Intermittent fasting.
That’s what today’s video is all about.
You may have heard about it, but if you’re new to the whole idea of healthy nutrition,
you might have a lot of questions.
My name is Lance Hitchings, and I created this channel to
share what I've learned about turning back the clock on aging.
So today I’m going to be talking about intermittent fasting
and it’s role in turning back the clock.
Watch this video to the end and you’ll learn everything you need to know about intermittent
fasting in order to get started with this great tool.
You’ll not only learn what it is, but also what the benefits are, and there are many.
You learn how to do it, utilizing several different strategies and you’ll learn how
to do it safely and what the side effects might be.
And in my humble opinion, this is one of the first tools you’ll want to use on the path
to turning back the clock on aging.
There are just so many benefits.
Intermittent fasting can advance so many of the objectives that you might choose to include
in your quest to turn back the clock.
Fasting has been around, in one form or another, for as long as humans have been around.
It’s not a new concept.
The human body can go, depending on sources, from anywhere between 3 weeks up to 2 months
without food.
Food was not a dependable resource for our hunter-gatherer ancestors, and we evolved
to be able to survive in an environment where we might go for long periods of time without
eating.
Throughout our history, fasting had been consciously practiced by almost all religious and spiritual
sects.
And while intermittent fasting, or IF, has been around for ages, it has only been popularized
for a few years.
In 2012 a BBC journalist by the name of Dr. Michael Mosley created a documentary called
“Eat Fast, Live Longer”, which was followed by journalist Kate Harrison’s book
“The 5:2 Diet” and by Dr. Jason Fung’s book “The Obesity Code” in 2016.
All of these books popularized the idea of IF, and a positive buzz has been generated
by a steady stream of anecdotes about it’s effectiveness.
But what is it, exactly?
Well, first off, it’s not a diet…it’s a pattern of eating.
It’s not about what you eat, or even about how much, really… but rather about when
you eat.
So, IF is a pattern of eating that cycles between periods of fasting and non-fasting.
These cycles can last for anywhere between a single day and several days, and the fasting
can be done as a whole-day fast or as a time-restricted fast, where one fasts during a period of time
each day.
And while there is quite a bit of variety in the different strategies with which IF
can be practiced, the benefit of IF seems to be pretty consistent across all the various
strategies.
Weight loss is the primary benefit, but IF also impacts hormone health, insulin sensitivity,
inflammation, brain function and aging.
So, let’s go through the benefits, one at a time.
As I mentioned, weight loss is the primary benefit.
One of the ways that it accomplishes this is through calorie restriction.
When you restrict the time in which you can eat, you tend to eat fewer calories.
But it causes weight loss through several other pathways as well.
After 12 hours of fasting, your body converts from burning carbs for energy to burning fats.
The nervous system signals the adrenal gland to ramp up the release of norepinephrine,
or noradrenalin, into the blood stream.
Norepinephrine is a fat-burning hormone and it breaks down body fat into free fatty acids
that can be burned for energy.
IF can also lower insulin and raise human growth hormone and it increases the metabolism.
And best of all, IF can really target visceral fat, that disease-causing fat that surrounds
our internal organs and that can be so difficult to lose.
Now, one of the worst side-effects of dieting is that the body tends to burn muscle mass as well
as fat.
But studies show that IF can retain muscle mass while at the same time, burning fat.
One review study found that intermittent calorie restriction caused a similar weight loss to
continuous calorie restriction, but with a much smaller loss in muscle mass.
Continuous calorie restriction produced a 25% loss in muscle mass, compared to only
a 10% loss with intermittent calorie restriction.
Another study had participants eat the same number of calories as before, but in a single,
huge meal in the evening.
They lost body fat, yet increased their muscle mass…along with a host of other beneficial
changes in health markers.
So IF appears to be the best possible strategy for losing weight while retaining, or even
increasing, overall muscle mass.
IF can produce benefits that far outweigh simply losing weight.
It can also benefit your hormone health.
As I mentioned earlier, IF can boost your human growth hormone, which promotes new muscle
growth, which in turn leads to an increased metabolism and weight loss.
Studies have shown that IF can cause levels of HGH to skyrocket, increasing by as much
as 5 times.
IF can have a huge impact on your insulin levels.
Eating causes insulin levels to rise…when we fast, insulin sensitivity improves and
insulin levels decrease dramatically, facilitating fat burning by making stored body fat more
accessible.
IF also reduces your insulin resistance, lowering blood sugar by 3-6% and fasting insulin levels
by 20-31%…and this should protect against Type 2 diabetes.
IF also has a major impact on your testosterone levels.
A single, short-term fast can boost T levels by as much as 180% and lutenizing hormone,
which as you may recall from a previous video is a hormone that stimulates the leydig cells in your testicals
to produce testosterone by as much as 67% in non-obese, healthy men.
The same study also showed that IF increased testosterone utilization by 180%.
The simple truth is, eating doesn’t go well with your T levels, eating causes T levels
to plummet, and with IF, there are much less hours during the day in which eating is negatively
affecting your T levels.
IF also induces autophagy, which is a process where cells break down and remove toxins and
estrogenic chemicals that can negatively impact your T levels.
It also down-regulates leptin, and decreased leptin levels stimulate testosterone secretion.
And in another study, fasting seems to increase androgen sensitivity,
which is where receptors respond better to testosterone and other androgens.
So if you’re trying to naturally boost your testosterone levels, intermittent fasting
should be one of your primary tools.
Intermittent fasting also has a number of different benefits for your brain health.
If increases levels of brain-derived neurothropic factor, or BDNF.
