Our Guest: Brandon, from The Body Logic

Today, we talk to Brandon Mentore about Intermittent Fasting.

Brandon is a strength and conditioning coach, a functional medicine practitioner and a sports nutritionist.

He has appeared on CNN, Men’s Fitness, Shape and Medical Daily with many other publication online and in-print.

Debunking what about Intermittent Fasting?

We will look into how Intermittent Fasting can help you lose weight and build lean muscle.

What is the best time to fast?

At what point Intermittent diet stops working?

And lastly, we clarify what are the facts and myths of Intermittent diet.

You are about to learn the secrets of one of the most groundbreaking health hacks practiced since the biblical era.

First of all, why some people don’t believe in the Power of Intermittent Fasting?

The power of intermittent fasting, unfortunately, tends to be missed by the public due to our sensationalist, quick-fix, faddish cultural obsession with dieting.

Strong superstitions and preconceived notions about “diets” cause people who are curious about intermittent diet to get it wrong, and intermittent diet is a dieting style that you can easily go wrong.

So how do you approach Intermittent Fasting for yourself and your clients?

As a health and fitness professional, I take a scientific approach to things; studying, experimenting and taking notes on the intermittent diet on myself before I recommended it to any of my clients.

After sifting through and filtering all of the nuances and aspects of what can occur physiologically from intermittent fasting I would put together protocols appropriate for my client and their personal health status.

As intermittent diet has become more and more popularized I’ve found myself spending more time correcting preconceived notions or errors made from people exploring this dieting style.

Given that, the success of intermittent diet lies in the nuance, so here are some things to know before you do it.

Things to know before doing it and clarifying the Myths vs Facts..

1. Unbroken blocks of time matter

A lot of people get tripped up by “intermittent”. You can intermittently eat throughout the day as much as you can intermittently fast.

Eating breakfast at say 9 am and then not eating again until 8 pm when you have dinner is an intermittent fast in between but the time-frames are off.

There are two-time windows with this diet, an eating window, and a fasting window. These windows of time need to be unbroken. For your fasting window or block of time, no food is supposed to be consumed, the closest you can get without throwing yourself off is coffee with a little cream that’s it.

For your eating window food needs to be consumed within the window of time that you set. You don’t spread it out over time this defeats the purpose.

2. Adequate calorie intake during eating periods

So many people are used to cutting calories, eliminating and or removing something when it comes to dieting, this is a big mistake to apply to intermittent fasting.

The effectiveness of the diet is contingent upon loading up on resources calorically during your eating window so that your body has something to work with during your fasting window.

If your calorie intake is insufficient or hypocaloric (low calorie) during your eating window you’re going to run into problems and set alarms off in the body.

Remember fasting is the control you’re placing on your diet most people use calories as a control but you don’t really do that with intermittent diet, doing both would be detrimental.

3. Transition Phases

There are several transition phases the body goes through while intermittent diet that may or may not happen and in varying intensities depending on the person.

The one to focus on the most is in the acute sense from the abrupt change in behavior, this takes place usually in the first 72 hours.

Sometimes you get hunger out of nowhere, lethargy, light-headedness. You have to remember your body has been on a certain pattern prior to intermittent diet, gears will need to shift and sometimes symptoms pop up, this is normal stay the course.

4. You won’t die if you don’t eat

Its funny because there are some people out there that go to work, have a coffee as their breakfast, a granola bar at lunch and then not eat again until 8 pm where they have a massive dinner.

Yet when you tell these people about how the fasting window works they’re suddenly concerned with not being able to eat.

Embrace the hunger, this isn’t bad, infact it’s a temporary thing your body will adjust as time goes on. No one ever died from skipping their 3 pm snack.

5. Lastly worrying about the type of food

As a general rule of thumb, food selection isn’t as important as people want to make it out to be when intermittent fasting.

You should always strive to eat healthy nutrient dense foods but you can be more liberal with your selection or less restrictive when fasting because the time control replaces the need for food control.

This is not a license to binge or to be extremely rigid in your selection either. The more rigidity you apply the less compliant you’ll be with the diet.

What is the best time to fast?

Nocturnal fasting is more effective for fat loss and overall health, because it aligns with your circadian rhythm or the body clock system of the body.

Fasting at night allows the repair and regeneration patterns to run and that are all advantageous to fat loss and muscle building such as growth hormone, leptin, and melatonin.

Eating and digestion in the evening can impede or slow down many of these processes. You can do fast in the morning/day but the less healthy you are the more effective evening fasting becomes.

You mentioned fat loss. How does Intermittent Fasting help shred fat and lose weight?

1. Longer periods of time with the absence of food drives the body to utilize internal metabolics instead of response metabolics from foods. Because your body doesn’t have the supply of food ingested during fasting periods it will upregulate beta oxidation to continue to produce energy by liberating your fat stores to do it, thus leading to fat loss.

2. Periods of fasting increase insulin sensitivity which can aid in fat loss in short bursts as well as increase nutrient uptake in muscle tissue if the anabolic stimulus is triggered through training.

3. Fasting also increases autophagy and mitophagy which is form of cellular cleansing. This helps you to internally detoxify tissues, augment fluid dynamics, and reduce inflammation and bloating. If you have increased cellular and mitochondrial performance metabolism performs better increasing thermogenesis and caloric expenditure at rest as well as enhanced exercise performance.

Can Intermittent Fasting help lose weight and build lean muscle at the same time?

It does have the ability to cause fat loss and has the potential to increase lean muscle provided you have the right training stimulus and things are done correctly.

Are there any limitations to Intermittent Fasting?

There are limitations to the amount of fat you can lose and muscle you build with intermittent diet because there are multiple factors at play. It is a viable strategy that give you the most bang for your buck in terms of fat loss, lean tissue and general health and wellness benefits.

Thanks Brandon for your time.

We learned a great deal about Intermittent Fasting and some of the myths about it.

We will catch you next time with another topic.

Follow Brandon on Instagram.

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