How To Increase Metabolism: Intermittent Fasting vs Calorie Restriction

How to increase metabolism, Boost metabolism. What is metabolism? What is BMR or basal metabolic rate what are the factors

factors that influence your BMR? is it better to do calorie restriction or to do intermittent

fasting if you want to improve your BMR your metabolism is directly linked to your ability

to lose weight and even more importantly it is linked to your ability to keep the weight

off once you've reached your goal weight today went to talk about all these factors and waiting

to give you the big picture we make it crystal clear coming right up metabolism comes from

the Greek word Metabo which means to change so metabolism or basal metabolic rate is the

rate that you're converting fuel sources like food into energy so the higher your metabolism

the higher your basal metabolic rate the more energy you produced per day BMR or basic metabolic

rate is how much energy are you expanding how many calories are you burning when you're

not doing anything when you just sitting around and your body is just doing its thing the

BMR is about 70% of all the energy that you produce and out of that 70 percent we have

the liver is using about 27% your brain is using 19% your skeletal muscle is using 18%

and that's not for moving that's just the baseline activity your kidneys are using a

full 10% heart is using 7% and all the other organs and body parts together are using 19%

what is this energy what is the body doing well for the most part it's simply pumping

fluids around and where the fluids you have nutrients and minerals and communication messengers

that follow that fluid around so that's most of what your body is doing that's what most

of the work goes so if you have a good metabolic rate not only are you so to speak burning

calories but you are also helping your these organs are doing the job and they're being

fueled properly so what is your liver do it converts harmful substances into less harmful

substances that you can process and get rid of so there's your detour your brain obviously

handles all the communication all your mental processes all the management of the body your

kidneys are pumping fluid there regulating fluid balance and mineral balance and they're

cleaning out junk that you want to get rid of your heart pumps the blood so most of what

your body is doing is pumping fluid and cleaning things up and changing things from raw materials

into things that you need to build your body that's where the energy goes So if your basal

metabolic rate goes down it is basically two organs that are involved if your thyroid slows

down if your thyroid is incapable of making enough thyroid hormone then that's like a

thermostat that just turned down your entire metabolism but it can also be the hypothalamus

telling the thyroid to slow down because the hypothalamus is your overall regulator it

is what regulates your hunger and your thirst and your body temperature and your ph and all

those different things and it looks at your whole body and it has an idea of where you're

supposed to be so when it comes to metabolism and weight your body has a set point then

we'll talk more about that the hypothalamus also perceives if there is a lack it's not

necessarily a real lack but if the hypothalamus has the idea that there is a lot then it's

also going to slow down your basal metabolic rate so let's put this into context give you

some examples so the most popular idea the prevailing idea the official version the guidelines

from the government and every medical institution out there is that if you want to lose weight

then you have to eat less and move more the calorie restriction calories in calories out

if you're gaining way to just eating too many you need to eat less move more yada yada say

that you have a basal metabolic rate of 2,000 calories per day and then you decide I'm going

to eat less than that so you eat 1500 and you figure I'm going to still keep burning

2000 so I have a calorie deficit of 500 and width at 500 calories per day * 7 days is

3,500 calories one pound of fat is 3,500 calories so the math says we're going to lose 1 pound

a week and if we keep it up for a year we're going to lose 50 pounds so if we are overweight

rate 200 pounds or ideal weight is 150 then this is all we have to do in a year we're

going to be at our ideal weight so the math is playing it is logical it is can't argue

with a math the only problem is this doesn't work at all and you already knew that because

you have tried it but every study they've ever done every long-term study with thousands

or tens of thousands of people show that this expected rate doesn't happen at all ever not

even close to it so what happens is that they predict this gradual linear weight loss that's

the black line but what actually happens is this red line that in the beginning as you

restrict something you lose weight a little bit faster and it doesn't matter what you

restrict if you restrict carbs or fat or calories your body will start burning through your

glycogen stores and you lose fluid first two to three to four pounds of every diet

happens in the first few days and it is water so you're going to get a rapid loss but then

when the fluid levels balance out now you're talkin actual fat loss so this starts to plateau

very very quickly so these people might have lost instead of their anticipated 50 than

might lose 10 or 15 may be 20 or maybe five but then it plateaus and now pretty soon they

stay on the diet and they start gaining the weight back if you try this you know that

this happens and it's so frustrating it's maddening everyone looking at it says oh you

cheated you didn't exercise enough you're just saying that to eating 1500 but we know

that you just don't have the willpower or the character and pretty soon you'll start

believing them but here's what happens that you have a set point if you have weighed 200

pounds for a while then that is where your hypothalamus thinks you should be so as you

start losing weight your hypothalamus feels threatened it wants to survive its banks 200

is your right weight now you start weighing less so it's going to turn down the thermostat

is going to lower your basal metabolic rate down to maybe 1500 so now you're eating 1500

your burning 1500 there is your Plateau you no longer losing weight but it might go even

further than that because you're still not at your set point so the hypothalamus says

