Intermittent fasting is getting much more attention in the health & fitness niche as many are beginning to realize the incredible benefits it can deliver.
However, there is still a rather large group of believe who believe fasting is damaging to one’s health, doing such things as ruining the thyroid and making you fat.
And there are even some (mostly traditional media people) who confuse intermittent fasting with starving yourself.
So, who’s right?!
Abel James, of Fat-Burning Man, produced an excellent, in-depth piece on “Intermittent Fasting 101“, covering the basics of what intermittent fasting really is, why it’s good for you, anti-aging effects it produces, who it IS and IS NOT for, and how to start intermittent fasting now.
Abel fasts regularly by not eating breakfast, choosing to simply have fatty coffee or bone broth instead, and then eating a light meal for lunch and bigger meal for dinner. He calls this schedule of eating “fasting and feasting”. Abel says that when he first began doing this he actually gained muscle. You can see here his before & after pictures:
via Fat-Burning Man
In explaining intermittent fasting, Abel compares our modern day environment to the one our primal ancestors would have lived in eons ago. Today, food is available at all times, and we’re constantly bombarded with advertisements and temptations of eating, whereas our ancestors (before agriculture) spent most of their time, energy, & effort hunting or gathering the food they consumed.
…the idea that we need three square meals per day is simply an arbitrary, cultural norm, not really a biological necessity.
What’s the result of our societal overeating (both in quantity & times per day)? Abel puts it like this:
Eating from dawn to dusk gives our bodies a steady stream of glucose, damaging in excess. Without a break from the taxing requirements of digestion, most of our population is faced with insulin resistance, weight gain, and disease.
Whereas, Abel says, cycling periods of fasting (usually in the morning) and feasting (usually at night) can have tremendous health benefits, including:
- Promoting human growth hormone production, helping you burn fat, build muscle, and slow aging.
- Normalizing insulin sensitivity, helping prevent chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
- Regulating ghrelin, aka “the hunger hormone.”
- Lowering triglyceride levels.
- and Reducing inflammation, also a very common cause of many chronic diseases
You may just now be learning about intermittent fasting, or cyclical fasting & feasting, but surprisingly research dating back to the 1930’s has proven restricting calories could have health benefits.
I highly recommend checking out the full article at Abel’s Fat-Burning Man website where he goes more in-depth into the anti-aging effects of fasting, who it IS and IS NOT for, and how to get started today.
You can find it all here:
http://fatburningman.com/intermittent-fasting-101-how-to-drop-fat-and-build-muscle-fast/
