Kindle Edition
Amazon
Category:
Health/Wellness
ISBN-10: 1520293593
Type: Non-Fiction
Copyright: Dec 13, 2016
ISBN-13: 9781520293592
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
This book is a step by step guide to intermittent fasting for weight loss which will help you easily guarantee the body fat cuts you are looking for and end the struggle to finally lose weight, saving you time and money and along the way.
Are you one of the millions of people who are looking for a weight loss program that actually works? Have you tried diet after diet that doesn't work for you? Do you want a weight loss method that will save you money instead of costing a fortune? Are you looking for an easy way to shed those extra pounds? How about a way to lose weight that has guaranteed results for millions of other people? Do you need a weight loss program that doesn't require you to workout or change what you eat to be successful?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, this book is for you. You will learn exactly what it takes to do an intermittent fasting program and why it will help you lose the weight you want to lose quickly and easily. It covers everything a beginner needs to know about intermittent fasting and goes into the advanced topics like the research done to show why, and how, intermittent fasting works. This book will save you time and money on your weight loss journey because you won't be buying expensive meals or subscribing to a costly program. It will help motivate you and help you make behavioral changes that will change your life and help you lose weight easily and lose weight quickly. You can finally lose the weight you want, look great, and feel great without changing what you eat or exercising.
Excerpt
Myths About Intermittent Fasting
Let's start by looking at some of the myths that surround intermittent fasting. Many people shy away from fasting because there is so much misinformation out there about it. Intermittent fasting is, in fact, well studied and safe despite what common knowledge would have us believe. It is important to understand what these myths are and why they are untrue before we go any further so they don't sit in the back of your mind telling you that this can't be good for you. Here are the top 10 myths about intermittent fasting and the evidence that proves why they are false.
Myth: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day
This prevailing myth is so ingrained in us that we often will take up the battle ourselves to tell other people that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, encouraging them not to skip this all-important meal. We hear and read it everywhere from commercials on TV to the back of cereal boxes, all telling us that we have to eat breakfast or we will get fat or pass out from hunger in the middle of the day. The idea is that if we fail to eat in the morning, then we will become so hungry by our next meal that we will gorge ourselves. There are observational studies which look at the link between people who skip breakfast and obesity. These studies show a correlation between the two. Consider the average breakfast skipper, though. It can be reasoned that many people who skip breakfast are not very healthy to begin with and it has nothing to do with the fact that they are skipping breakfast. A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2014 looked at a group of 283 overweight participants and compared the weights of those who were in the skip breakfast group and those in the eat breakfast group. At the end of the 16-week study, there was no difference in weights between the two groups. This study finally debunked the marketing scheme that breakfast companies use to push their products on the consumer. The myth that breakfast is the most important meal of the day is so ingrained in us that it will take time for people to learn the truth and you will certainly still hear about it all the time even though it is a completely false notion. As with everything in life, there is some individual variability, but this study proves that the average person is not affected negatively by skipping breakfast. The truth is there is no magic in breakfast that keeps us thin.
Myth: Eating lots of small meals will speed up your metabolism
Many people believe that the more frequently you eat, the more calories you will burn. This idea comes from the fact that we have to expend a percentage of all calories we take in during the digestive process. If you spread the meals out over the course of the day, then you will be burning calories by digesting food all day. This concept of burning calories to digest calories is called the thermic effect of food. Roughly 0-3% of calories from fat, 5-10% of calories from carbohydrates, and 20-30% of calories from protein are burned while digesting each of the energy sources. Overall, about 10% of the calories we consume are burned in the process of digestion. The problem with this myth is that the thermic effect of food has nothing to do with how food consumption is spaced out. It is based only on calories taken in. So, if you ate ten 200 calorie meals or one 2000 calorie meal, you will still burn about 10% of those calories while digesting the food you ate. A study published in 1997 in the British Journal of Nutrition showed that there is no difference in calories burned based on meal frequency. This myth has been proven false for a long time now, but we still hear about it all the time. The truth is that your metabolism will not be increased by eating more meals throughout the day.
