Back in August 2017, I joined RTG Training and Performance with that girl Carol (aka, my wife) to try something different to get in shape. While I love weight lifting, I was not happy with how I felt, and Carol had trimmed down doing the MRT protocol.
So I joined, and my fitness level improved significantly and I lost 12 pounds (dropping from 232 to 220). Then I plateaued. Now I am back on the fat-burning train, having lost another 10 pounds in the last four weeks by making one change.
What I Discovered
Enter click bait! I clicked on an advertisement on YouTube for something called Science-Based Six Pack. While I did not sign up for the course, I did discover a ton of valuable content provided by the presenter, Thomas De Lauer, on his personal channel. Evidently, he is also a prominent fitness model.
In any event, Thomas enlightens viewers with the science of intermittent fasting. I listened.
And I listened.
And I listened.
I began to wonder whether the reason I had lost weight so fast about ten years was that I was unwittingly following an intermittent fasting protocol. Why?
Because I have been following the protocol for the past 4 weeks, and I dropped an additional 10 pounds!
What I Did
In a nut shell, I stopped eating before 8 PM — not that hard, right? More importantly, I don’t eat again until noon the next day. I have been eating the same number of calories (~2500), just consuming them between noon and 8 PM.
I begin each day with 3-4 cups of black coffee. Around 9:30 AM, I may start to feel some hunger pangs, but they subside and my body’s ketogenic agents kick in — more on beta-hydroxybutryate (aka BHB) in a future post. This is akin to the runner’s high.
So my intermittent fast lasts for 16 hours now, 14 hours the first week I tried. I am working toward an 18-20 hours fast. I pretty much eat (and drink) what I want on weekends.
The Science
While I am no expert on cellular metabolism or molecular science, I have learned (and experienced) that fasting causes an increase in human growth hormone and testosterone. This burns fat and builds muscle.
Fasting also resets the insulin response to food. Since insulin is a hormone that can cause fat-storage, getting my body to use insulin is a positive.
I have experimented with the best food for breaking a fast. I have settled on a mixture of water, apple cider vinegar, pink Himalayan slat, cream of tartar, and fresh squeezed lime. It’s an acquired taste… by the third day, I was pounding a 14-ounce mixture without much difficulty.
My lunch is usually a pouch of tuna mixed with Frank’s Redhot and two rice cakes. Sometimes I switch it up with chicken off the bone. The important thing here according to Thomas is low fat content.
The later in the day it gets, the less particular I have been about what I eat. And I do not track what I eat Saturday and Sunday.
Has anyone tried intermittent fasting?