Stuck at a certain weight and want to lose more? Or are you just trying to push the envelope on longevity? Try a strategy called Intermittent Fasting.
If you’ve reached a weight plateau and wish to continue to lose weight, perhaps adding the technique of Intermittent Fasting will help you to continue to achieve your weight loss goals. Even if you are at a healthy weight and follow a Nutritarian diet, intermittent fasting offers various health benefits.
Why it Works: The practice of intermittent fasting, or time restricted eating, is gaining popularity both as a weight loss aid and healthy living practice. Advocates report that the strategy has helped them to lose weight with ease, while research points to the strategy’s ability to optimize your body’s ability to repair and heal itself. It also reduces growth-related signals by improving insulin sensitivity and inflammation.
Cells in the fasting state are more resistant to disease and stress, reducing cancer risk and slowing aging. Fasting and caloric restriction also increase autophagy, a process in which cells focus on repair work, recycling damaged components, and cleaning out harmful or dead cellular matter.1-6
Combining a Nutritarian diet with intermittent fasting is where the real magic happens. A Nutritarian diet is full of nutrient-dense, whole plant foods that keep oxidative stress, inflammation and DNA damage at bay. The Nutritarian diet is already designed to prevent disease and help the body to repair and heal.7 Utilizing fasting with this superior diet offers an opportunity to enhance these advantages. This means you will lose weight, feel better, and improve your overall health for a happier life.
In addition, the technique of restricting your eating time window most often results in reducing calorie intake unconsciously.8, 9 This makes weight loss easier than other methods, such as counting calories or using special pre-packaged foods.
Intermittent Fasting is also flexible, you can choose a plan that fits into your lifestyle. There is even a side benefit. Since fewer meals are needed, the time you spend shopping and preparing and cleaning up from meals is reduced.
How it works: Although people fast every day during periods of sleep, the idea of intermittent fasting is to extend the period of time overnight when you are not eating. You can reduce your caloric intake for the day by having a light dinner, a green juice for example, or finishing dinner earlier, around 4 pm.
You can practice Intermittent fasting in a number of ways, including:
Limiting your caloric intake to a window of 6 to 10 hours a day
Try to push your fasting window overnight to 15 hours
Alternating days of regular meals with calorie-restricted days
Alternating a longer eating time window one day with a shorter eating time window the next
Eat breakfast and lunch, skipping dinner whenever possible
Eat in sync with your circadian rhythms: get most of your calories earlier in the day, preferably before 5 pm. Choose an appropriate eating window. Since insulin sensitivity is highest in the morning,10 evidence suggests that extending a fast during the evening hours is preferable to the morning hours (so skipping breakfast is likely not as beneficial as skipping dinner), Stop eating earlier in the evening to lengthen your overnight fast.
References
Antoni R, Johnston KL, Collins AL, Robertson MD. Effects of intermittent fasting on glucose and lipid metabolism.Proc Nutr Soc 2017, 76:361-368.
Tinsley GM, La Bounty PM. Effects of intermittent fasting on body composition and clinical health markers in humans.Nutr Rev 2015, 73:661-674.
Mattson MP, Longo VD, Harvie M. Impact of intermittent fasting on health and disease processes.Ageing Res Rev 2017, 39:46-58.
Patterson RE, Laughlin GA, LaCroix AZ, et al. Intermittent Fasting and Human Metabolic Health.J Acad Nutr Diet 2015, 115:1203-1212.
Longo VD, Mattson MP. Fasting: molecular mechanisms and clinical applications.Cell Metab 2014, 19:181-192.
Longo VD, Panda S. Fasting, Circadian Rhythms, and Time-Restricted Feeding in Healthy Lifespan.Cell Metab 2016, 23:1048-1059.
Stefanson AL, Bakovic M. Dietary regulation of Keap1/Nrf2/ARE pathway: focus on plant-derived compounds and trace minerals.Nutrients 2014, 6:3777-3801.
Harvie MN, Pegington M, Mattson MP, et al. The effects of intermittent or continuous energy restriction on weight loss and metabolic disease risk markers: a randomized trial in young overweight women.Int J Obes (Lond) 2011, 35:714-727.
