Looking to lose weight and shed fat from your body? How about trying intermittent fasting for weight loss? Here is all you need to know about this eating pattern.
Although there are many variables when it comes to building muscle and losing weight, such as which exercises to do, for how long, sleep and cold therapy, one thing trumps it all and everyone agrees on: to lose weight, you need to eat fewer calories than you spend.
And this is where intermittent fasting for weight loss can help you tremendously and Max Posternak decided to explain fully what that means and how to approach it.
Max Posternak is the founder of Gravity Transformation, a website focused on giving tips and training guidance for people looking to improve their fitness and lose weight. His YouTube channel has over 5 million subscribers.
Posternak shared a video fully explaining how to use intermittent fasting for weight loss, how you can try different approaches and how to keep your hunger level in place.
Intermittent Fasting For Weight Loss
Firstly, you need to understand that intermittent fasting is not an eating plan, but rather an eating pattern. This means there are no food restrictions, no macro target and no specific caloric recommendations.
What you do is take this eating habit and apply it to any other type of diet or eating plan that you think is best for you, be it the keto diet, paleo, alkaline, flexitarian, volumetrics, pescatarian, low-carb and so on.
Related: How to Create Your Own Diet Plan from Scratch
What are the benefits of intermittent fasting? Besides convenience, Posternak cites improved insulin sensitivity, levels of muscle-building human growth hormone, and enhanced repair process for old and damaged cells through autophagy, increase productivity and mental clarity, and the reason you probably clicked here, weight loss.
The one thing every intermittent fasting for weight loss has in common which is restricting a part of the day in which you are not allowed to consume any food and another part called the eating window.
Fasting is a process which you need to ease into. For example, if you skip breakfast every day for months, you begin not feeling the need to eat breakfast at all as your body won’t send a hunger signal to your mind during breakfast time as it is not accustomed to having food during that period.
Posternak then explains a few of the most common intermittent fasting for weight loss that people can do:
- 16/8 – fast for 16 hours, eating window for 8 hours every day.
- Warrior diet – fast for 20 hours, eating window for 4 hours every day.
- OMAD – one meal per day only.
- Alternate day fasting – fast for 24 hours, eating window for the following 24 hours, repeat.
- 5:2 diet – fast for 2 days, eating window for the following 5 days. The 2-day fast window does not have to be consecutive back-to-back.
Posternak also has some advice to keep your hunger levels controlled while fasting such as drinking black coffee and water. You can also have a teaspoon of psyllium husk powder in the middle of your fast, as it has almost 0 calories and is high in fibre, which will help you feel fuller for a period of time.
For those looking to build muscle, Posternak doesn’t recommend the warrior diet or the OMAD approach as it will be hard to eat enough calories to stay in a caloric surplus needed for muscle building.
If you decide on any of the intermittent fasting for weight loss mentioned above, you don’t need to obsess over how to get back to eating after fasting. You can eat normally, anything you want. Your digestive system can handle it. The problem becomes if you fast for 3 days or longer, then you should ease in back to eating such as having broth and apple cider vinegar.
Posternak also says that some scientific literature affirms that doing exercise while fasting will burn more calories while other studies suggest that fat loss will level out at the end of the day being fasted or not. So you should do whatever feels more comfortable for you.
That was Max Posternak’s full explanation of intermittent fasting for weight loss. To see a more detailed argumentation from him, click on the video below.
VIDEO – Intermittent Fasting For Weight Loss
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