15 Intermittent Fasting Mistakes That Make You Gain Weight

intermittent fasting mistakes that make you gain weight

most people are usually very successful at losing weight on intermittent fasting

but there are some that don't do so well they might actually plateau or even gain

weight so today we're going to talk about 15 intermittent fasting mistakes

that you want to avoid so that you can reach your goal so you can lose the

weight lose the fat and keep the muscle coming right up hey I'm dr. Ekberg I'm a

holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete and if you want to truly

master health by understanding how the body really works make sure that you

subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you don't miss anything today

we're going to cover several different scenarios we're going to assume that

most people are doing intermittent fasting to lose weight so we want to

talk about how to avoid gaining weight but also if people plateau we want to

make sure that they're not losing muscle and gaining fat and we're going to talk

about how to get back on that weight-loss journey when we do

intermittent fasting there are five things that we want to have happen and

we're going to relate the successes and mistakes to those so the first thing is

you want to burn fat you want to burn fat off the body you want to maintain

your basal metabolic rate you don't want your basal metabolic rate your

metabolism to slow down and make it almost impossible for you to lose weight

in the future that's what happens with calorie restriction and yo-yo diets you

need to reduce your insulin resistance because insulin is the primary storage

hormone it's the primary reason people are overweight as well as getting

pre-diabetic and diabetic we want to keep the muscle most people are afraid

of fasting they think that they will lose muscle they've been told that oh

yeah you'll lose some weight but it's mostly muscle that's not true and we'll

talk about why you also want to increase growth hormone and

growth hormone is a very beneficial hormone it is muscle sparing it

increases metabolism and it is also a generally recognized anti-aging hormone

so it's sort of a byproduct and a component of this whole process the

number one mistake that people make is they eat too many carbs I get a lot of

comments on my OMAD my one meal a day videos and people say that Oh

for me it doesn't matter I can do a high carb OMAD and I still lose weight and

other people say that oh I can't lose weight if I eat any carbs so realize

that everyone is different some people can eat moderate or even high carbs and

if they fast long enough then they would not become insulin resistance they can

reverse their insulin resistance with some carbs so that's not true for most

people and if you want to play it safe then you want to limit your carbs so for

the most part if you're not losing weight you're probably eating too many

carbs and the carbs are triggering insulin and maintaining your insulin

resistance keeping you in storage mode making it impossible for your body to

actually burn the fuel off your body the number two mistake is eating too much

protein a lot of people again are having success with carnivore diets and a lot

of people are eating a high-protein diet and that's great for them but if your

body is really stubborn and you're having some trouble if you're plateauing

chances are that your protein is too high because protein will also trigger

insulin and maintain your insulin resistance

number three mistake eating too much fat so even though the keto and the low carb

high fat and the low carb movement and intermittent fasting principles they all

talk about eating less carbs and higher fat it's still possible to eat too much

fat and how do you know well if you're eating so much fat if you're putting so

much fat into your system on a regular basis

that there is no need for your body to burn the fat off the stores on the body

then you're eating too much fat it is very difficult to eat too much fat

because your body will say no you get much more satiated you get fuller and

you get satisfied longer when you cut back on carbs and you eat more fat but

it's still possible so we need to realize that as a factor that it is

possible to eat too much fat if you're not losing weight then that could be it

number four you could be eating too many calories we don't want to focus on

calories but in the end it's still about calories in calories out the reason we

don't want to focus on calories is if you try to cut back then you will

typically lower your basal metabolic rate that's what people have done with

their yo-yo diets and their calorie restrictions for most of their lives and

they've been monumentally unsuccessful but we still have to realize that it's

about calories and it's still possible to eat too many so if you eat really

really delicious food that invites you to overeat if you eat a lot of keto

bombs and you eat some some things that just makes it easy to eat a lot and you

let's say you have a 16-8 intermittent fasting pattern and you eat

three meals a day and you just eat a lot of food on those three meals then you

probably had to work about it but it's still very possible to eat too many

calories number five mistake is eating too few

calories and that sounds funny it's like well how can the opposite cause the same

