INTERMITTENT FASTING 101 Everything you need to know to get - - PDF document

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INTERMITTENT FASTING 101

Everything you need to know to get started.

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Your source for 
 fat-loss and muscle building solutions that that fit your life.

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Intermittent fasting (IF) is currently one of the world's most popular health and fitness trends.
 People are using it to lose weight, improve their health and simplify their lifestyles. Many studies show that it can have powerful effects on your body and brain and may even help you live longer. This is you ultimate beginner's guide to intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting (IF) is an eating pattern that cycles between periods of fasting and eating.
 
 It is not a Diet. It doesn’t specify which foods you should eat but rather when you should eat them.
 In this respect, it’s not a diet in the conventional sense but more accurately described as an eating pattern. Common intermittent fasting methods involve daily 16-hour fasts

• r fasting for up to 24 hours, twice per week.

Fasting has been a practice throughout human evolution. Ancient hunter-gatherers didn't have supermarkets, refrigerators

• r food available year-round. Sometimes they couldn't find

anything to eat. As a result, humans evolved to be able to function without food for extended periods of time. In fact, fasting from time to time is more natural than always eating 3–4 (or more) meals per day.

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Intermittent Fasting Methods

There are several different ways of doing intermittent fasting — all of which involve splitting the day and week into eating and fasting periods.
 During the fasting periods, you eat either very little or nothing at all. These are the most popular methods:

• The 16/8 method: Also called the Lean gains protocol, it

involves skipping breakfast and restricting your daily eating period to 8 hours, such as 1–9 p.m. Then you fast for 16 hours in between.


• The 12 on 12 off method. This method is especially good

when you’re just getting started.


• The 20/4 method: Bit more aggressive and really helps

with rejuvenation benefit. 


• Eat-Stop-Eat: Use maybe once each season. This

involves fasting for 24 hours, once or twice a week, for example by not eating from dinner one day until dinner the next day. Great for the gut and cellular rejuvenation

• befits. 


By reducing your calorie intake, all of these methods
 cause weight loss. 
 


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A Very Powerful Weight Loss Tool

By making you eat fewer meals, intermittent fasting can lead to an automatic reduction in calorie intake.
 Additionally, intermittent fasting changes hormone levels to facilitate weight loss.
 In addition to lowering insulin and increasing growth hormone levels, it increases the release of the fat burning hormone norepinephrine (noradrenaline).
 By helping you eat fewer and burn more calories, intermittent fasting causes weight loss by changing both sides of the calorie equation.
 Studies show that intermittent fasting can be a very powerful weight loss tool.
 A 2014 review study found that this eating pattern can cause 3– 8% weight loss over 3–24 weeks, which is a significant amount, compared to most weight loss studies. 
 According to the same study, people also lost 4–7% of their waist circumference, indicating a significant loss of harmful belly fat that builds up around your organs and causes disease. Another study showed that intermittent fasting causes less

muscle loss than the more standard method of continuous calorie restriction. 


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However, keep in mind that the main reason for its success is that intermittent fasting helps you eat fewer calories overall. If you binge and eat massive amounts during your eating periods, you may not lose any weight at all.

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What I Want You To Do.

Do Not Fast Every Day. 
 If you do your stomach will get smaller and smaller and your hunger will decrease along with your metabolism and that’s not what we want.
 
 We want to take advantage of the good adaptations that fasting gives us while keeping the metabolism nice and fast. 
 
 Have a look at your schedule. 
 When can you maybe fast? How long will you start with? 12:12? 18:6? 20:4? remember to fast every other day. NOT EVERY DAY:) 
 
 Don’t Break Your Fast with Fats and Carbs EVER. 
 When you break your fast, avoid eating carbs AND fats at the same time. We don’t want both going into the cell.

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Here are some examples of the best foods you can break your fast with.

Bone Broth - helps gut recover 
 Lean meat (chicken, turkey, tuna, beef). 
 Rice Cakes - easy to digest
 Wild Caught Fish 
 Eggs
 Nuts and Seeds
 Protein Shakes
 
 Please remember… 
 Avoid combining fats with carbs.


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Why Fast At All? To MakeYour Healthy Lifestyle Simpler


 Eating healthy is simple, but it can be incredibly hard to maintain.
 One of the main obstacles is all the work required to plan for and cook healthy meals.
 Intermittent fasting can make things easier, as you don't need to plan, cook or clean up after as many meals as before.
 It improves your health while simplifying your life at the same time.
 
