Intermittent Fasting’s Darkest Secret

intermittent fastings darkest secret do you ever wonder what happens inside your body if you just stop eating is it healthy to stop eating if so how long should it be for by the time you get to the end of this video we'll have answered these questions there may not be many things we know for sure in medicine except for two one is that laughter is the best medicine and the second thing chronic diseases that are not infectious or genetic in origin they're a result of insulin resistance that's when the cells of your body become less responsive to the insulin that circulates around in your bloodstream so what does your pancreas do it says okay I guess I better make more insulin which means I have to work harder doom and so it revs up its insulin production insulin blood levels become higher but too much of this over time leads to those medical conditions that I just mentioned yes insulin resistance leads to higher blood pressure also higher triglycerides higher cholesterol levels and of course pre-diabetes and then diabetes for type 2 diabetes that is insulin resistance is a result of eating processed food it's really this simple processed food has lots of added sugar it's deprived of its fiber especially the insoluble fiber and this leads to insulin resistance over time slowly but surely every day that you do it it gets worse and worse and worse another way to get the insulin down would be to stop eating now if you were to stop eating that probably doesn't look like you but let's just say you stop eating and we check your insulin levels what's going to happen at that point they're going to hit rock bottom and this in itself is a good thing but that doesn't tell the whole story how many times do people have New Year's resolutions where I'm going on a diet of caloric restriction and then it might work for maybe a month or two and then they gain that weight back when you reduce calorie intake this is what happens less food less calories is coming down in your intestines here then via the portal vein it gets to the liver so ultimately less calories are being delivered to the liver now your liver then says I need to start ramping up this enzyme called amp kinase when this happens the cells start making new mitochondria as well as promoting autophagy also known as program cell death where the old cells or the bad cells are methodically broken down and recycled and all of this is a good thing so what's the problem the problem is that this is going to plummet your leptin levels so insulin levels drop leptin levels drop and when those left levels are dropping your brain senses this in the hypothalamus and you start getting hangry ah you start looking like Chucky I guess you also become weaker so less weight at the gym and it takes about 24 hours of not eating for those leptin levels to hit rock bottoms and this is when your body goes into energy save mode just like your laptop or your cell phone and a second major point when it comes to caloric restriction is that not all calories are created equal 2 000 calories from avocados broccoli kale spinach quinoa salmon almonds is not the same as 2 000 calories from pizza donuts hamburgers Oreos soda and french fries absolutely not the same now you can guess which side will improve insulin resistance and which side it will worsen it unprocessed food versus highly processed food this is often why caloric restriction diets often fail after two months the processed foods throw the hunger hormones out of whack and not only that but when you're not eating the unprocessed Foods on this side right here that's less fiber and that's not going to keep you feeling full as longer so this ends up not being a real solution because it's not sustainable so what about intermittent fasting well instead of restricting calories you're restricting the time that you're eating it's a less painful way of revving up the same metabolic processes of caloric restriction except that your leptin levels don't get too low for too long we don't want you looking like this so back to this picture instead of restricting calories we're restricting the time that we're eating and we're allowing for these metabolic processes to still happen and because it's intermittent you're not going to have as severe of a plummet of those leptin levels it's more like this also in these metabolic processes ketones are generated which is the exact same thing that happens when you eat a very low carb diet aka the ketogenic diet but this process right here is why we have a medical term and it's called starvation ketoacidosis in other words fasting acidosis this is what happens when Ketone levels become too high in the blood and it makes the blood pH more acidic so whether you're doing intermittent fasting or ketogenic diet either way these metabolic processes are occurring and you are generating ketones like beta hydroxybutyrate but as long as those Ketone levels are low it's okay it's when they're taken to the extreme is when you run into danger and you're certainly not going to get into dangerous levels of ketones in the blood if you're fasting for let's say 16 hours a day in fact there's several studies showing that low levels of ketones in the blood have health benefits we're talking about weight loss improved blood glucose control decrease levels of inflammation better stress tolerance anti-aging effects living longer improvements in memory improvements in neurological conditions decreased rates of heart disease decreased rates of cardiovascular disease even decreasing cancer risk so all of this as a result of having low levels of ketones in the blood but interestingly enough all of these things that you see here can also be accomplished by eating unprocessed food so this is what happens either one when you don't have insulin resistance and you keep those insulin levels low so when you're doing intermittent fasting or a very low carbohydrate diet or eating unprocessed food or some kind of combination of these things insulin resistance goes down which is to say that the cells of your body become more insulin sensitive and when those leptin levels are low from not eating it's going to go travel to the brain specifically the hypothalamus part of the brain and say hey man you are not full you are hungry insulin actually blocks or partially blocks that leptin signaling which ultimately results in you being less and less hungry but to get to this point it's going to take you about three to four weeks of doing intermittent fasting and or switching from a processed food diet to an unprocessed food diet also because the hunger hormone ghrelin that's the hormone that makes you feel hungry those levels are going to go down when you're eating unprocessed food when you're doing intermittent fasting or a combination of and it's going to tell the hypothalamus you know what seems how my levels are lower now I'm not going to be so hard on you to tell you that you're hungry there's different ways of doing intermittent fasting my personal favor and the one that I recommend the most is do an early time restricted feeding AKA time restricted eating it's the most common it's simple and it's practical just set a window of when you can eat so for example I'm not going to eat any food after 8 pm and then I'll start eating at noon the next day then between noon and 8 PM you can eat as much as you want but you should