With holiday events coming up, you may be worried about weight gains. Well, here is something you can do to prevent from gaining weight and able to control you weight even if you over ate. Yes, it is the process that you've been hearing of. Fasting!
Fasting 101
You've heard of fasting or intermittent fasting. It is trending dietary strategy for weight loss, health improvement and so on. But what is fasting? Is it different from starvation? Fasting is voluntary where as starvation is involuntary. Fasting is when you choose not to eat although food is available where are starvation is not able to eat because of food supply. So important thing to understand about fasting is you choose to do it whether for religious, health or other purpose.
Fasting itself is not a new concept. If you look at history, at any given time, fasting has been practiced for whatever reasons. Initially, it was said to enhance the spiritual awareness.
Currently, thanks to science, we do understand more about the benefit of fasting.
Benefit of Fasting
Although fasting got attention recently for weight loss or fat loss benefit, however, it seems to have more health benefit.
First benefit is fat loss. Majority of population, nowadays, who starts looking into fasting or intermittent fasting is for fat loss. Let's face it, if you stop eating for extended period of time you body will eventually start utilizing those jiggling fat into energy. It's just that simple After all, fat is there as stored energy rather than the looks so it is ok to be used rather than showing it off. According to the studies, resting metabolic rate stays the same or increases when you are in fasted state. How does that happen? It actually is simple. When consuming food, the body will secretes a hormone called insulin. Insulin's job is store energy or nutrients that are available through food sources. In other words the body does not want to spend energy when eating. Sure, the energy is required to breakdown food, digest and absorb, however, other than that, the body wants to store so the metabolic rate will be lower. On the other hand, when you are in fasted state, usually around 2-3 hours after meal (this is why you shouldn't exercise after you eat), the insulin level goes down and another hormone called glucagon will be secreted. Glucagon is a spending hormone that wants to get rid of unnecessary energy. So you may have image of fasting would lower the metabolic rate, however, fact is the opposite.
Second benefit is autophagy. This may be a new word for you but eventually you will hear. Autophagy means self-eating. Sounds scary right? But it is actually cool mechanism that our body has. Imagine you are remodeling your kitchen to add new fridge, cabinet, sink, etc. What you may need to do is to take out the old parts. For body, this process is called autophagy. If you been exercising for whatever reason, you may realize that the old cells in the body die and replaced with stronger ones. Question is what will happen to those cells that are no longer functional? Unless autophagy kicks in, it seems to stay there. However, with fasting, our body can promote autophagy to eliminate those old, inactive cells. This cells include, damaged muscles, excess skin, damaged blood vessels from stroke, and so on. Better way to word it is elimination of excess proteins, which will also help with people with dementia.
Third benefit is convenient. You can start when you want and you can stop when you want. Longest fasting ever done was 382 days. Now, majority of us has better things to do than fasting for that long, but fasting for few days is fine. However, if you are new to fasting you may want to start with shorter fasting, which I will cover later in this article. Then when you feel like you need to eat, then you can eat. For me, I do 16-24 hour fasting when I'm not working out and have 3 meals during the workout days. It is flexible and also can pair with any diet, vegan, paleo, carnivore, low carb, and so on.
Fourth benefit is FREE. Why isn't there service available for fasting? Because professionals cannot make any money off from it. How complicated is "not eating for xx hrs" and how much should we charge for that? It would be crazy for me to be charging fees for something that you don't do anything for. Great part also is, because you don't need to plan your meal, if you are busy doing your work you can skip the meal and don't even worry about it.
The difference between fasting and calorie restriction
Common question I get is the difference between calorie restriction and fasting. It looks synonymous, however, our body responds in different way.
Typical practice for calorie restricted diet is keeping the calorie to 1200 calories and if you are hungry you should be spreading the meal to 5-6 times per day. Now that we've discussed little bit about insulin, what would happen when you are consuming food 5-6 times per day even when you have restricted the calorie to 1200 calories or even lower? If you answered "insulin will be secreted all the time" then you are correct. In other words, the body wants to store energy as fat all the time. Another issue is when calorie is restricted, the body will respond to what energy, you will be bringing in and lower the metabolic rate. Therefore, even with 1200 calorie diet, you may not lose any weight and may also end up gaining weight. Let's make it simple, calorie restriction or counting does not work. You will be spending more money and time for the results that you cannot get.
Fasting on the other hand is sending a message saying "find the energy source out side of food". Where do you think the body would look into? Fat! Even with someone weighs 150lb with 5% body fat, the person can have over 20,000 calories!! Again, fat is not there for looks so why not use it. With fasting, we are sending signal and giving an opportunity for the body to use energy that we have stored in ourselves without compromising our metabolism.
Who should not fast
Although it is a safe process, however, there are certain people who should not be fasting and it is quite obvious.
People who are,
Pregnant
Breast feeding
Underweight
If you are taking medications, you should consult with your physician before starting the fast. This is to monitor the progress and balance out and eventually taper down the medication that you are taking. If your physician is not willing to do so, find new doctor who will support you.
Starting intermittent fasting
So how should you start? Well, it is a very simple process but I will share how I started. Yes, initially for me was little intimidating to do extended fasting so I've started with 12 hour fasting. This is finishing dinner at 7pm and have my first meal at 7am. Since I sleep for 8 hours so all I need to figure out is that 4 hours, which was easy.
Once I've practiced 12 hour fasting for 2 weeks, then I've extended to 16 hour fasting for 3 times per week and other days were 12 hours. For me, it was more of health benefit especially for autophagy benefit so I didn't worry about doing 24+ hour fasting. After completing 16 hour fasting I've done 3 times per months of 24 hour fasting. For 24 hour fasting, I've chosen the day that I know I will be busy.
I've challenged myself for 3 day fasting but I feel like I can do that every 3 month because it interfered with my workout routine.
Although fasting works, you will need to find what works for you. Also, you will also need to have a plan for exiting from fasting especially if you are doing longer than 24 hour fasting. Make sure to be consuming natural food sources as much as you can. Natural food sources are meat, fish, vegetables. Fruits seems to not work very well may be because of the sugar content. For anybody doing extended fasting, which is 24+ hour fasting, it seems to work better with vegetable soup for it is easier to digest and have enzymes to enhance digestion and absorption.
Something else to be considered
If you are fasting for fat loss or health benefit, you may not need extra calories but will still need nutrients for faster fat loss and improving the overall fasting benefit. To do so you may need to consider supplementing. Here are some list of supplement that you should consider.
Multivitamin
Omega 3
Vitamin D
Probiotics
Fasting is the easiest, cheapest, and flexible plan for everybody. Practice and see how it can work for you. It is not hard. May be uncomfortable for the first 2 weeks but it is very do able, and health benefit you can gain is superb.
Kota Shimada
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