5 Steps To Optimum Intermittent Fasting And Health | Ronan Oliveira

Maybe you want to start intermittent fasting and you're not sure how to start. Maybe you're doing it already, but it's not working well or is being too hard. That may be one of the few variables that are still missing. So what I want to give you in this video is a guide on how to plan, how to get started with intermittent fasting, or how to optimize a couple of variables so you can maximize your results. When you are thinking about intermittent fasting, here we are talking about a sub modality of it because there's many ways of intermittent fasting. And the sub modality that we are talking about is also called time restricted eating. That this is when you have times of the day that you are fasting and this is called your fasting window. And you have times of the day when you're eating and this is called your feeding window. And then every day you go through these two windows. In terms of time restricted eating, there are four variables that you want to plan and be and be aware of to optimize them. These variables are length, frequency, timing and meals. So first let's talk about length. Length is basically for how long are you going to fast? And there are different options that we do on a beginner level of intermittent fasting, time restricted eating. And you can fast for anywhere between 12 to 16 hours on average. And there are different types of benefits or the benefits they get better as you go forward. But 12 to 14 hours already show a couple of benefits. For example, we have a meta analysis that was done by the California State University. They basically got all these studies that were looking into 12 to 14 hour fast. They were mostly Ramadan studies. And they found out that on average people doing this for a month, they were losing 1 to 3% of body weight in fat. And also not only burning fat, they're also improving some health markers. So for example, the triglyceride level of these participants of all these studies in Ramadan decreased from anywhere between 4 to 37%. And this only with a 12 to 14 hour fast. So it's not something too hard to do. But when you go all the way to 16 hours, this is when you are likely to experience experience the peak benefits of a daily fasting protocol. Check this out. There is this one study from the University of North Carolina and they did a mathematical model to simulate everything that happens in your body once you are fasting. And when you reach 16 hours of fast, this is when your insulin levels go the lowest, your glutagon levels go the highest. And your glycogen levels go to the bottom so you start burning more fat. If you want more details, check our last video about intermittent fasting that I go a bit deeper into this study and here you are playing for the long term. You know, fasting is not going to change your life tomorrow morning, but if you apply this consistently for a couple of months, this is when you get the benefits. The best way to stick to any fasting protocol is to do something that fits your schedule and your habits pretty well. So better start by 12 hours and then every one to two weeks you increase one hour if you want to go all the way to 16 hours. Next variable that we need to look at is frequency. Frequency basically means how many days in a week are you doing intermittent fasting? The main options are three days, five days and seven days. And it will depend on the benefits that you want. So how do you choose that? Three days is mostly if you want to give it a try. You're not going to get a lot of benefits from intermittent fasting if you're doing this only for three days in a week. But this is for you to like to test the waters. You know, does it fit well in my agenda? How do I find it? Is it something that I want to keep on going? If you do this for five days is when you're looking for a bit more practicality. Maybe I do all my intermittent fasting on weekdays, but then weekends are a bit more erratic and I want to have a flexible schedule that works as well. Seven days is when you want to maximize your benefits. And this is where all our scientific studies on intermittent fasting are done. Most of these studies that talk about benefits are done with seven days in a week. So if you want to go all in and get all the benefits, seven days is your choice. The next variable that we need to think about is timing. So if you have parts of the day that you are fasting, parts of the day that you are eating, when is it that is going to happen? If you're fasting for 12 hours, you're starting this week. This is pretty straightforward. You either have your feeding window from 8am to 8pm and then you fast from 8pm to 8am or a feeding window from 7 to 7 or from 9 to 9, it would be more or less like that. But as you progress and you get to close to 16 hours, this is when you need to think a little bit more about because you're probably skipping some meals. There are five things that you want to take into consideration to Figure out when is the best time to fast. And here again, there's not really a time of the day that will be better for fat loss. It really depends on how it fits your schedule. So the first thing that you want to take into consideration is your work routine. You know, how flexible is it and can you have meals during work? If you cannot have meals during work, it will be hard to plan a feeding window that you need to have a meal at 3pm, for example. So if that is something that you need to take into consideration, you need to work with your feeding window around that. Then the second thing that you want to think about is family traditions. Maybe you have this tradition every Wednesday or every evening you have dinner with your family. And then if you plan a feeding window that you are no longer having dinner, very soon you're going to figure out that that was not the best idea. There will be friction, you will not be able to continue the practice. So think about