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One of the well-known rules of weight loss asserts that when you eat is as important as what you eat. Which is why many of us have long held to certain food-timing conventions we believe will help keep our metabolisms humming from the moment we wake up: We kick-start our mornings with a solid breakfast; we eat several small meals throughout the day. We try not to go more than a few hours — heaven forbid a whole day — without food because we fear it might slow our metabolic rate to a crawl.

Now, though, a small-but-growing group of nutrition and fitness experts is beginning to question that conventional wisdom. These experts argue that constant grazing can actually disrupt metabolic pathways and that the best way to kick our metabolisms into high gear is to occasionally eat less often — in short, to observe an eating pattern known as intermittent fasting.

When most of us hear the word “fasting,” we’re likely to think of politically motivated hunger strikes or endurance stunts like illusionist David Blaine’s infamous 44-day stint, sans food, in a transparent, Plexiglas box. But the occasional fasting these experts are recommending is something different. They point out that humans evolved through multiple short-term periods of caloric restriction, and that our metabolisms operate more efficiently when freed from the burdens of 24/7 digestion and nutrition assimilation.

Humans evolved through multiple short-term periods of caloric restriction, and that our metabolisms operate more efficiently when freed from the burdens of 24/7 digestion and nutrition assimilation.

The time frames recommended for intermittent fasting vary. Popular options (all of which can incorporate sleep time) include daily 14- to 16-hour fasts, once- or twice-weekly 24-hour fasts, and alternate-day fasts of assorted time durations.

Ultimately, the goals and results of these programs are similar. Studies indicate that short-term fasting can increase longevity, help regulate glucose levels, and help treat everything from asthma and autoimmune diseases to cardiac arrhythmias.

In many ways, short-term fasting has more in common with detox regimens than with extended fasts of multiple days or weeks. But detox programs follow specific dietary rules, while short-term fasts rely on only the period of not eating to achieve health benefits.

It should be noted, however, that some health experts, including detox experts, are not big fans of intermittent fasting. (For more on that, see “Fasting vs. Detoxing,” below.) And even advocates acknowledge it’s not for everyone (see “Note,” below).

Integrative nutritionist Kathie Swift, MS, RD, LDN, has mixed feelings. On the one hand, she notes, observing what happens to the body during a short fast can help people become more observant of their habitual pattens and learn to identify real hunger.

“I’m fascinated by the idea of alternate-day fasting,” she says. “Some people do that almost intuitively — eat heavily one day, and then really, really cut down the next day.” But she also notes that because the body relies on key nutrients to eliminate toxins, build healthy tissue and more, intermittent fasting can cause problems for people who are not generally well nourished.

The biggest skepticism about fasting stems from the concern that it will disrupt metabolism and lead to weight gain. Yet a new study published this year in the journal Cell Metabolism suggests that limiting periods of food intake to eight hours a day might reduce the risk of obesity and obesity-related diseases.

In the study, researchers noted that mice who continually grazed on fatty food for 100 days gained weight and developed high cholesterol, high blood glucose and liver damage. The mice that fasted for 16 hours a day — but ate the same total amount of food during their nonfasting periods — weighed less, stayed healthy and performed better when they exercised.

Researchers have found that after a few hours of fasting, the body starts to burn fat and break down cholesterol into beneficial bile acids — as if it were flipping a fuel-selector switch.

Why? Researchers have found that after a few hours of fasting, the body starts to burn fat and break down cholesterol into beneficial bile acids — as if it were flipping a fuel-selector switch. The liver, meanwhile, shuts down glucose production for several hours, lowering blood glucose levels. Instead of ending up in the bloodstream, extra glucose is used to repair damaged cells and make new DNA, which can help prevent chronic inflammation. Meanwhile, liver enzymes are activated and help in the creation of brown fat (the good kind, which converts extra calories to heat).

“You’re enhancing your body’s ability to use fat as an energy source,” says strength and conditioning specialist Mike T. Nelson, a PhD candidate at the University of Minnesota in kinesiology and an intermittent faster. “Being more metabolically flexible allows you to shift back to burning fat faster after a meal.”

Frequent eating, on the other hand, means the body keeps making and storing fat, enlarging both fat and liver cells. Take that too far, and liver damage can occur. Plus, the liver keeps right on making glucose and raising blood-sugar levels.

