I would highly recommend intermittent fasting for those who want to control their body fat levels, lose weight, and have a lean physique. As the name implies, this method of diet simply means you go without eating for a set period of time. This is a simple method of weight control that doesn’t require you to constantly count calories or eliminate any particular food groups. It is becoming more popular but this strategy has been around for a while. It was first made popular in the 90′s with the Warrior Diet. At the time few people took notice in the bodybuilding community because everyone still believed you had to eat several times a day.
People may believe eating small, frequent meals will “fire up” your metabolism or help you to burn more calories. But this is simply not true. Eating multiple meals, in fact, became popular among bodybuilders because they could not gain weight on just three meals a day. In other words, it was originally a method to eat more calories, not a way to lose fat.
Research has also proven that the number of meals you eat per day has nothing to do with the number of calories you burn. You can look up a study entitled Influence of the feeding frequency on nutrient utilization in man if you want proof. But here’s a summary: subjects ate all their daily calories in either two meals a day or seven meals a day. The study revealed there was no difference in daily calorie expenditure between a two meal per day and a seven meal per day feeding pattern. In other words, it all boils down to the number of calories that are eaten and used—not the number of meals per day.
Another intermittent fasting myth is that skipping meals will cause you to lose muscle mass or cause your body to go into “starvation mode.” This is simply not true. The human body is perfectly capable of handling short periods without food—our species would not have survived this long if it wasn’t so. The metabolism is not negatively affected by brief periods of fasting, and this will not cause muscle loss (especially if you are training with weights as part of your overall fitness plan—which you should be doing).
A short fast actually increases the level of fat burning hormones for 24-48 hours. You can get extra motivation from knowing every move you make during a fast is more likely to tap into your fat stores for fuel. Another advantage is this method will help you get rid of stubborn fat because the hormonal environment is beneficial for this. Areas like the lower abdominals, “love handles, and hips/thighs may be more likely to respond to this method of diet when others make no impact.
This is not to say you don’t have to watch calories with this diet. You still have to achieve a negative calorie balance if you want to lose fat. In other words, you can’t fast and then spend the next few hours/days eating pizza, bear and ice cream–it just doesn’t work that way. But if you are wiling to eat what you want in moderation and fast on a regular basis you’ll find intermittent fasting will be enough to help you lose fat.