problem well if we eat fewer calories then there's a chance that we will

reduce our metabolism that we will reduce our basal metabolic rate and to

really understand why we have to look at number six the difference between a low

calorie diet and fasting because fasting is a low calorie diet is limiting the

calories it is limiting the fuel intake but it's not

doing it by reducing the size of small frequent meals it is doing it by eating

fewer meals and there's a world of difference in how the body interprets

that you could make it even worse eating low calorie eating small frequent meals

if you eat a lot of carbs but even if you don't you're still giving the body

signals several times a day so let's say you're eating three meals a day you're

giving your body insulin signals three times a day to store something and if

you're always eating a little bit less than you really want if you're

restricting your calories then two things happen first your body perceives

lack its senses that there's just never quite enough the food keeps coming on a

regular basis but there's never quite enough I better slow down my metabolism

and save some for a rainy day however that does not happen with fasting if you

eat fewer meals but you eat till you're full then the body says oh I don't know

when the next meal is going to come but when I get it it's always plenty and in

those cases the body does not lower the metabolism the basal metabolic rate so

you could eat let's say that you want to have you want to have your body burn

2,000 calories and then you eat three small meals at five hundred calories

then it might seem like you'd be at a 500 calorie deficit but because the body

perceives a deficiency a lack a starvation it's going to lower the basal

metabolic rate until you plateau the beauty of the intermittent fasting is

you could eat a lot you could eat 2,000 calories every other day which turns out

to be a thousand calories per day but with no loss of metabolism you're

actually going to burn a thousand calories

the body so it's really critical to understand the difference and this has

been verified in studies that this is how it works

even if low-calorie diets can make you lose some weight initially your body

figures it out and it plateaus relatively quickly

number seven mistake is you're not drinking enough water everyone always

wants to know what can I drink when I'm fasting and they're focusing on the

coffee and the tea and the herb tea and the drinks of various kinds but water is

still your drink of choice even though you could have some coffee you could

have some tea you still want to drink mostly water and you want to make sure

that you get enough minerals because minerals hold water it's osmotic

pressure the water in the body is held by minerals when you lose minerals you

lose fluid and vice-versa so you want to keep up the intake of both and one thing

that can happen is that you think you're hungry when in fact you're just thirsty

so a lot of times by just drinking some salt water or just water then you find

the hey I wasn't hungry after all number eight mistake is to get out of control

if you get too hungry if you go at it too fast if you don't give your body

time to get fat adapted if you go straight for a fast that's too long

longer than your body is capable of handling if it's shocked then you might

get so hungry that you just freak out and you say I'll have to eat something

and you eat just about anything so the risk here is that you overeat or you eat

low quality food or high carb or sugar or things like that and now obviously

that defeats the purpose of the fasting so don't let yourself get too hungry do

things gradually learn how your body reacts plan your food out and know ahead

of time what you're gonna do number nine mistake is to not exercise

so even though it is possible to lose weight without exercise it's really

irrelevant because exercise has so many benefits for your health that you don't

even want to consider not exercising optimum health

is not possible without exercise so just do it now for fasting purposes and for

insulin and cortisol and growth hormone purposes there are certain ways that you

want to exercise and I've done several videos on that but the thing to

understand is weight lifting and high intensity exercise tends to trigger a

lot of growth hormone so extended fasting I don't know exactly the numbers

of where this kicks in after how long but if you fast for a solid week or so

you can increase your growth hormone by twelve hundred percent and it's

obviously some sort of gradual increase up to that peak point of growth hormone

now high intensity exercise can increase it by itself by about three to four

hundred percent so fasting and exercise high intensity exercise work together to

drive up that growth hormone and if you exercise while fasted then you amplify

that benefit now the key is that you don't want to spend a lot of time in the

anaerobic mode because now if you're huffing and puffing your body switches

from burning mostly fat to burning mostly carbs and because you don't have

a lot of carbs in your system now your body is going to make cortisol which is

a stress hormone it's going to break down muscle so that it can use the

protein to make glucose via gluconeogenesis so there are many many

reasons why you want to understand how to exercise so walking is great because

it's low intensity and you don't trigger cortisol cortisol triggers insulin and

drives insulin resistance whereas short duration high intensity even though it's

anaerobic it's so short that you don't trigger a lot of cortisol but you still

get the growth hormone benefits so if you hit a plateau and you haven't been

exercising that could very well be the reason so don't even question it just do

it anyway number 10 stress we just talked about

cortisol from an aerobic exercise long duration and aerobic exercise but stress

in itself can also do that all forms of stress whether it's physical stress from

exercise or it's just emotional stress or you're just sort of that's your

lifestyle you if you're in stress if you feel stressed if you feel tense then you

will make higher cortisol levels cortisol will increase glucose blood

sugar and you will increase insulin and you will make yourself more insulin

resistant not less that's a very powerful factor that we don't want to

overlook sleep goes together with that as well so poor quality sleep not enough

sleep irregular sleep sleeping at different hours of the day not getting a

continuous sleep during the dark period of the day all of those constitute poor

sleep they will increase cortisol they are a form of stress and you will have a

much harder time to reverse your insulin resistance if you don't sleep well

number 12 mistake is that you don't change things up that your body if you

make it to pattern if you make it too regular if your intermittent fasting

times and your eating patterns if they're too repetitious they're too much

the same then your body gets used to it and it says oh I've got this I don't

need to change anything I'll just sort of settle in right here so you always

want to change things up you don't want to stay on OMAD forever you don't want

to 18:6 forever you don't want to do 36-hour fasts you change it up you do

some 18-6 you do some thirty-six hours you do a couple of

three-day fasts you change it and you also change the amounts of foods and the

types of foods because your body will adapt to anything the last three items

on my list are I have question marks on them because they're very often brought

up on other channels and I don't know for sure to what extent they're true but

I'm kind of questioning whether they're a big deal number thirteen here is

combining carbs and fat when you break a fast and the thinking there is that

after you've been fasting you haven't been making insulin so your body is very

insulin sensitive yes it is more insulin sensitive than it was but if you have

been extremely insulin resistant for many many years you're not going to get

rid of that in in a single fast whether it's a week or two weeks even so you're

not going to become extremely insulin sensitive just like that the other

reason that I'm kind of questioning that a little bit is that your body is pretty

