You Should Include Fasting in Your Muscle Building Program

There’s a growing body of evidence and sentiment that promotes the use of intermittent fasting in conjunction with any exercise and fitness program you may have embarked upon. This is no accident. Fasting has long been shown to deliver benefits that can’t be achieved through other means, and it would be a mistake to discount it as a faddish or fringe method undeserving of your attention. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why you may want to consider this to help with your overall plan.

First, let’s define exactly what intermittent fasting is and why it can be incorporated into a workout routine. Intermittent fasting is the practice of abstaining from food for a period of usually 24 hours, once or twice per week on a week-to-week basis. It is unlike juice and other types of fasts in that there is no sugars, or other consumables other than water taken in. This is for several reasons. The point of intermittent fasting is to give you a chance to cut caloric intake while still maintaining a high metabolism, and also to cleanse your system. Other types of fasts emphasize different goals than these, with different results. Juice fasts, for instance, still have you consuming large amounts of juice, which contain natural sugars that may well wreak havoc with your blood sugar, throwing your whole system out of kilter. Other types of fasts, such as fasts that have you subsisting on a particular food group, have their place, but more than likely not in the weight loss realm. There are many spiritual benefits to be had from fasting, and this is also important to many people.

My view on this is that you should include intermittent fasting one or two days a week at the start, if you are involved in a workout whose goal is to achieve maximum fat loss. The practice of deleting up to two full days of calories from your weekly dietary plan should excite you, and the good news is that fasts of this nature don’t have the debilitating effects that other, longer fasts have on your metabolism. You experience no energy drain, and in fact, often the opposite occurs. You also are not usually plagued with any of the other downers associated with fasting, like light-headedness. You aren’t ravenously hungry, and you are more than able to handle a full workout schedule.

One of the advantages of a plan like this that includes intermittent fasting is that you can eat normally on your “off” days, as long as normal to you isn’t a full-on gorge session! It doesn’t do much good to fast at all if you spend the other days cramming your face with anything you can get your hands on!

Take some time and investigate intermittent fasting as an aid to your workout plan. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at just what it can do for you!

His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, visit www.eatstopeat.com

Why Should You Include Fasting In Your Daily Lifestyle?

There are many reasons why you should include fasting as a part of your everyday lifestyle, many of which have nothing to do with diet. Fasting as a concept has been around as long as the hills, though it has been taken to extremes at times and made to look like a less than viable part of a normal and sensible health and weight control plan.

Fasts have been undertaken through the years for reasons as diverse as political causes (Bobby Sands comes to mind) and religious fasts. The Bible and many other religions promote fasting as a way to get closer to God, and to achieve enlightenment. There is also some physical evidence that deprivation can lead to a heightened state of awareness, no doubt some of which comes from the lack of additional food the system must process.

Fasts can also be used as a prelude to medical procedures. For instance, most doctors recommend a 12-hour fast before taking a lipid profile. This is also standard procedure before surgery. Complications from the combination of food and anesthesia have been known to occur. There is also at least empirical evidence that fasting can have a beneficial effect on other aspects of your health. There are those who believe that water fasting can not only work to detoxify cells and rejuvenate organs, but also can help and possibly aid in curing such diseases and conditions as cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, lupus and many more autoimmune disorders.

A newer trend in terms of using fasting as an aid in a sensible weight loss plan is the concept of intermittent fasts. These are short-term fasts lasting 24-36 hours in length, which help contribute to a total caloric deficit, thus bringing about faster weight loss. This type of fasting is simple to implement, and can be adapted to most individual needs.

One danger to be aware of is the practice of extreme fasting among teens. This can lead to other types of food disorders, such as bulimia and anorexia. Few teens need to go on extreme fasts for purposes of weight loss, and if one is considered, it should be under the supervision of their physician. If the reasons for going on a fast have anything to do with pressure to be thin, or feelings of low self-esteem, then it would be wise to offer counsel. Extreme fasts tend to appear when a period of binge eating has occurred, with the intent being to purge the body of all the excess food.

