Transcription
Imagine that you've been intermittent fasting, but you haven't been paying attention to research that's come out that's suggested that maybe you would get more benefit if you do things a little bit different. The good news is, almost everything that's come out has actually made fasting easier. So, this is going to serve as somewhat of a complete guide for how to do intermittent fasting for fat loss, but also for building muscle, and how to sort of time things. But again, the good news is, everything has gotten easier.
But the big name of the game now is, how do we toggle between what is called sympathetic and parasympathetic states? What we've learned throughout the literature over the last four or five years is that fasting is stressful. It's hard on the body. So that's why you're seeing people like Dr. Peter Attia, some of these other people, even Dr. Ronda Patrick, not condoning fasting as much. Whereas I'm someone that's a huge fan of it because it works. We just have to learn how to implement it rather than throw it all away. So we can teach ourselves how to use the stress and then how to back away from the stress, so we get maximum fat loss, maximum muscle building, and then maximum recovery, so we can turn around and do it again.
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So the first thing that's going to really change is now we're going to focus more on what is called burst fasting. What I mean by burst fasting is, I used to be a fan of going one or two days on with fasting, then one or two days off, and never really fasting back-to-back days. And I used to be a big fan of that because most people would do 16:8 intermittent fasting, where they fast for 16 hours and eat for eight hours, or an eight-hour window in which they can't eat. And I was always concerned that that would slow down the metabolism over time. And that's a valid concern because if you just continue to decrease calories at the same rate by skipping breakfast every day, that just becomes your norm. Where's the catalyst for change, right? Fat loss comes from a rapid change or a shock to the body.
Burst fasting is where we now go three to five days in a row of intermittent fasting, not a three to five day fast itself, but three to five 18-hour fasts in a row, which is hard for me to fathom, but it started working really, really well. But then you take three to five days off of fasting. This does a few things. One, it prevents you from getting somewhat psychologically addicted to the fasted state. It is addicting. It feels good, we feel light, we feel airy. But then next thing we know, our recovery starts to kind of go downhill. And that's when people bail. People like Dr. Peter Attia, it's like, I'm not going to fast anymore. It's not, no shame on him. It's just a matter of, no, we don't need to be that black or white. We can have some middle ground.
Now, it also allows us this chance to recover and keep our calories higher on the days we don't fast, so that way we end up with the recovery. And the fasting ends up being a shock. Now, I used to always be about fasting being the anomaly anyway, where you would go, you know, maybe two days a week of fasting, make it aggressive. Well, in this case, we're just changing the timeline. We're going three, four, five days in a row of fasting, three, four, five days in a row of not fasting. My recommendation on the days you are fasting, those would be good days to not have as many carbohydrates in the mix. Maximize the effects of the fast, maximize the effects of lipolysis. Carbohydrates do inhibit lipolysis, even though they can be good for recovery. Okay, so we want to kind of get the maximum fat burning there. Then on the days you're not fasting, if you want to have some carbs, go ahead and sneak them in somewhere, probably in the evening time.
The second thing that I suggest people do differently, that I'm starting to do differently, is I have separate high-calorie fasting days and low-calorie fasting days. I don't think you need to have a serious program to this. I think you just need to have some randomness to it. What I mean by that is, some days you're going to fast and you might not feel like eating a lot in your eating window. Don't force it. But other days you might feel like you need to eat more. You might even eat more during your eating period than you do in a day that you're not fasting. Let me say that again, you might even eat more during your eating period of a fasting day than you do during the days that you don't fast. Doesn't mean you do it every day. Remember, the magic of the fast is during the fast. I know there's people out there that say, hey, it's all about caloric deficit, caloric balance. That definitely is a big piece of it. But we know now that there's a lot of other moving pieces, and it's not just about that day over day. Okay, we have to look again with a wide-angle perspective here.
So what I'll do is, some days I might only have 1,500 calories on a fasting day. Some days I might have 3,000. It all depends on my activity level, it depends on how I feel. So randomly fluctuate that, keep your body guessing a little bit.
The next one is something that's really important if you want the easier route, something that's easier to maintain. Just skip breakfast. But 18:6 is the new 16:8. What? Remember that 16:8 was always the Hollywood sort of intermittent fasting length, 16 hours of fasting and eight hours of eating. Now, we pretty much know that 18 hours is really where you want to be. 16 hours is just skipping breakfast and forgetting to eat. 18 hours, something happens pretty significantly in terms of AMPK, in terms of gluconeogenesis after 16 hours. What that means is your body does tend to start tapping into more resources, it's stored body fat, things like that, after 16 hours. So I would say 18 becomes sort of the new minimum. I know it's hard, but it's much more effective.
