Hello Health Campions. Today I want to talk about what intermittent fasting really
is and why it's become such an incredibly popular and successful tool for weight loss
but most importantly how to transition into intermittent fasting with the least amount
of problems and discomfort. So the first thing to understand about intermittent fasting is that it's
not a diet. It is not tied to any particular kind of food but it is rather a pattern of when you're
eating and more importantly when you're not eating. And the benefits of this are a reduction in weight
and also an increase in health and this is because we're affecting two of the most important hormones
in the body. The first one is we're lowering insulin and the second is that we're increasing
growth hormone. Insulin is your fat storing hormone so we want to reduce it. Growth hormone is a fat
burning hormone so we want to increase it but it is insulin that is the more important one because
in the body insulin is kind of like a sledgehammer. It is so powerful it just overrides most of what
every other hormone is doing but if we can do both then that's obviously better. Now I mentioned that
it's not tied to a specific food so any kind of food that you eat will work. However it will work
much much better if you eat foods that also reduce insulin that trigger less of an insulin
response. And why is that? Because insulin will drive fat into the cell it will drive
glucose into the cell which is converted to fat but at the same time when insulin is high
then it prevents the exit of fat. It keeps us from using the fat that we have stored
and when we don't have access to the energy reserves now your body senses a lack of energy
even though there is plenty of it and as a result you get hungry. So it's much much easier
to eat foods that don't stimulate so much insulin you'll be much happier in the long
run. Now if we look at fat burning over a 24 hour period then right after you have eaten
now you're in fat storage mode and then the longer you go without food the more likely your body is
to stop storing and to start using and burning fat so while you're in fat storing your insulin is
high your growth hormone is low and then as time goes on you move more into fat burning
insulin goes down and growth hormone goes up. Now for most people they will have
at least an eight hour period somewhere in their day and that is because they
are typically sleeping for eight hours or nearly eight hours most days but for a lot of people they
never really go beyond those eight hours so they don't really get into that fat burning zone they
store fat at first and then they just barely get ready but then they wake up and they eat so that
is why it's so difficult to lose fat and to lose weight on a frequent meal plan. So this is what
we typically call 8:16 so that means you're fasting for 8 hours and eating for 16 hours
and if we compare this then the fasting period to the eating period. The period where you are
storing fat versus where you're burning fat we are at one to two so only 33% of the time
here are we actually burning fat. That makes it very difficult to lose weight now if we add just
a few hours to this then we'll be at 12:12. if we increase we wait four hours to eat we're 12
12 and now we've changed this ratio from one to two instead one to one and now we have 50 percent
fat burning so it's a dramatic increase just by extending it a few hours and now if we can go
four more hours now we're at 16:8 we have reversed this ratio and now we're 67%
fat burning and only one-third fat storing and if we put just two more
hours onto that that's called 18:6. 18 hours of fasting six hours of eating and now 75% of the time
we are in fat burning mode rather than fat storing. Now if you go one step further that's called
omad and that doesn't mean that you're burning a hundred percent of the time because your body gets
out of fat burning when you eat something but you get the idea that the longer you go without food
the more favorable it is for fat burning. Now the die hard calorie counters are going to say the
only thing that matters is that you have a calorie deficit and while it is technically correct
you can make it hard on yourself or you can make it easy on yourself. Which do you think
sounds smarter? The hard way is to eat low fat six times a day because if you eat low fat
that means you eat high carb high carbs stimulates more insulin to combat the blood sugar
and with high carb you're going to have high blood sugar spikes high blood sugar fluctuations. You're
going to produce a lot of insulin six times a day and send a powerful message to store fat and what
this does is when insulin is high like we said and I will tell you again this makes you hungry
when insulin is high you can't access what you have stored so your body thinks the only way to
provide energy is to eat more and it makes you hungry that is why it is so much harder to eat
frequent meals and low fat to reach that calorie deficit plus it's going to backfire if you don't
lower insulin in the long run. Now a better way is to eat low carb high fat six times a day
not a great way but it's better because now you have less blood sugar therefore
you make still insulin six times a day but you make less insulin even better would be to go
low carb high fat and intermittent fasting and if you eat just twice a day now you're going to only
make insulin twice a day and you're going to make much less so do you have to have a calorie deficit?