Beyond Weight Loss

Many intermittent fasters report experiencing something not often associated with calorie restriction: relief. Those who have struggled with trying to eat five to six meals a day (or to count calories) report feeling eased of those burdens. Intermittent fasters also say they have more patience around food, and a stronger preference for eating high-quality fare on nonfasting days.

“Eating six meals a day can train you to get hungry more often,” says strength coach John Romaniello, founder of Final Phase Fat Loss. “Once you start practicing some sort of fasting, you usually eat less on nonfasting days, too.”

Fitness enthusiasts have discovered that fasting makes exercising for fat loss more efficient, and, in turn, exercising makes fasting easier. “Athletes performing long endurance activities while fasting actually burn more body fat than athletes who are fed (because the fed athletes are burning through food energy before they get to the stored energy in their body fat),” writes fitness guru Brad Pilon, MS, in his e-book, Eat Stop Eat. “The very act of burning fat also releases something called ‘glycerol’ from your body-fat stores. When the fatty acids are released, so is the glycerol. Glycerol is a valuable precursor for gluconeogenesis [a metabolic pathway] in the liver that helps keep blood glucose stable.”

“Most likely, what we call hunger is really a learned reaction to a combination of metabolic, social and environmental cues to eat.”

If you tend to get hungry before working out, Pilon notes that the sensation might be more psychological than physical. “Most likely, what we call hunger is really a learned reaction to a combination of metabolic, social and environmental cues to eat,” he says. “Consider that most people get noticeably hungry or irritated if they have gone more than two to three hours without eating. But during this time, metabolically speaking, they are still in the fed state.”

While the case for fasting as a general-health tool is compelling, the case for fasting as a longevity booster may be even more compelling. Studies have shown that severely restricting calorie intake can increase the lifespan of rats and mice. (Data published this year in the journal Science Translational Medicine showed that mice with cancer improved their survival rates when they fasted during chemotherapy.)

The National Institute on Aging announced earlier this year that fasting for one or two days a week may also help stave off Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other degenerative brain conditions. When fasting, the researchers said, brain cells are mildly stressed, benefiting the brain in a similar way to how the mild stress of exercise benefits muscles.

How to Get Started

Several well-regarded experts recommend fasts of a day or less, but you can start with whatever seems doable and appealing to you. Pilon, for example, advocates a 24-hour fasting period, one to two times per week. If you spread the fast over a two-day period, he points out, you can still eat every day — and sleep through the hardest part.

“Depending on your schedule, and what you’re most comfortable with, you could do a lunch-to-lunch or dinner-to-dinner fast,” Pilon says. “Going longer than that is very intrusive on life. Really, what I’m asking people to do is not fast, but take a break from eating. You learn patience, and that you don’t have to eat all the time.

Once you know your muscles aren’t going to melt, your metabolism is not going to crash, you regain the ability to be patient when it comes to eating.”

Pilon also likes this method because it allows him to eat food he loves at socially appropriate times: “I’d rather have dinner with my wife and kids than eat by myself all day at work.”

If a 24-hour fast is not your style or seems too extreme, Swedish nutritional consultant and personal trainer Martin Berkhan advises condensing your nutritional intake into an eight-hour period to maximize potential hormonal benefits. The idea behind his 16-hour fast works on the theory that you produce growth hormone when you sleep. Once you start eating, the spike in insulin shuts it down. By avoiding food in the evenings, and pushing the first meal of the day back, you may be able to maximize growth-hormone production.

Romaniello has even developed a system that allows for cheat days: You eat whatever you want throughout the day (he usually splurges on wings and burgers), then fast for 36 hours, and then eat a balanced diet during the week. Similar to Berkhan’s idea, Romaniello’s belief is that leptin (the hunger hormone’s counterpart, which makes you feel full), gets bumped up after the cheat day.

Whatever the method, many people who thrive on short-term fasts like them for their simplicity: You’re either fasting, or you’re not. No counting calories; no restricting certain foods. But, as in all things, practice in moderation until you’re able to gauge exactly how intermittent fasting affects you physically and emotionally.

“You have to keep it in check,” Pilon says. If you’re missing out on a lot of life events or stressing over foods because of your diet, then it’s time to detach, relax and reassess.

Your First Fast

Strength and conditioning specialist Mike T. Nelson, who is currently doing doctoral research at the University of Minnesota in kinesiology (exercise science), has coached many fasting newbies. His advice: Start by just coaxing your body in the right direction. Approach it as an experiment, and don’t get hung up on an iron-clad number of hours you’ll go without eating. “Long-term, it’s ideal to notoverplan your fasts, and to simply listen to your body. If you wake up one day and you’re not feeling hungry, that may be a good time to start a fast,” he says. Here are more of Nelson’s tips.