that. Third, do you have any social commitments that are recurring and that are important to you that you should plan ahead? Maybe you don't have dinner with family, but have breakfast with your company, or you have Friday dinner with friends that happen every Friday. So if that happens, your feeding window needs to encompass that Meal number four, you want to think about your strength training. If you're doing some type of intense exercise, you can do it fasted, but chances are that your performance is even better if you're fat. So if you're lifting weights, consider having it after you have your first meal of the day, after least. And finally, the last thing that you want to think about is your sleep time. And this is because you want to finish your last meal of the day more or less three hours before going to bed. Because when you are digesting food, you raise your body temperature. And quality of sleep depends on your body's ability to decrease its own temperature. So if you eat too close to going to bed, you will see that you may even you sleep seven to eight hours. But the quality of sleep and the energy in the next morning is not going to be as good as if you had finished your meal a little bit before. Now we need to think about meals and how many meals. How much should I eat, what do I eat when I'm eating, and what do I eat when I'm fasting? That's a very common question. First, when you have your feeding window, this is the practicality of intermittent fasting. You're not going to worry about changing what you eat, at least in the first phase. Maybe later on, when you want to optimize even further your practice, then you think on how to have even more nutritious diet. But the main idea is you keep your nutrition habits, the foods that you eat the same. You only change when you eat. So that means you don't remove foods, but you also don't add foods. So when you are outside of your feeding window, in your fasting window, then it will depend on your main goal. If your main goal is fat loss, then what you want to have in your fasting window is really zero calories. That means only water or black coffee with no sugar, or tea with no sugar. Because the main benefit that intermittent fasting provides to burn fat is by decreasing the amount of calories intuitively, without needing to count them. So if you add the calories by eating, by putting sugar in your coffee, you are defeating the purpose that gives you fat loss. Now, if you don't care about fat loss, you know you're fine, you're lean where you are, and you are only worried about the longevity benefits of intermittent fasting. In these cases, this is when you can have things like bulletproof coffee. They still have calories, but don't raise your insulin levels. Now that we thought about these four variables, we are ready to plan how to get started intermittent fasting. So let me give you an example of a three week plan. So if you start like tomorrow, this is one of the things that you could possibly do. So let's imagine that I have my week one here and because it's week one, I'm starting 12 hours of fasting. I will start slowly, already getting the benefits, but feeling how it fits into my schedule. So length will be 12 hours and I'll do this seven days in a week because it's 12 hours fast. If I'm doing 12 hours fast and only three or five days, it doesn't give you me much. So I'm doing this for seven days in a week and my timing would be 8am to 8pm it's pretty straightforward. Then on week two I'm going to pace it because, you know, 12 hours per day was pretty easy. So on week two, I'm going to fast forward for 14 hours, but my frequency will be only five days because I want to keep my weekends a bit more flexible to see how it fits in my lifestyle. And then what I'm going to do with my timing is that I bring from 8am on my breakfast all the way to 10am So 10am my breakfast, 8pm is when I finish my dinner. And here I have a 10 hour feeding window and a 14 hour fasting window. And then week three is when I'm going all in. I'm going for the results. So I will add two hours to my fasting window and it's going to be 16 hours. And because it's all in, I'm going to do this for seven days in a week. But now I want to have my last meal a little bit earlier so I can digest all the food before going to bed. So I will bring my breakfast to 11am and I'll pull my dinner to 7pm so all my feeding window happens in eight hours. And then I have 16 hours of fasting every single day. And this is exactly how you plan all the variables that you need to get started with intermittent fasting. There are two things that I want to bring to your attention because it will help a lot. One of the things that I see happening very often with people who stack intermittent fasting is that idea that, you know, I just fasted for 16 hours so I deserve to go and get the pizza, the beer and all the ice cream in the fridge. Fasting is not a strategy so that you can have dessert every day. Fasting is a strategy for you, to improve your health, for you to improve your body composition so you don't need to remove foods but also don't add foods that you usually don't have now because you're fasting because that will defeat the purpose that you are looking for. And the second thing is if you are on a fat loss journey, you want to really make sure that your body is focusing on burning fat and preserving the muscle mass that you have. And a really good thing to do there to make sure that this happens is to do some type of strength training. And even if you don't have access to gym, there is a way of developing muscle mass. In fact, my next video is going to be about this. So here is what I want to ask you. If you have any questions about intermittent fasting, how to get started, how to optimize, just put in the comments below, make sure to subscribe to this channel and hit the bell button so when the video about strength training at home comes up, you get notified. I see you in the next video. Sam.