7 Ways Fasting Can Rev Up Your Fat Burning Furnace

By Brad Pilon, MS

Flexible intermittent fasting is becoming a very popular way to use your body’s natural ability to burn lots of fat in a short period of time.

Here is a list of the ways that flexible intermittent fasting will turbo charge your fat loss.

1. Increases Fat Burning Hormones

Hormones are usually at the root of most of your metabolic functioning, and fat burning is no different. Growth Hormone is the most important fat burning hormone in your body. Fasting pushes growth hormone production into high gear and this makes your fat burning furnace start to work overtime. Fasting also decrease your insulin levels, which ensures that you burn body fat instead of storing it.

2. Increased Fat Burning Enzymes

Fat burning hormones need the help of fat burning enzymes to get their job done. Fasting will sky rocket the activity of two of the most important fat burning enzymes in your body. Adipose tissue HSL (Hormone Sensitive Lipase) is the enzyme responsible for allowing your fat cells to release fat so it can be burned as energy in your muscles. Muscle tissue LPL (Lipoprotein Lipase) is the enzyme responsible for allowing your muscle cells to take up fat so it can be burnt as a fuel. Fasting increases both of these enzymes to optimize fat burning - A perfect combination.

3. Burn More Calories

Short term fasting (12-72hrs) actually increases your metabolism and adrenaline levels. This causes you to increase calorie burning during the fast period. The more calories you burn the faster you can lose weight. The extra energy you get from the fast might actually help you through a workout or get more work done at work or around the house. When I did my first fast I was shocked at how awake and energetic I was. My fasting days are now my most productive days of the week.

4. Burn Fat Instead of Sugar

Fasting shifts your metabolism from burning blood sugar to burning mostly body fat. When you eat a meal your body likes to burn carbs first, then the fat from your food. Any extra fat that your body can’t burn in the few hours after you eat get stored as body fat. When you fast your body has no choice but to burn stored body fat. By the end of a 24 hour fast your body is burning way more fat than it would during a regular day of eating.

5. You’ll Find Out Why You Eat

The most surprising benefit people report back when they start fasting is a new found awareness of what causes them to eat. When you make a conscious decision to fast for a day your less than flattering eating motivations become painfully obvious. This is the first and most effective step to getting rid of bat habits for good. Knowing what your motivations are for poor eating choices is essential before you can change them and build better habits.

6. Builds Positive Attitudes Towards Yourself and Food

Each short fast is an accomplishment that can build self confidence and gratitude. At the end of a 24 hour fast you can feel good about your accomplishment and start feeling good about your relationship with food again. The positive empowerment from each fast builds on the last until you feel completely in control of your food choices.

7. Eat All The Foods You Love Guilt Free

Short term fasting allows you to lose weight and burn fat without restricting any of the foods you love to eat. With this style of eating you can consume any and all of the foods you like whenever you choose without feeling guilty about it and still lose weight. You will never again have to be sitting in a restaurant picking at a salad while everyone else at the tables indulges in their favorite entrée and dessert.

Eating for fat loss doesn’t need to be complicated and food should never be a source of anxiety or guilt. Mixing in a few 24 hours fasts to your week can liberate you from the dieting prison and allow you to enjoy food again.

****
Brad Pilon is a nutrition professional with over eight years experience working in the nutritional supplement industry specializing in clinical research management and new product development. Brad has completed graduate studies in nutritional sciences specializing in the use of short term fasting for weight loss.



His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, visit www.eatstopeat.com

Hormones For Fat Loss Revisited

Weight loss is fairly simple - make the scale go down regardless of where the weight loss comes from. While it simply makes the number go down, it doesn't mean that the results will be what you want. Fat loss on the other hand, is a complex thing and it's what you really should be concerned with not only to look better but to be healthy.

There are many hormones in your body that do all sorts of things. For fat loss, there are hormones that can make you lean or fat depending on what's going on in your body. Part of your goal with your nutrition plan is to manage your hormones to keep you in an anabolic, fat burning, muscle building state. Here we will discuss some of the heavy hitters. I have compiled excerpts from a variety of sources listed below to give you an overview of some big hormones in the fat loss arena. There are many more and you could go on forever about hormones, thyroid and such but this is just a shotgun blast.

Insulin: A peptide hormone composed of 51 amino acid residues, which is produced by the beta cells of the pancreas and released when any of the several stimuli is detected. These stimuli include ingested protein and glucose in the blood, produced from digested food. Insulin has expansive effects on metabolism and other bodily systems. It causes the uptake of blood sugar (glucose) by the vast majority of bodily cells. These cells include muscle, fatty tissue, and liver cells. Insulin is primarily responsible for storing glucose as glycogen in the liver and muscles. When insulin is at high concentrations in the body, it prevents the use of fat as an energy source.

Ghrelin: Your stomach makes ghrelin when it’s empty. Just like leptin, ghrelin goes into the blood, crosses the blood-brain barrier, and ends up at your hypothalamus, where it tells you you’re hungry. Levels are high before you eat and low after you eat. Ghrelin seems to be affected by growth hormone release, which differs in men and women.

