Why intermittent fasting is much more effective for weight loss than simple calorie restriction and why the calorie in and calorie out model is dated?
The simple explanation of CICO (Calorie in calorie out) is that, in order to maintain weight, the number of calories you eat needs to match the number you burn. When you take in more energy than you burn, you gain weight; when you take in less energy than you burn, you lose weight. But our body is much more complex than that. Your START Wellness intermittent fasting and water program points out why using a restricted-calorie diet, to lose weight, does not work.
So, in order to know how much you can eat, you need to find out how much your body burns. There are three main body processes that burn calories:
- Basic metabolism (BMR) : most of the calories you get from food are used to sustain basic functions.
- Digestion (TEF) : 10-15% of the calories you eat are used to power digestion.
- BMR+TEF for males = 66 + (6.2 x weight) + (12.7 x height) – (6.76 x age);
- BMR+TEF for females = 655.1 + (4.35 x weight) + (4.7 x height) – (4.7 x age); using pounds for weight, inches for height, and years for age.
- Physical activity. This depends on your lifestyle:
- 2 – little to no exercise;
- 375 – light exercise 1–3 days per week;
- 55 – moderate exercise 3–5 days per week;
- 725 – hard exercise 6–7 days per week;
- 9 – very hard exercise, training, or a physical job.
So, here is the secret formula : Calories needed to maintain weight = (BMR+TEF) x activity level;
Now, all you need to do is calculate the number of calories you burn, on a regular basis, and start eating. Suppose you need to eat 2500 calories to maintain your weight. If you eat 2500 calories out of chocolate, chips, and juice, at the end of the day, you should be fine. But that is not the case.
The type of food you eat matters than the number of calories.
Since not all calories are created equal, different foods have different effects on various processes in the body.
- Glucose and fructose provide the same number of calories per gram. Added fructose is linked to insulin resistance, increased blood sugar levels, and higher triglyceride levels than a diet based on glucose. Fruit, which contains natural fructose along with fiber and water, does not have the same negative effects.
- 100 calories of fruit reduce your hunger much more than 100 calories of candy. That’s because food low in protein and fiber, like candy, increases levels of ghrelin, the hunger hormone, and does not stimulate the fullness centres in your brain.
- Food rich in protein has the biggest TEF and requires more work to digest, absorb, and metabolize. Fat has the lowest TEF. This means that a high-protein diet requires more calories to be metabolized than a lower-protein diet does. This is why a protein-based diet will boost your metabolism.
- The amount of nutrients a food contains per calorie can vary greatly. Nutrient-dense foods (fruit, vegetables, meat) provide higher amounts of vitamins, minerals, and beneficial compounds per gram compared with less nutrient-dense foods (cookies, pasta, juice).
- A low-calorie diet usually takes a long time. In the end, people just go back to eating the same calories and the same unhealthy food. And they get their weight back, if not even more. But the weight is fat, not muscle. And the most harmful part is that they feel they have failed.
- When you cut the number of calories that your body expects (calorie restriction diet) it slows down your metabolism. You feel cold, hungry, tired. Because you don’t burn that much energy, you don’t have that liveliness, you don’t feel good.
When you restrict calorie intake or eat weak meals, you do not enter ketosis, the insulin goes up and it’s worse than if you didn’t eat anything at all.
Your START Wellness Intermittent fasting and water program is not a diet. It’s a pattern of eating, drinking and a lifestyle that has enormous long-term scientific benefits. It doesn’t tell you what to eat, but when to eat. People exist in either a fed or fasting state:
- When you eat, insulin is secreted by the pancreas to move sugar into the cells. You store the bulk of your sugar in the liver. But when you exceed the storage, you store it as fat. If you eat all day, you will be in a continuously feeding state. Your body will just build up this store of fat and doesn’t need to access it. In the presence of insulin, you can not lose weight. Every time you eat, you spike insulin even if it is healthy or junk food. Eating all day long overtaxes your body’s pancreas and digestive system and you cannot absorb your food and nutrients. Those who eat all day are sugar burners. They consume a lot of carbs and tap into glucose as a primary fuel source, which is inefficient. They are frequently hungry, struggles to lose fat, have more oxidative stress, and have problems with inflammation.