Harvey J, Howell A, Morris J, Harvie M. Intermittent energy restriction for weight loss: Spontaneous reduction of energy intake on unrestricted days.Food Sci Nutr 2018, 6:674-680.
Saad A, Dalla Man C, Nandy DK, et al. Diurnal pattern to insulin secretion and insulin action in healthy individuals.Diabetes 2012, 61:2691-2700.
Joel Fuhrman, M.D. is a board-certified family physician, seven-time New York Times bestselling author and internationally recognized expert on nutrition and natural healing, who specializes in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional methods. Dr. Fuhrman coined the term “Nutritarian” to describe his longevity-promoting, nutrient dense, plant-rich eating style.
For over 30 years, Dr. Fuhrman has shown that it is possible to achieve sustainable weight loss and reverse heart disease, diabetes and many other illnesses using smart nutrition. In his medical practice, and through his books and PBS television specials, he continues to bring this life-saving message to hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
Intermittent Fasting: Kickstart Your Weight Loss
October 17, 2018 by Joel Fuhrman, MD
Stuck at a certain weight and want to lose more? Or are you just trying to push the envelope on longevity? Try a strategy called Intermittent Fasting.
If you’ve reached a weight plateau and wish to continue to lose weight, perhaps adding the technique of Intermittent Fasting will help you to continue to achieve your weight loss goals. Even if you are at a healthy weight and follow a Nutritarian diet, intermittent fasting offers various health benefits.
Why it Works: The practice of intermittent fasting, or time restricted eating, is gaining popularity both as a weight loss aid and healthy living practice. Advocates report that the strategy has helped them to lose weight with ease, while research points to the strategy’s ability to optimize your body’s ability to repair and heal itself. It also reduces growth-related signals by improving insulin sensitivity and inflammation.
Cells in the fasting state are more resistant to disease and stress, reducing cancer risk and slowing aging. Fasting and caloric restriction also increase autophagy, a process in which cells focus on repair work, recycling damaged components, and cleaning out harmful or dead cellular matter.1-6
Combining a Nutritarian diet with intermittent fasting is where the real magic happens. A Nutritarian diet is full of nutrient-dense, whole plant foods that keep oxidative stress, inflammation and DNA damage at bay. The Nutritarian diet is already designed to prevent disease and help the body to repair and heal.7 Utilizing fasting with this superior diet offers an opportunity to enhance these advantages. This means you will lose weight, feel better, and improve your overall health for a happier life.
In addition, the technique of restricting your eating time window most often results in reducing calorie intake unconsciously.8, 9 This makes weight loss easier than other methods, such as counting calories or using special pre-packaged foods.
Intermittent Fasting is also flexible, you can choose a plan that fits into your lifestyle. There is even a side benefit. Since fewer meals are needed, the time you spend shopping and preparing and cleaning up from meals is reduced.
How it works: Although people fast every day during periods of sleep, the idea of intermittent fasting is to extend the period of time overnight when you are not eating. You can reduce your caloric intake for the day by having a light dinner, a green juice for example, or finishing dinner earlier, around 4 pm.
Eat in sync with your circadian rhythms: get most of your calories earlier in the day, preferably before 5 pm. Choose an appropriate eating window. Since insulin sensitivity is highest in the morning,10 evidence suggests that extending a fast during the evening hours is preferable to the morning hours (so skipping breakfast is likely not as beneficial as skipping dinner), Stop eating earlier in the evening to lengthen your overnight fast.
Joel Fuhrman, M.D. is a board-certified family physician, seven-time New York Times bestselling author and internationally recognized expert on nutrition and natural healing, who specializes in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional methods. Dr. Fuhrman coined the term “Nutritarian” to describe his longevity-promoting, nutrient dense, plant-rich eating style.
For over 30 years, Dr. Fuhrman has shown that it is possible to achieve sustainable weight loss and reverse heart disease, diabetes and many other illnesses using smart nutrition. In his medical practice, and through his books and PBS television specials, he continues to bring this life-saving message to hundreds of thousands of people around the world.