14 hours. Then push it to 16 hours. It’s usually a lot easier to skip breakfast than dinner. If you look at circadian rhythms, hunger is usually at its lowest around 8am and it’s easy not to eat. At this moment you have not eaten for 12 to 14 hours and you are at your least hungry. Your body fuels itself without food.
Can you eat anything while fasting?
“IF works well on a plant-based diet, which is how people in Asia ate for many years. And they stayed slim. It’s only when you’re adding processed or high-carb foods that you need to be careful. You need to be careful about the types of foods you eat since processed foods like wheat and flour, bread are now so processed. For bread they now take the wheat berries and grind them into fine dust. So the absorption is super fast, unnaturally fast. If you eat a lot of cakes and cookies and processed breads and donuts that will spike your insulin. If you’re on a plant-based diet, make sure you’re eating whole, plant-based, unprocessed foods.
“So if you’re plant-based and eating beans, legumes, vegetables, and whole grains like quinoa, it all keeps insulin levels down. If you look at the simple sugars in granola like Captain Crunch and chocolate donuts, which may be vegan but they’re terrible for you.
What to eat to break your fast
When breaking your fast, focus on whole foods and healthy plant-based options that are easy to digest. These include:
- Cooked vegetables
- Healthy Fats
- legumes
- nuts
- seed
- raw fruits
- vegetable broth or soups
- vegetable juice
Expert tips on how to start fasting
1. Start slowly
Start by trying IF for 16 hours, which just means you don’t break your fast until noon and start fasting again in the evening.
2. Stop snacking and limit your alcohol consumption
Instead of being tempted to extend your eating window with a late-night dessert or midnight snack, create a strict rule for after-dinner snacks that will ease the start of your fast. Alcohol is metabolized like sugar, so be sure to limit alcoholic beverages and stop drinking when you start fasting.
3. Break your fast with whole foods
Avoid processed foods and opt for whole foods like fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes instead to prevent spikes in blood sugar. To break your fast, eat easily digestible foods from the list above.
4. Drink green tea when you are fasting
Green tea contains catechin, which can help suppress hunger, so it’s a great tool to use while fasting.
Conclusion: Intermittent fasting is an effective way to promote weight loss.
Before beginning a fast, it’s a good idea to talk to your doctor about the possible risks and choose an IF method that’s healthiest for you.
If you want more from Dr. Jason Fung, get a copy of The Complete Guide to Fasting. And his other book The Obesity Code. life on the fast track is available on Amazon.
For more great expert advice, check out DailyGoodTips health and nutrition articles.
