Fasting vs Eating Less For Weight Loss and Fat Burn

hello health champions today i want to talk about

fasting or intermittent fasting versus eating less and we want to really

understand what happens in the body when you restrict

the period of time that you eat food during the day

such as an intermittent fasting versus if you restrict the calories or the

amount of food that you eat in each meal such as infrequent meals and calorie

restriction and we want to understand fully how

these two methods compare and differ in terms of insulin

resistance and diabetes and of course weight loss

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 let's first look at two

different statements the first one is in order to lose weight you have to eat

fewer calories than you burn the second statement is

in order to lose weight you simply have to eat

fewer calories than you burn and at first glance

to most people they look like the same thing but

the first one is totally true and the second one

is absolutely false but unfortunately most people don't see the true

difference between these two statements including doctors and dietitians and

policymakers and that is why there are billions of

people who have unsuccessful weight loss attempts the

prevailing official weight loss model is called

calories in calories out eat less exercise more and it says the

following that if you eat 1500 calories and you're

burning 2 000 calories if your basic metabolism is 2 000 calories

and you cut back to eating 1500 then you will have a shortage

or a deficit of 500 calories per day and if you keep that up for seven days

you'll have a deficit of 3500 calories per week

and you will lose one pound of fat per week

that's what the math says and therefore according to the math

if you weigh 200 pounds you are burning 2

000 calories and you eat 1500 calories then a year later you will weigh 148

pounds you lose one pound per week in a straight line that's what the model

says that's what the math says unfortunately

there's only one problem with this and that is

it doesn't work sound familiar it never worked it never will work and

if you're watching this video you probably know

that it didn't work for you either in reality

the results look more like this you cut back by 500 calories

you lose some weight initially you even might lose

faster than the predicted one pound per week because you're going to lose some

extra fluids in the beginning but pretty soon the weight loss slows

down eventually it plateaus and then

the body starts gaining and before long you're back to where you started

but the idea of calories in calories out is so

strongly ingrained in our culture that when they observe this then they say

well obviously you're not doing it right

because the model can't be wrong so if you're

not getting the straight line results then there's something wrong with you

you might be cheating you might be eating things

you're not confessing to you might be actually

eating more calories than you think you are you may not be measuring you may not

understand this properly or you might not be burning as many

calories as you think your exercise might be less than what you think it is

and science doesn't lie is an argument that

if the science if the math and the model predicts a straight line

weight loss then that's what should happen and if it doesn't happen

then there's something wrong with you because

of course math is math math can't lie and physics the law of thermodynamics

says that the energy of a system is constant

and the system predicts a straight line weight

loss so if science says one thing and we're

observing something different what are we missing

well it's not that math or physics is wrong

it's just that they're not the only science out there

and when we look at the calories in calories

out as the simple and only part of that argument then we're missing

a whole branch of science called biology because living

things like humans and tigers and bacteria

and any living organism it has behavior and it has goals guiding

that behavior and the strongest behavior and goal of all

is the survival instinct a math equation doesn't have behavior the law of

thermodynamics doesn't have survival instinct

they're kind of inert but living things have goals they want to survive

and to that effect they're going to vary their amount of hunger their metabolism

their hormones and these are going to change your behavior

so hormones like ghrelin for hunger and leptin for satiety

or insulin for storage or human growth hormone

to build tissue or burn fat these hormones will

override any kind of willpower in the long run that's why we can't

fight this we have to correct the hormonal balance if we want to have

success in the long run so now that we understand that there's

an additional science called biology let's look at how the math changes and

look at a concept called setpoint so in the beginning there's no difference we

still have a 500 calorie deficit on week one

and we're losing a pound or even more per week but then

as time goes on the body changes behavior based on perception it makes

different interpretations about your circumstances and your environment

so a few weeks into it you're eating the same amount

but now you're not burning the same amount

the body senses that there is a shortage we don't have the same availability

of fuel anymore so now even though you're eating the same your

deficit is down to 200 and your weight loss

has slowed to 0.4 pounds per week and if time goes on and the body gets

more and more concerned about its survival then it

might cut the consumption the metabolism the

burning down to 1300 so now you start gaining weight

you start putting on some weight even though you're eating the same amount of

calories that resulted in weight loss initially

so what is this thing called set point is there

a place in the body is there something we can measure show me the set point

no it's a concept and it's a concept based on the behavior of the

body so it is not something we can measure

there's no lab marker for it but we know based on

countless observations and you probably observed this yourself

that with the constant input the body changes the output the body's behavior

changes and we think we reason that

the body has a set point it tries to return

to this and it works both ways so for a lean person who is athletic and

not insulin resistant they could double

their calories and not really gain weight the body compensates by

