What You Need To Know About Intermittent Fasting

What is it?

  • Intermittent fasting is tool, a pattern of eating and not eating.
  • One of the most important tools to trigger 2 important hormones when it come to weight loss – growth hormone (anti-aging and fat-burning hormone) and insulin (fat-storing hormone – in its presence you cannot lose weight and it blocks growth hormone).

How will this help?

  • By improving your insulin response – when we eat, insulin is released and it stores some fat in the liver and in the cells.  Sugar  is stored in the liver as glycogen. When we stop eating, insulin levels drop.  This is a good thing because it actually boosts your energy.
  • By using FAT for fuel instead of SUGAR – The body likes to use sugar for energy because it’s easy to access it.  Think of it as having cash in your pocket.  It’s easy to burn through that cash.  Fat is like money in a vault, in a bank. Not so easy to access and hence not so easy to burn fat.
  • By burning through stored sugar and getting to the FAT – when you practice intermittent fasting your body will burn through the glycogen first (stored sugar) and then it will start burning body fat.

How to start?

  • Start with a shorter fast- either 14(recommended for women)or 16 hours (recommended for men). To do this you want to have a period of either 14 or 16 hours between your last and first meal.  For example.  Eat your last meal at 7pm and don’t eat anything until 9am (for 14 hour fast) or 11am (for 16 hour fast).
  • During that time stay well hydrated by drinking plenty of filtered room temperature water or you can also have water with lemon, water with apple cider vinegar, tea, coffee (with 1t or 1T cream or almond milk), buttered latte or tea (with 1T grass fed butter, ghee or coconut butter).
  • Break your fast by eating a nutrient balanced meal consisting of a source of healthy fat + protein + fiber. For example 1/2-1 avocado + 1-2 eggs or 3-6oz (depending on your size) meat or fish + 1 cup fibrous vegetables such as greens, cruciferous vegetables, mushrooms, asparagus, onions, radishes, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, celery, cucumber – just to name a few.