Fasting can be a viable and important piece of a well thought out weight loss plan. The use of short-term fasts used in conjunction with a sound diet can offer great weight loss results, as well as some of the ancillary benefits of fasting. This combined with all the spiritual and beneficial effects fasting can have on a person’s psyche make fasting something you should definitely consider when determining your course.

His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, visit www.eatstopeat.com

How You Should Implement Intermittent Fasting

You may not even have heard yet about intermittent fasting and the benefits thereof. In fairness it is a relatively new way of looking at fasting and it’s possible uses, so let’s take a few moments and examine why intermittent fasting is quickly becoming a valuable element in your weight loss/fat loss arsenal.

Many of us know fasting as something that has religious and/or spiritual applications, or perhaps as a political statement or tool. (Almost always a bad idea!) However you’ve thought of fasting in the past, it may be time to look at it in a new way. Intermittent fasting has evolved into a useful way to cut your caloric intake and still maintain energy and strength enough to workout and get stronger, and in general become more fit.

An intermittent fast can be defined as one in which the person fasting abstains from everything but water for a period of 24 hours, one to two times per week. This definition serves those who would use this as a tool in their weight loss routine, and still be able to workout. Think of the benefits of exercising a full two days worth of calories from your diet, and still be burning them up at a high rate simultaneously. Sounds attractive, eh?

Now, employing a fast once or twice a week and then using the remaining days to practice for eating contests won’t cut it. You need to practice restraint and employ a sensible eating plan for those days, but all in all, most people report that the urge to pig out isn’t as strong as they thought it would be.

One of the biggest benefits of doing intermittent fasting as a part of your workout program is that studies have shown that not only is your energy NOT diminished, but it actually seems to be enhanced, and your metabolism isn’t reduced but clearly further stoked up. This is the primary complaint among people who would use a traditional fast. They would no longer have the gas left in their tank to work out, and while they’d lose weight, often it would be muscle mass, which sort of defeats the purpose.

When starting out with intermittent fasting, make sure you start out easy, getting your body used to skipping a day once a week, then perhaps two. Also take it slow when working out during this transition time, until you start to feel as though you’re able to take a full load in your workout program. This won’t take long, and in fact will leave you hungering for more, and I don’t mean food!

If you’re seeking a way to accelerate your fat loss and still keep working out, then you need to take a good look at intermittent fasting. You may be pleased at just how effective it can be at painlessly reducing your caloric intake while at the same time allowing you sufficient energy to complete your workouts!

His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, visit www.eatstopeat.com

Intermittent Fasting as a Simple Method for Permanent Weight

If you’ve been looking for a way to lose and keep weight off permanently, then you would do well to consider using intermittent fasting as a method of reducing your caloric intake to aid you in your weight loss quest.

Intermittent fasting is defined as short-term fasts, typically 24-36 hours in length, once or twice per week. These fasts are normally water only. Doing a so-called “juice fast” can defeat the purpose of intermittent fasting altogether, as by its very definition you are consuming large amounts of natural sugars, which can throw off your blood sugar as well as other bodily functions as well. Other types of fasts that emphasize one food or drink (other than water) can be just as worrisome.

Short-term fasts like these are simple to do and they also provide a way to cut your caloric intake rather easily. Imagine knocking off two full days worth of calories from what you’ve been taking into your body. It makes the task of reducing that much easier.

Of course, replacing those saved calories with massive amounts of food on the other days will negate this aid, but in truth, if you are in tune with what your body is telling you this will not be an issue. Many times we succumb to our mind’s indoctrination that we’ll somehow starve if we don’t get that extra food. Nothing could be further from the truth.

We can survive and indeed thrive on much less food than we’ve been conditioned to think we need. America, in particular, is notorious when it comes to conspicuous consumption, and if we’re not careful, we’ll feed our next generation into an early grave with the amount of food we’re forcing down their throats. There is no relief or help in sight from either the food industry, government or health organizations. Many are either trying to sell us what they have to offer, the latest diet solution (that won’t work!) or deny there’s a problem in the first place. (The FDA comes to mind!)

