Top 10 Foods To Eat For Intermittent Fasting Benefits

Hello Health Champions. Today i want to talk about the best foods to eat during intermittent fasting to get the most benefits with the least amount of hunger and suffering. Coming right up! Hey I'm Dr Ekberg. I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete and if you want to truly master health by understanding how the body really works make sure you subscribe and hit that notification bell so you don't miss anything. There are so many benefits to intermittent fasting and weight loss is probably the number one reason people do it but in my mind there are much more important reasons such as lowering blood sugar reversing diabetes reducing inflammation reducing brain fog heart disease having less risk of alzheimer's parkinson risk of cancer goes down and we can also improve immune function and we can live longer not only that but we can have more health and more joy during those extra years so the list can go on and on and on but whatever the reason you're doing it whatever the benefit you're getting it all comes down to two common mechanisms and the first one is that during the time you're not eating your insulin goes down insulin is released in response to food so when you don't put food in the body insulin keeps dropping for the duration if you do that consistently for weeks and months and years now you will reduce even stubborn cases of insulin resistance and you can reverse type 2 diabetes in virtually every case the second mechanism by which this works is called autophagy and what is that well during the time that you're fasting you're not eating you're not putting resources you're not putting new resources into the body the body has to get much better at utilizing the resources that are already there so the body up regulates the crew that goes around recycling it goes out scavenging looking for resources and it gets really good at figuring out what's good what we want to keep and what's junk what do we need to get rid of and in that process we actually improve our detoxification significantly and our immune system also during fasting our growth hormone increases and it can go up as much as 10 fold or more and what that does it improves fat burning but because the body also gets really good at determining what it needs to keep and what it needs to lose protein is really precious and the body wants the protein for muscles and enzymes and hormones so when you don't put protein into the body it makes sure that it uses the protein effectively and it burns fat for energy a lot of people when they hear fasting they think of long-term fasting they think days or weeks without food and that's not a bad thing to do you could go three days five days a week ten days and do that every two to three months a couple of times a year because what that will do is it will create very high levels of autophagy you can reverse a lot of disease conditions with that the problem is that it's not sustainable as a lifestyle it's not something you do all the time and this video is about the best foods for intermittent fasting so we're talking about a lifestyle intermittent fasting is where you can eat on a regular period and fast on a regular period so you might be eating once a day maybe eat for four hours or six hours maybe every day maybe every other day whatever gets you to your goals and when we do it this way it's sustainable we can do this all the time we can do this every week year after year so the foods we're looking for are the ones with the most nutrition that maximize our satiety our fullness and set us up for success and reduce the suffering during the fasting period and while intermittent fasting can never get the massive levels of autophagy that long-term fasting will we can still get some autophagy on a regular basis and that's kind of the whole point that if we can do it all the time and we can get just a little bit that's still very valuable some people say that carbs are not a problem with intermittent fasting and they keep eating pizza and pasta and bread and as long as they keep a fasting period they're doing great well that could work for some people and for others it will be a disaster but here's why i think that low carb is way better if you're trying to go from a high insulin level to a low insulin level let's say from this point to this point it's going to take a certain amount of time for that insulin to drop where you can reverse insulin resistance and get into autophagy but how long it takes depends on how high your insulin is when you start if you eat every meal with high carb you're going to jack up that insulin so you kind of have a backlog to compensate for each time you go into fasting when you eat things with refined carbs like sugar and bread and pasta and starches you trigger a lot of insulin when you eat protein you trigger some and when you eat fat you hardly trigger any insulin at all and protein is very sensitive depending on how much of it you eat because if you eat a lot of it the body says here's an abundance we can turn some of this into fuel so the protein becomes glucose and triggers insulin whereas if you eat smaller amounts of protein now the body is not going to turn that into fuel and then it triggers much less insulin but let's say that you eat a low carb diet now every time that you start fasting you're going to start off from a much lower insulin level it's like you've got a head start you've given yourself a huge advantage not only are you going to get to that low point much much faster but because you get there faster you're going to spend a longer time in autophagy and you're going to reach a much deeper level of autophagy the other thing that carbs do is they trigger hunger and cravings if you eat mostly fat and protein and fiber whole foods no processed, no sugar then your glucose levels and your insulin levels are going to stay in a very narrow range if you start eating sugar and starch and processed foods your blood sugar starts spiking and whenever it's really high your body makes a lot of insulin the insulin pushes the blood sugar down quickly so now you have peaks and valleys and anytime it's low then it's called reactive hypoglycemia and now you get lethargic you get tired you get headaches and most importantly you get massive hunger and cravings carbs create unstable blood sugar but not only that some of these carbs have drug-like effects like sugar wheat and refined carbs they actually stimulate opiate receptors pleasure receptors in the brain so not only are you trying to go without food for a while but you're trying to overcome an addiction not an easy thing to do so one more reason that going low carb will make it much much easier and it will reduce hunger and cravings and make you suffer much less now let's talk about the only thing that makes this a little tricky which is that satiety and insulin is very straightforward if we want to get full we eat protein with fat like fatty meats we eat we add fat to it we eat things with fiber and we get very full