Intermittent Fasting -
The Basics of Intermittent Fasting (from Dr Berg)
Dr Berg claims that intermittent fasting (IF for short) is one of the most effective things a person can do to improve their overall health. It leads to growth of new brain cells, which in turn leads to improved memory and attention; improvement in mood due to brain healing as well as reduction of inflammation: improvements in immune system function including the growth of new immune stem cells in bone marrow, and an overall reduction in inflammation. These improvements generally come from healing insulin resistance. Insulin is actually necessary for all nutrients to enter cells, not just sugar, so insulin resistance leads to a seemingly paradoxical reduction in nutrients while eating "plenty" of food. A common concern that people have about IF is that they will lose muscle from the body breaking it down to "feed" itself. This doesn't happen with IF because the body significantly increases its production of growth hormone in order to protect the muscles.
The basic concept of fasting is for the body to burn energy that has been stored as fat. This means that the body is not starving when you are not eating, it is simply "eating" its fat reserves. The best indication that fasting is working (the body is eating stored fat) is that you aren't hungry. Dr Berg clarifies that the principal is to get healthy to lose weight, not to lose weight to get healthy. Although IF is a powerful tool to help the body achieve appropriate weight loss, weight loss itself is not usually the goal but an outcome of working towards optimal health. Another way of looking at this is to get to the point where you are controlling your food, not your food controlling you. IF is often done along with the ketogenic diet. For more about eating "keto" see this post.
Here are some basic principles:
Skip breakfast, or move breakfast later and later, aiming for around noon. Many people eat in the morning out of habit more than hunger.
Don't eat if you are not hungry. In order to not feel hunger, keep your intake of carbs low at the meals you do eat, around 20 or 30 grams. If you eat more carbs at lunch and dinner you will be hungry the next morning. If you are hungry for breakfast one option is to have "bulletproof coffee". To do this add either butter or MCT oil to your coffee and whiz it in the blender (this emulsifies the fat so you don't have a pool of grease sitting on top of your coffee). MCT oil will turn into ketones which will help you make it to your first meal around noon. If you don't drink coffee you can eat a spoonful of MCT oil plain. Another issue is that your body releases a burst of cortisol around 8 AM which can feel like hunger when it happens. If you ignore this it usually goes away and your body learns to distinguish this from hunger.
Avoid snacking. Every time you eat, whether a snack or meal, your pancreas releases insulin. More insulin is released after eating carbs, but protein snacks also do cause insulin levels to rise. Many of the benefits of intermittent fasting come from reducing insulin resistance which is done by reducing the amount and frequency of insulin that your body releases in response to what you eat. Especially avoid snacking at night which can be particularly hard to give up for a lot of people. Some tricks to help you be successful changing this habit include keeping busy after dinner, avoid bringing snack food into your house in the first place if possible, and making sure to eat a filing and satisfying dinner.
A note about cholesterol - the majority of people who transition to eating IF and keto see their cholesterol levels lower, but occasionally they do go up and this can make people nervous. What's happening is that when fat is burned for energy, cholesterol is left behind because it is not burned that way. This cholesterol is sent to the liver on it's way out of the body, and if you don't have adequate liver function (which can be the result of having a fatty liver, not enough bile, etc) this cholesterol backs up in your system. An Advanced Lipid Profile Test will show that if your cholesterol levels are elevated, it's with the large low density particles that are not dangerous. Dr Berg says that after 14 days of doing combined IF and keto one-half of the excess fat in a fatty liver is gone.
Specific Tips:
-Have patience in this process. It took many years of eating poor quality foods to get where you are before starting.
-Getting enough potassium (and other electrolytes) can become an issue when eating IF and keto, which leads to discomfort often called "keto flu". This particularly happens during the transition to eating this way. This can be helped and even avoided by eating enough vegetables. Because this can be hard for some people to do, especially when eating during the limited time frame in IF, eating a large salad at one or both of your meals can really help. Dr Berg suggests eating the salad first, because once you've had your protein and fat, you will probably not be hungry enough to want to eat that much salad. Eating a lot of vegetables also helps because the microbes in your gut microbiome eat the fiber from the vegetables. Among many things, they produce a kind of fat that reduces blood sugar levels. For more about the importance of getting enough potassium see this post. If you still feel "keto flu" symptoms after increasing your intake of vegetables, you might benefit from supplementing electrolytes and B vitamins. This need should only be temporary while your body adjusts to the new way of eating.
-The two types of food that don't increase insulin levels are fat and fiber. This could be a spoonful of MCT oil or a cup of bulletproof coffee. A mostly fiber snack could be plain celery or raw greens. This may not be appealing but is functional
-Green tea helps insulin resistance and can allow you to fast for longer periods of time. Other herbs and spices that can be made into tea that can reduce blood sugar and appetite include cinnamon, ginseng, garcinia, and ginger.
-Avoid having a pre- or post-workout protein drink, smoothie, or snack, because this counteracts the benefits of the increased growth hormone that is produced by working out.
-Apple cider vinegar contains acetic acid which reduces insulin resistance, which appears to be the reason that it can contribute to weight loss. You can mix some into a glass of water to drink with a meal so that your body will absorb more of the nutrients from the meal and you will feel more satisfied.
-If you cheat and either eat more carbs or eat during a fasting time, even a small snack or drink or half a glass of wine, it will take you out of the fat-burning mode that you have worked hard to get into, probably for at least a day. It can be hard to remember that the point here is not about calories, which is what people are often thinking about when they chose to consume something as a "cheat", but about being in a state that is about hormone levels.
-Lemon juice reduces insulin levels. It also contains citric acid, which can protect against gout for those at risk of developing it, because fasting can increase levels of uric acid in the body (not a problem in general).
-Drinking ginger lemon water in the
morning is helpful. Ginger has at least 115 known
antioxidants/phytonutrients whose effects include anti-inflammatory,
anti-cancer, relief from gas, reduces nausea (including from pregnancy
and motion sickness), and decreases insulin levels.
How to make it:
1/4 cup of ginger (can buy the juice)
juice of 1 lemon
12 ounces of water
If
using fresh ginger you can grate or shred it and soak it in the 12
ounces of water for 30 to 60 minutes. Strain out the fiber and add the
juice of 1 lemon. Drink on an empty stomach. This will not break the
fast.
For maximum weight loss, the optimal ratio of eating time to fasting time is 23 hours of fasting and then 1 hour, which is one meal, each day. This is especially helpful if you have a lot of weight to lose or you have pretty severe insulin resistance. This may be too hard to start off with so it's fine to start with 18 hours fasting and 6 hours eating, which allows for 2 meals a day.
Why fasting bolsters brain power: Mark Mattson at TEDxJohnsHopkinsUniversity
Top Fasting Benefits: Autophagy Explained- Thomas DeLauer
Intermittent fasting increases autophagy by 5 times. Autophagy is a process in the body that clears up debris and excess "junk" in and around your cells.