I got to turn this down even further so he turns it down maybe two 1300 or 1200 and now

you start gaining weight back and that's unfortunately not all it's happening because when your basal

metabolic rate goes down now there's less energy available for these vital organs to

do their vital processes so your liver is supposed to detoxify you but now it doesn't

have the same resources before those 27% was 540 calories that was it fuels budget now

it doesn't have that much so it has to get by on less it starts to cutting corners the

same of course happens for for all of these so now you're getting more toxic you're getting

less repair your getting sicker because your BMR goes down if feeling sluggish you don't

have the energy or tissue start to lose muscle tone etc etc so let's talk about what happened

why does why is the set point so strong and why does the body perceive that there's a

lack why the brain why doesn't the hypothalamus understand that you want to lose the weight

and the answer is insulin. So insulin is a storage hormone it basically helps any time that you

eat food especially carbohydrate it helps the blood sugar get out of the bloodstream

and into the cell so it's a storage hormone it opens access for fuel into the cell where

the cell will burn what you need in this moment and it will store the excess so if you eat

like most people do with which were recommended is to eat frequent small meals high in carbohydrates

than what's happening is every time you eat you are triggering insulin so the red area

here is when you are in storage mode and if you only give yourself a couple of hours between

each meal then you're going to be in storage mode all the time so you're eating 200 calories

your body says better store half of that to eating 200 calories but a store half of that

and the only time that you have a chance to lower the insulin to reverse that insulin

resistance is during the night when you don't eat so everything is red here is in storage

mode it is increasing insulin resistance and only at night are you in the green zone where

insulin is allowed to lower because when you have insulin at a high level when you have

become insulin-resistant which is virtually everyone that overweight which means we're

talkin 85 to 90% of the population have some degree of insulin resistance to insulin is

blocking the brain from seeing all your fuel reserves so if you're a hundred pounds overweight

you have three hundred fifty thousand calories stored in your body but the insulin says let's

pack that way for a rainy day.

Let's put it into storage so that we don't die during a future starvation.

And that is what determines a set point. That the insulin puts the body into a starvation mode

into a perceived starvation mode even though there is an abundance of fuel available.

The insulin distorts the body's ability to use the fuel properly.

A lot of people are afraid of something called starvation

mode they are afraid of fasting because they think if I stop eating I'm starving my body

will sense I'm in a starvation mode and it will lower my basal metabolic rate the starvation

mode is a perception that happens when there is fewer calories on a regular basis. It is like a

form of trickle feeding your getting food frequently but never quite enough

and in the presence of insulin it gives you the perception of starvation so the body lowers

the basal metabolic rate and it tries to get back to that set point it can't change the

set point when there is insulin present the insulin changes the hypothalamus ability to

change the setpoint what are the most popular TV shows of all time I was called The Biggest

Loser and they had all these really obese people who were put into a camp and they were

made to eat very specific calorie-restricted diet and they were made to exercise pretty

much around the clock everyone loved watching it because people came in weighing 400 lb

and they left weighing 200 pounds it look like an enormous success on the surface but

let's look at what happened so let's say that these people had a 2000 calorie basal metabolic

rate it's going to be different depending on the size of the person but just for example

and then they put them on a 1500 calorie diet they burned 2000 sort of on the baseline but

then they exercised 3 4 5 hours a day so they burn an additional 4,000 calories from exercise

so they had a total deficit of 4500 so these people were going to lose 1 to 2 pounds a

day so every week they had a weigh in and they lost 7 lb and 15 lbs and 20 lbs and and

it looked like wow this stuff is really really working and then what happened is that gradually

their bodies they said they didn't lower the insulin all the way they lowered it sound

because they were just exercising so much they were in a deficit they lowered its some

but they didn't lower it enough so the body started lowering the basal metabolic rate

so they were eating 1500 their basal metabolic rate was maybe a thousand so again I'm just

putting a number on these are not exact numbers and then they were still exercising about

4,000 calories a day so they maintained a deficit of 3500 and they were still losing

a pound a day so throughout the program it looked like they were losing weight steadily

which they were in a way even though it's slow down a little bit but what happened is

they were stressing the bodies they were doing something very unnatural unsustainable to

the body and the body really really wanted to get back up to that to that original weight

and with record in hand when they any time to do a follow up with those people who participated

in The Biggest Loser almost every single one has gained all the weight back and in some

cases even more I think it's like a single person has managed to keep the weight off

so why did The Biggest Loser look like a success and ended up being an epic failure list four

reasons the first is that they lower the basal metabolic rate because they didn't restore

balance to the body they didn't change the body to change the set point they didn't reduce

the insulin resistance the second is that the set point didn't change the third is that

deprivation is not sustainable because when you're in a deficit but you still have insulin

there insulin storing food and trying to get you back to the set point you get ravenously

hungry and that's okay you can do that in front of the camera for a while but you can't

sustain it nobody can be hungry for the rest of their life and that anyone it was tried

a deprivation or calorie restriction diet knows this that you get hungry you get irritable

you get cranky you don't feel good and nobody can keep that up for the rest of their life

The 4th reasons is that that level of exercise is not sustainable either but even if it was

that is not healthy because that body didn't want to burn all those calories it kept burning

thousands of calories because they were in a fight flight state they decided they made

the point they pushed the people to exercise all the time and you get all sorts of stress

hormones adrenaline to make you feel good while you're doing yet but it is not a balanced

state it's a fight flight state you're in constant physical stress. It is like a survival state. That is okay for short burst and even healthy

in short burst but it is not sustainable.