increasing the metabolism just like it does

by decreasing so we know the body changes

its behavior to stay around a certain weight and that's what we call the set

point so let's look a little deeper on this set point and

how it normally works in your favor that let's say you start at a set point

of 150 that's what your body believes it should weigh then you eat some food

your body releases some insulin to process that food and to

store some of that excess as fat so you gain a

few pounds as those fat cells fill up they start

releasing leptin which is the satiety hormones that

signals the brain that we have enough we've got some extra

fuel we have some reserves so you can reduce your appetite and stop

eating so leptin signals to reduce appetite

so we don't have to eat anymore and while we're not eating

now we can burn through those fat stores and as we burn through we return to our

original weight of 150 pounds so in this way it

helps us maintain a set point and then of course once we're back to

starting point now the leptin goes down so when leptin goes down we're not

as satisfied we're not as full and we signal ghrelin ghrelin is

released which is hunger and the hunger goes up so we can eat

again and we can repeat this over and over so

in this way the set point helps us but now let's

look at how that set point works against us when we disturb the balance

when we have frequent food and especially if we have

processed food high sugar high starch foods then they create excessive insulin

responses and we have frequent meals so now we

have chronic excess insulin which creates insulin

resistance and chronic fat stores so now we gain

weight but now here's the difference that these

fat stores they release leptin and that leptin is supposed to turn off

our hunger it's supposed to make us feel satiated

but in the presence of insulin when we become insulin resistant

due to high levels of insulin on an ongoing basis

the feedback mechanism doesn't work what is supposed to sense satiety gets

desensitized so even though you're gaining fat you're

still hungry you don't have that sense of

fullness you have corrupted the feedback mechanism

so you keep eating and you keep storing fat even though you already had plenty

of it so this is how we gain weight and it

might be a few pounds at first but over the course of

years and decades it just keeps going up and up and up and

the mechanism that's supposed to return us

to our set point has been distorted it has been corrupted and the reason

this feedback mechanism doesn't work anymore now is

because of insulin and leptin resistance so now

even though we keep adding to the fat stores even though we keep gaining

weight we're still hungry and we keep eating

now let's look at a little more detail on how exactly

intermittent fasting or time restricted eating compares

to frequent small meals because according to the calories in calories

out model it's all about calories so if you eat

300 and 300 and 300 five times a day that is 1500 calories

that should still work and in their minds according

to the math of calories and calories out it's exactly the same thing as eating

600 plus 900 calories in two meals closer together because

it's still 1500 calories then why is that

not the same thing because the insulin response is different

so if we eat five small meals then there is

five times per day that we trigger insulin and every time we trigger

insulin and there's only a short period till the next meal it doesn't

allow the insulin to drop very much and if we have a meal at six

and we have a late night snack at nine or ten

then we're basically still at midnight we're still in insulin resistance mode

and it's only after we've been sleeping for a while that it drops

a little bit during the morning hours with intermittent fasting

when we have a shorter feeding period we have the last meal at six o'clock

that leaves us enough time that by midnight we already have a few

hours where insulin has been dropping and then

during the early morning hours it keeps dropping

lower and lower and lower and then because we don't have breakfast

first thing it keeps dropping even lower so it's both the time frame

and how deep the insulin is how low the insulin is allowed to drop

if we compare them side by side it's even more obvious

that with the frequent meals the only time that we are allowing insulin to

drop where we're becoming more insulin

sensitive is for about six hours in the morning 25 of the day

we are becoming insulin sensitive for the rest

of the 75 of the day we are either neutral or

promoting insulin resistance with insulin levels being high

we're being in storage mode with intermittent fasting on the other hand

we are already a few hours into insulin sensitivity of lowering

insulin before midnight and then we have 16 hours in total before the first meal

so during all this time we are getting a continuous slow

lowering of insulin resistance and it's only

for about a third of the day eight hours that we're either neutral or promoting

so the proportion of time that we are in insulin sensitivity versus insulin

resistance promoting insulin resistance is very

very different and that is why intermittent fasting is

so much more powerful and this is why intermittent fasting

actually works because when we allow insulin to drop for a

longer period of time then we also lower insulin resistance

over time it might take weeks or months or even

years but that's the only way that we can lower insulin resistance

and now we're shifting the body's tendency

the whole metabolism shifts from a storing tendency

to a willingness to burn energy and with reducing insulin we also reduce

leptin resistance which of course will change our appetite we don't get as

hungry as a result of all that we lower the set point and an additional

bonus is that with longer fasting we increase

human growth hormone which is tissue building muscle sparing

and fat burning so if you truly understand this it has

very very little to do with calories you can't deprive yourself you can't starve

yourself and get long-term results and i hope

that you can see by now that it's all about the intelligence of the body

understanding what is going on that once we can restore balance and change

the set point the body sees the truth about what's

going on and it is willing to lose the weight if you

enjoyed this video i think you'll love that one next

thanks so much for watching i'll see you next time