So when push comes to shove the only real way to lose unwanted fat and pounds is to consume less food than we use in calories. It’s simple math, and the proof that different types of diets don’t matter as much as they’d like you to believe lies in the fact that most of these diets will help you to lose weight. It’s being able to sustain that particular diet that becomes the problem. Most are so restrictive that it’s next to impossible to do them long-term.

Fasting offers a good alternative, as it’s not asking you to add anything, buy anything or do anything apart from abstaining from food for a designated period of time so your body can get into calorie deficit and begin to cleanse itself. You owe it to yourself to look into this further and see if intermittent fasting might be a good idea to add to your weight loss plan.

His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, visit www.eatstopeat.com

5 Weight Loss Strategies

Losing weight sounds simple but it can get confusing if you don’t know where to start. This is the top 5 most important things you can do to lose weight and keep it off.

Eat Less – This one sounds obvious but it can’t be stressed enough. The only way to lose weight is burn more calories than you consume. One easy way of doing this is eating less. As a matter of fact the only way any of the popular diets cause weight loss is because you end up eating less while you follow them. It doesn’t matter if the diet is low carb, high protein or low fat. As long as you are eating less calories than your basal requirement you will lose weight. The easiest and most effective calorie reducing system I have come across is Eat Stop Eat by Brad Pilon.
Do High Intensity Exercise – High intensity whole body circuit training will ensure that you are burning lots of calories and working all the muscles in your body. This works better than traditional ‘cardio’ workouts for 2 reasons. First high intensity circuits burn more calories than ‘cardio’ can. Two, they build and tone muscle which keeps your metabolism up.
Get A Weight Loss Team – Social Support is the most important factor to realizing your weight loss goals. Get as many of your close friends and family on your side as possible. The more people that are pulling for your success the better. Make sure you always have at least two or three people to call that will help keep you on track when you feel like skipping a workout or cheating on your nutrition plan.
Eat more Fruits And Vegetables – This seems a bit simple but its one of the most effective things you can do to lose weight. Fruits and veggies take up lots of space in your stomach and fill you up without adding too many calories. They will also take the place of some high sugar and high fat foods you may have eaten instead.
Set Short Term Goals – Short term goal setting is often overlooked and is a powerful tool to realizing your eventual long term weight loss goal. Set multiple and attainable short term goals, and the shorter the better. At the start set goals for each day, morning evening and night. Set short term goals for finishing each one of your workouts, as well as for eating your fruits and vegetables. Set them each day, and mark it down each time you achieve one. As you build up your list of goals you have accomplished you will build up confidence and momentum towards your overall long term weight loss goal. Keep the list somewhere safe and keep marking down each goal as you achieve it. After a few weeks you should have a nice looking list of accomplishments to be proud of. Remember, every little bit counts.
Put these 5 strategies into effect and you will be well on your way to achieving your weight loss goals in record time.

His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, visit www.eatstopeat.com

Starvation Mode Does Not Exist

The theory of Starvation Mode is something that fuels Obsessive Compulsive Eating in North America and throughout the world.

To use a very basic definition, Starvation mode is when your metabolism supposedly slows down when you don’t eat enough calories. More often than not this definition is used to support very complex diet programs.

These diets will tell you that not eating enough food will cause you to store more fat. Right after delivering this pseudo-science message of fear they then tell you the only solution is to keep eating, and here is the catch, you must eat the special foods they recommend.

This is just another example of fear mongering and confusion created by the food, diet and supplement industry that ultimately leads to obsessive compulsive eating.

They are actually trying to tell you that eating less food won’t help you lose weight, and in fact might actually cause you to gain weight – Fear mongering at its best.

The truth is a large body of scientific research shows you can eat very low calories for extended periods of time with no change in your metabolism and, no decrease in muscle mass, as long as you do some form of resistance training (I cover a large part of this research in Eat Stop Eat).

