I’ve been taking a break from posting about my health, so that I could do more research. What I have found has astonished me and pissed me off. Specifically, I’ve been researching the value of fasting, both long term (2 to 21 days) and intermittent fasting (16 to 24 hours). I had always been taught that not eating slows your metabolism, which in turn will make you gain weight when you do eat. What I did not know was that reducing caloric intake, alone, can slow it down. BUT, eliminating calories altogether forces your body to switch fuel sources from glycogen to fat. The American way of eating is making the whole country fatter and fatter.
I also learned that the body cannot lose fat while insulin is flooding it. The only time when our bodies have nil insulin production is when we have not eaten in 6 plus hours. The problem with the way I had been eating is that I was eating meals that were too big, too often. If I ate at 8pm and went to sleep at 10pm, my body would still produce insulin at 2am. I’d get up at 6:30am and eat breakfast, which would turn insulin back on. In fact my eating schedule, as with most Americans, was breakfast first thing in the morning, lunch at 12pm and dinner at 6 or 7pm with snacks between each meal. If each meal requires insulin production for 6 hours, you can see that insulin only turns off for about 4 hour, between 2am and 7am. That is only if you last meal is actually at 7 pm. If you have a snack at 9 or 10 pm, insulin wouldn’t stop until 4 am, limiting non production to just 2 hours. Do you see the problem? Eating this way only leaves the body 2 to 5 hours of no insulin production, which mean it can only burn fat for 1/12 or 1/6 of the day!
Intermittent fasting is not a diet. It’s an adjustment in eating times. If a person can eat only from 10am to 4pm, insulin production would stop around 10pm. The body can burn fat (even while sleep) from 10pm to 6 am, (about the time I awake) through 10am. THAT IS 12 HOURS OF FAT BURNING (10PM TO 10AM) !!!!!!
What I decided to do was go on a three day fast to purge and reset my eating habits and times. I figured that if I could fast for 3 days, I could surely fast for 18 hours, especially if 8 of those hours, I was asleep. I am also doing my aerobic exercise or weightlifting during that fasting window. You would think that I wouldn’t have energy to workout after not eating for 18 hours. I have found JUST THE OPPOSITE!!! I have more energy during my workouts. This due to the hormone release of human growth hormone and norepinephrine during fasting periods.
As of this morning, I weigh 278 pounds, which is about where I left when I was making progress losing the weight. The goal is now 225 pounds and the goal is to make intermittent fasting a way of life for the rest of my life. As a summary I learned the following from my research:
- The body can lose weight but cannot BURN FAT while insulin has been released.
- All macronutrients (carbs, protein and fat) trigger insulin production
- Carbs make insulin spike more than protein and fat
- It takes 6 to 10 hours for the insulin to drop back to 0 after eating (less time for protein and fat)
- Energy and muscle building hormones are released during a fast of more than 10 hours
- Most mammals go through periods of fest and famine daily, weekly, monthly (or longer for bears)