Posts Tagged ‘fasting’

Intermittent Fasting: A Primer

Tuesday, October 10th, 2023

Intermittent Fasting Part 1 – A Diet Strategy to Get You Ripped

For many people, losing fat and keeping it off is an impossible task, and they’d sooner reach China by grabbing a shovel and flinging dirt around. The road to leanness is littered with the remnants of horrible-tasting food, dingy Tupperware containers, and the dreams of those who abandoned their quest because of the seemingly insurmountable difficulty.

We’ve all been there at one point or another, but those who’ve managed to travel the wasteland and emerge on the other side victorious have done so by finding a way to stay on the path while others fell to the wayside, rules be damned.

And let’s face it: the fitness industry has managed to create a lot of rules and myths, both intentional and unintentional, to keep people in a constant state of fear and dependence, but the concept of intermittent fasting has come around and anecdotally proved that many of these claims are based off faulty and cherry-picked research, or are just flat out lies. Freeing people from the shackles of dogma and letting them indulge their inner hedonists without an ounce of guilt has helped hundreds if not thousands, achieve the body of their dreams.

Finally! A Powerful Diet That Anyone Can Follow

Forget about Atkins, low-fat dieting, low-carb dieting, the South Beach Diet, or any of those other fad diets. Here is a nutrition strategy you can use year in and year out to maintain ideal body composition, to get shredded for a show, or to lean out for summer.

Without further adieu, I’d like to introduce you to the new sheriff in town and how he can help you get to where you want to be as fast and painlessly as possible.

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The Pursuit of Productivity: How Silicon Valley Start-Ups are Leading the Way

Tuesday, June 27th, 2017

silicon valleyAspiring to be the best you can possibly be has always been a part of the human condition since time immemorial. And yet, in an era where a gym membership is almost as indispensable as a mobile phone and more and more people swear by the benefits of so-called superfoods, we appear to be pushing this ethos further than any of our ancestors could ever have imagined.

No other industry has profited as much from this demand as the HealthTech sector of Silicon Valley – estimated to be worth $3 trillion. With new health trends and fads popping up seemingly overnight, start-ups are rushing to create the next big thing.

From this frenzied scramble, a number of bold and progressive ideas have emerged. Here are three of the most radical.

Nootropics

If you don’t recognise this word, you are not alone – it was only coined in 1974, and is made up of the Greek words for mind and bend. And no – nootropics are not the latest evolution of psychedelic drugs, but they are not far off. (more…)

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For Extreme Fat Loss Check out Intermittent Fasting

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

I have always been a big supporter of eating breakfast and eating frequent, small meals all day long. Both for fat loss and for muscle gain. That is, until a year ago when I started investigating Intermittent Fasting and Martin Berkhan’s Leangains protocol, Jon Pearlstone’s EET, and the ‘Eat. Stop. Eat.’ plan.

Since I started believing in the Intermittent Fasting hype, I have learned so much more about the benefits of IF, and I use the strategy pretty much every day. It is unusual for me to eat before noon or 1pm, and my most productive time of day is pre-meal.

Aside from IF and sporadic gym training, I’m not actively trying to lose weight, yet I’ve lost about 15 pounds in the last year while keeping my strength level. I haven’t decided whether or not IF is best for muscle gain, but you can’t beat it for fat loss.

Here are some links you can check out for more info about Intermittent Fasting:

4 Reasons Why You Should Start Skipping Breakfast
Eating the ‘Most Important Meal of the Day’ Will Make You Fat
Leangains
EET Fit

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How to Use the Intermittent Fasting Method Eat. Stop. Eat.

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011

How to Drop Weight If You Are Tired of Restrictive Diets

Eat Stop Eat

If you’ve had trouble following your current diet plan, you might do well with a diet that is tracked on a weekly basis.

It’s hard to follow a strict diet plan every day. The demands of most popular diets require users to keep a log of everything they consume and keep constant track of calories – and many times, people fail at their diets because they don’t fee like they’re able to keep up with all the details. Constantly monitoring caloric intake is simply too tedious for most individuals.

Strict Diets Often End in Failure

Here’s an illustration: An article published in the International Journal of Obesity in 2007 shared the results of a study of several diet plans with strict calorie tracking requirements. The study gathered 311 overweight females and randomly placed each of them on either the Atkins Diet, the Zone Diet, the Ornish Diet, or the LEARN Diet.

