5 Reasons Why INTERMITTENT FASTING Burns Fat FASTER

Hello Health Champions. Today I want to talk about why intermittent fasting

burns fat faster. 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 you subscribe and hit that notification bell so you don't miss

anything. Now anything that's successful and gets popular but that's a little bit

off the beaten path is gonna get a lot of controversy around it so we're going to

talk about five reasons why fat is burned faster when you fast the first

way that fasting helps burn fat is that it's very effective at depleting hepatic

glycogen hepatic just means liver and glycogen is a storage form of excess

carbohydrate the body can't store a whole lot of carbohydrate but it can

store some and it stores it in the muscles which is fuel for the muscles

but the the glycogen can't get from the muscles to the rest of the body

however the liver is a reserve of carbohydrate for the rest of the body

now I want to clear something up about fuel the body has three types of fuels

available carbohydrates fat and protein and it does burn them preferentially in

this order but it's not like a lot of people have said or been told that you

will only burn carbs first that you will not burn any fat until one hundred

percent of the carbs are gone that's just not how it works there's

always a mix of fuels that are being burned protein is being spared as much

as possible you really just burn protein if none of these are available or if you

have eaten excess protein if there's more protein by far available then some

of that's going to be used for fuel but carbs and fat are used in a different

proportion depending on how much is available if a

lot of carbs are available it'll burn mostly carbs and then there's a very low

incentive to burn fat so as you burn through the carbs as your glycogen

stores go down now the incentive to burn fat increases and it generally takes 12

to 24 hours to deplete the hepatic glycogen or to reduce it significantly

to where fat burning kicks in a lot of people only get about eight hours of

fasting the people who eat a late meal and then breakfast the first thing in

the morning they might only get eight hours of fasting or even less if they

sleep five or six hours and during that time you probably get into a little bit

of fat burning but very very little fat is being burned however if you can

increase that fasting period if you skip the breakfast and you have your first

meal at lunch let's say and then you have your last meal at 8 now you have a

16 hour fasting window and now you're giving your body a much much better

opportunity to burn fat and if you can stretch that even a couple of more hours

now that's two more hours where your body gets better and better where you're

shifting more and more toward fat burning and obviously they're longer you

can stretch that the more fat you burn the second way that fasting burns fat is

by reducing insulin whenever we eat something insulin is released and

insulin is a storage hormone so when insulin is high we really can't burn

much fat at all therefore lowering insulin increases fat burning and

fasting is the most powerful way to reduce insulin so by lowering insulin

fasting allows us to become fat burning and even more important long term is fat

adapted we can teach the body through longer periods of fasting longer than

eight hours at least we teach the body to use

fat as the primary fuel and as you probably know if you watched a few

videos sugar and carbs will increase insulin the most so we can start

reducing insulin by eating low carbs that'll keep insulin and glycogen

lower but if you think about it fasting is zero carbs during the time that

you're fasting you're introducing zero carbs to the body so that's the fastest

most powerful way to reduce insulin the third mechanism by which fasting

increases fat burning is that it up regulates fat burning hormones when you

fast you increase human growth hormone and while there's a lot of things such

as high-intensity interval training that can raise human growth hormone

tremendously fasting is the most powerful and the longer fast like three

to five days can increase it up to twelve hundred and fifty percent however

you don't have to go quite that long to get significant benefits even with a 16

18 20 hour fast you're still getting dramatically higher level of growth

hormone than if you're eating six meals a day a tremendous additional benefit is

that it's muscle sparing and that's another myth that you hear a lot is that

fasting would waste muscles and no it does not

unless you're just completely starving if your body has no resources then of

course eventually you're going to waste some muscle as well but fasting produces

growth hormone for the purpose of sparing the muscle and burning the fat

so that's another mechanism that allows that selective using of fat another

hormone is nor-epinephrine or nor-adrenaline and even though that is a

stress hormone we have to keep in mind that some stress is beneficial that when

we do things like exercise and cold showers and fasting those are

physiologically beneficial by stressing the body just a

little bit we give it a reason to do something better

the fourth mechanism is that fasting allows a longer period of fat burning so

once we are fat burning the more time we stay in that state then it's obvious

we're gonna burn more fat okay, you knew that but think of it this way also that

even if you eat low carb I mean if you eat high carb it's more so but even low

carb a meal is an interruption in fat burning when you don't put any fuel in

the only fuel available is on the body but as soon as you put fuel in now the

body has a choice it can burn the fuel on the body or the stuff that you just

put in and obviously it's going to reduce the burning of the fat on the

body so think about it this way if you have a calorie restriction diet you're

eating 3 meals a day plus snacks but you're eating really really low calorie

foods like hundred calorie snacks and 200 calorie meals low fat rice cakes and

things like that the blue line represents blood sugar insulin and

glycogen because all three of those go together and they interfere with fat

burning so let's say that you had a meal the night before and then you go to bed

and now you're in fat storing mode because your body has to store away it

has to process through the meal that you had but then sometime during the night

you cross over and you're done with the storing and you get into fat burning but

then you wake up and you have breakfast so now you get into fat storing again

and if you're eating really low calories then the food isn't gonna last that long