This is one of the major reasons why so many people are afraid that eating too much food or too little food will have a negative effect on their metabolism.

In my opinion the scientific research is clear, you can eat very low calorie for an extended period of time. As long as you do some weight training the only thing that is going to happen is an impressive amount of fat loss.

And if the existing body of research wasn’t enough to convince you, here is more proof that you can lose significant amounts of weight without losing muscle mass or damaging your metabolism as long as you are using resistance training as part of your weight loss plan.

In a study just published in the Journal of Obesity, researchers examined the effects of losing 25 pounds on 94 women who either

A) Followed a resistance training workout program

B) Followed an aerobic training program

C) Did not workout at all

These women were asked to follow a diet consisting of 800 Calories until they reduced their BMI down to less than 25 (The average 25 pounds of weight loss). The women continued this diet for as long as 5 months straight (not something I would personally recommend without being medically monitored).

The researchers found that the women who were following the resistance training workout program maintained their Fat Free Mass during the time they were on the diet. This means that even though they lost 25 pounds they were able to preserve their muscle mass. Therefore all 25 pounds that these women lost was fat!

They also found the group of women who were following the resistance training workout program preserved their metabolic rate. In other words they did not see any metabolic “slow down” as a result of losing 25 pounds, or from being on a 800 Calorie per day diet for 5 months!

Interestingly, the researchers found decreases in Fat Free Mass in the women who did not workout AND in the women who performed aerobic training.

More evidence that resistance training while following a weight reducing diet program can preserve lean mass and metabolic rate.

This is yet another example of why the Eat Stop Eat combination of flexible intermittent fasting and resistance training can help you lose fat without losing muscle or lowering your metabolism.

His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, visit www.eatstopeat.com

The Secret To Weight Loss Is Short Term Fasting

If you’ve been searching for a diet plan that you will not only lose weight with, but have a chance at making a change that will last a lifetime, then you need to look into short term fasting as part of a sensible plan that can help you reach these goals. If you’ve always dismissed fasting as the domain of the religious fanatics or the political prisoners, then you are in for a surprise. There are many misconceptions surrounding fasting, and here we’ll look into how it can help you not only in your weight loss program, but aid in achieving a better overall you!

In order for any diet plan to work, there is really only one “magic” secret for it to work: eat fewer calories than you burn off. That’s it! Think about it – all of the current fad diets rely on teaching you to eat certain proportions of whatever they think is best. Ornish promotes low fat, Atkins low carbs, The Zone a more balanced ratio, but in reality, they all preach smaller amounts, which will lead to weight loss. The only question with them is can you sustain yourself on these diets? Not many can. I tried the Atkins plan, and even though I’m a meat lover, after a few weeks it was difficult to face all that protein. Conversely, people report similar difficulty staying with Ornish and the others, simply because of the restrictive nature of these diet plans. One thing that is interesting, however, is that any of these kinds of diets will cause you to lose weight, (by restricting caloric intake) proving that it really doesn’t matter what you eat, only that you eat less of it.

I proved this to myself when I was younger by going on a cherry pie and hard-boiled egg diet for 30 days. I lost a bunch of weight, but it obviously wasn’t the healthiest plan I could have undertaken. And needless to say, it was not sustainable as a lifestyle. (But it hit the spot for a time!)

I believe that short term fasting, a 24-hour fast once or twice per week, can be a great way to get you into total caloric deficit for the week. Eliminating two full days of eating helps us consume fewer calories than we use, and that in turn can help us reach our goal of weight loss. Of course, you can’t eat like Michael Phelps the remaining hours of the week, (Unless you ARE Michael Phelps!) and hope to have a deficit, but in reality, I’ve found that you don’t often have the desire to wolf down excessive amounts of food when following this plan.

Short term fasting is not only the fastest way to achieve caloric deficit, but also, contrary to popular opinion, can actually increase your metabolism during the first 24-36 hours. Short term fasting can be a great aid to helping you lose weight. Give it a try, there’s nothing to buy!

