Definitive Guide to Intermittent Fasting
So this post is quite-comprehensive and details how you can lose fat (also known as a “cut”) and/or gain muscle but not fat slowly (also known as a slow “bulk”). Cutting and bulking are the two terms you will now use for “dieting” and “getting big”, because by using bodybuilding terms I’m hoping you will all embrace the fact that you can gain and lose weight in an organized, healthy fashion rather than starving yourselves or getting fat on the GOMAD (gallon of milk a day) diet.
As a little teaser, i’ll let you in on the secret that:
Real intermittent fasting, done the easy/correct way, always involves skipping breakfast (gasp!) and instead “breaking-the-fast” around lunchtime. For one, if you sleep 8 hours, that’s technically 8 hours of fasting right there (which you’re already doing! Good for you, you’re like an intermittent fasting aficionado!). More details will be forthcoming, but I’m getting ahead of myself here…
So first, what is the real definition of intermittent fasting (IF)? Here’s Part 1 of 7 on a site I frequent (it’s a funky “paleo diet/caveman diet site” but don’t let that deter you from reading the series - I’ll be posting more about what I recommend eating for health later)
Mark’s Daily Apple: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/fasting-weight-loss/#axzz2LCYMIkDT
I suggest reading all 7 if you have the time because I’m sure you’ll find it interesting, but I will rehash the major benefits and details here. And because I don’t do things half-baked, I’m going to put lots of details in now instead of spoon-feeding it to you, so that once you learn this you’ll never have to learn it again and you can explain it to somebody else….
…But, if you don’t have the time and want to do this like right meow, go on ahead to the section titled “Intermittent Fasting”.
Your body is in either one state or the other
The “Fed” state varies in length based on how big and how complex your meal is
Fat = slow digestion, non-starchy carbs (think: green things) = slow digestion, starchy carbs (think: potato) = fast digestion, protein = fast or slow (whey = fast, casein = slow)
Example: nonfat milk digests faster than whole milk, and whey protein digests faster than any milk (because milk is 80% casein 20% whey).
Get the idea? So if you drink 20g whey protein with water, expect to fully digest it in around 1.5 hours
A full, mixed meal with fat, carbs, and protein can take up to 4-7 hours to digest.
So why do you care about all this? Well, truth be told it won’t change the basic IF protocol, but in case you need to tweak something one day (like a pre-workout meal or protein shake) perhaps you’ll be able to do it on the fly, eh?
Ok, so, REALLY BRIEF SCIENCE ALERT (which you don’t have to read, but I wanted to give credit where credit is due) http://suppversity.blogspot.com/2011/09/intermittent-thoughts-on-intermittent_25.html
So the Fed/Fasted cycle basically comes down to two protein kinases (aka, enzymes (not the digestive kind) that make shit happen) - AMPK and mTOR. Sounds scary? It’s really not - this is all I need you to know:
As you can see, they are opposites and when one goes up, the other goes down, like supply/demand.
Here are two graphs that give some nitty gritty details, which you can safely skip because i’ll summarize them in but a sentence!
What mTOR Actually Does (when you have too much)
A few things you should take away: When AMPK is “upregulated” aka there’s a lot of it (so that means you’re in what state? Fasted.), you get “fatty acid oxidation” and “autophagy” in fat, and a lack of protein synthesis in muscle.
As the see-saw graph above says:
AMPK = fasted = fat burning, cellular repair, and no muscle gain.
mTOR = fed = general growth and muscle gain.
So for anti-cancer and long-life purposes, you want to balance AMPK with mTOR. The average American does not do this often - eating and snacking all day will continuously prevent AMPK from building up, and too much mTOR will promote cancer and fatness etc.
That’s not to say you can’t lose fat eating 17 meals a day, because in the end total calories per day is what matters, but it would certainly make life a lot harder.
Here are some Simple, Awesome Graphs by Brad Pilon of “Eat, Stop, Eat” who looks like this by the way:
See how the bodyweight one drops 2% each fast, then spikes back up when they eat again? That’s mostly water weight, with a bit of fat. Fat loss takes time - approximately 1-2lbs per week is normal. Expecting or trying for more via extreme calorie restriction is ludicrous, and will likely stop healthy weight loss rather than promote it.
Another BRIEF SCIENCE NOTE: While in the fasted state, you will be maintaining your blood glucose requirements with a combo of recently-digested carbs as well as stored carbs/protein. The stored carbs are glycogen from your liver, and the protein is from muscle. Once you hit 16 hours, you will be running mostly on stored amino acids because your liver glycogen will run out:
Glycogen depletion in the human liver upon fasting (with no exercise) is about 0.3mmol/kg liver tissue per minute. With 300mmol/kg glycogen in a liver, a 16-hour fast, as Martin Berkhan suggests, would use roughly 96% of your liver glycogen stores.
After that, glucose is made from gluconeogenesis by cannibalizing the body’s muscle tissue.
Despite this, you will not really start to lose muscle until after the 24-hour mark. Similarly, for those afraid of going into “starvation mode”, your metabolism only drops after around the 72-hour mark of a fast (which you are definitely NOT doing, riiiight?)