This is a brain hormone that triggers the growth of neurons in the hippocampus, an area
of the brain associated with memory, emotion and the autonomic nervous system…and one
of the first areas to suffer damage in Alzheimer’s Disease.
Because of this, it is also thought that IF may protect against Alzheimer’s.
Oxidative stress and damage to the brain cells from increased amount of "Reactive Oxygen Species",
or ROS, has been theorized and somewhat proven to be one of the primary causes of cognitive
decline and brain fog.
Intermittent fasting has been shown to improve cognition by limiting the production of ROS.
You can also limit the production of ROS by maintaining low body fat, exercise, increasing
your intake of quality antioxidants and micronutrient-dense foods,
and by limiting your intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids.
There are several studies which have shown that IF can reduce markers for inflammation, which is a key
driver in a number of chronic diseases,
such as metabolic syndrome, diabetes, cancers and a wide variety of other diseases.
Studies have shown that intermittent fasting can reduce “bad” LDL cholesterol and blood
triglycerides, in addition to the previously mentioned inflammatory markers, blood sugars
and insulin resistance…and these are all risk factors for heart disease.
When you’re in a fasted state, your cells initiate a process called "Cellular Repair Process"…and this
includes, as I mentioned earlier, autophagy, where cell break down, digest and remove old
and dysfunctional proteins that build up inside the cells.
There are a number of different animal studies suggest that intermittent fasting may prevent
or protect against a variety of different types of cancer.
IF also seems to have a number of anti-aging benefits.
In a study done on rats, intermittent fasting extended the rat’s lifespans, allowing them
to live 36-83% longer lives.
It was thought that it did this through calorie restriction.
But IF also causes changes in the function of genes related to both longevity and protection
against disease.
In my quest to turn back the clock on aging, intermittent fasting is a major component
in my arsenal of weapons designed to combat aging.
It just has so many benefits for so many of the objectives that I’m trying to achieve.
But how do you do it?
Before I jump into the various strategies available for intermittent fasting, I’d
like to hit on some tips that relate to all strategies of intermittent fasting.
First, food quality.
The food that you eat and the quality of those foods are still just as important as they
ever were.
Try to eat mostly whole, single-ingredients, organic, non-GMO foods.
Next, calories…which still count.
It’s important that you keep track of your macros…the proteins, carbs and fats that
you consume, and that you consume the proper ratios as well as the proper total amount
of calories for whatever it is that you’re trying to accomplish.
It’ll be different depending on whether you’re trying to lose weight or put on new
muscle.
Consistency.
You need to be thinking of this as a major change in your lifestyle…something that
you will be doing in one form or another, for the rest of your life.
If you want to see results from it, you need to be doing it consistently, for an extended period of time.
And finally, patience.
It can take your body some time to adapt to an intermittent fasting protocol.
I suggest taking it slowly and in stages.
If you try to just jump into it immediately and adopt a very strict regimen, your body
is not going to thank you for it…and you’re going to get really hungry.
So just ease into it, training your body to adapt to eating in a smaller and smaller window
of time…over time.
OK, so there are a few different methods for doing intermittent fasting.
The first I’m going to talk about is called the “5:2” plan.
In this method, you eat normally for 5 days a week, and then the other two are your fasting
days…although you do still eat.
You just limit your intake to between 500 and 600 calories.
And make sure that your fasting days are on non-consecutive days.
In other words, you don't eat for 5 days, and then fast for 2.
But rather, you eat for 3 days, fast for 1...the eat for 2 days and then fast for 1 day.
The next method is called “Eat-Stop-Eat.”
It’s much like the 5:2 method, in that you eat normally for 5 days a week and fast on
2, non-consecutive days.
But on your fasting days, you restrict all food for 24 hours.
You eat nothing on your fasting days, instead of the normal 500-600 calories
that you would normally eat on the "5:2" method.
The final method that I’m going to be talking about is called the “16:8” method.
This ones a bit different.
In this method, the fasting, non-fasting cycle only lasts for a single day.
You fast for 16 hours, and then you only eat during a short, 8-hour window of time.
You can do this type of intermittent fasting every day, or only a few days a week.
So, for example, you could fast all morning and then break your fast at noon.
All of your eating for the day occurs in the next 8 hours, and by 8 PM you begin your next
fast, eating nothing until noon of the following day.
This is the type of intermittent fasting that I do, and it’s a really easy method to ease
your way into.
Start out by fasting for a shorter period of time and making your window for eating
a larger one.
And then gradually reduce that window until your achieve the ideal 16 hour to 8 hour ratio.
I actually fast for 18 hours and only eat for 6.
Since doing fasted cardio increases the burning of fats for an extended period of time, I
try to keep it going for as long as possible.
So, I want to close by talking briefly about side effects and safety.
The side effects are about what you’d expect…hunger, a feeling of weakness, and possibly brain
fog.
But these side effects are temporary and once your body had adapted to intermittent fasting,
they should so away.
If you have a medical condition, you should consult with your doctor before beginning
intermittent fasting.
This is particularly important if you have diabetes, you have problems with regulating
your blood sugar, you have low blood pressure, you take medications, and if you are underweight
or have a history of eating disorders.
Also, women who are trying to conceive, are pregnant or are breastfeeding, or have a history
of amenorrhea should also consult with their doctors before beginning intermittent fasting.
OK, so there you have it.
Everything you ever wanted to know about intermittent fasting.
Well, maybe not everything.
If there’s something that you’d like to know but I didn’t mention it here, put it
in the comments below and I’ll address it in a future video.
I hope you enjoyed this video and found it educational.
If you did, then please subscribe to my channel, hit the like button, share it with your friends
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And, as always, thank you so much for watching.
'Til next time.