What is intermittent fasting?

Intermittent Fasting  (IF) is an elegant way to mimic the Keto Diet each day. Instead of eliminating carbs entirely for 5 days and carb-loading for two days, the purpose is to get the benefit of lipolysis by fasting for at least 12 hours and the anabolic effect of a carb-up after your workout session every day.  For me to win the bet with Will, my 24 year-old friend, I’d have to hit around 8% bodyfat.

Working towards a muscular body for us males has been a national pastime, but not everyone seems to be able to achieve the look without resorting to fat burners, anabolics, and sacrificing our hard earned muscle gained in the gym by doing inordinate amount of cardio. The quandary is: how do you get and stay lean while building muscle? The answer lies in the hormone insulin and maximizing its anabolic function and minimizing it storing function. By combining this with the practice of a daily fast, you increase your body’s ability to burn stored fat and build, or at least maintain your muscles. 

Insulin is a storing hormone that in general does two things: shuttle sugar into your muscles cells for storage as glycogen, or initiate the process of storing the left over macronutrients into storage in our fat cells. When you reduce your consumption of starchy carbs, you reduce circulating insulin in your system. Once we can reduce our insulin output from the pancreas and reduce using glucose as your main source of fuel, your body will shift to utilizing fat as an energy source. By reducing intake of starchy carbs and consuming mostly fat, protein, and fibrous carbs and then fasting to at least 12 hours, you create a bodily environment that will increase insulin sensitivity. In other words, you increase the chance of your insulin shuttling more sugar into your muscle than to the fat cells. This not only help to create an anabolic environment in the muscles but you will get to satisfy your craving for foods that we are not supposed to eat.

In essence, I see intermittent fasting as killing two birds with one stone in our post-workout meal. I get my fix of whatever yummy things I like—for me it has been my wife’s awesome dairy-free organic blueberry muffins—to eat each day and help build more muscles as you set your body to burn more fat in the long-run.

And the looks I get when I gobble down 10 cheese danishes at the gym? Priceless.