so you probably dip into just a little bit of fat burning but you're eating

high carb low fat so you have to eat frequently and you're hungry and you're

just eating is tiny tiny bites of things so you're burning a little bit of fat

but you're interrupting that fat burning throughout the day so here's

a meal and a snack and a meal and a snack and a meal and a snack and maybe

between you get a little bit of fat burning but most of the time you spend

in storing and because you're reducing calories but you're not really burning a

whole lot of fat that is what reduces your metabolism you're constantly

pushing your insulin which is storing so now your body doesn't have the fuel and

it has to slow the metabolism to compensate for that low calorie input

and then you have your evening snack and then you go to bed and you repeat the

whole process now let's say that you try intermittent fasting but you're eating

the same types of food lots of bread and pasta and oatmeal and so forth so you're

starting off at the same point and you're crossing it at the about the same

place during the night you get into fat burning but when you wake up you don't

have breakfast first thing you go four more hours before lunch and that gives

you four more hours of fat burning so you get a longer period and you get a

little bit deeper into fat burning then you have one meal and then you get into

a little bit of fat-burning before you have your evening meal and then you

start over again so this is better than this because you're allowing longer

periods of reducing insulin so your body is going to have more access to the fat

store so you're not gonna get as hungry and the incentive to lower your

metabolism is not as strong as with the frequent meals but there's always a

better way so let's combine intermittent fasting with low carb so it's the same

two meals but because it's low carbs we're starting at a lower level of

glucose we're starting with lower glycogen and lower insulin so it's not

going to take us as long we're going to hit that fat burning zone much earlier

during the night and even if we eat at the same time at lunch or in the

afternoon we have spent more time in fat

burning and we get to a much deeper more profound level of fat burning on

low-carb then we eat but we're not raising the glucose and insulin and

glycogen as much so again we get quicker back to the fat burning we're always

closer to fat burning on a low-carb diet and then of course we have our meal and

we repeat it but all in all with low carb and intermittent fasting you spend

much more time in fat burning than either of these other examples the fifth

way it helps burn fat is that it helps you eat less alright how does it do that

it helps with improving insulin sensitivity when you're fasting insulin

goes down you become more insulin sensitive and that makes more fat

available for burning the calorie counting mafia is right you have to eat

fewer calories than you burn if you want to lose weight but they're wrong in that

calories are the thing to focus on you can't just eat fewer calories you have

to eat fewer calories in a way that doesn't make you hungry and that's what

fasting allows you to do when insulin is high it's a storage hormone it packs

away the fat and when insulin goes down that fat becomes available now we have

an additional fuel source we don't have to rely just on the calories we eat we

can add the calories that were just liberated by lowering insulin so now we

have more fuel available from the body our energy reserves just the available

energy reserves just increased and therefore we get less hungry another way

is that insulin is tied to leptin and leptin is a satiety hormone when you eat

you're supposed to get full and when you put food in your body

leptin is produced and leptin tells the brain that hey I had something to eat

I'm full but insulin blunts it blocks the message

of leptin so you eat and the leptin goes to tell the brain hey I'm full but now

that message doesn't reach the brain so you keep eating you're still hungry

so by improving insulin sensitivity we also improve leptin sensitivity we have

improved we restore the fullness signaling and you get less hungry is

intermittent fasting a good diet well I don't like to call anything a diet I

just want to look at how does it work for health and how does it work for

results and does it get results absolutely can it fit into your

lifestyle and is it sustainable absolutely what's the point of doing

something if it's not sustainable if you do something that creates a certain

results but you don't maintain it then it's just a matter of time before you're

back where you started or worse so it's absolutely sustainable is it easy yes

it's the easiest thing you can do because all you do is you do less of

something you're already doing so instead of eating six meals you go down

to three and then you go down to two and maybe go down to one it's about not

doing something you're already doing how much easier could it get then there are

different patterns so which one do you pick well I would suggest that you start

with something like a 16-8 and then you go to whatever length of fasting gets

you the results that you are looking for so if you get the results with 16 hours

of fasting an 8 hour feeding window great if you need to go a little further

then that's what you do and then once you've reached the goals then depending

on your schedule and your lifestyle based on your metabolism and your

genetics then you might go to OMAD and then you might backtrack or you might

stay on one meal a day a lot of people once they've lost the weight they

probably will go back to a 16-8 or 18-6 personally I do a combination of

these three occasionally I'll do a two day fast and I plan to start doing a

three day fast about once a quarter but for the most part I just stick to these

because it's super convenient I eat one large meal a day and sometimes a smaller

one and for me that lifestyle fits perfectly I love the fact that I'm not

organizing my life around food if I get one or two meals somewhere in the day

then I'm good I don't have to wake up first thing in the morning and get some

food I don't have to worry about when I'm out where am I gonna get lunch if I

get to it great if not I'll just eat later once your body gets used to it you

will wonder why you didn't do it sooner but wait there's some bonuses also and I

know you're saying that I just wanted to lose the weight that's all I care about

but if you do this through fasting then feeling good and getting healthy is just

the terrible price that you're gonna have to pay you will reduce diabetes you

will reduce the risk of dementia you will have a lesser tendency for high

blood pressure you will reduce osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis

you will improve mental clarity and mood fasting can help normalize your

microbiome so your gut flora the bacteria living in your gut there is a

balance there and the better that balance the healthier you are it can

have a lot of influence on your immune system and your metabolism your cravings

and so forth so fasting can help improve can normalize and balance that flora and

help move you toward insulin sensitivity fasting has tremendous benefits on your

immune system and it can slow or interfere or even reverse cancer fasting

is one of the easiest way to slow aging and most of all like we've said it is so

easy and sustainable which is a great thing

that you're going to live a lot longer if you enjoyed this video and you'd like

to learn more about how the body really works I think that you'd really like that

video too thank you so much for watching I'll see

you in the next video