Okay, now if you are someone that's trying to build muscle, it's a little bit different. We're going to talk about that in a minute. But if you want to go a more advanced route, what I would recommend is taking two or three days a week, again, consolidating them together, giving yourself the recovery, maybe three to four days per week, and skip dinner. That way you can tell your family, hey, for the next three days, I'm not having dinner. I'm going to fast through dinner. And then you go three, four days, five days, and you do eat dinner. It's like, it's not like you're having to abandon the whole thing. The reason that it's more effective is because when you wake up in the morning, you're in that deeper fasted state. It's going to allow you to go into those workouts and pull more fat from storage, plain and simple. Insulin levels are going to be lower. I know there's people that are going to deny this, and I'm done trying to please everybody. The fact of the matter is, is this works. It works for me. Some evidence backs it up, and it works for thousands of other people that I've talked to and I've instructed, and probably hundreds of thousands that have watched my videos.
So at the end of the day, we can talk about calories in, calories out. But we can also say, hey, wait a minute. If you're deeper in a fast, it's pretty clear you're probably going to be producing more ketones. You're probably going to burn more fat. The deeper in a fast that you are. So skipping dinner and doing your workout in the morning, followed by breaking a fast, it's probably the most aggressive way to go.
Now, here's what's a little bit different. Now, if fat loss is your goal, I recommend 30 to 40 minutes of resistance training on your fasting days, followed by only about 15 minutes of cardio. Now, when I say resistance training, I do mean relatively short rests, 60 to 90 seconds, move pretty quick, maybe do EOM style, whatever, 30 to 40 minutes. The reason is, I am now pretty darn convinced that when it comes to fat loss, the most important thing during a fast is muscle preservation. If we talk about what these experts, and again, I'm not saying this in any cheeky way, Ronda Patrick, Dr. Peter Attia, some of these that have kind of turned around on fasting a little bit, well, what's interesting is that they are most concerned about the muscle loss. If you talk to a lot of people that fast, they don't weight train when they're fasting, they do cardio when they're fasting. Shift that. Flip the paradigm. Flip the script. Go ahead and do your resistance training fasted so you keep your muscle. So then you kind of get rid of the overall negative aspect of fasting in the first place. The biggest driver for muscle protein synthesis is actual stimulus, resistance training. That's the biggest driver for building muscle is being able to actually stimulate the muscle. So you're not going to lose much muscle if you use it while you're fasting. Okay? So do not worry so much about the cardio on the fasting days. On the contrary, do the cardio on your non-fasting days. Okay? Cardio is going to be very good for building muscle in the long run. But in the short term, there's no doubt it's catabolic. So why would you do that on a fasting day when you're trying to basically preserve as much muscle as possible? Do more cardio on your feeding days. You can still do your cardio in a quote fasted state first thing in the morning, but you don't have to do it on a fasting day. I would recommend eating shortly after your cardio if muscle building is your goal. Remember that protein, calories, and stimulus matter the most. Carbohydrates don't matter anymore. We're not worried about carbs for muscle growth unless you are a high-stress person that needs to bring cortisol levels down. We can talk about that later.
What I would recommend if muscle building is your goal is take two days a week where you do aggressive 20 to 22-hour fasts, but two days a week back-to-back. So you have two days out of the week that are aggressive, aggressive fat burning days to keep you in check. And then you have five days to really kickstart everything, get muscle protein synthesis going, get things rocking and rolling, and really building the way that you want to build. Okay?
Now, if you wanted to throw other things into the mix, if you wanted to even potentially throw peptides, you could talk to your doctor about that, though it could work really well during a muscle building phase with fasting. A lot has shifted in the supplement world. Okay, we are now seeing some really interesting evidence on what's called YK-11 and RAD140. Particularly in a fasted state. YK-11 and RAD140 are massive appetite suppressants. They destroy your appetite. But additionally, what's really fascinating about them is they are what is called an alpha-2 adrenergic receptor agonist. They bind to the alpha-2 adrenergic receptor. Okay? So what this means is it's essentially blocking the blocking of fat liberation. We have sort of an inherent blockage preventing fat from getting out and breaking down into free fatty acids. And when that alpha-2 adrenergic receptor is acted upon, that doesn't allow us to really liberate those fats. What YK-11 and RAD140 does is it binds to those and it actually blocks that whole process. Long story short, it allows fat to be liberated, allows the triglyceride to break down into free fatty acids. And we've seen this evidence, strong evidence. And I've posted other videos talking about YK-11 and RAD140. Start with 5mg, and it may be something that is too intense. You might want to talk to a physician. It is something that's totally legal and over-the-counter, but it's intense. And it kind of works along a similar pathway of caffeine, but a little bit longer acting. RAD140 is more expensive, but it's higher quality.