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Don’t Eat Late At Night

Monday, June 13th, 2011

Should Bodybuilders Eat Late at Night?

Don't Eat at Night

Bodybuilders are subjected to a million different tips about what to eat, when to eat, and how to eat. We are constantly looking for new foods and diet strategies to help us gain muscle but not fat, or to lose fat but not muscle.

So what is the truth? Should we listen to Oprah? Should we listen to Mr. Olympia? Is Atkins right or does Intermittent Fasting work better? As an individual you need to try different strategies in order to see if they work best for you.

The Myth

It is common knowledge that if you eat before bed, those calories will stored as fat. It might be considered common knowledge, but is it true?

The Truth

For athletes looking to gain muscle mass and strength, one strategy that I have used and recommended to clients over the years, is to eat within 15 minutes of going to bed at night. Not junk food. Nothing full of fat and carbs. Instead it should be a small meal of slow-digesting protein with an optional small amount of complex carbohydrates.

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Intermittent Fasting Helps Prevent Diabetes, Heart Disease, and Lowers Cholesterol

Monday, April 11th, 2011

Eating 5 or more meals a day is great for weight gain, but not so good for weight loss, and is not optimal for good health.

We already know that increased meal frequency does not increase the metabolism or decrease appetite. In fact eating more than 3 meals each day can often lead to increased calorie consumption over time, because people eventually get bored and tend to begin to ignore their meal portions, which results in overeating.

Conversely, we know that fasting tends to decrease your appetite once you get past that first 6 hour fasting window. We also know that intermittent fasting lowers insulin resistance and blood pressure, and promote lightening-fast weight loss. Knowing those facts, here are a couple more great reasons to switch to an Intermittent Fasting lifestyle, for good health and efficient fat loss.

First, The Study Results

To keep you interested, we’ll talk about the research results first, then we’ll look at the studies.

New studies on periodic fasting by the American College of Cardiology have determined:

  • periodic intermittent fasting seems to reduce the risk of falling victim to type 2 diabetes by 50%
  • intermittent fasting also decreases your risk of developing heart disease
  • HDL cholesterol increases during an intermittent fast
  • triglycerides decrease during an intermittent fast
  • human growth hormone (HGH) levels increase during a fast, leading to weight loss and muscle gain
  • HGH increases by a factor of 20 in men and a factor of 13 in women, on average

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Intermittent Fasting: Workout Planning

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

Intermittent Fasting Part 3 – Training to Burn Fat

And so, faithful readers, we have arrived at the final installment of our intermittent fasting series. In part 1 I gave you a brief overview as to what intermittent fasting is and what some of the benefits are. In part 2, I laid out the guiding blueprint to help you create your own nutrition plan, but today we’re gonna talk about how to create the sexy via resistance training.

Intermittent Fasting Results - Front Intermittent Fasting Results - Back
Here are the results of Roger’s recent bout with Intermittent Fasting – Nice work Rog!

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Intermittent Fasting: Meal Planning

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

Intermittent Fasting Part 2 – Eating To Win

In part 1 of the Intermittent Fasting series, I gave you a brief overview as to what intermittent fasting is and what some of the benefits are. Now it’s time to get into the nuts and bolts of how to breakdown your meals.

I view intermittent fasting as more of a long-term lifestyle change as opposed to a quick fix, and as such it should be approached in a way that addresses health as well as body composition. Before I get into more details, I want to express to following tips that will greatly increase the likelihood of you creating an awesome physique.

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The Truth About Fasting to Lose Weight

Friday, March 6th, 2009
Update: I wrote this article with regards to fasting for 24 hours or longer. I did not intend to address intermittent fasting with this post. Since I wrote this, I have learned about intermittent fasting and fully support it as a fat loss strategy. I still don’t support fasting for more than 24 hours though. 1/4/2011
Fasting
Fasting

What is fasting?

Fasting is when you don’t eat anything at all for a prolonged period of time. I’m betting you have heard of “breakfast”? This is a meal that essentially breaks your overnight fast.

Is it healthy to fast overnight?

Your overnight fast isn’t that bad. Some hardcore individuals do set an alarm clock to wake up 4 hours into their sleep cycle in order to swill down a protein shake. I have actually done this before, except that I planned it out as follows:

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