It's like a rubber band. You are pulling it and as soon as you let go the body wants to return to balance and homeostasis.

Any time you are in flight / flight for that long

you are making adrenaline you making cortisol your burning out your adrenal glands but more

than that your body cannot heal while it's in a fight flight state if you try to sustain

that fight flight state you're going to push the body into failure in to break down and

you're setting yourself up for some long-term serious disease so there's many many reasons

why it look good on the surface but it's going to fail miserably and it's not healthy either

in the long run but if you're like most people you already knew this because you have tried

it and you know that there's about a 99% failure rate to calorie restriction nobody wants to

feel deprived nobody wants to push themselves in the long run and with insulin resistance

it is like that rubber band you can't keep pulling it forever at some point you're going

to let go it just bounces back let's compare that to fasting what happens in fasting well

in an sustained in a prolonged fast we have zero calories we are not eating anything

with drinking water coffee tea and in the beginning were burning 2000 calories and with

a fear of starvation mode like the people are afraid of fasting they say oh you can't

fast you will you will wreck your metabolic rate as we see that happens in the calorie

restriction but with fasting that actually does not happen because we expect a 2000 calorie

deficit which would be about a 5-pound weight loss per week we get just like before we get

a quick drop in the beginning we lose 3/4 lb in the first couple of days and after that

we maintain about 0.7 lb we're about 5 lb per week and with fasting four people have

done extended fast this tend to be a fairly straight line.

It might slow down and curve a little bit but it is pretty continuous it is pretty sustainable

if you do if you can't do the fasting for all that long maybe you'd like to do a week

or two and then you want to transition into intermittent fasting with keto then you could

do something for example that you eat every other day or you do some pattern of 36/6 or

4:36 to 12 or 4:40 to 6 meaning that you eat every other day for 6 hours to eat your 2,000

calories but it's only every other day so your average is a thousand calories and your

body keeps burning 2000 you would expect a two and a half pound weight loss per week

and for the most part that is what happens so how can this be because it's all about

insulin insulin controls the hypothalamus it indirectly controls your basal metabolic

rate and your set point the only way to change the set point over time is to reduce the insulin

so assuming that we start this fast in a fed state with some insulin present but then we

don't eat then after a short period

of time the insulin will drop into a place where we're burning fat and we are reversing

insulin resistance we're reducing the amount of released insulin and therefore the cells

don't have any insulin to be resistant to so they start loosening up and you become

more insulin sensitive and for as long as you keep up the fast your insulin is going

to drop so you have this huge green zone that represents fat burning and lowering of insulin

and with that you are not reducing your basal metabolic rate the evidence shows that and

logically it also makes sense if we understand how insulin works if you do an intermittent

fasting pattern then you're going to have short periods of time where you eat where

you going to release some insulin but in between you're going to have long periods of insulin

sensitivity where you're not feeding where your insulin is allowed to drop where the

cells become more sensitive to insulin if you've done a lot of dieting if you've done

a lot of yo-yo dieting then this is probably what you have done over and over and over

and as a result you probably lowered your basal metabolic rate one time several times

many many times and each time it becomes increasingly difficult to lose weight so the only way that

you have to increase metabolism and lose that weight from good is to change the set point

you have to lower the insulin to the point where the hypothalamus starts believing in

a new set point where it stops trying to get back because if it's trying to get back to

a higher weight it makes you hungry that's what insulin does and as a result of this

as part of this you have to change the perception of starvation insulin being a storage hormone

means it's going to always put some away so in this picture because there is insulin present

from every time can you eat a little bit that insulin is always going to have that tendency

to store and if things are being stored that means they're not available as food so the

hypothalamus gets the impression that there's a starvation going on so the key is to reduce

insulin resistance whether you do it through fasting or intermittent fasting or Keto or

some combination of these the ultimate thing that you have to get to is to reduce the insulin

resistance because once you become more insulin sensitive once you reduce the tendency to

store you make fuel available to the body now you can start burning the fuel but you

also allow the hypothalamus to change your set point and to let go of that perception

of starvation because when the insulin less now you have access now you have an abundance

of fuel available even if you are not eating anything unfortunately despite thousands of

studies showing the epic failure of this model and thousands of studies and thousands of

individuals showing great and Lasting success with this model the calorie restriction model

is still the prevailing official recommendation when you go to most medical doctors and most

dietitians and when you go to the Mayo Clinic and you read the American Diabetes Association

guidelines and the USDA guidelines then they're going to tell you that you need to eat low-fat

high-carb control your meals eat frequent meals and all of the regular stuff that has

been shown over and over to be epic failures if you want to learn more about this we have

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