- When you do not eat, your insulin level drops and you can tap into your fat store for energy. A person on the START Wellness app should result in being a fat burner. He or she taps into fat stores for energy, doesn’t get hungry, loses weight, sleeps better, and ages more slowly. Meal timing and how frequently we eat is crucial.
Here are 3 stages for an easy transition from 5 meals per day to an intermittent fasting 16/8 :
Step 1: If you eat 5 meals a day (Breakfast–Snack-Lunch–Snack–Dinner), each meal will increase insulin. So, remove snacks.
Step 2: Reducing to 3 meals (Breakfast-Lunch-Dinner). In order to go from one meal to another without being hungry, you must increase fat eating.
Step 3: Eat 3 meals a day, but only in a period of 8 hours. If you wake up and don’t feel hungry don’t eat. Eat when you are hungry.
Most people eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner around the same hours every day. Ghrelin, which is the hormone that triggers hunger, follows this pattern and is higher around these hours. But around two hours after, it decreases. This happens either if you eat or not. So your body doesn’t necessarily need food. But ghrelin expects food around these hours. It triggers hunger. But, be patient, hunger will go away.
The START Wellness intermittent fasting and water program is a brand new beginning for you and it will teach you how to evolve from being a sugar burner to a fat burner.
Your body can burn two fuels for energy: carbs or fat. Carbs are converted into glucose, whereas fats are converted into ketones by the liver. During intermittent fasting on START Wellness you will be entering a state of ketosis, meaning that your body is primarily burning ketones from fats rather than glucose from carbohydrates.
Although, most people run on carbohydrates, studies are now showing that burning fats (ketones) for energy is the healthier alternative.
Hunter-gatherers relied on ketosis to help them survive until their next meal. We can mimic these metabolic conditions to make ketones. Ketone is an appetite suppressant, an antioxidant and provides more oxygen. Your brain and central nervous system do not require insulin to use glucose. The rest of the body needs insulin to break sugar in order to use its energy. During fasting, the body uses fat for energy. The brain and the central system use direct glucose for energy.
For a better understanding of how fasting works, Dr. Jason Fung made an interesting analogy. He compares glycogen with a refrigerator and the fat store with a freezer.
- Glycogen is like a refrigerator. You put food easily in and you get food out easily, when you need it.
- Fat is like a freezer. You can store more of it, but it is in your basement. It’s hard to get to it and hard to get out. The refrigerator has limited space. If you have too much stock, you need to put it in the freezer.
When you fast the body gets a signal to get a part of that energy out. First from glycogen and then from fat. What you should seek in doing is getting the fat “out of the freezer”. If you have high insulin, it will tell your body to move all the energy in the freezer. If you reduce your calorie intake, you reduce your metabolic rate, not fat from the freezer. And this is why the calorie in calorie out model is dated.
When fasting, you do not go into starvation mode, but surviving mode. When your body feels it has nothing to burn at hand, your body increases your metabolism up to 14 % to burn your stored fat in order to survive.
Oshumi’s research proved that fasting for 12 to 24 hours triggers autophagy. Another thing that induce autophagy is exercise. The reason why fasting is associated with longevity is that cells start the repair and renewal process, during autophagy. Also, autophagy contributes to a range of physiological functions, such as inhibiting cancer cells, ageing, eliminating pathogens, and cleaning the insides of cells.
On the START Wellness intermittent fasting and water program you consume the same amount of calories that you do now, but in a period of 8 hours per day (known as the ‘eating window’) and don’t eat for the other 16 hours (also known as the ‘eating window’). Till will kick you into fat burn more and will help you lose more fat, the correct way. And there is a study to prove it. During fasting are released into the body catecholamines: adrenaline, norepinephrine, and epinephrine. These hormones tap into your fat stores and preserve muscle.
In just 7 days you’ll FEEL the change.
In 30 days you’ll BE the change.
All you have to do is START!
Learn more about START Wellness – Best Intermittent Fasting & Weight Loss App 2021
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