Fasting...is it really necessary?
Do you have excess energy (fat) sitting around your waistline?
If so, read on.
There are three ways to use up this excess energy:
- Diet
- Exercise
- Fasting
ALL of these work, however, fasting is fast becoming the way to go.
Here's Why...
We were born to move, make no mistake about that, the problem is that we have created a lifestyle that requires very little movement – so we added diets and gyms to our lifestyle choices, makes sense, right?
But consider these 3 questions:
- Are you happy with your results?
- Do you always find time for exercise?
- Can you sustain it?
When it comes to living a healthy lifestyle we often talk about a balanced lifestyle: using common terms like work/life balance, and balanced diet.
However what's rarely mentioned is: fasting is the natural balance to feasting, problem is we’ve created a food system that’s made us lose touch with our natural instincts.
Today, many of us can’t go more than 4 hours without food, and it’s visibly sitting on our waistlines!
Thanks to sugar we’ve messed up our hormone signaling, plus, the food industry would be upset if we stopped eating three times a day…
Let’s face it, whoever decided we need to eat 3+ times a day was sure on to a winner, because every time we eat we produce insulin the fat storage hormone, that blocks fat burning and increases hunger!
To clarify, fasting is NOT the same as starving. Fasting is something you chose to do. It’s periods of not eating through choice, which is very different from someone who has no access to food.
Today’s high sugar diet makes it virtually impossible to fast without experiencing low blood sugar (feeling hangry), faint, shaky or ravenous.
So, whilst fasting is the simple, natural balance to feasting many of us have turned the satiety switch off, and the thought of going 24 hours without food seems impossible...
You won’t die, most of us have got enough food on board to last a month! If you’ve got more than 20lbs to lose I am not joking…
Think of it this way, you don’t need to eat another 20 dinners for at least a month – if you’ve still got 20 dinners to burn through.
Okay... it’s not quite that straight forward, but for the sake of simplicity, to lose weight we need to burn up our sugar stores BEFORE we can reach our fat stores.
That takes between 24-48 hours, so if you put anything in the tank during that 24-hour period you’ve just topped up your sugar reserve, upped your requirement for exercise and slowed down your access to fat burning.
This is what makes fat burning so elusive, it’s not your lack of willpower or exercise, it’s the constant production of insulin…
Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE FOOD! It’s the sustenance of life, it releases "fell good" hormones and we need it, on a very regular basis.
But for some that means, once or twice a day depending on our activity levels.
A quick 20-minute yoga session, bounce on the rebounder (mini-trampoline) or run on the treadmill is enough to shake up you circulation, stimulate your lymphatic system (waste system) and jumpstart you energy. Coupled with making sure that you move on the hour, you should be good!
Eat. Less. Often.
Because, unless you are an active growing child, athlete or nursing mother eating 3+ times a day triggers insulin which causes glucose to get stored as fat in our fat cells for a later date.
So instead of counting calories, eating smaller portions and forgoing dessert, why not eat less often, so that when you do eat you don’t have to hold back?
You can enjoy the holidays, and special occasions without fear of wrecking your waistline.
You don’t have to follow a ketogenic diet to get into fat burning.
Yes, following a high fat, low carb diet is a surefire way to get into the fat burning zone, in fact, we are born in a state of ketosis (fat burning) since fat is a natural and preferred source of energy.
As children we become sugar burners once we switch from high fat breast milk to high carb foods like bread, cereals and pasta.
The liver can only store about 100 g of glucose in the form of glycogen, that's about 8 tablespoons...once we’ve filled it up we start storing excess sugar in our fat cells. For many that's easily done over 2-3 days.
The best foods to eat are those that produce little to no insulin, fat produces a minimal amount of insulin, protein produces a little insulin, and carbs, aka sugar, produce lots of insulin.
Like I said, it’s simple BUT it’s not easy because first we have to get our blood sugar under control and that can take a month or two. Especially if we’ve been getting our energy from sugar for a long time.
Don’t let the word fasting scare you, just like learning to ride a bike you need to learn how to do it properly, or you will crash at the first hurdle…
If you have any questions about how to get started let’s jump on a call.
I’ll get on the phone for about 45 minutes and help you figure out exactly what’s stopping you from getting into the fat burning zone. And provide you with 3 action steps that you can implement straight away.