His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, visit www.eatstopeat.com

Intermittent Fasting – What do you have got to lose?

So just what is intermittent fasting and why should you care? Intermittent fasting has become quietly popular in circles where people are striving to come up with ways to reduce caloric intake without harming their workout goals and still allow them to lose weight while strength training.

Intermittent fasting in a nutshell is the practice of short-term fasts, 24 hours in length, once or twice per week. There are variations on that theme, but in general that is the norm. This is done not so much to “cleanse the system” as many would have you believe, though it will to a degree. It’s merely a simple and fast way of decreasing caloric intake so you can achieve your weight loss goals without starvation plans or other fad diets. You don’t have to be overly concerned about the types of food you consume while you’re not fasting, although it should be noted that fasting once or twice per week won’t really help you reach your goals if you spend the other five or six days stuffing yourself with all manner of junk. A little common sense is called for.

By allowing a sensible freedom in your food choices, it relieves a great deal of the anxiety present when it comes to most diets. Many times we feel totally constrained and restricted, while this approach leaves us able to not only choose what we’d like to consume, but brings balance and sanity back into our diets. Intermittent fasting as a lifestyle will bring about changes that will last a lifetime. Start by taking it slow at first, and really learn to listen to what your body is trying to tell you as you go through your first few weeks of this. If you find yourself feeling lethargic or underfed, change it up a bit. Your body will tell you what it needs. (And that usually isn’t a monster double cheeseburger!) Many times, especially at first, your body will be going through some withdrawals, and it’s important to learn how to differentiate the signals. Also, you need to factor in what effect any workout routines you may be involved in will have on your intermittent fasting plans.

The most important thing to remember about intermittent fasting is that it is not merely a diet plan, but a lifestyle, worthy of consideration along those lines. In order to get the best results possible from this type of plan, you need to befriend it. Your fasting should be something that you look forward to, as you most certainly will after you start reaping some of the benefits of this intermittent fasting lifestyle. Making this type of plan fit into your life is key to making a lifetime of good eating and healthy living possible. There are a lot of inherent freedoms built into a diet plan like this, and while that can backfire on you if you’re not careful, it can also enable lasting success. Look into what intermittent fasting can do for you!

His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, visit www.eatstopeat.com

Does Fasting Work?

I suppose all of us have at one time or another wondered does fasting work? On the surface it appears to make sense, especially for the short term. Less food, giving the body a chance to cleanse itself from unwanted toxins that have managed to take up residence, and allowing the body’s natural processes to work. This all seems to make sense. Then we head to the supermarket and are confronted by images of the latest starlet and her emaciated form clinging to life, and wonder what if any benefits are to be found in denying the body the basic building blocks of life? The answers, like in many areas, lies somewhere in between the emphatic abstinence from all fasting, and the fanatic abstinence from all food!

Fasting does have a beneficial effect on our bodies, but only if it’s not overdone. We’ve all seen and heard about famous fasts for political and spiritual reasons, and far be it from me to debate the spiritual benefits one may or may not receive from such an endeavor, (political fasting tends to end badly most of the time) fasting for a health benefit is both a good practice and long a staple of those seeking optimum health.

The key question here is how much and how often. I’ve become a fan of what is known as “intermittent fasting”, which is the practice, as the name implies, of doing a fast at intermittent periods. There is a lot of latitude here. Some people do as much as alternate day fasting, some one or two days per week. Most people opt for the once or twice per week regimen, in part because many who are employing these methods are on a fitness quest, and to deprive the body further would likely derail their efforts at optimum health.

Doing this type of fasting allows for individuals to still maintain a rigorous workout routine if they so desire, and in fact can benefit that aspect greatly, both by helping to cleanse the body of accumulated toxins by the use of the fasts, as well as by helping to keep additional weight from adding another element to the fitness equation.

Make sure you are healthy enough to employ a fast, without a heart condition, hypoglycemia or other serious medical issues. Start slowly and get used to the lifestyle and see what works for you and you’ll have a much greater shot at success. Programs started at light speed sometimes lose their traction as people get discouraged and lose interest. Start slow to ensure success!

