Today I want to address what seems to be the latest trend in dieting: Intermittent Fasting. Of course, fasting has been around forever but now the word “intermittent” has been put in front of it and it has taken on this sexy, sensationalized appeal for losing weight. In my continuing effort to sort the trends and gimmicks from the sound nutrition information, I am here to tell you that intermittent fasting is just the latest fad and is NOT an effective way to lose weight. You could just stop reading right now and believe me, but if you’re interested in the why, here you go…
You can’t trick your body…it’s smart, it’s intuitive, and it’s decisions are based on survival!! So, when you starve it, when you don’t eat enough calories in a day or frequently enough to fuel all the systems in your body, it has to get fuel or energy from somewhere else. And because fat is more crucial for survival than muscle mass is, you will break down your muscle mass first for the needed fuel before going after fat cells. So, at the end of your fasting for several days or weeks, you actually are “fatter.” The number on the scale may say that you lost a few pounds BUT because you lost more muscle mass relative to fat, your percent body fat is actually higher. Now as many of you likely know, muscle is way more active than fat is. In fact, it takes 8 times as much energy to support muscle than fat. So, when we have less muscle relative to our fat, our metabolism slows down. We go back to eating what we did before fasting and we gain weight back…we gain fat back…and now we are even “fatter” than we were before!!
When we fast, we hold on to fat and burn muscle, our metabolism lowers due to lower muscle mass and due to insufficient calories, and when we do eat, we often rationalize eating everything in sight. When we are starving, we tend to make poorer decisions about what we put in our mouths and how much of it. Our emotional brains take over our logical brains.
Instead of starving yourself, I’m proposing you do the opposite. You actually get to eat to lose weight! Try eating something about every 3-4 hours. Try consuming 4-6 small meals or snacks per day. See that each of the meals/snacks have healthy sources of fat, protein and good carbs. This will help stabilize your blood glucose meaning that you won’t get the highs and lows in energy but will stay steady all day long. It will maximize your ability to let go of extra body fat by sending a message to your brain that “there is there is plenty of food around so I can let go of these extra pounds around her midsection.” Combined with a good exercise routine you can lose those unwanted pounds once and for all and most importantly do so in a way that doesn’t compromise your health.
Lastly, just a reminder that we lose muscle mass every year just due to the aging process. By lifting weights, we can negate some of that loss BUT then why would we want to go on a diet that would break down what we are trying to preserve and build??
So now you know…You need to Eat to Lose!!