smart so even though you are more insulin sensitive than you were before

the fast all that means is that even if you eat some carbs your body is not

going to make excess insulin because you're more insulin sensitive your body

will not make so much insulin will make just enough to handle the food you ate

based on the level of insulin sensitivity that you have now now of

course that doesn't mean that you go crazy and eat a bunch of junk carbs you

still want to eat a low-carb diet but it's not that you have to be extremely

careful just because of that and again this is my opinion I don't have any

solid facts or results to back that up but I don't think it's such a big deal

number 14 is sweeteners and of course they're not talking about sugar they're

talking about stevia and monk fruit and chicory root

and the non calorie sweeteners I'm assuming that if you've been watching

this channel that you won't touch the artificial non calorie sweeteners

because they will they're basically poison and they will not do you any good

so here's why they talked about them so much there's something called a cephalic

response that anytime that you put something in your mouth that tastes

sweet your brain will send a signal to the pancreas to make insulin because

it's expecting based on the sweet taste that you ate some sugar thinks hey

there's some sugar there's some carbs coming I better be prepared so it kicks

out some insulin now my thinking is that this is a very minut response because

there is so little carbohydrate in your system that there probably won't be much

of an insulin response and here's how you can check for yourself so you get a

glucose meter and you monitor before and after having some of that sweetener and

here's what you want to have happen some people think that oh it's like sugar so

it's gonna raise my blood sugar and that's probably not what's gonna happen

again I can't guarantee how your body's going to react it's possible you eat

something sweet and your liver kicks out some extra glucose from glycogen but for

most people what's gonna happen is that you taste sweet you increase your

insulin but there's no sugar actually coming into the system so your blood

sugar should be lower after having that sweetener because you get an insulin

response but there's no actual food so here's the thing to watch for if you get

an enormous drop then that's a problem for you you should stay away from that

sweetener if you drink this stuff many many times a day and you get yourself

hypoglycemic that would be really bad but my guess for most people is that

there probably will be no difference or it will

maybe a point or two and that's not a big deal because again in your

bloodstream you have less than a teaspoon of sugar at any given time and

if your blood sugar drops by a point or two we're talking a difference in

milligrams you're not going to change your insulin resistance because you're

not driving any fuel into the cell we're talking milligrams if that if you're

curious and I think it's a good idea for you to check then see what happens if

you don't become hypoglycemic then you can probably do that at least in

moderation number fifteen mistake bulletproof coffee and bone broth

does it break fast yes it breaks the fast but what are we really after we're

looking to burn fat keep up the basal metabolic rate reduce insulin resistance

keep the muscle increased growth hormone if it doesn't mess with that then it's

okay so the question is how much are you having if you're doing in a fast and

it's the difference between you breaking the fast completely or helping you

through it then it's a good thing then you should have your bulletproof coffee

you should have your bone broth if it helps you get and now there's six hours

or another 12 hours or an extra day or two on your fast then do it because it's

helping you but if you're doing OMAD or if you're doing an 18-6 and you're

having each bulletproof coffee is three to four to five hundred calories and you

have two of those a day then chances are that it's going to have you take too

many calories too much fat it's going to keep you from reaching these goals just

because you're violating so many of these principles so you've got to use

some common sense and I would say it's okay if it helps you through the fast

and it will still reduce your insulin resistance but again if you hit a

plateau then chances are you are violating some of these rules and then

you're probably better cutting it out so you want to understand the principles

around these you want to understand that people react differently and once you

understand them you can try them out and see what happens if it works for you

great if it doesn't work for you change it up go one step further do one thing

more to get the results you want these are all tools and the more that you

apply the tools the better your results some people just have to do a little bit

some people have to do a lot ultimately you just want to make sure that you're

burning the fat that you're maintaining or increasing your basal metabolic rate

that you're reducing your insulin resistance and that you're keeping your

muscle so again growth hormone is going to help you keep

your muscle and the weight training and the high intensity training the interval

training is going to increase the growth hormone but it's also going to use your

muscles it's going to strain your muscles it's going to stress your

muscles to give your body an extra incentive to build more muscle as it

repairs the damage from the exercise so realize

that exercise is damaged that's the whole point that you're stressing you're

damaging so the body has to rebuild it bigger and that would be an extra

incentive to keep the muscle but I wouldn't go and do super hard extended

workouts because now you'll probably trigger some cortisol and if you're

fasting you probably don't have all the resources to maintain that muscle at

that point so do your weights keep it short do your

high-intensity interval training keep it short if you're new to the

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sting and insulin resistance thank you for watching and I'll see you in the

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