You've seen people going on and on about intermittent fasting on social media. People losing all that weight with it. You've seen those progress pictures on instagram. You're seen that 3 month time lapse on youtube. You know a friend who's doing it because a ripped guy on the internet told him to do it. You might be doing it to show your six-pack to the ladies.
For noobs who don't know this upcoming "magical tool" for fat loss, hang on to your knickers.
What is intermittent fasting?
You can google the definition if you want to know what it is. Here, in this article, we're gonna be talking about something in addition to that definition.
Intermittent fasting (IF) has become the latest diet fad and the subject of several books. IF diets purportedly accelerate fat loss and some proponents go so far as to claim you can build muscle while fasting.
I'm not gonna go in the science of it, because this post is different.
Simply put, fasting allows the body to burn off excess body fat. It is important to realize that this is normal and humans have evolved to fast without detrimental health consequences. Body fat is merely food energy that has been stored away. If you don’t eat, your body will simply “eat” its own fat for energy.
If we start eating the minute we roll out of bed, and do not stop until we go to sleep, we spend almost all our time in the fed state. Over time, we will gain weight. We have not allowed our body any time to burn food energy.
How do you do IF?
It's simple.
Fast for 'X' hours, and eat in the remaining time. There's IF for you. Shocker.
We basically fast for 6-8 hours when we sleep. In IF, i'm asking you to extend that period.
Let's say you sleep at midnight, with your last meal at 8:00 PM.
You'll skip breakfast. Don't have your next meal before 12:00 PM that noon.
There. You just fasted for 16 hours.
Now, cram food like it's the last supper till 8:00 PM that night.
Repeat.
Ugh, difficult right?
It works.
Trouble is, in addition to losing fat, a study (1) shows that you could also be losing muscle, or at the very least, not building muscle.
For a person doing resistance training, any possibility of gaining muscle is eliminated when training in a fasted state.
And there will be a fasted state, considering you're doing the 20/16/14/12 hour fasts.
Bodybuilding coach John Meadows quotes:
"Proponents of IF like to think of it as the 'science diet' but the complete opposite is true. Intermittent fasting is the fad diet. There's no logic to it, unless your goal is to lose muscle, slow down your metabolism, and have poor workouts.
Ooh, things get interesting.
As i said before, i'm not gonna go in the science of it, i want the obese high school teen who can't seem to lose weight understand what this post is trying to say.
"Should i do it or not, self taught fitness expert?"
Let me give you the gist of what TC Luoma, a great coach, wrote.
First, determine our level of fatitude:
If you've got a considerable amount of body fat, you restrict your eating to a 9-hour window.
If you just need fine-tuning, as in you can just see or at least sense the shadow of some abs or some veins lurking under the muscle, you restrict your eating to a 12-hour window.
So, you restrict your sensible, healthy eating to either a 9-hour window or a 12-hour window, depending on your level of body fat. Simple.
The 9-Hour Group
Let's say you're in the 9-hour group and you have your first meal at 7 AM. That means all your conventional meals must be eaten by 4 PM.
The 12-Hour Group
Have your first meal at 7 AM. That means all your conventional meals must be eaten in 12 hours, by 7 PM.
That's it. And it should go without saying that you can't just eat anything and everything you want in unlimited quantities. No eating plan or diet can withstand such idiocy.
Eat 1-1.5 grams of protein per pound of your body weight, and eat 13 or 15 multiplied by your bodyweight(lbs) amount of calories per day.
Voila, the "Time-Restricted-Plus Diet". Thank you, oh TC Luoma.
Commit, and you won't be disappointed. Stay tuned for more easy how-to's.
(1) Leucine or carbohydrate supplementation reduces AMPK and eEF2 phosphorylation and extends postprandial muscle protein synthesis in rats