Myth: Eating more frequently will reduce hunger and cravings
This goes hand in hand with the previous myth. People think that, in addition to increasing your metabolism, frequent meals reduce hunger as well. In truth, the evidence is very mixed on this and there is no conclusive evidence that this is true. Some studies have found that frequent meals do indeed reduce hunger and cravings while other studies have shown that it has no effect on hunger. Still, other studies have found that eating frequently actually increases your hunger and cravings. A study published in the Obesity Journal in 2010 showed that consuming 3 high protein meals a day as compared to 6 high protein meals a day made it easier to control hunger and cravings. So again, there is some individual variability here. If snacking throughout the day helps control hunger for you, then that is fine. If you have never found that to be the case, then there is no reason to start eating more frequently. The truth is that this is not a hard and fast rule. There just is not enough evidence to show that snacking or eating more frequently actually reduces hunger.
Myth: The brain needs a constant supply of sugar, so we have to eat sugar for our brain to work
I struggled to get over this myth. The brain does indeed need a constant supply of fuel, and most of that fuel, in the average person, comes from glucose taken in from our food, but it does not have to. Many people believe, as I did, that you have to eat carbohydrates in order to fuel the brain. The body has several mechanisms to fuel the brain if we don't eat carbohydrates for a while, or even stop eating them all together. If you think about it, it doesn't make sense that our hunter-gatherer ancestors would require a constant supply of carbohydrates, otherwise their brains would shut down making it impossible for them to find more food with carbohydrates. The first backup for blood sugar that our bodies' have if we don't consume carbohydrates is in our liver. Our liver stores glycogen, a form of glucose, which can be used for hours to power the brain. The next backup the body has for supplying the brain with power is called gluconeogenesis. This is a process where the body produces glucose from non-carbohydrate substances like lactate, glycerol, and glucogenic amino acids. Finally, if the body undergoes a long term low carbohydrate diet, long term fasting or starvation, it can generate fuel for the brain in the form of ketone bodies from dietary fats. These ketone bodies significantly reduce the brain's need for glucose. So during a long term fast the combination of ketone bodies and glucose from gluconeogenesis sustain the brain's need for energy for a long time. The truth is that we don't need to eat carbohydrates constantly to fuel our brains. Our bodies were designed to compensate for long periods with no carbohydrates in our diets. Intermittent fasting will never overcome those compensatory mechanisms.
Myth: Snacking and eating frequently promotes good health
There is actually evidence that snacking and eating often can have a negative impact on health and raises the risk of disease. A study published in 2014 in the Hepatology Journal found that a diet that included frequent meals and high-calorie intake resulted in an increase in liver fat. This indicated that frequent snacking puts a person at risk for fatty liver disease. There are also multiple observational studies that have found a link between snacking and frequent meals and a much higher risk of colorectal cancer. Intermittent fasting, on the other hand, has been shown in studies to actually increase health through a larger number of processes in the body including cellular repair, protecting the brain, and increasing the metabolism. The truth is that frequent snacking actually does the opposite of what it is claimed to do, whereas intermittent fasting actually has some truly amazing benefits to the body's health. We will take a look at those benefits in the next section.
Myth: Your body can only process so much protein per meal, so you should eat protein frequently
There are people who assert that the body can only digest 30 grams of protein each meal. Consequently, we should eat every 2-3 hours in order to get optimal muscle growth. This simply is not supported by science, though. There are multiple studies that show that there is no difference in muscle growth whether protein is eaten in small doses frequently or in larger amounts just with meals. One such study was published in 1999 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. It found that frequency has nothing to do with protein absorption, but instead is dependent on the total amount of protein eaten. This information has been available for some time now and continues to be confirmed. The truth is intermittent fasting won't hinder muscle growth because you aren't eating protein every 2-3 hours. As long as you are getting enough protein when you do eat, there will be no reduction in muscle growth.
