Intermittent Fasting For Weight Loss (The Ultimate Guide)

80 pounds.

That’s how much both my private coaching clients lost from doing intermittent fasting. In this video, I’m going to show you how she did it:

It just flat out works. In my opinion, intermittent fasting for weight loss is the most powerful and sustainable strategies to lose weight. Because it’s not really a diet. It’s more of an eating pattern. It’s a lifestyle. Intermittent fasting makes it possible to:

• Lose weight by improving your insulin sensitivity
• It boosts your brain and improves your health
• It increases your metabolism
• It increases your energy
• It builds your immune system
• It increases growth hormones and builds lean muscle.

Amazing, right?

It’s literally a no brainer to do if you’ve been thinking about whether you should do it or not. If you want to lose weight, just don’t eat. I don’t think it gets any simpler than that. I actually prefer to call it simply taking a break from eating.

Just ask yourself this simple question. What do you think will happen if you don’t eat? What do you think will happen if you took a break from eating? You’re probably, most likely, going to lose weight. A lot of weight.

But here’s the thing. What you eat and when you eat are equally as important when it comes to weight loss. Intermittent fasting takes care of the ‘when you eat’ part of the equation.

The best intermittent for weight loss schedule

There are many intermittent fasting for weight loss schedules you can choose from.

You can do a daily 16 hour fast. You can do a 20 hour fast which is more commonly referred to as the Warrior Diet where you have a 4 hour eating window. You can do a 24 hour fast or more commonly referred to as the OMAD Diet. You can do a 5:2 fast or you can do alternate day fasting.

Then you can get into more advanced protocols where you do a dry fast or an extended fast where you’re doing anywhere from a 48 hour fast, a 3 day fast, a 7 day fast, or God knows how long you want to fast.

But I always say that there are levels to this. Especially if you’re somebody who’s never fasted before.

Listen, weight loss is not a sprint. It’s a marathon. Whoever wins is whoever can stick to it long term.

Let’s say you’re used to eating six meals a day and then all of a sudden you just start eating one meal a day. I guarantee you, one hundred percent, you’re going to have a miserable time doing it.

Again, there are levels this and I always say that your baseline should be honestly to just start with a 12 hour fast. You eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. You have a 12 hour eating window and a 12 hour fasting window. And this was the norm back in the 50s and 60s and we did not have an obesity epidemic back then.

Ask your grandma if snacking was a thing back in the 50s and 60s and she’ll most likely say, no. She’ll say that it will ruin your appetite.

And that’s the biggest problem when it comes to snacking in between meals. We don’t really snack on salmon or hard boiled eggs. What we snack on are really packaged and convenient things to carry. The problem is these foods are usually highly processed like granola bars, protein bars, and pop tarts for example. Remember, the poison lies in the processing.

Intermittent fasting for weight loss – The minimum effective dose 

Now, once you’ve established the twelve hour fast as your baseline, then you can get into what I like to call the minimum effective dose of intermittent fasting. The MED is the 16 hour fast. So you fast for 16 hours and then you have an 8 hour eating window.

The easiest way to do this is by simply skipping breakfast. Or if you’re somebody who likes to eat breakfast, then you can eat breakfast and lunch, and then skip dinner. Just pick an 8 hour eating window that fits with your schedule.

If you follow this intermittent fasting for weight loss protocol and if you follow the list of foods I’m about to give you, I promise you you’re going to lose weight and you’re going to see results. Because it’s definitely not a free for all when it comes to the food you eat during your eating window.

I highly recommend that you track your macros and you track your calories at the beginning just so you have an idea of how much foods you should be eating. Click here to learn to track your macros.

If you’ve never done it before, the MyFitnessPal gives you an idea of how much you should be eating every day and how many calories you should be eating. But I don’t want you to be obsessed with this number.

At the end of the day, you want to be listening to your body and follow the general rule of fat loss: Eat when you’re hungry. Don’t eat if you’re not hungry.

Now, once you’ve calculated your macros and you’ve picked your desired intermittent fasting protocol, then it’s time to focus on the what you eat part of the equation. Again, it’s equally as important. And there are many different diets that you can choose from. You can go Paleo, Keto, Carnivore, Vegetarian, or you can even go Vegan. They all work with intermittent fasting. And that’s the beauty of it. It works with any diet.

I personally prefer a high fat, low carb, moderate protein diet, especially when it comes to fat loss. But no matter which diet you follow. There are certain rules and guidelines that you need to follow.

Now, if you don’t get any further than this one rule that I’m about to give you, I guarantee you you’re still going to get results. That is, what do you stop eating has far more impact to your health than what you start eating.

What I mean by that is if you stop drinking soda, if you stop eating fast food, if you stop eating processed carbs like chips, cookies, bread, pasta, cereal, pizza and so on. If you stop eating sugar like candy, chocolate, Granola bars and most fruit, I can almost guarantee you that you’re going to lose weight and you’re going to be healthy.

Now I’m not saying that you should never eat those foods again. I mean, that’s just not practical. But they can’t be part of your daily diet.

This is especially true if you’re overweight, or you have metabolic syndrome and you have a lot of weight to lose. You need to get healthy first before you even start thinking about integrating those foods again into your diet.

Your diet should mainly consist of plants and animals. You should revolve your diet around nutrient dense, single ingredient and mostly unprocessed foods. You want to be eating grass fed and grass finished beef. You want to be eating pasture raised chickens and eggs. And you want to be getting your fats from high quality sources. You want to eat until you’re fully satiated from the foods that I just mentioned. You want to be hitting your daily macros and your daily calorie deficit for the day.

