Intermittent Fasting on a Keto Diet. Intermittent Fasting, or “IF”, is a relatively new craze that is used as a supplement to your diet. It revolves around the timing of your food intake, and can have some benefits in the long run. There are quite a few people misinformed on fasting, so we’ll clear that up and explain how intermittent fasting can be useful. On your ketogenic journey, it’s important to know that your success is not only dictated by eating enough fat and protein and restricting carbs. When you eat, how often you eat, and how much you eat have a substantial impact on your health and function as well. If your results have plateaued or you are thinking of starting a ketogenic diet, this article will provide you with a way to lose more fat and improve energy levels called intermittent fasting. If you need to learn how to calculate your macros, visit our Keto Calculator. Fasting isn’t required to lose weight on a ketogenic diet. If it doesn’t work for you, then do not force yourself to fast. Restricting yourself unrealistically is pointless – it’s not worth it if it makes you unhappy. There are 2 basic terms we need to understand here first: feeding and fasting. Your body is in a feeding state when you are eating your food, and you are in a fasting state when you are between your meals. The Approach. There are a few approaches when it comes to intermittent fasting. Skipped meals. This is when you skip over a meal to induce extra time of fasting. Usually people choose breakfast, but others prefer to skip lunch. Eating windows. Usually this condenses your entire macronutrient intake between a 4 and 7 hour window. The rest of the time you are in a fasting state. This is where you go into extended fasting periods, and do not eat for 1- 2 days. I don’t recommend that you go straight for a 1- 2 day fast, but begin by restricting yourself to certain eating windows. Typically people restrict themselves to the hours of 5pm – 1. People often refer to their fasting windows by numbers: 1. Once you have the hang of eating on a schedule, you can try short periods of 1. Then you can judge if intermittent fasting is for you. Whether you decide to do it every day, once a week, or twice a week is up to you – do what makes you feel best and listen to your body. How Does Intermittent Fasting Work? The whole point of intermittent fasting is to allow ourselves to increase the amount of food we can intake at one time. Our bodies naturally can only take in a certain amount of food at once, so we are creating a sort of limit on our calorie intake. This is also a great method for people that overeat. I tend to see people that forget to count the snacks that they have throughout the day, and wonder why they are putting weight on. Your body will adjust itself to fasting, and you will find yourself not as hungry as you used to be. This allows you to properly record and maintain the nutrient values of what you intake. In this fasting state, our bodies can break down extra fat that’s stored for the energy it needs. When we’re in ketosis, our body already mimics a fasting state, being that we have little to no glucose in our bloodstream, so we use the fats in our bodies as energy. Intermittent fasting is using the same reasoning – instead of using the fats we are eating to gain energy, we are using our stored fat. That being said, you might think it’s great – you can just fast and lose more weight. You have to take into account that later on, you will need to eat extra fat in order to hit your daily macros (the most important thing). If you’re overeating on fats here, you will store the excess. While there are some weight loss advantages to fasting, it’s more for the convenience of timing. Do not fast solely for the weight loss if you do not enjoy doing it. There are other benefits, though, and we’ll discuss these too. Intermittent Fasting – Meal Timing Matters. Intermittent fasting is a term that we use to describe the dietary practice of restricting your food consumption to a specific window of time. Intermittent Fasting, or “IF”, is a relatively new craze that is used as a supplement to your diet. It revolves around the timing of your food intake, and can. Intermittent fasting can be beneficial for the right people at the right time in their training/diet process. Try these sample meal plans. The top 4 Intermittent Fasting protocols for fat loss, muscle gain, & health, presented by New York Times Bestselling fitness author John Romaniello. Science or Fiction? Exploring the Benefits of Intermittent Fasting. The growing popularity of intermittent fasting lends it mythical status in certain. A popular intermittent fasting strategy, for example, is fasting during an 1. Let’s say your last meal was at 6 pm last night and you ate nothing else after that. To implement an intermittent fast, simply restrict eating until 1. To do this every day, only eat between 1. There are many different variations of intermittent fasting as well. Intermittent Fasting FAQ. Just a quick one for you today. Given how prominently Intermittent Fasting is featured in my programs, and how often I discuss various.Dom D’Agostino, the well- known ketogenic diet researcher, suggests doing a longer intermittent fast for 3 days, 3 times a year. This means not eating for 3 days, and eating normally until the next fast. Daily intermittent fasts are recommended as well. He says that it is ideal to have one to two meals after fasting for most of the day to reap the benefits of intermittent fasting every day. You are probably wondering how there could possibly be a benefit to eating less frequently that goes beyond what you are already getting with a ketogenic diet. Restricting carbs and eating enough fat and protein does come with a plethora of health benefits, but when you add intermittent fasting to your lifestyle you can increase energy and reverse aging by harnessing the power of a nobel prize winning process. A Nobel Prize Winning Lifestyle “Hack”Last year, the Noble Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi for discovering some of the mechanisms of autophagy — the process by which the cell devours itself. Superficially, this sounds like a terrible thing for our cells to do — until you consider what is really taking place. When our cells undergo the process of autophagy, non- essential parts like