 Now… this covers everything guys need to get going. But for women there’s a bit more detail that we should discuss… 


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Intermittent Fasting For Women

What’s Happening When Women Fast?
 During a fast, women are more sensitive to the hormones that deal with hunger and satiation (leptin, ghrelin, insulin) because when it comes to producing eggs a starved environment is not ideal for an egg to thrive. 
 Women may experience more intense signals to eat and potentially feel cold as well as moody. These symptoms may persist at different times throughout the month. This is due to a complicated series of hormonal communication happening between the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and gonads. 


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 In short, women may experience much stronger hunger signals, chills, and swings in mood than men. What it does not mean is that there is a negative effect happening to the thyroid, or a slowing of the metabolism. 
 
 If you find that these symptoms are very strong it may not be worth fighting through them on that day. Just break your fast and try again in a couple days. Why Fasting Works Very Well For Women
 The common myth is that women shouldn’t fast because a woman’s body has life giving properties that need to be

• protected. 



 Actually the opposite is true. The female body is designed to go for longer periods without food as a way of protecting a potential fetus. It makes sense that women can actually do better at “weathering the storm” than men. 
 
 A study published in the journal of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise proved that women utilize lipids better than men. They found that during exercise women would recruit more fat than men and also women would oxidize less proteins and carbohydrates than men which means that their bodies didn’t break down as much muscle as men. 
 


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The Benefits of Fasting for Women Mental Fasting creates a large degree of ketones which are a tremendous fuel source for the brain. Ketones are one of the few molecules capable of passing through the blood brain barrier and help to modulate inflammation “Brain Fog” in the brain. Fat-loss This from the sense that when you are in a fasted state your body is stressed because you’re not eating food. And that stress triggers adrenaline and something called hormone sensitive lipase which triggers the start of the fat burning

• process. Another reason women burn more fat than men

when when fasting is because women also have more microscopic bits of fat between the muscle to use for fuel. 
 Rejuvenation
 This benefit happens especially with longer fasts. The restorative effects are due to the creation of new stem cells and the protection of telomeres. A study from USC found that prolonged fasting (2-3 days) can reset and regenerate stem cell production in the immune system. 
 Telomeres also seem to become more resilient with fasting. If you don’t know what telomeres are think of them like the plastic tip on a shoelace. If the plastic tip becomes weak or frayed our cells breakdown and die. This is the basic mechanism causing natural death.

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Autophagy
 This is the body’s natural recycling process for old and dying

• cells. It’s like survival of the fittest and these older cells are

taking up vital fuel that the rest of the body could be using. What happens is fasting applies a scarcity affect within the body so the stronger cells start running out of options and start eating the weaker cells so you’re left with more strong thriving cells so your body is more efficient and clean. How Fasting Affects Women When you first start fasting you’re going to put your body under a lot of stress. 
 Stress elevates the hormone cortisol. There’s a link between cortisol and estrogen. So a lot of times when women first start fasting they don’t lose weight and might even gain. That’s because there’s a cortisol - estrogen loop and as the body is getting used to using fats for fuel both hormones will elevate and you will have fat retention and water retention for a very short amount of time. Do not get discouraged… this is normal and fixes itself very quickly. How Should Women Approach Starting A Fast? Leptin levels need to be low. Leptin is the communicator between your fat tissue and your brain. When leptin is high your fat tissue is telling your brain that there’s plenty of fuel and its ok to turn on the metabolism. When leptin is low the

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fat cells are telling the brain the body is low on fuel and to slow down the metabolism. 
 Wean off of food a little bit before going into a fast. Or go into a ketogenic diet a couple of days before starting a fast. This is because carbohydrates spike leptin really high. Fats do

• not. So, your last meal before starting a fast ideally shouldn’t

have carbs or should be very low carb. What Foods Can You Consume During A Fast?

• Coffee - Black (creamer will break fast) Stevia is OK.
• Tea
• Apple Cider Vinegar
• Salt
• Minerals
• Electrolyte Drinks
• Monk fruit
• A little bit of lemon

As You Get Closer To The End of Your Fast Quick not about Cortisol.. We have been taught that cortisol is the bad stress hormone that causes us to store belly fat. But cortisol is a double agent. It helps us store fat AND burn fat. Here’s a simple illustration to bring this home: Cortisol + Calorie Deficit (Fasting) = Fat Burning Cortisol + Food = Fat Storage. So we have to be careful at the end of our fast because our cortisol levels are high because we are stressed out because we are fasting. So what can you do?