The other thing is TMG, trimethylglycine. You're probably no stranger to it by now because I have talked at nauseam about it. Okay, it is very interesting as a methyl donor, which ultimately ends up lowering inflammation and increasing fat burning and muscle building. The evidence is really strong. So even just like a small amount, a couple grams of TMG is going to be powerful. You could just use a recommended dose and use it daily. It's pretty simple.
The next one, which is really something that you've heard of before, but it is unbelievably important now, and I'm talking at higher dosages during fasting days, and that's creatine. Hear me out on this. I have noticed such a significant change if I am a fasting block where I'm fasting more by literally using 5 to 15 grams of creatine on a fasting day. My brain is on fire. I don't get hungry. And my muscles stay full. And most importantly, I'm hydrated. It's one of the most important things for hydration during a fast is possibly having creatine. So intracellular water comes in. So don't be shy with the creatine. I put a link for some stick packs. Actually, you know the company, it's called Create. But at a 50% off, like legit 50% off creatine stick packs. They're 5g stick packs and they're sweetened with monk fruit, entirely fasting friendly. So you can have them during a fast. I promise you, they will keep your appetite at bay, but they'll keep your energy high. So if I'm fasting a lot, my calories are low, 10 to 15 grams of creatine throughout the day, I spread it evenly in like little water bottle sips throughout the day. I just sip on it. Those stick packs make it kind of easy to just sip on throughout the day because I can put it in a water jug or whatever. But my strength stays high even in a fasted state. So again, that link is down below, 50% off Create's creatine stick packs. They still have their gummies too, those are super awesome. But these sugar-free stick packs are even cooler. So again, link down below in the top line of the description.
When it comes to breaking your fast, things are about the same, but there's one big change. The carbohydrates. Okay? So when you break your fast, I recommend 20 to 30 grams of light, lean protein right when you break your fast. Been saying that since 2016. Okay? 30 to 60 minutes later, go ahead and bring in more protein and more fats. But I don't recommend bringing in the carbs anymore. I used to be about, hey, now's a time to add some carbs in the mix. The interesting thing is that now we're seeing that carb timing doesn't do a ton for recovery unless you feel extra like, ah, after your workout or after your, uh, fast. Right? Then carbs can kind of help bring you down. But I recommend just going protein, and then the next meal, some protein and some fat, and then maybe add carbs into the evening if you want to add them in because then you're going to get better sleep out of the equation too. And all is fine and dandy. But I think you're going to get more if you just had the carbs in later than maybe add the carbs in right after you break a fast where you might feel lethargic. There's just too much evidence saying that carb timing doesn't matter. Like carb timing pre-workout doesn't really matter. What matters most is if you do eat carbs, are your glycogen stores somewhat full? That's all that really matters. And when I had Dr. Mike Israetel on the channel, he was talking about this. He's like, doesn't matter if you get 400 grams of carbs from binging on sushi at night or if you sprinkle it throughout the day. Bottom line is just get it in if you want the carbs. But don't try to time it specifically with your fast. It might just disrupt the hormones that are improving fat loss to begin with.
Here's a couple of fasting dos and don'ts for this coming year. Fasting dos: Definitely utilize a sauna or hot bath during a fast. It's an exercise mimetic. You will get a fat loss effect and you definitely get some growth hormone benefit, which can really help preserve some muscle during that fast as well. Resistance training is definitely a do. Upper aerobic work is definitely a do. That means upper zone three, even into zone four, is a solid do. Definitely enjoy that. Drinking fair bits of coffee, drinking fair bits of tea. Another one that's kind of added in now is yerba mate, even better for fat loss than green tea, but it kind of gets you going. So maybe just use the yerba mate right when you start the day, and then switch over to the green tea as the day goes on.
Now, a couple of fasting don'ts. I don't recommend you cold plunge on a fasting day. It's just too much on the allostatic load. Remember, the whole name of the game here is how do we shift from stress, fasting state to parasympathetic? We want to turn on, and then we want to turn off. All the recovery, all the repair, all the rejuvenation happens in the recovery phase. Problem is, too much of us live in the recovery phase. We try to make our life calm and relaxed all the time. We need to have periodic stress. That's what we're trying to do with fasting. So we're trying to go longer periods of stress, longer periods of recovery, just different ratio here than we used to do. Now, when it comes down to cold plunges, that's a lot of stress. So if you're experienced, it's one thing. But if you're someone that's just like trying to add cold exposure in, just do it on the days when you're not fasting. So it's not that stressful. It's just a short acute stress rather than a chronic stressor. Do not do a bunch of zone five cardio. Maybe a little bit in a fasted state is fine, or if you're experienced, like I'll do it now and then, but I don't recommend going balls to the wall zone five on a fasting day. It's just too much stress on the body. Why do that to yourself? Another thing, if you're sick, don't do it. Okay? I've talked about that before. It's not the time. You don't flush it out. That's not how it works. Okay? You don't starve it out. I know there's sayings about that. Let's just, let's not go there. It doesn't work that way. You do need some recovery.