Leptin: is made by adipose tissue (aka fat) and is secreted into the circulatory system, where it travels to the hypothalamus. Leptin tells the hypothalamus that we have enough fat, so we can eat less or stop eating. the more fat you have, the more leptin you make; the less food you’ll eat; and the higher your metabolic rate (possibly). The less fat you have, the less leptin you have, and the hungrier you’ll be. So for weight loss — the more leptin the better. Leptin resistance is similar to insulin resistance. Insulin resistance occurs when there’s lots of insulin being produced (for example, with a diet high in sugar and simple carbohydrate), but the body and brain have stopped “listening” to insulin’s effects. Both types of resistance seem to occur together in obese people, though obese men who tend to have more internal belly fat (visceral fat) have higher insulin levels, and women who tend to have more fat under their skin have higher leptin levels. Leptin seems to influence reproduction and fertility in women, which is related to women’s body fat levels. Women appear to be much more sensitive than men to leptin levels… unless men are given estrogen.

Hormone Sensitive Lipase (HSL): This hormone is responsible for releasing fat into your bloodstream to be utilized as fuel. When HSL is increased in muscle, fatty acids are liberated from intramuscular lipids where they are utilized by muscle fibers as an energy source. With regard to muscle contraction, HSL activity appears to be increased by the frequency and duration of exercise as a result of changes in muscle glycogen. Low glycogen stores induced by a low carbohydrate diet increases HSL activity in muscle.

Adiponectin: is a hormone exclusively secreted by body fat. This hormone has been recently gaining attention from researchers because of some of its functions. Two important ones are the regulation of glucose and fat metabolism. Elevated levels of adiponectin are associated with increased insulin sensitivity, and increased fat catabolism (i.e., fat burning). And these associations appear to be causal. That is, adiponectin levels do not seem to be only markers, but causes of increased insulin sensitivity and fat catabolism. In other words, an increase in circulating adiponectin seems to lead to increased insulin sensitivity and increased fat catabolism. Insulin sensitivity is the opposite of insulin resistance. The latter is a precursor to diabetes type 2, and is associated with elevated fasting and postprandial (i.e., after a meal) glucose levels. Adiponectin also seems to work closely with leptin, another hormone implicated in a number of diseases of civilization. It appears that adiponectin and leptin modulate each other’s secretion and effects in metabolic processes. Adiponectin is unique among hormones secreted by body fat in that it increases as body fat decreases. Other important body fat hormones, such as leptin, decrease with body fat loss.

Cortisol:
As stress heightens, cortisol is released. While cortisol has beneficial effects on the body, the constantly high levels of it are problematic. Cortisol still tends to promote the storage of fat, specifically to the abdominal area where it can quickly be utilized for the fight or flight response. Scientists have found an increased level of activity of the enzyme 11b hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 (11b HSD-1) in abdominal fat that they believe is the cause of the correlation between cortisol and abdominal fat. A recent study by Roland Rosmond and Per Bjourntorp found that stress-related cortisol secretion in men is strongly associated with abnormalities in glucose, insulin and lipid metabolism as well as abdominal obesity. Over the long-term, elevated cortisol may be as detrimental to overall health as elevated cholesterol or elevated blood sugar.' High cortisol levels have been linked to a lowered testosterone: cortisol ratio, a prime marker of anabolic status and the ability to recover from exercise and build muscle. Further, as cortisol continues to increase, chances for muscle atrophy, impaired immunity, vitamin depletion and increased blood pressure occur.   During intensive strength training, the type of training used to transform bodies, the body enters a catabolic state where there is a net protein breakdown in the body. During this time, ACTH and cortisol are released to decrease muscle inflammation and to begin breaking down amino acids for the process of protein synthesis after exercise. While this is a natural and necessary response, excessive cortisol has been associated with overtraining syndrome. During exercise, the body will breakdown an increased amount of muscle proteins as fuel if there is an inadequate supply of carbohydrates. However, it has been found that consuming a carbohydrate beverage during exercise attenuates the rise in cortisol levels and limits the amount of exercise-related immunosuppression. Current research indicates that sleep deprivation can lead to an elevation in cortisol and is harmful to carbohydrate metabolism.

So what can you do:


Psychology and education: get your head in the game and learn about whats going on with your body.

Nutrition / water intake: Eating right and staying hydrated is essential

Exercise smarter - don't just endlessly workout and beat your head against the wall

Sleep -get some

Stress management: stressors cause damage. Try to limit and manage stress.

Lifestyle changes - the big picture for long term results.