You would do well to check out this kind of fasting as a method of not only improving your dietary and general fitness levels, but also for the many added benefits that fasting usually brings around, some of those being a sense of discipline, improved sense of well-being, a real chance for your body to rejuvenate, and an antidote to the fast paced lives we all live.

His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, visit www.eatstopeat.com

10 Signs To Tell if Your Diet Promotes Obsessive Compulsive Eating

In this ground breaking study, 311 overweight women were recruited to follow one of the following popular diet programs: The Atkins Diet, The Zone Diet, the LEARN diet or the Ornish Diet.

To start the study, each woman was given a copy of the popular diet book that she was randomly assigned to follow.

Then, to make sure she was an “expert” on her program before she started dieting, each woman attended a series of 8 classes (each lasting an hour) explaining exactly how to follow her assigned diet.

(Side note- This just shows how OCE these diets are considering that it takes EIGHT classes for these women to know how to properly follow each diet!)

After the courses were completed the women then set off to follow their assigned diet plan for a total of 1 year.

The results were pretty much exactly what I expected – everybody lost a lot of weight in the first two months, after that the diets tended to even out and by the end of the trial the weight loss was far from impressive – none of the groups averaged more than 10 pounds of weight loss after an entire year of dieting.

And while many people used this study to ‘prove’ that diets simply didn’t work, or that the body somehow adapted to dieting, my take was much simpler – Firstly, this trial is in agreement with most research that shows it is very hard to accurately measure how many calories a person eats in a day, and secondly I thought that these results showed that the number one reason diets fail is compliance.

In other words, the more complicated and the more rigid the diet is (or the more OCE it is), the more likely it is going to fail in the long term. – People just can’t stick to these types of diets for long periods of time.

Apparently I wasn’t alone with my analysis.

In a study published in the International Journal of Obesity titled “Dietary adherence and weight loss success among overweight women: results from the A to Z weight loss study” researchers re-examined the A to Z weight loss trial to see if there was an association between the level of compliance and the amount of weight that was lost.

Guess what they found?

Astonishingly only ONE subject in the ENTIRE study followed the diet as directed for the whole 12 months. This means that every other subject was not following her assigned diet properly at some point during the research trial!

The researchers also found that adherence was significantly correlated with 12-month weight change for all three-diet groups. So the better a woman was at following her diet, the more weight she lost.

The fact that adherence was so low is very interesting considering that these women spent eight class sessions reviewing their assigned diets with a registered dietitian before they even started the diet…you can imagine what adherence must be like for someone who simply bought one of those books, read it cover to cover and then gave it a try!

The findings from this follow-up analysis also suggest that the difference in dietary macronutrients had only negligible effects on the participants weight loss success.

The bottom line is that you can generally figure out how successful a diet will be by looking at how complicated it is.

More rules = more complicated = low chance of success

Less rules = less complicated = high chance of success

In my opinion weight loss can be incredibly simple if you let it.

Find the easiest, most comfortable way to reduce the total amount of calories that you eat. The less intrusive a diet is on your lifestyle the greater chance you have of sticking to it long term.

For me, this is flexible intermittent fasting. After all if you can fast for 24 hours once, you know you will always be able to do it. Some fasts maybe harder or easier than others, but you know you can do it!

Obsessive Compulsive Eating habits that make diets complicated and difficult spell doom for long term weight loss.

10 Signs a diet suffers from OCE:

1. It contains a list of foods you can and cannot eat

2. It lists specific times of every day that you are allowed or not allowed to eat

3. It contains specific diet plans that do not take into consideration your own personal food preferences

4. It lacks flexibility

5. It focuses on macronutrients and micronutrients excessively

6. If fails to point out the importance of long term compliance

7. It requires you to pre-pack and carry certain foods with you while you travel

8. It promotes certain foods because they PROMOTE weight loss

9. Over reliance of food Journal

10. Metabolic Typing

His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, visit www.eatstopeat.com