damaged proteins are recycled and invading microorganisms and toxic compounds are removed. This means that autophagy plays an important role in stopping the aging process, reversing disease, and preventing cancer, but it doesn’t happen all the time. Fasting, protein restriction, and carbohydrate restriction are the three main ways that can initiate different autophagic processes — all of which are not the same. This is part of the reason why a ketogenic diet has so many positive effects, and it also shows you why intermittent fasting is a way to improve your diet even more. Benefits of Intermittent Fasting. There are a number of benefits shown that come from intermittent fasting. Some of these include blood lipid levels, longevity, cancer, and testosterone levels. Below, you’ll find a number of reasons on why intermittent fasting on a ketogenic diet may be a good thing for you: Mental Clarity. Once your body is keto- adapted, your brain can effectively run on ketones, which are derived from fat breakdown in the liver. Fat is considered one of the most energy- efficient fuels for your body to run on, and your brain is a huge consumer of energy. Most high- carb advocates are campaigning on the deprivation your body undergoes when you do not continuously refuel on grains and fruits. They want you to be carrying around an apple and a granola bar wherever you go, but the beauty with keto is that you don’t. Even if your body is out of glycogen (which it most likely is if you’re in ketosis), it can rely on the abundance of fat from the foods you eat and stores you have. That means your powerhouse of a brain can run full power all the time. Less mental fogginess, and more focus. As you get used to fasting, you should start to fast naturally. Meaning, only eat when you’re hungry. Don’t plan your fasting – let it happen naturally. Fitness. People are always saying that if you don’t utilize the importance of pre and post workout meals, you are going to be losing muscle when you work out. This isn’t necessarily true, and it is even less so when you are adapted to ketosis. Fasting while training can lead to a number of benefits in the long run, including: Higher metabolic adaptations – Studies show that your training performance will increase in the long run when you are exercising in a fasted state. Improved muscle synthesis – Studies show that muscle gains are heightened when you train in a fasted state and utilize proper nutrient intake. Improved response to post- workout meals – Studies show that the speedy absorption of nutrients after a fasted workout can lead to better results. There have been numerous studies on fasting while training, including one on Muslim athletes during Ramadan. It concluded that there is no effect on performance in training while fasting – so you have no need to worry. Intermittent Fasting and Muscle. Two ground- breaking studies have recently been published on the effects of intermittent fasting on males. One group of researchers studied the effects that 1. They found that muscle mass stayed the same, fat mass decreased significantly, and the males who fasted for 1. Another study showed that combining 2. The benefits of intermittent fasting translate to untrained overweight and obese individuals as well. One study published in Obesity Reviews found that eating fewer calories is effective for fat loss, but it does come with some muscle loss. However, if the subjects fasted for 2. Yes — you read that correctly — 2. This finding contradicts our common sense, but when we dig deeper into autophagy we can find the mechanism behind this result. Muscle Loss Prevention and Autophagy. Before the Nobel Prize was awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi, other researchers were making groundbreaking discoveries about autophagy. In 2. 00. 9, an article was published in Cell Metabolism entitled Autophagy Is Required to Maintain Muscle Mass. In this article, researchers described how deactivating an important autophagy gene resulted in a profound loss in muscle mass and strength. This happened because autophagy is necessary to clean up damaged proteins and mitochondria in muscle cells. If autophagy is never activated then the proteins and mitochondria will remain damaged and the muscle cells will begin to die, which causes a loss in muscle and strength. Two Meals a Day Are Ideal. By Dr. Mercola. How many meals a day is ideal? There are many answers to this question, but if you want to optimize your lifespan and decrease your risk for developing chronic degenerative diseases, the answer is becoming very clear. Other less obvious risks are biological changes that result in metabolic dysfunction, subsequent weight gain, and diminished health. In fact, a number of beneficial effects take place when you go for periods of time without eating. Valter Longo,1 director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California, where he studies meal timing and calorie restriction, even three meals a day may be too much. As reported by Time Magazine: 2. They often look only at the short- term effects of increasing meal frequency. While your appetite, metabolism, and blood sugar might at first improve, your system will grow accustomed to your new eating schedule after a month or two. When that happens, your body will start expecting and craving food all day long instead of only around midday or dinnertime. More recently, I have refined my views on skipping breakfast. The key to remember is to only eat within a window of six to eight consecutive hours each day, and avoiding food for at least three hours before bedtime. As long as you restrict your eating to this window, you can choose between having breakfast and lunch, or lunch and dinner, but avoid having both breakfast and dinner. I have recently appreciated that this is another important factor that can help optimize your mitochondrial function and prevent cellular damage from occurring, which I'll review in the next segment. That said, none of this probably applies to normal weight teens or growing children. They likely need three square meals a day unless they're overweight. For kids and teens, the type of food they eat would be a primary consideration. Ideally, all of their meals would revolve around eating REAL FOOD — not processed foods, fast food, and sugary snacks. Drinking plenty of