And then additionally, I am now starting to think that I used to be okay with diet soda during a fast. I'm starting to think that maybe we should limit this. I'm not a big fan of aspartame. I'm not a big fan of sucralose anyway. But I used to kind of give people a pass on that being like, hey, have it. But after having Dr. Ben Bikman on my channel, talking about even how these things can impact like insulin levels, but talking more so, so doc to doc, Nick Norwitz, I'm kind of like, you know, maybe it's not worth it. Maybe I'll stick to stevia, monk fruit, and not really worry about having diet sodas. Not that I really had them ever during a fast unless it was like a treat or a moment of indulgence. But I know some people use them to get by. I recommend switching to something like LMNT electrolytes or sip on that Create creatine, uh, stuff that I was talking about, like the stick packs. Sip on something sweet, but it doesn't have to be sucralose or aspartame. It just, maybe not the best.
What about post-fasting supplementation? Remember, our goal here is stimulating that parasympathetic state. Okay? I like to still moderately dose fish oil. Now, I do combine it personally with C15. I know I've talked about having, you know, Dr. Ben Watson on, talking about how C15 might be more important than fish oil. I still think they're both important. So for me, I'll take like two to 3,000 milligrams of fish oil, usually skewed more towards the DHA because I want the brain benefit and the calming effect there. I'll take 500 milligrams of magnesium, usually in the form of di magnesium malate. But now I also add an additional 200 milligrams from magnesium glycinate before bed, trying to relax myself as much as I can. I'll also use Nicotinyl GABA, which is a GABA supplement that's bound to B3. I'll also use Honokiol, which is known as magnolia bark. Okay? This can be really, really good for just tilting your brain towards the GABA system more. If you remember, I had Dr. Scott Sher on my channel. He's a huge GABA guy. He's all about GABA, that neurotransmitter that helps us be in that calmer state, which is better for recovery, better for sleep, and better for being able to turn it on when we need to turn it on. Okay? So he's got that product, Troom. This isn't a plug for them, but I've used that product. I love that product. That has Nicotinyl GABA and also has, uh, Honokiol. Kyle has some of these other things in some of their other products. Point is, try to calm yourself down. Another thing that I use tryptophan now. Okay? I will do usually a 1,000 milligrams of tryptophan and then I will also do about 400 milligrams of theanine. So things have changed. And yeah, I'll add a multivitamin in. But these are my relaxation supplements. I am all about calming myself down. I might even use a little Muscimol now and then, which is kind of like a, uh, U, it's a, it's a legal mushroom that kind of helps you calm down. But some people has an adverse effect, kind of amps them up a little bit more.
Number nine, carbs allocated towards the evening. I talked about this earlier, but that's not going to ruin your blood sugar. That's not going to make you have this big spike overnight. That's not how it works. Okay? If you are insulin resistant, that could be a problem. And if you're eating within two or three hours of bed, that could be a problem. But your last meal of the day, maybe two or three hours before bed, you're perfectly fine to have some carbohydrates. You might find it helps your sleep, especially if you're taking tryptophan, because then the insulin spike allows the tryptophan to get into the brain, and it's a recipe for good sleep. So I do recommend it if recovery and sleep is something that is a priority to you. We want to get that deep sleep, we want those growth hormone pulses to counteract the fact that we're in extreme deficit with fasting.
And the last, most important thing that I really think people need to know. You are in control. You are in charge, not your fasting schedule. I spent years letting my fasting schedule control my life. Meaning, if I was stressed, I would still fast on a day I was supposed to fast. If you get an argument with your spouse, if you get fired from work, it's probably not a good idea to fast. Your allostatic load, that overall state of stress is too high. Again, we go back to what Dr. Peter Attia, Dr. Ronda Patrick, all these people that are pivoting on fasting, it's all because too much stress and catabolism. We are in control of that. Like, why is fasting in control of us? We can say, hey, I'm not going to fast today. We can say, hey, I'm not going to fast this week or this month because stress is too high. And then go back to it hardcore. You are in control.
So as always, please keep it locked in here on my channel, and I'll see you tomorrow.