Intermittent Fasting: Can we believe the hype?
Organic Fasting is method of weight loss and weight maintenance that has been followed naturally, by mankind, since the beginning of time.
As most of us know, it is somewhat common to hear well intentioned medical professionals saying untrue things about Alternate day fasting. Three of these arguments are contained below.
1. Fasting slows down your metabolism so you will not lose weight.
2. Fasting eat up your muscles, leaving you a greater fat to muscle ratio.
3. Fasting does not work because you always gain the weight right back afterwards.
Statements like these, along with many more have been around for at least the last 150 years. Like many other statements that have been around that long, there is current scientific knowledge that tends to prove them wrong. Let me show you three easy examples on why why the above statements are not correct.
1. Fasting slows down your metabolism so you will not lose weight.
This is actually quite a humorous statement. If this was the case then I dont think we would ever see pictures of people starving. You know, those skin and bones pictures. The truth of the matter is that your body requires a certain amount of calories a day just to function and stay alive.
When a person stops eating enough calories to sustain this need of their body then the body begins to take energy that is found in body fat. Each pound of body fat stores 3500 calories. This is the same as saying that if a person wants to lose 1 lb of body fat they must eat 3500 calories less then their body needs just to function.
Fasting provides this. The average person eats between 2000 and 3000 calories a day. With just one day of fasting per week a person a person can cut back on 3000 calories, that is losing almost a pound of fat a day!
While it may act to reduce metabolism at first, that very small reduction of metabolism will not have much of an impact at all on slowing down fasting weight loss.
2. Fasting eats up your muscles first, leaving you with a greater fat to muscle ratio.
Again we have a statement that just does not make sense if you look at the science. It is true that at the beginning some small amount of energy is pulled from body muscles, but this is only a very small amount and it is usually pulled from muscle mass, not the actual muscle. What this basically means is that while the temporary mass of your muscle will descrease temporarily, you will not really be loosing muscle. You body will very quickly replace such muscle size once the fast is broken.
A long, long time ago, back when our ancestors survived by hunting and gathering they were not able to eat everyday. Food did not store very well and it was not readily available. Some days they would find food and some days they would not and the bodies of our ancestors adapted just fine to this lifestyle.
As a natural result when the opportunity came to eat, our ancestors would eat large amounts of food, and their bodies would simply store whatever the body did not need as body fat. Then, next time they had to go to bed without dinner their bodies would just pull energy from their fat storage|body fat).
It just does not make any sense to think that human bodies would pull body fat from muscle before they would pull the extra needed calories from fat storage. We need our muscle to function, while the main purpose of fat is simply to store energy for our bodies. This is what Intermittent fasting teaches and does.
Since it is our fat, not our muscle, that our bodies pull energy from, our ancestors were able to go for days at a time without eating while living off FAT stores, not muscle. Your body finally begins to consume muscle in large amounts only as a last resort after all body fat is gone. This is technically the definition of starving, when you have no body fat left and your body begins to consume your muscle to survive.
3.Fasting does not work because you always gain the weight right back afterwords.
It is true that if a person eats more than they need upon a completion of a successful fast period, and that person falls back into the habit of eating more than needed then that person will gain back weight. It is important to realize that this is the case will every single weight loss method out there. The trick is to only eat what your body needs, and, if your happen to gain a little back, well, that is nothing that Alternate Day Fasting can cure. - 17274
As most of us know, it is somewhat common to hear well intentioned medical professionals saying untrue things about Alternate day fasting. Three of these arguments are contained below.
1. Fasting slows down your metabolism so you will not lose weight.
2. Fasting eat up your muscles, leaving you a greater fat to muscle ratio.
3. Fasting does not work because you always gain the weight right back afterwards.
Statements like these, along with many more have been around for at least the last 150 years. Like many other statements that have been around that long, there is current scientific knowledge that tends to prove them wrong. Let me show you three easy examples on why why the above statements are not correct.
1. Fasting slows down your metabolism so you will not lose weight.
This is actually quite a humorous statement. If this was the case then I dont think we would ever see pictures of people starving. You know, those skin and bones pictures. The truth of the matter is that your body requires a certain amount of calories a day just to function and stay alive.
When a person stops eating enough calories to sustain this need of their body then the body begins to take energy that is found in body fat. Each pound of body fat stores 3500 calories. This is the same as saying that if a person wants to lose 1 lb of body fat they must eat 3500 calories less then their body needs just to function.
Fasting provides this. The average person eats between 2000 and 3000 calories a day. With just one day of fasting per week a person a person can cut back on 3000 calories, that is losing almost a pound of fat a day!
While it may act to reduce metabolism at first, that very small reduction of metabolism will not have much of an impact at all on slowing down fasting weight loss.
2. Fasting eats up your muscles first, leaving you with a greater fat to muscle ratio.
Again we have a statement that just does not make sense if you look at the science. It is true that at the beginning some small amount of energy is pulled from body muscles, but this is only a very small amount and it is usually pulled from muscle mass, not the actual muscle. What this basically means is that while the temporary mass of your muscle will descrease temporarily, you will not really be loosing muscle. You body will very quickly replace such muscle size once the fast is broken.
A long, long time ago, back when our ancestors survived by hunting and gathering they were not able to eat everyday. Food did not store very well and it was not readily available. Some days they would find food and some days they would not and the bodies of our ancestors adapted just fine to this lifestyle.
As a natural result when the opportunity came to eat, our ancestors would eat large amounts of food, and their bodies would simply store whatever the body did not need as body fat. Then, next time they had to go to bed without dinner their bodies would just pull energy from their fat storage|body fat).
It just does not make any sense to think that human bodies would pull body fat from muscle before they would pull the extra needed calories from fat storage. We need our muscle to function, while the main purpose of fat is simply to store energy for our bodies. This is what Intermittent fasting teaches and does.
Since it is our fat, not our muscle, that our bodies pull energy from, our ancestors were able to go for days at a time without eating while living off FAT stores, not muscle. Your body finally begins to consume muscle in large amounts only as a last resort after all body fat is gone. This is technically the definition of starving, when you have no body fat left and your body begins to consume your muscle to survive.
3.Fasting does not work because you always gain the weight right back afterwords.
It is true that if a person eats more than they need upon a completion of a successful fast period, and that person falls back into the habit of eating more than needed then that person will gain back weight. It is important to realize that this is the case will every single weight loss method out there. The trick is to only eat what your body needs, and, if your happen to gain a little back, well, that is nothing that Alternate Day Fasting can cure. - 17274
About the Author:
Would you like to learn addtional information about Alternate Day Fasting? Then take the time to read Brad Pilon's awesome new research about how you can lose the extra pounds, while still eating whatever you want with Intermittent Fasting
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4:19 AM
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