Getting started:

  1. Begin by eating an early dinner and just avoiding food for a few hours before going to bed, then push the first meal of your day back by an hour or two.
  2. Plan a postfast meal. Include lean meat or fish, a vegetable, and maybe a fruit (but don’t load up on grains and starches). Avoid gorging; strive to eat as though you hadn’t fasted.
  3. Schedule your fast for a busy day. Then you’ll benefit from not having to stop to find and eat food, and you’ll be distracted enough by your activities that you’ll be less likely to notice habitual urges to eat.
  4. Use your break from food as an opportunity to enjoy pleasurable, low-key activities you might normally not make time for. A day without food can be a good time to settle the mind as well as the body.

How to handle cravings:

  • If you find yourself starting to crave food, go for a short walk; see if you’re still hungry afterward.
  • Stay hydrated. Sip water or unsweetened herbal or green tea to minimize “empty stomach” sensations and support detoxification.
  • Distract yourself from “habit eating” by calling a friend or reading. Avoid watching TV if it triggers you to eat.
  • Still hungry? Go ahead and eat your preplanned, postfast meal. Initially, don’t get too attached to fasting for a precise number of hours. Within four to six weeks of practicing these techniques with shorter fasts, Nelson says, you’ll probably manage longer fasts just fine.

Note (Commonsense Caution):
If you have any medical issues or concerns, talk to your healthcare provider before starting a fast. Fasting is not recommended if you’re pregnant, nursing, underweight, diabetic, or struggling with mental illness or eating disorders. If you don’t feel well on a fast, cut it short.


Fasting Vs. Detoxing

Not sold on intermittent fasting? Consider a detox program instead.

Unlike fasting, which is about avoiding all foods for a specified period, detox diets propose a restricted menu of cleansing foods. Depending on your health status and motivations, you may find a detox program more appropriate, and perhaps more effective.

“People often feel bad when they fast,” says Mark Hyman, MD, founder of The UltraWellness Center in Massachusetts. “That’s because they are releasing metabolic wastes but not eliminating them properly.”

Some key biochemical pathways essential to detoxification are activated by specific nutrients, he explains. “If you’re fasting, you’re not getting those nutrients, and if those pathways aren’t activated, you’ll get sick. It’s like opening a water faucet of toxins but plugging up the drain. So if you’re going to fast, you have to do it in a very thoughtful way or it can be harmful.”

For this reason, Hyman finds detoxing gentler and more effective than fasting. “If you’re currently eating gluten or dairy and are sensitive or intolerant to them, you’ll find that just stopping those foods will produce dramatic improvements,” he says. “You’ll get even better results by doing a detox program designed to support and enhance detoxification.”

Integrative nutritionist Kathie Swift, MS, RD, LDN, agrees that nutrients drive detoxification. That’s why, during her workshops, Swift emphasizes a program of optimal nutrition designed to kick-start and support a detox experience in which participants are coming off sugar, alcohol, caffeine and processed foods.

Ann Louise Gittleman’s Fast Track Detox Diet (Three Rivers Press, 2006) includes a 24-hour cranberry-based juice fast, but it also calls for seven days of preparation for the one-day fast. Healthy fasting, says Gittleman, PhD, includes preparing the liver and providing fiber for the colon. Since your liver will be working extra hard on fast day, she recommends fueling up on liver-loving foods beforehand, such as broccoli, kale, oranges and eggs. Her detailed plan, she says, helps pull toxins from the body.

The key, Gittleman says, is to plan in advance. “It’s not something you jump right into,” she says. (For more on Hyman’s and Gittleman’s detox diets, search for “The UltraSimple Slimdown” and “Fast Track Liver Detox.”)


Exercising While Fasting

Can you engage in a short-term fast and exercise at the same time? Here’s what our experts had to say.

Think intermittent fasting and exercise are mutually exclusive? Not necessarily, say fitness experts and fasting advocates. Combining a workout routine with intermittent fasting is mostly a matter of common sense.

First, consider your goals. Are you exercising to burn fat or to enhance your performance? If it’s the former, says fitness guru and Eat Stop Eat author Brad Pilon, “training in a fasted state creates a metabolic profile that favors extra fat burning.”

