Let's talk about the rules of intermittent fasting. I've done a lot of different articles on this topic, but I just wanted to condense everything in just one article. So let's take it from the top.
The best fasting is the fasting of the day, from sunrise to sunset
A lot of times people will want to know what can I eat with the fast What can I drink with the fast? Let's talk first about drinking water is fine. There's a thing called a dry fast. That's a whole different topic. But I do recommend drinking water. Tea is totally fine. certain type of teas can help you fast longer and decrease hunger because the herbs in tea help support your blood sugars and your liver. Coffee is fine. I just wouldn't want to overdo it. But coffee will not knock you out of ketosis because tea coffee and water have basically zero calories. So it's just the amount of calories that could bump you out of fasting. Next question is can I take certain supplements when I'm fasting, I recommend it especially vitamins,
electrolytes, minerals, B vitamins in the form of nutritional yeast, trace minerals, omega three fatty acids, especially d h A. And so if you're doing cod liver oil, for example, or fish oils, the calories are going to be so small, it's going to not really interfere with your fasting. Ideally, if you get a green drink, without the fiber, let's say a wheatgrass juice powder, you're getting something that is super concentrated, usually about six to 11 times less volume of material, because it takes a lot of greens to make just a little bit of juice from that. And so usually one serving when you add water comes out to less than one gram. And so you get the boost of nutrition without messing up your fasting. What you do want to avoid is the protein powders, especially whey protein powder, and there's many other ones, I would just avoid all protein powders. Also avoid branched chain amino acids, because it will turn into sugar pretty quickly. Now, as far as bone broth, there's mixed reviews, some people do find that their ketosis actually stops for way too long. And other people, it doesn't seem to affect their ability to generate ketones. So this is mixed reviews, you might want to try it out and see if you actually can do it or not get a little testing unit to check yourself. Now as far as MCT oil, which sometimes you're going to put in your coffee to make it a bulletproof coffee, you can put butter in it, you can just put coconut oil or just put MCT oil, what's going to happen is you're not going to lower your ketones, because those fats will turn into ketones.
But the only thing that's going to happen if you do too much of this is you're going to shift from burning your own fat to burning this fat and turning it into ketones. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing, especially in the beginning as you're making the transition into ketosis. But at some point, if you find that your weight loss is stalled, then realize it could be this extra fat that you're consuming. But I actually do recommend it for a lot of people because it allows them to fast longer, which is actually very, very important because you want to get your body adapting and MCT oil can give your brain straight ketones.
So there's some other benefits to taking MCT oil so it's kind of depends on your situation. Okay, number two
Don't eat unless you're hungry. So when you start this fast, and let's you're going to go 18 hours and your main goal is to lose weight. And you find that you just completely have no appetite, go a little longer. Now you don't have to do a really long, fast right off the beginning. But you're on a roll, your body is eating, it's eating its own fat, it's not starving, might as well ride the wave and go a little bit longer, you're gonna see better results, but you want to prevent the point of going too far where your body is weak and you feel dizzy.
So you want to be able to differentiate some slight hunger pains, you're a little hungry, but you've had a lot of energy, and you have no cognitive problems, might as well just push through that, especially if it's in the morning at eight o'clock in the morning, where you have this spike of cortisol where your body might be releasing more sugar.
But most people just push you that, and then the hunger goes away. But you've gone too far. If you're very weak, and you're fatigued, and you're dizzy, and you have irritability, right? Number four.
The longer the fast, the more you have to refeed slowly. So if you're fasting for 48 hours or longer, make sure you consume just a small amount of food, maybe a little egg, a little lettuce, maybe a little bit of peanut butter, but not too much food too fast. Because what happens is that sometimes if you do a long fasts, especially if you're getting like 72 hours or even longer, and you have this huge meal, your system is not ready for it.
And you can really feel kind of bloated, nauseous. And so I don't recommend it.
So just do a little bit of food, wait a little bit, have a little bit more food, kind of gradually go into number five, a good indication to know the severity of insulin resistance is how long can you go without feeling like you need to eat food. If you can fast, easily over a period of time. That means that you don't have much insulin resistance left, there's not a problem. Now, there's other good indicators to like, if you were to check your blood sugars, and let's say you're fasting, your blood sugars go up, that means that you're not quite out of the woods, you have insulin resistance, because your body is actually making more sugar. It's called gluconeogenesis, because of certain mixed messages with insulin connecting to the liver. And so if you can't fast for a very long time, all that means is you have insulin resistance. And you have to just keep working, you have to give it more time, add more fat to the meal to which will make you more satisfied and alive, though longer. Number six.
I recommend you always do keto within a minute fasting. I mean, think about you're getting all these great benefits with fasting.
Why wouldn't you also want to get the benefits from keto, which is also going to keep your insulin low when you eat, if you're fasting and then you go to a high carb diet, you're going to raise insulin, raise your blood sugars and kind of minimize the effects of intermittent fasting. All right, number seven,
I recommend you do periodic prolonged fasting. Why? Because longer fasts give you additional benefits. There are three really important benefits that most people get with just regular fasting, not that long, maybe 16 hours, they'll lose weight. They'll have cognitive benefits, memory, focus and concentration.
And they have mood benefits, they go from anxiety or depression, up to a higher level of emotion. They just feel better, a calm sense of well being, which is huge. But when you do periodic prolonged fasting, you really support your brain, you grow new brain cells. When you run your body on ketones. There's much less free radical damage, there's much less waste products being generated, as compared to running your body in glucose where you have a lot more free radical damage. And so ketones are more efficient fuel, it's less stress on your body, it creates less waste, and more oxygen and less co2.
So it's good brain food. Also, you're going to support your immune system, you're gonna be able to fight infections better, you're going to actually increase your resistance of your cell from toxins, you'll decrease your risk from cancer because one of the purposes of the immune system is to kill cancer cells.
This is a good benefit, right? And then you have the anti aging benefits because your body is recycling old damaged tissue, and definitely proteins. So you're cleaning up the cells that are dysfunctional, and you're renewing them. So for repair and regeneration and anti aging doing a prolonged fast hearing.
Remember: the best fasting is the fast of the day, from sunrise to sunset
is definitely worth it. Alright, thanks for watching.