Myth: Intermittent fasting forces your body into starvation mode and will prevent weight loss
This is one of the most common misconceptions about fasting out there. This myth states that if you stop eating for a period of time then your body will shut down your metabolism and you won't be able to lose weight no matter how hard you try. There is a real "starvation mode" that the body goes into. It is called adaptive thermogenesis and it occurs during long periods of weight loss. Adaptive thermogenesis can result in hundreds of fewer calories burned a day. The part that gets left out of this discussion is that adaptive thermogenesis occurs anytime the body undergoes weight loss, no matter what method is used. The frequency of meals has nothing to do with your body's response to the weight loss. There is no evidence to suggest adaptive thermogenesis occurs more as a result of intermittent fasting. Actually, the opposite is true. There is evidence that intermittent fasting will increase your metabolism. A 2002 study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found that the body's metabolism is increased due to the rise of norepinephrine in the blood which tells fat cells to break down. In addition to breaking down fat cells, norepinephrine has the beneficial effect of increasing the speed of the metabolism. A study published in 2000 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that fasting for 48 hours can actually increase the metabolism by between 3.6% and 14%. Another study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2005 found that participants who fasted every other day for 22 days had no drop in the metabolism's speed, but were able to lose an average of 4% of their fat mass. Those are amazing results for only intermittent fasting for 3 weeks. The truth is that our body does adapt our metabolism when we begin to lose weight, but this happens no matter how we lose weight. There is also strong evidence that intermittent fasting may be one of the only ways to lose weight without decreasing the metabolism and may even increase it.
Myth: You lose muscle mass if you intermittent fast
There are many people who suggest that you shouldn't ever fast because if you do, your body will start burning muscle for energy and you will lose muscle mass. The problem with this argument is that you lose some muscle every time you lose weight, no matter what method you use. This is because there must be a calorie deficit in the body if the body is to lose fat. Conversely, there has to be a calorie surplus for the body to build muscle, therefore you will gain some fat every time you gain muscle. So while it is true that you will lose some muscle by losing weight with intermittent fasting, you will lose some muscle mass if you ever hope to lose fat. There is evidence, in fact, to suggest that you lose less muscle during intermittent fasting than with other weight loss methods. One review published in 2011 in the Obesity Review found that participants of intermittent fasting saw the same weight loss as continuous calorie restriction diets, but lost much less muscle mass. This is significant because if the participants lost the same weight, but lost less muscle, that means they lost more fat with intermittent fasting. A study published in 2007 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition had participants eat the same number of calories in 2 groups, but one group ate all the calories for the day in a single meal. The group who only ate once a day lost body fat and actually had an increase in muscle mass. In addition to losing fat and gaining muscle, there were a number of other positive health benefits from the intermittent fast that the test group was put on. The truth is that intermittent fasting can cause muscle loss, but that is the case with any weight loss program and can actually cause much less muscle loss as compared with other methods.
Myth: Intermittent fasting is bad for your health
Some people believe that intermittent fasting can be destructive to your health. They believe this because of one or several of the myths above. This is simply not the case, though. There is a great deal of evidence to the contrary. Studies have shown that intermittent fasting changes brain hormones to increase mental function and protect against brain conditions. It has been found that intermittent fasting reduces oxidative stress on the body, increases insulin sensitivity, reduces inflammation, and reduces the risk of heart disease. Intermittent fasting can even go so far as to affect our genes to protect against diseases and improve your lifespan. The truth is there is no conclusive evidence that intermittent fasting can have a negative impact on health, but it can have a wide range of positive effects on our health.
Myth: Intermittent fasting will cause you to eat overeat when you are done with your fast
There are people who say that you can't lose weight by intermittent fasting because you will eat too much during your eating periods because you are more hungry. People do in fact eat more after fasting. This is the bodies way of compensating for the calories lost while not eating. The problem with this argument is that we don't compensate for the calorie deficit fully. A study published in 2002 in the International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders found that participants in a one-day fast only compensated for the fast by eating an extra 500 calories the following day. During their fasting day, they burned an average of 2400 calories and took none in. On the following day, they ate 500 additional calories, which left them with a 1900 calorie deficit overall. That is an impressive calorie reduction for just 48 hours. A review study published in Translational Research found that fasting for between 3 and 24 weeks yielded a 3% to 8% weight loss and a 4% to 7% loss in belly fat. This study found that depending on the type of intermittent fasting the participants used, they lost an average of between .55 pounds and 1.65 pounds per week. The truth is that people don't eat enough to overcompensate for fasting days to overcome the calorie deficit they create during a fast. People do lose weight using intermittent fasting and it is one of the most effective ways to do so.
Takeaway
As you can see by this list of myths about intermittent fasting, there is a lot of misinformation out there. It comes from marketing ploys, fear, and ignorance. Hopefully, this list has taught you that these myths are inaccurate and rid you of any fears that you may have about starting an intermittent fast. There is nothing to lose by trying it, but the weight. The benefits of intermittent fasting are numerous and that is what we will be focusing on in the next section.
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