insulin is the same three factors in a slightly different order to get full we can eat tons of protein with to control insulin we can eat protein but it needs to be moderate however with autophagy it's very sensitive to protein even very small amounts of protein will shut off autophagy because it's the lack of protein that makes the body get really good at recycling those resources a lot of research has been done around fasting mimicking diet and they have found that if you keep your protein under 18 grams per day then you still maintain most of the benefits of fasting so i know 18 grams is hardly anything and you can't do that for very long but stay with me and we're going to come back to that and see how we can use that to our advantage so protein becomes kind of the balancing factor between these benefits on the one hand satiety and insulin which is pretty simple and if we also want to get some autophagy so animal foods like fatty fish grass-fed meat and eggs they are the most filling you can have these as a meal in themselves and they're very very satisfying they're low to moderate in the insulin response unless you eat a lot of it they're moderate to high protein however so they're not going to be the best for autophagy we can't have hardly any of these until we shut off the autophagy fatty nuts are a little bit better like macadamia nuts and pecans are the best ones especially raw they're quite filling not as much as animal meats but pretty good they're low carb low protein they are very high fat high fiber and they have a very low insulin response so you can't eat tons of them because the toffee is sensitive to both the amount of calories and protein but you could have some of this and still sort of stay in that autophagy zone other foods you can use are leafy greens cabbage non-starchy vegetables like cauliflower broccoli brussels sprouts etc they're very low carb very low protein very low fat they're hardly going to trigger any nutrient sensors or insulin they're also high fiber and even though they provide a certain volume through the fiber and they don't trigger insulin you don't get very full it is hard for most people to eat enough of just this to get full however if you combine it with fat if you put some butter and olive oil on this then they can be quite filling now let's look at the timing and see how we can tweak the benefits a little bit let's say that you have dinner at 6 pm one day and you eat a large meal with lots of protein and fat and fiber you're really full you make it through the night you skip breakfast but then you come around noon time and you start getting hungry now you've gone 18 hours and you could push through but you're really feeling sort of like i really want something to eat and autophagy and these insulin resistance benefits of reversing insulin resistance they kind of start kicking in really after 12-14 hours so by 18 hours we're really just getting going wouldn't it be great if we could get another six hours out of it then we would like triple the benefits out of this now if we had a big meal of protein then we would shut down the process cold the autophagy goes away insulin goes up we broke in the fast however if we had something small just enough to get us through and that little thing we had was pure fat or at least very low in protein and very low in sugar now maybe we could get those extra six hours and we could maintain the benefits of autophagy so if you can go the 24 hours and feel great then do that but if you're not feeling so great and you really want something then this is a trick that can help you get through so what would you be using then well here's where we bring in our famous bulletproof coffee and all that is it's black coffee or black tea and you add some fat to it it could be butter it could be mct oil could be coconut oil and what that does it gives you some nutrients it gives you some calories but it has zero carbs zero protein it's very high fat almost zero insulin response so your body's nutrient sensors don't really react much to it unless you exaggerate it so in the strictest sense you definitely break your fast but from a practical standpoint you're still getting most of the benefits of intermittent fasting and if it helps you get from 18 hours to 24 hours you have dramatically increased the benefits we also have different forms of fat like butter extra virgin olive oil coconut oil lard etc they're quite filling zero carbs zero or trace protein like in the case of butter they're very high fat and almost a zero insulin response and while these things are not something that you would eat by themselves necessarily you could use them for your bulletproof coffee and you can also put them on vegetables so if you had a salad for example instead of the bulletproof coffee then you're not eating enough protein or calories to really get out of that fasting zone coconut cream is also great it's very filling has all of these benefits that we talked about and you can use it for your coffee you can use it as a creamer coffee or tea and i often use it in smoothies and you can also make some delicious hot chocolate with it and then we get to nature's perfect food that seems to show up in every list anyone ever does avocado because it is quite filling very low carb very low protein moderate fat high fiber very low insulin it meets virtually every one of these criteria and yet it has a lot of properties of vegetables it's strictly speaking it's a fruit but it sort of behaves like a vegetable in many ways and i call it moderate fat compared to other really fatty foods like nuts but for plant it is very high fat and that's why it is more filling more satisfying in itself than virtually any other plant i'm not suggesting that this is the perfect list but i think it's a great list and it's a good place to start and the reason i set it up like this is that you if you understand the principles if you understand the mechanisms and why these things are on the list then you can take these and then you can expand it into similar foods and you can grow your list and you can find out the things that work best for you because what's really filling for one person may not be perceived that way by another because we're all very different if you enjoyed this video and you'd like to learn more about how health really works i think that that next video will really hit the spot for you thank you so much for watching i'll see you next time

Channel: Dr. Sten Ekberg

Views: 723,983

Rating: 4.9444132 out of 5

Keywords: intermittent fasting food, intermittent fasting foods to eat, intermittent fasting foods you can eat, intermittent fasting foods to avoid, intermittent fasting food list, intermittent fasting food ideas, best foods to eat for intermittent fasting, intermittent fasting food plan, top 10, weight loss, lose fat, dr ekberg, dr sten ekberg, wellness for life, real doctor, holistic doctor, Intermittent fasting food idaes

Id: P0U1CJnbrPU

Length: 16min 53sec (1013 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020