pure water and avoiding sugary beverages is another key consideration. This is due to the way your body produces energy. Many don't realize that your mitochondria are responsible for . Your cells have between 1. When you don't have insulin resistance this energy transfer works quite nicely, but when you are insulin resistant or you eat excessively, dysfunctions tend to emerge. These excess electrons leak out and wind up prematurely killing the mitochondria, and then wreak further havoc by damaging your cell membranes and contributing to DNA mutations. Simple: resolve your insulin resistance as soon as you can, and do not eat for AT LEAST three hours before you go to sleep. Personally I stop eating around 4 PM or even earlier and typically go to sleep around five to six hours later. This is one of the reasons why I now believe skipping dinner may be an even better strategy than skipping breakfast. Clearly skipping dinner is more difficult to implement from a social perspective, but it might be a superior biological strategy. Obese participants who . All participants, including the control group, received a weight management consultation on how to improve their diet and exercise. Those who ate three meals a day and drank water prior to each meal lost an average of nearly 9. Those who only pre- loaded once a day, or not at all, lost just over 1. In all, 2. 7 percent of the treatment group who pre- loaded with water lost more than five percent of their body weight, compared to just five percent of the control group. This makes logical sense, as thirst is often misinterpreted as hunger. Drinking water before settling down to eat will also make you feel fuller, so overall this strategy could result in eating less. Interestingly, research. So one reason why calorie restriction may lengthen lifespan appears to be due to the positive effect it has on gut microbiota. Earlier research has demonstrated that calorie restriction helps extend the lifespan of animals by improving insulin sensitivity and inhibiting the m. TOR pathway. This was demonstrated in a 2. Research included in that review, and other published studies, indicate that intermittent fasting can help: Limit inflammation, reduce oxidative stress, and cellular damage Improve circulating glucose Reduce blood pressure Improve metabolic efficiency and body composition, including significant reductions in body weight in obese individuals Reduce LDL and total cholesterol levels Prevent or reverse type 2 diabetes, as well as slow its progression Improve immune function,1. Improve pancreatic function Improve insulin and leptin levels and insulin/leptin sensitivity Reproduce some of the cardiovascular benefits associated with physical exercise Protect against cardiovascular disease Modulate levels of dangerous visceral fat Boost mitochondrial energy efficiency Normalize ghrelin levels, known as . Fasting can raise HGH by as much as 1,3. HGH plays an important part in health, fitness, and slowing the aging process. It's also a fat- burning hormone Lower triglyceride levels and improve other biomarkers of disease Boost production of brain- derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), stimulating the release of new brain cells and triggering brain chemicals that protect against changes associated with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. For starters, it's a lot easier to comply with, and compliance is everything. The calorie restriction route is also extremely dependent on high quality nutrition — you want to sacrifice calories without sacrificing any important micronutrients — and this can be another hurdle for many who are unfamiliar with nutrition and what actually constitutes a healthy diet. Most people fail to appreciate that there are many intricate biochemical dynamics that occur that are unaccounted for when you just count . As pointed out by Fight Aging: 1. Thus only the mouse evolves a relatively large plasticity of life span in response to food scarcity. Ancel Keys demonstrated this in the mid- 1. Thirty- six young healthy male volunteers were placed on a 2. They also had to walk for about 4. But instead of resulting in continuous weight loss, at 2. The men became obsessed with food to the exclusion of everything else in their life, and when the calorie restriction ended, they all over- reacted. Within a few weeks, they regained all of the lost weight plus about 1. Other studies have come to similar conclusions. So starvation- type diets may not be ideal for the average person. Your body will tend to shut down various processes in order to survive. For example, by reducing thyroid function, your body will not burn as many calories. On the one hand, calorie restriction promotes beneficial biological changes that tend to extend life; on the other, there are built in mechanisms that when triggered by chronic calorie restriction can trigger other health problems. These are complex issues, and any extreme measure is likely to cause more problems than it solves. The best we can do is come up with some general guidelines that replicate ancestral patterns. In my view, daily intermittent fasting and avoiding eating for a number of hours before bedtime has many advantages over general calorie restriction and other radical diets, while providing many of the same benefits with a minimum of risk. It's important to recognize that, with few exceptions, you cannot burn body fat if you have other fuel available, and if you're supplying your body with carbohydrates every few hours, your body has no need to dive into your fat stores. When you apply intermittent fasting you not only avoid this but also will typically decrease your food costs and increase your health. If you're not insulin resistant, intermittent fasting is not as crucial, but may still be beneficial. If you're among the minority of Americans who do not struggle with insulin resistance, then my general recommendation is to simply avoid eating at least three hours before bedtime. That automatically allows you to . To that, I would add avoiding sitting, engaging in non- exercise movement throughout the day, and getting regular exercise. Exercise will not produce significant weight loss without addressing your diet, but when done in combination it can be significantly beneficial.
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