Yes, but if you focus on the calories and you eat frequent small meals you will get hungry
if you go to lower carbs and fewer meals it makes it so much easier. In fact it makes it so easy that
most people forget that they're trying to accomplish something there's just so convenient
with that lifestyle that they just do that for the rest of their life anyway. Now before I talk about
how to go from six meals a day to two meals a day there's something super important to understand
you want to think of your body as a metabolic machine. It takes food it turns food into
energy and into tissues and carbohydrate is one of these things that it turns into energy but if you
have abused this machine which the entire modern world has done then your body isn't processing
carbohydrate appropriately. When the machine was new it had no problem it was working flawlessly
but over time with too much abuse you wear it out. And if you're insulin resistant which most people
who are overweight are insulin resistant and vice versa, then you are carbohydrate intolerant.
Think of it as a sensitivity your body just doesn't work to process it anymore. Basically
your sugar machine your carbohydrate machine is broken if it's broken then you have to fix it you
have to repair it before you can use it again. And in the body that's called healing and that takes
some time. So now if you go cold turkey if you say oh I've eaten six meals high carb junk food fast
food and i'm just gonna go straight to it it will work but you're gonna have a lot of discomfort
and the likelihood of you turning it into a long-term lifestyle is not that great. Instead
if we do it gradually then it's almost like you're not even noticing what's happening. So here's how I
want you to do it to make it so easy it's like you don't even notice something happened except you
start feeling better and better of course. So on a 24 hour period if you eat your breakfast at eight
and then you have snacks and lunch and snacks and dinner and the late evening snack at 11 that
means you have a nine hour fasting window and a 15 hour feeding window now the first step to do that
anybody can do is just cut out the snacks. You'll be a little bit hungry but don't worry about it
you can absolutely do it. Then what happens is not only have you reduced your insulin spikes
from six times to three times but you've already cut back your window three hours so instead of 9
15 you're now at 12:12. and then you take your three meals and you push them a little closer
together you start moving your breakfast just a little bit later maybe 15, 20, 30 minutes per day
you move your dinner a little bit earlier until you're going from 10 to 6 or whatever hours fit
you now you have a 8 hour so you go on from 12:12 to 16:8. what you don't want to do
is to rush this you don't want to try to get this over within a couple of weeks. If it takes
two weeks or three weeks or four weeks to go from one stage to the next that's totally okay.
Give your body the time it needs to adapt and repair and become fat adapted because
as you start cutting back the frequency of meals and the number of insulin spikes
your body gets better and better at burning fat. It becomes more fat adapted and now it's easier
and easier to go a little longer without food. So now here is your key point don't eat until you're
hungry so many people they just eat because it's nine o'clock or because it's 12 o'clock or there
they are in some place where they usually eat well don't eat until you're hungry because your body is
changing and now what you find is it's going to be super easy you don't even think about it you just
skip breakfast a lot of people in my clinic once we start just cutting back on the carbs they say
Do I have to eat breakfast? They've been told all their lives that breakfast is the most important
meal so they eat it just because they think they have to but at this point they just cut it out
right and then you start you cut this out you can have lunch a little earlier now you're eating two
meals a day six hours apart and you have gone from 16:8 to 18:6 and you get the idea
now you're eating two meals a day you start moving the meals a little bit closer together
now they're four hours apart and you have gone from 18: 6 to 24. So how far do you need to take it
well there is no one diet there is no one perfect intermittent fasting pattern it depends on your
body and your goals so if you get all your desires at 16:8 then that might be where you
stop but if you don't let's say you your blood pressure goes down your blood sugar goes down but
you're not losing any weight then you keep going if that's your goal and the next step after this
would be if you want to go a little bit further then you cut out one more meal and now you're
doing what's called OMAD, one meal a day and if you just listen to your body you keep learning
about the why and the how and you let this unfold in its own time then before you know it you'll be
eating once or twice a day and you'll be wondering how you could ever do anything as absurd as eat
six times a day. Most people who get to that point one or two meals a day becomes their new norm
their new lifestyle and it's just liberating not having to cook and eat all the time. If you enjoyed
this video and you'd like to learn more about how the body works and how to master your health
that video is going to be a great one next. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you next time.