| bronco67 |
07-25-2019 02:15 PM |
I've been doing it on and off for 5 years.
I would tell anyone wanting to get control of their weight to first start learning to fast. It helps you get accustomed with the feeling of being hungry and realizing you won't die. Our biology is designed to go for long periods without food if necessary. When our ancestors were running around in the woods hunting with a spear, there were no grocery stores to get whatever they wanted whenever they wanted it. Our biology today is no different from those early humans.
When I'm really trying to get extra lean, I go back to fasting because it makes me eat better overall. I just did my first 36 hour fast earlier this week, and believe it or not I wasn't that hungry by the time I finally ate. Actually I only had a handful of walnuts to break the fast and didn't eat again until 3 hours after that.
It definitely suppresses your appetite. My theory is that your system stops telling you you're hungry because it recognizes the new state of having less food. But I will admit there's a period of being seriously hungry after a few hours...but it passes and then you feel like you could go for a few more days.
I'm going to be using it to create my weekly calorie deficit over a one day period...then eat normal maintenance calories the rest of the days. Makes it easier overall to just get it out of the way quickly and enjoy the rest of the week. And that's the trick about learning to fast...you can open the floodgates when its time to eat again.
You don't need to do 24 hour fasts. I usually do 18 hours. Most of us normally fast 12 hours per day just by stopping at dinner time and going to bed. Pushing breakfast to later (like noon) isn't that much extra work. I recommend easing into it by adding an hour per week.
So is it some magic bullet hormonally to burn more fat? I don't know about that. But it helps to hit a low calorie target easier and weight loss is all about energy balance. But I wouldn't even say you should think of it in terms of "weight" loss. Think about fat loss and muscle gain. Indiscriminate weight loss for the sake of a better scale number is detrimental long term.
here's another thing. Drop the breakfast/lunch/dinner paradigm. Make lunchtime your breakfast. Or make dinner a snack. The point is to get your calories for the day in whatever method works best. Just because it's noon, doesn't mean you have to eat lunch. If you had a big breakfast, then just have an apple for lunch. Most of the fat people I know probably get all of the calories they should during breakfast and lunch. Then by the time dinner rolls around that all gets added to fat stores. Fasting will make food your bitch and you'll know if you need to drop dinner or eat.
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