So, actual ways to do a proper Intermittent Fast:
Does not necessarily mean calorie restriction. I can IF and eat 3000 calories in a day. In this case, I may not lose fat because I’m eating so much, but I will get the benefits of autophagy (cellular repair = anti cancer) etc. Because you can digest food in four hours, if you restrict your daily eating window to a lesser set of hours (say, 8) rather than the whole day, it becomes an "intermittent fast" that lasts part of the day despite still being able to eat more or less than you need to lose weight as you please.
Anyways, the best intermittent fast is: 16 hours for men, 14 hours for women.
The best guide is on here:
http://www.leangains.com/2010/04/leangains-guide.html
Martin Berkhan, the author, looks like this (year round) by the way:
Specifically, for exercise purposes, I’d suggest one or two pre-workout meals if you train later in the day (because you’re in college):
This is the most common setup for my younger clients that are still in college or have flexible working hours.
Sample setup
12-1 PM or around lunch/noon: Pre-workout meal. Approximately 20-25% of daily total calorie intake.
3-4 PM: Training should happen a few hours after the pre-workout meal.
4-5 PM: Post-workout meal (largest meal).
8-9 PM: Last meal before the fast.
Two pre-workout meals
This is the usual protocol for people with normal working hours.
Sample setup
12-1 PM or around lunch/noon: Meal one. Approximately 20-25% of daily total calorie intake.
4-5 PM: Pre-workout meal. Roughly equal to the first meal.
8-9 PM: Post-workout meal (largest meal).”
It is possible to do up to 24 hours, which is what Brad Pilon recommends, to burn extra fat. The downside, however, is that after 16 hours for men and 14 hours for women you might start losing muscle in order to do so. A lot of the IF magic will have already happened by 16 and 14 hours, so not doing a full day isn’t really an issue.
The one benefit is that 18-24 hour spike in “Free Fatty Acids” graph above, which indicates that a lot more fat starts getting used for energy around that point in time.
However, any kind of intermittent fast lets you eat every single day while still IFing -
if following Eat Stop Eat (better fat loss): just eat dinner at 8 one day and fast until dinner at 8 the next
if following Leangains (better muscle retention), just eat from 12pm-8pm and don’t eat again until 12 pm (for men) or 10pm (for women).
For Leangains, that’s an 8 hour feeding window with which to eat a lot of food (it should be A LOT whatever your goals are - if you usually eat 2000 calories but want to lose fat, you should be eating 1500 calories in an 8hour time period. That’s 2 or 3 solid meals).
Whatever you choose to do, I’d read the whole “Leangains Guide”, because it’s quite informative, with statements such as:
"coffee, calorie free sweeteners, diet soda and sugar free gum are ok (even though they might contain trace amount of calories)
A tiny splash of milk in your coffee won’t affect anything either (½-1 teaspoon of milk per cup at the most - use sparingly and sensibly if you drink a lot of coffee)
Neither will sugar free gum in moderation (~20 g)”
Also, a note from the lovely people at Examine.com about protein timing on a fast (more to come in my definitive guide to protein part 2):
"Pre-loading some protein, if in a fasted state, may be better than consuming it after a workout with little to no pertinent need to consume the protein immediately after the workout.
The ‘one hour metabolic window [i.e. the eating protein within an hour rule] may apply only to fasted training where there is no pre-load, as some evidence suggests that sooner is better in this particular scenario only”
On Non-Workout Days you should still do a Leangains 16/8 (men) or 14/10 (women) IF [16 or 14 hr fast, 8 or 10 hr feed), just make your FIRST meal the biggest (think: large meals centered around your workouts, which was dinner the night before and now breakfast the next day - this optimizes muscle gain instead of fat gain).
Conclusion: Try 16 (m) or 14 (f) hour fasts to start, for at least a month or two, experimenting every now and again with an 18-24 hour fast if so desired. But 14-16 hours is a very manageable habit that won’t interfere with your daily life. In fact, it gives you a bunch of health benefits (even beyond fat loss) and adds a good 30 minutes to an hour to your morning (so you can extend that whole sleep-fasting thing to get those 8 hours per night). Remember, the longer you sleep, the longer you avoid initial hunger pangs (which will subside within an hour or two into pleasant, fasted complacency).
Furthermore, the more often you eat in an exact IF pattern, the better your hormonal entrainment to your meal patterns - aka it’ll feel natural and you won’t get hungry as often in-between meals whilst fasting.
Lastly, as I showed previously with Brad and Martin, a picture is worth a thousand words:
Here’s Duong Nguyen, a http://suppversity.blogspot.com/ ”student”, after a 12-week IF program (he already had most of the muscle, but look at all that fat he got rid of!):
P.S. For girls who STILL worry about getting bulky with lifting weights, it’s comical to think you could get into manly-woman territory without extreme effort and/or steroids. Here’s an example of a woman who lifts big and eats big (not necessarily IF though), and look “toned” as a result of doing some really simple lifting:
Whatever gender you are, just trust me when I say that…
Abs are made in the kitchen, while asses are made in the gym.
Interested? Then try IF, and lift some weights.
Let me know if you have any questions
theartofmadeline
prguitarman
areudirty
izzy806
gummygunk