really focus on eating unprocessed Foods you're going to have way more success if you eat unprocessed Foods because that's going to get the insulin levels down and prove that insulin sensitivity but also to balance out those hunger hormones so what's the most amount of added sugar that you should eat per day well the general recommendation is no more than 25 grams but of course the less added sugar you eat per day the better intermittent fasting by itself will promote fat burning eating unprocessed food by itself will promote fat burning when you combine the two you're gonna Turbo Charge that process and if you want to take things to an even higher fat burning level keep the carbs lower and lower so if you want to burn fat one way to do it would be intermittent fasting another way to do it would be to go on a low carb or a very low carb diet that's what the ketogenic diet is a third way to do it is to eat unprocessed food because unprocessed food naturally is low in sugar and then the fourth way to shed fat is through exercise but who's to say that you can't combine these who's to say that you can't eat unprocessed food and keep the carbs low and participate in a fasting regimen say 16 hours a day or 14 hours a day of fasting and of course exercise on top of that because when you start stocking these on top of each other you're just going to get to a higher and higher level of fat burning mode also we know that not all carbohydrates are the same for example let's take a look at starch there's two types of starches you have in amylose and amylopectin amylose is the good starch and amylopectin is the bad starch why is this the case well amylose is a single chain of glucose molecules strung together amylopectin is also a bunch of glucose molecules strung together but as you notice here it's a branched chain why does that matter well the enzymes in your body can only attack the amylose chain from two ends at a time so it's going to take the enzymes longer to break down that amylose into its components of glucose molecules it's a slower digestion and slower absorption of glucose compare that to amylopectin well guess what your enzymes you could have multiple enzymes at once trying to break down that chain so guess what the amylopectin ends up being digested faster and absorbed faster into your liver as compared to the amylose foods that will have more amylose as its starch will be whole intact grains so things like oatmeal barley Rye quinoa legume so beans chickpeas lentils that sort of thing I would say a wild rice long grain rice not the white rice that's gonna have more of the amylopectin also pasta potatoes so anything with flour like pasta pizza this is going to be all the bad starch here now bread is almost always processed where they take out the bran and The Germ of that so you're left with the flour from the endosperm and that's going to be this right here amylopectin so generally speaking bread is the bad type of starch now there are some types of bread out there such as Ezekiel bread that is not processed bread they have the whole intact grain again it all comes down to the processing the whole intact grain is what you're aiming for it has the amylose not the amylopectin and guess what happens digestion slower absorption of glucose which is sugar not to mention all these Foods right here also are pretty loaded with fiber and protein both insoluble and soluble fiber and that's also going to help to slow down the digestion and absorption of glucose let's get back to intermittent fasting for a second let's say you want to do intermittent fasting the time restricted eating or the the restricted feeding same thing maybe fasting for 16 hours a day and only eating for eight hours is too extreme too fast maybe you want to build your way up to that because remember it's going to take you a few weeks for your hunger hormones to start to balance that out to adapt to that so you could start out doing 12 and 12 and then gradually work your way up to that point maybe it's 12 and 12 for the first week and then you do 14 to 10 for the second week and then finally get up to that 16 to 8 Ratio or maybe 14 to 10 is good for you and you don't want to take things any further than that that's fine too your body will adapt but it might take you about four weeks to get there because after all we're aiming for a lifestyle modification and not a crash diet here check out this 2015 systematic review within this review there were 40 studies showing that there are various forms of intermittent fasting that were effective for weight loss with a typical loss of 7 to 11 pounds over a 10 week time span and this is similar to when people go on caloric restriction diets but the problem with calorie restriction is for one they're usually not sustainable and two the types of calories that you eat absolutely matter a fair question to ask is do you even need to intermittently fast in the first place and this right here is intermittent fastings darkest secret the reason is right here because you can generate ketones decrease insulin resistance and get all of those great health benefits if you avoid eating processed food especially if you keep the carbohydrates low especially the sugar but also the bad carbohydrates in terms of the bad starch it's all about getting insulin levels down and improving insulin sensitivity in your body it's not that there's anything wrong with intermittent fasting I actually do it myself it's just that you don't actually need to do it if you're just eating unprocessed food but if you want to maximize the health benefits you can do intermittent fasting on top of eating unprocessed food and you're going to be extremely healthy from a metabolic standpoint but what about women in intermittent fasting some women have concerns about the possibility of it messing up their hormonal balance but there are no definitive studies done on humans women specifically regarding this matter there are some old small studies done on animals that suggested that maybe there's some hormonal imbalance there but it's definitely far from conclusive now with that said if you stick with the time restricted eating like 16 to 8 or 14 to 10 fasting you're highly unlikely to have hormonal issues especially when eating unprocessed food now if you want a couple tips to help out with hormonal balance in general there are some superfoods that promote hormonal balance for example lignins which are found in ground flaxseed powder as well as adaptogens found in maca powder in turmeric powder if you want to know more ways to do intermittent fasting such as alternate day fasting and others you should definitely check out this more in-depth video if you're serious about it because it has everything you need to know thanks for watching

Channel: Doctor Mike Hansen

Views: 1,011,668

Keywords: intermittent fasting, how to lose weight fast, how to lose weight, fasting, intermittent fasting weight loss, alternate day fasting, fasting weight loss, intermittent fasting meal plan, benefits of fasting, fasting benefits, intermittent fasting results, intermittent fasting for beginners, benefits of intermittent fasting, intermittent fasting benefits, how to do intermittent fasting, what is intermittent fasting, intermediate fasting, intermittent fasting before and after

Id: 4xFaYS-k8r8

Length: 12min 49sec (769 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 11 2022