Social support - friends and family or groups can help tremendously

Read more:

http://www.projectswole.com/diet/how-to-manipulate-insulin-for-fat-loss-and-muscle-gain/#ixzz215tkaXPV



http://www.precisionnutrition.com/leptin-ghrelin-weight-loss


http://www.musculardevelopment.com/articles/sex/1603-crank-up-those-catecholamines-for-fat-loss.html


http://healthcorrelator.blogspot.com/2010/03/adiponectin-supplementation-body-fat.html

http://www.fitness-nutrition-weightloss.com/cortisol-part-2.html

Eric
Dempsey's Resolution Fitness

My 8 Week Get Lean Program: Week 6 Update

So week 6 has finished two weeks of Intermittent Fasting (IF). I felt alot better doing IF after carb cycling. Progress is slow and steady. This week, I'm down 3lbs, which I'm not trying to lose weight, down a half inch off the waist and caliper is still zero. Had to punch a new belt notch in. I'm also down 2% body fat this week according to the hand held bioelectric impedance device. Definition is improving slowly. Water intake still too low and calories probably low as well. Water retention better but still too high. Could have done better. Energy levels are pretty good on IF. IF is good stuff, I just hate fasting and hate being hungry. 

Also I wanted to note that I'm not doing 3 hours of insanity or crossfit every day. I'm doing my normal routine. I see the 3 hour a day people making minimal to no progress and chuckle. What a waste of time. You don't need to spend hours working out. You just need to spend a little bit of time doing the right stuff. I'm healing up my joint injuries, getting lean and gathering data on nutrition plans. I'm not trying to get on stage or win a competition. I feel really good and I'm getting leaner than I've been possibly ever. I'm not killing myself to do it either. Oh yeah and I'm not taking a bunch of crazy supplements. I did try B12 under the tongue pills and CLA but haven't noticed anything spectacular about them. 

Cheat meal this weekend, then on to week 7. Back to two weeks of the standard plan of eating every couple hours with small evenly sized meals, cycling carbs daily by meal, instead of weekly.

Eric

Dempsey's Resolution Fitness  

7 Ways Fasting Can Rev Up Your Fat Burning Furnace

Flexible intermittent fasting is becoming a very popular way to use your body’s natural ability to burn lots of fat in a short period of time.


Here is a list of the ways that flexible intermittent fasting will turbo charge your fat loss.

1.     Increases Fat Burning Hormones

Hormones are usually at the root of most of your metabolic functioning, and fat burning is no different. Growth Hormone is the most important fat burning hormone in your body. Fasting pushes growth hormone production into high gear and this makes your fat burning furnace start to work overtime. Fasting also decrease your insulin levels, which ensures that you burn body fat instead of storing it.

2.     Increased Fat Burning Enzymes

Fat burning hormones need the help of fat burning enzymes to get their job done. Fasting will sky rocket the activity of two of the most important fat burning enzymes in your body. Adipose tissue HSL (Hormone Sensitive Lipase) is the enzyme responsible for allowing your fat cells to release fat so it can be burned as energy in your muscles.  Muscle tissue LPL (Lipoprotein Lipase) is the enzyme responsible for allowing your muscle cells to take up fat so it can be burnt as a fuel. Fasting increases both of these enzymes to optimize fat burning - A perfect combination.

3.     Burn More Calories

Short term fasting (12-72hrs) actually increases your metabolism and adrenaline levels. This causes you to increase calorie burning during the fast period. The more calories you burn the faster you can lose weight. The extra energy you get from the fast might actually help you through a workout or get more work done at work or around the house. When I did my first fast I was shocked at how awake and energetic I was. My fasting days are now my most productive days of the week.

4.     Burn Fat Instead of Sugar

Fasting shifts your metabolism from burning blood sugar to burning mostly body fat. When you eat a meal your body likes to burn carbs first, then the fat from your food. Any extra fat that your body can’t burn in the few hours after you eat get stored as body fat. When you fast your body has no choice but to burn stored body fat. By the end of a 24 hour fast your body is burning way more fat than it would during a regular day of eating.

5.      You’ll Find Out Why You Eat

The most surprising benefit people report back when they start fasting is a new found awareness of what causes them to eat. When you make a conscious decision to fast for a day your less than flattering eating motivations become painfully obvious. This is the first and most effective step to getting rid of bat habits for good. Knowing what your motivations are for poor eating choices is essential before you can change them and build better habits.

6.     Builds Positive Attitudes Towards Yourself and Food

Each short fast is an accomplishment that can build self confidence and gratitude. At the end of a 24 hour fast you can feel good about your accomplishment and start feeling good about your relationship with food again. The positive empowerment from each fast builds on the last until you feel completely in control of your food choices.

7.     Eat All The Foods You Love Guilt Free

Short term fasting allows you to lose weight and burn fat without restricting any of the foods you love to eat. With this style of eating you can consume any and all of the foods you like whenever you choose without feeling guilty about it and still lose weight. You will never again have to be sitting in a restaurant picking at a salad while everyone else at the tables indulges in their favorite entrée and dessert.

Eating for fat loss doesn’t need to be complicated and food should never be a source of anxiety or guilt. Mixing in a few 24 hours fasts to your week can liberate you from the dieting prison and allow you to enjoy food again.

****
Brad Pilon is a nutrition professional with over eight years experience working in the nutritional supplement industry specializing in clinical research management and new product development. Brad has completed graduate studies in nutritional sciences specializing in the use of short term fasting for weight loss.

His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. 

For more information on Eat Stop Eat, visit www.eatstopeat.com

Eric

Dempsey's Resolution Fitness