Translation? Do your Zumba class at the end of a 16-hour fast, and your body will delve into fat stores more quickly than if you down an energy bar on the way to class. That’s because our bodies first burn through easy-to-access carbohydrates and then turn to harder-to-retrieve fat stores. Near the end of a fast, your body will already be in the fat-burning phase.

The only problem? Experts suspect that we imperceptibly compensate for that extra fat burning by eating slightly more throughout the day, or by not getting up from your desk, for example, quite as frequently after a fasted workout. “Exercising while fasting tends to be one of those things that works exceptionally well in theory,” Pilon notes. “But, when the human factor gets involved, it’s a bit of a wash for most people.”

The answer, experts say, is to experiment. For some, a light workout during a fast is refreshing. For others, it’s so exhausting they give up on the eating pattern altogether. So, bring in the common-sense element: Keep notes on your workouts, and include the time of day and what you ate beforehand, Pilon advises. Rank each workout on a scale of 1 to 10. Most likely, you’ll notice a trend. Schedule your fasts and workouts during the time frames when you’ve noted the most 8s, 9s, and 10s. You may be surprised at what you find.

“Most people I’m talking to report that their workouts are better when fasted, but some do prefer to exercise after they’ve eaten.”

“Most people I’m talking to report that their workouts are better when fasted, but some do prefer to exercise after they’ve eaten,” Pilon says.

There’s no denying the psychological component. If you’re well into a short-term fasting routine and love the results, you might be predisposed to hit your stride with a workout timed just before the end of a fast. “It really comes down to comfort level,” Pilon says.

Strength coach John Romaniello, founder of Roman Fitness Systems and author of the upcoming book Engineering the Alpha, is someone who prefers training on an empty stomach. “If I eat anything prior to a workout, I get nauseous,” he says. “There are tons of anecdotal reports that generally find people feel stronger and have more endurance when their body is fasted and not having to break down nutrients.”

How exactly does a workout fit into an intermittent schedule? Although one of the benefits of intermittent eating is its flexibility, most people aim to end their workouts and fasts at the same time. If you’re fasting from 10 p.m. until 2 p.m., for example, hit the gym at 1 p.m. And be aware that the first meal following a fast can be the hardest to control, says Romaniello, especially if weight loss is one of your goals.

If your overall goal is more about enhancing your fitness performance — say, shaving a few minutes from your running time — you might want to consider a more comprehensive strategy to incorporate the benefits of intermittent fasting into your race-day plan.

Say your current fitness nutrition involves an array of gels, bars and sports drinks. Intermittent fasting could help your body use fat for fuel more efficiently, allowing you to simplify your race-day eating habits and focus on that personal record.

In fact, before companies started touting the benefits of “scientifically formulated” sports drinks, runners didn’t worry much about liquid nutrition during races. A slew of recent studies shows that the benefits of sports drinks have been largely overhyped: The medical journal BMJ (formerly named the British Medical Journal) recently published several articles on the topic, revealing that many of the scientists who tout the benefits of sports drinks are sponsored by sports-drink companies.

Walk into any health club today, however, and you’ll see the number of people with gallons of neon-colored sports drinks next to their treadmills, convinced it will help them train better. Instead of gulping lemon-lime electrolytes while training, strength and conditioning specialist Mike T. Nelson, MS, CSCS, who is doing doctoral research at the University of Minnesota in kinesiology (exercise science), suggests fasting: “It’s one way to lower your insulin levels so you can more easily use fat as an energy source. Even a lean person has a lot of excess energy in the form of stored fat.”

Your body needs to gradually adapt to using fat as your fuel source, so before your big race, do a couple of runs a week the morning after an overnight fast, and then gradually work up to a 24-hour fast. The process could take 10 to 12 weeks. Track your distance, time and calories consumed, and you should start seeing a trend. Nelson says: “If you can run the same distance at the same or better time on fewer calories, you are getting better at using fat without sacrificing performance.”

About 36 to 48 hours before the race, start adding in carbs. Then, on race day, you have the best of both worlds: Your body is tuned to run on fats much more efficiently and you can add carbs as needed — for a surge toward the finish, for example, or for more demanding portions such as hills.

“Trust me, come race day, your digestive system will thank you,” Nelson says, adding that many fitness enthusiasts tend to experience intestinal distress when it comes to the various sports gels on the market.

Sheila
Sheila Mulrooney Eldred

Sheila Mulrooney Eldred is a Minneapolis-based freelance writer.

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