Posts Tagged ‘intermittent 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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Top 5 Most Popular Intermittent Fasting Methods

Monday, March 14th, 2022
Popular Intermittent Fasting Methods to get you ripped

Intermittent fasting (IF) is a highly popular health trend. It’s claimed to reduce weight, improve metabolism, and even boost lifespan. Each of the most popular intermittent fasting methods involves a way of eating using regular short-term fasts. These fasts help you consume fewer calories and optimize hormones related to weight management. If your goal is to improve your eating habits this type of diet strategy could help you significantly.

Let’s take a look at 5 popular intermittent fasting methods and the benefits to your weight loss and your health.

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2015 Intermittent Fasting Updates and The Importance of Meal Timing

Tuesday, March 31st, 2015

Intermittent Fasting for Health

The benefits of Intermittent Fasting (IF) continue to turn up in research and studies.

  • improved insulin sensitivity, blood glucose, and lipid levels
  • relief from inflammation
  • improved metabolic efficiency and reduction in body fat composition
  • increased energy, decreased lethargy
  • improved mood and mental clarity
  • reduced LDL and total cholesterol
  • helps prevent, slow progressing, and possibly reverse type 2 diabetes
  • protection from cardiovascular disease
  • improved pancreatic function

And of course one of the best benefits of IF – less time spent agonizing over meal planning and perfecting your diet.

Intermittent Fasting for Health

For 18 years I’ve studied nutrition, changing my diet around to meet my current goals – bulk, cut, health, lean gains, etc… I’ve done a 0 carb diet, low fat meals, I subsisted on a Chanko diet once for a month, tried paleo eating, juicing, hell at one point I even ate nothing but apples and canned tuna for about 4 weeks straight. So far nothing has been as easy or felt as good at intermittent fasting.

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How to Lose Weight Without Losing Essential Nutrients

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

Lose Fat, Stay HealthyIn today’s society, many people put premium on being thin. Many factors, especially the media, contribute to the notion that what is beautiful is a well-sculpted body that doesn’t show the slightest hint of fat. This has led many people to interpret fitness as looking like those sexy models as an epitome of ideal body. Some has been into different weight loss plans, such as the Medifast, and other crash dieting just to get rid of their extra pounds.

The results of crash diets are dire. Those people trying to lose weight by sacrificing their nutrition are actually punishing themselves. They are constantly living in a condition of hunger which eventually leads them to feel exhausted all the time. Worse, it can lead to collapse and many other health risks. Crash dieting can literally make someone crash.

Those who intend to shed those extra fats in their body must realize that there are weight loss plans which do not lose the essential nutrients of the body. Healthy choices in food and proper exercises are the major keys in losing weight the healthy way.

For beginners, it must be understood that a variety in the foods a person eat is actually essential. One should not be easily taken by the low carb/high protein diet mindset which some fitness people propagate. Maximizing protein intake, in and of itself, is not a balanced diet. Sure low carbs and high protein can help retain and build muscle while simultaneously losing fat, but a diet consisting of, for example, 5 meals of chicken and broccoli each day, is not a healthy diet and can actually make you sick.

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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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