What you don’t want to do is you don’t want to start dieting on top of intermittent fasting because it’s going to make your fasting periods harder.

How do you make intermittent fasting for weight loss easier?

Again, you want to have a nice nutritious meal.

But when those hunger pangs arise, the best solution is to drink a glass of water. Most of the time, your brain can’t actually distinguish whether you’re just thirsty or you’re hungry. So try to drink a glass of water first just to see if you’re actually just thirsty.

You can also drink soda, water, black coffee or tea. It’s also not the end of world if you add a little bit of cream or heavy cream to your tea or coffee.

Now, once you’ve mastered the 16 hour fast, then you can move on to more advanced intermittent fasting protocols like the 20 hour fast or even a 24 hour fast where you’re just eating one meal a day.

The problem with those longer fasts is they’re less flexible, which means that you really have to plan ahead, especially if you have social gatherings, you’re going to be going to a party or you’re meeting people for lunch. You want to time your fast and your eating window to coincide with that event.

But I always say that if you plan on doing a 24 hour fast that day, but then you only end up doing a 20 hour fast or even just a 16 hour fast, you’re still winning. You’re still way ahead of the people who thinks that eating six meals a day will somehow magically make them lose weight. Aim for the stars, land on the moon.

The reason why these more advanced techniques like the 20 hour fast or 24 hour fast are more powerful is that it’s way harder to eat all your calories in one sitting. Which means that you’ll naturally eat less.

Speaking of eating less, once you’ve tried a 16 hour fast and a 20 hour fast, you can move into one of my favorite intermittent fasting protocols, the 24 hour fast.

Some people also refer to this fasting protocol as OMAD diet or one meal a day diet. It’s unbelievably powerful because you allow your insulin levels to get really low throughout 95 percent of the day.

Then you’re just eating one meal.

And again, it’s really hard to eat all your calories in one sitting. If you ever decide to have a cheat meal, I would do it while I’m on a 24 hour fast. And that one meal is going to be your cheat meal.

But you obviously have to be sensible about this. This doesn’t give you the green light to hit up your local all you can eat buffet.

Now, a very common concern that a lot of people have is that, won’t fasting cause muscle loss? Or sometimes the anti fasting crowd just goes for the jugular and just automatically say that fasting causes muscle loss without really any evidence to back it up.

The short answer is, no.

Here’s how your body utilizes energy. Your body usually stores enough glycogen stores in your liver to last you for two days. After that, your body switches to burning fat for energy.

And guess what? You have about 100,00 calories worth of energy stored in the form of body fat.

Listen, fat is not just there for looks. It’s stored energy waiting to be used.

That’s why fasting is so powerful when it comes to fat loss, because then you’re able to tap into fat stores for energy when you don’t eat. Unless you’re at 4 percent body fat. You don’t need to worry about your body burning your own muscles for energy.

At the same time, while you’re fasting, you also have a huge uptick in growth hormones or HGH, which also then prevents you from losing muscle.

And no, your body won’t go into starvation mode. That’s another myth.

Starving means that you have no idea when the next food ration is coming in. Fasting means that you’re voluntarily taking a break from eating. The keyword here is voluntary.

Which means that you can break it whatever you want. You can eat whenever you want. You’re just taking a break from eating. There’s a big difference there.

Now, the other two things that I want to talk about is what should you drink during your fast and should you train fasted?

What should you drink while fasting?

This one is easy. I mentioned this earlier already, but feel free to drink water, soda, water, black coffee or tea. You can add a little bit of cream or heavy cream to your coffee, and that’s OK. You can also add a squeeze of lemon or lime to your water if you want a little flavor.

But I think it’s equally as important to talk about what you can’t have during your fast. You cannot drink diet soda like Diet Coke or anything that’s branded as zero calories, but it’s sweetened with artificial sweeteners.

The reason being is that when we’re fasting, the biggest thing that we’re trying to do is we’re trying to bring down our insulin levels. We’re trying to moderate our insulin levels. The thing with diet soda and Zero calorie drinks, is that yes, it’s zero calories. That doesn’t really mean anything.

While it’s zero calories, It still triggers an insulin response. And when you trigger an insulin response, that breaks your fast.

Drinking diet soda also triggers the cephalic phase response in your body. Which means that your body thinks that you’re eating. Your body thinks you’re about to eat. But you’re not because you’re still fasting. So your body then sends even stronger hunger pangs which results in stronger cravings.

Notice that you’re always hungrier after drinking a can of diet soda?

Should you workout while intermittent fasting?

I have a separate video that talks about this in further detail on my YouTube channel but the short answer is, yes.

If you could train fasted, you should do it.

Your muscles adapt to whatever energy source is available. So if your body is used to burning fat while you’re fasting, then your muscles will preferentially burn body fat for energy while you’re working out.

But you shouldn’t worry about this too much if you can’t train fasted because of your schedule.

As long as you’re working out, you’re going to be okay.

You should do intermittent fasting if:

Now, one last thing I have to mention. If you’re:

• Pregnant, or you’re breastfeeding
• Malnourished
• Suffering from an eating disorder
• A teenager, then you should not fast.

If you have diabetes or you’re taking blood sugar or medication, then you should consult with a medical professional first before you try. Intermittent fasting. Otherwise, you’re perfectly good to fast and reap all of its benefits.

As always, if this was helpful, share it with a friend who could benefit from it as well!

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