Intermittent Fasting for Women | Jason Fung ft. Megan Ramos

this week we're going to talk a little bit more specifically about women in fasting and stick around till the end i'm going to share debra's fasting regimen that allowed her to lose almost 40 pounds there's a lot of debate out there about how fasting affects women so we're going to talk a little bit about the science of how the sex hormones like estrogen and progesterone affect women and body fat a lot of this applies to men as well but we're going to focus on the women today before puberty girls and boys on average have about the same percentage of body fat the effects of the sex hormones on body fat distribution are really evident over one's entire life but there are certain periods of time that it becomes more obvious puberty is one of those under the effect of mostly estrogen and progesterone are going to increase the amount of body fat such as breast development their hips become wider and this is mostly in preparation for childbirth during the childbearing years people are often advised not to fast for women why is this it's because if you fall below a certain percentage of body fat then the body doesn't ovulate you don't produce eggs and you can't become pregnant you can develop irregular menstrual cycles and develop what's called amenorrhea or an ovulatory cycles if you're underweight that is a body mass index under 18.5 by definition then you really shouldn't be fasting for long periods of time because you don't want to be losing weight you may have to talk to your own doctor in special situations the other period of time where it becomes obvious about the sex differences is during the menopausal transition in this study they looked at multiple nations and what happened to body weight as people got older they measured it from the number of years before menopause and you can see that the body weight and the amount of fat that women carry tend to go up in the years preceding menopause on average it goes up about a pound a year until menopause it continues for one or two years afterwards and then really stabilizes so there is clearly a distinction between that menopausal transition where women tend to gain weight and this is what many women tell us in our clinic that they really have trouble losing weight during that period of menopause at the same time you can see that the amount of lean mass which is generally muscle mass tends to go down leading up to menopause and this combination of less lean weight and increased fat weight is what often causes people to gain weight overall there are actually several problems during that menopausal transition that can affect weight it's not only about the diet there is the changes in sex hormones which we can't do much about and the days of routine hormone replacement therapy are no longer with us so that may be something we have to live with however there are other disturbances that happen that can affect weight one of those is sleep disturbance this study looked at the amount of sleep that people got and their weight and what you can see is that if you are sleep-deprived that is less than five hours of sleep then the rate of rise of weight is much higher than if you got adequate amounts which is six to nine hours let's look at the scientific studies that have been done to see if women lose weight while fasting and there's been a number of studies for example in harvey in 2011 they randomized 107 people and they were 100 female in this study they found that fasting was indeed more effective than chronic calorie restriction which was a control group the same researcher in 2013 found exactly the same results this time with 115 also 100 women in 2016 the study by carter had 63 uh people and 52.4 of them were female here again the fasting group did slightly better than the chronic calorie restriction group when they break out the rate of weight loss between men and women what they find is that the rates are roughly equal there's not really any noticeable difference that they find between fasting between men and women i've asked megan ramos from thefastingmethod.com to share some of her expertise and her best tips for fasting and women megan has coached thousands of people men and women through fasting and she has noted through her clinical experience certain things may work better for women than men here's megan tip number one women do well with a varied approach to omad now omad is short for one meal a day and traditionally this is done by eating the same meal every day of the week and fasting the rest of the time and people often eat dinner and every day they'll fast from dinner the day before and to dinner that day and they'll do this seven days throughout the week and this does work well for many individuals but a strategy we found that can really help women lose those extra pounds is by varying that meal we're having during an omad approach so you're still eating one meal a day you're just not eating the same meal day in and day out now the fasting method we've developed a protocol that we call the 30 16 hour fast and this is where we encourage people to alternate between eating lunch and dinner throughout the week so monday wednesdays and fridays you'd have lunch whereas tuesdays thursdays and saturdays you'd have dinner and this results in you alternating between 30 hours of fasting and 16 hours of fasting while still eating just one meal a day tip number two many women do find it easier to do a three day fast rather than fast on alternate days throughout the week so if this is you you can absolutely get into your fast and stay there for the full 72 hours rather than breaking it up and trying to do alternate daily fast throughout the week tip number three plan your fasting around your cycles now during weeks one and two of the female cycle we will find that estrogen is the dominant hormone and now estrogen is an appetite suppressing hormone so during this half of her cycles women find it easier to do longer intermittent fasts or even extended fasting but what happens in weeks three and four of our cycle is that estrogen levels drop and progesterone and testosterone become more dominant and progesterone and testosterone are appetite stimulating hormones so many women struggle to do longer fasts during weeks three and four of their cycle so during the second half of your cycle it's really great to focus on time restricted eating and shorter intermittent fasts thanks megan those are definitely some useful tips the bottom line is that women certainly can have problems losing weight during fasting but so do the men there it's not to say that there aren't specific things that we need to worry about for women but does it work yes it does should you be careful yes and all the same worries apply for men and women if you're underweight if you're malnourished then you shouldn't fast but if you have weight to lose then this can be an effective tool in your toolbox for weight loss let me share with you deborah's story deborah is a 52 year old optometrist the mother of twins and she says she was overweight most of her entire adult life she tried counting calories so many times it never worked finally she read the obesity code and then something clicked she was pre-menopausal but as she started losing weight she found that she hadn't felt better ever her energy was high she was sleeping better her mood stabilized she reduced the medication she needed for high blood pressure and she almost lost 40 pounds what she said is that star she started off by not eating breakfast it was so easy she said then she started to move to a low carbohydrate diet and started the 16 8 diet as she became more familiar with that she went to one meal a day and then 36 to 42 hours so she changed it up slightly she cut down her refined carbohydrates and sugar quite a bit and tried to have more healthy fats in january of 2020 her husband started to do fasting and low carb dieting as well he cut out all the sugar which wasn't easy for him but he lost almost 45 pounds in just four months her top tip fasting together is very important it's so much easier when you have somebody to share things with and support each other and that's made all the difference that's a great job deborah you've done amazingly well that's it for this week i hope you learned something and if you did share it with your friends they might learn something too and you might be able to help them and if you enjoyed this video if you could do me a favor and just hit that like button down there i'll see you next week

Channel: Jason Fung

Views: 227,029

Keywords: intermittent fasting for women, intermittent fasting, weight loss, intermittent fasting benefits, jason fung, dr jason fung, weight loss tips, intermittent fasting for beginners, dr. jason fung, fasting, fasting for women, can women fast, should women fast

Id: o9YXEgMheEo

Length: 10min 32sec (632 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 28 2021