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Add salt near the end of your fasting window to lower cortisol. Drink Tea with cinnamon. This allows for insulin to spike before eating which will limit the storage of any fat or carb when you do break your fast. How Should Women Break A Fast? This is the most important step. Even more than the fast itself because the fast is easy compared to the first meal and the body is most sensitive immediately following the fast. So…

• Consume a lean protein
• BONUS: Try bone broth for gut lining rejuvenation


What to Avoid When First Breaking A Fast

• No Gluten: The digestive system is already sensitive and

gluten will cause inflammation and leaky gut.

• Avoid Dairy: Dairy is very inflammatory.
• Don’t pair fat with carbs: Again, insulin causes cells to open

up to receive nutrients and you don’t want fats and carbs going into storage together.

• Hold off on Veggies. Veggies will cause bloating as the gut

is very sensitive.

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What Women Might Want To Eat 60-90mins After Breaking A Fast Everything here is focusing on hormone and thyroid support
 Please visit the tables below for inspiration.

• Whole Food Sources of Omega 3 (hormone support)
• Good Healthy Fats (hormone support)
• Cruciferous Veggies (hormone support)
• Foods rich in vitamin D (hormone support)
• Foods that have Zinc (thyroid support)
• Foods that have Iodine (thyroid support)
• Foods rich in Selenium (thyroid support)

Hormone Supporting Foods 


Foods Rich in Omega 3/ Vitamin D Good Sources of Fats Cruciferous Veggies Tuna Avocado Arugula Egg Yolks Cheese Bok Choy Salmon Nuts Broccoli Macerel Chia Seeds Cabbage Mushrooms Dark Chocolate Cauliflower

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Thyroid Supporting Foods

Frequently Asked Questions

• 1. Can I Drink Liquids During the Fast?
• Yes. Water, coffee, tea and other non-caloric beverages are
• fine. Do not add sugar to your coffee. Small amounts of milk
• r cream may be okay.

Coffee can be particularly beneficial during a fast, as it can blunt hunger.
 Green Tea is amazing during your fast because it helps old fat cells to be eaten up and made into better newer cells. 


• 2. Isn't It Unhealthy to Skip Breakfast?
• No. The problem is that most stereotypical breakfast skippers

have unhealthy lifestyles. If you make sure to eat healthy food for the rest of the day then the practice is perfectly healthy.


Zinc Rich Roods Iodine Rich Foods Selenium Rich Foods Shell fish Seaweed Brazil Nuts Legumes Iodized Salt Tuna Nuts Tuna Chicken Whole Grains Eggs Oysters Dark Chocolate Prunes Firm Tofu

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• 3. Can I Take Supplements While Fasting?
• Yes. However, keep in mind that some supplements like fat-

soluble vitamins may break your fast and work better when taken with meals. Stick to taking minerals such as magnesium and potassium during the fasted period.

• 4. Can I Work out While Fasted?

Yes, fasted workouts are amazing and have major benefit to muscle retention, especially toward the end of your fast. Maintain your normal workout routine. Don’t worry about going slower because you’re fasting. Keep your workouts the same:) 


• 5. Will Fasting Cause Muscle Loss?

All weight loss methods can cause muscle loss which is why it’s important to lift weights so the body prioritizes keeping muscle and burning fat. One study showed that intermittent fasting causes less muscle loss than regular calorie

• restriction. 

• 6. Will Fasting Slow Down My Metabolism?
• No. Studies show that short-term fasts actually boost

metabolism however longer fasts of 3 or 4 days can reduce metabolism temporarily.

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• 7. I’m getting bloating when I break my fast.

This is also normal in the first couple of weeks. Your gut biome is sensitive and you might notice different things bloat you every time you eat. That’s why I’m asking you to eat simple bland things when you break your fast.

• 8. I’m getting cold. What does this mean.

Couple things here, first this is a good sign that you’re in a calorie deficit which is great. Second, you’re cold because the blood flow is going to your adipose “white fat” tissue to convert it over to a usable form of visceral “brown fat”.

• 10. How often should I fast?

I do not recommend fasting every day, specially for women. It can lead to eating disorders and it can lead to a slow down in

• metabolism. I recommend alternate day fasting.

Here’s an example: Monday: Fast Tuesday: No Fast Wednesday: Fast Thursday: No Fast Friday: Fast Saturday: No Fast Sunday: Fast

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Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this document please share my instagram @kevinmaynardfitness with your friends or head over to my Youtube (Kevin Maynard) and check out more of my videos about fat- loss. Thank you so much, 
 
 Kevin

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