Is intermittent fasting bad for you? It’s quite the opposite.
In my opinion, intermittent fasting is the most powerful method of weight loss; bar none. It’s efficacy when it comes to specifically targeting body fat and burning it for energy is unparalleled.
It’s something that all my students, inside the Fat Loss Accelerator, incorporate into their daily routine and they’ve all gotten some amazing results. So you know it works.
But If you ask the average person what they think about fasting, they’re probably gonna say that it’s bad for you.
They’ll say that it’s gonna put your body in starvation mode, you’re gonna lose muscle, you’re gonna feel weak, and all sorts of negative things without any real evidence to back it up.
It’s kind of just been the generally accepted truth about fasting. You’re hurting yourself. What are you doing? We need to do an intervention. It’s basically the worst thing you can do to your body.
But, is it?
In this video, I’m gonna share with you and clear the air on the 8 most popular intermittent fasting myths that I can’t believe still exists and we’re gonna debunk them and put them to rest once and for all.
Is Intermittent Fasting Bad For You?
Myth#1: Fasting puts you in starvation mode
This has been ingrained in our heads through brilliant marketing by food companies for decades now that skipping a meal is bad for you.
This is also how the myth that breakfast is the most important meal of the day came about. And if you’re a breakfast cereal company, of course you’re gonna keep towing this line.
This is the number one problem with fasting. And this is really more of a reflection of our current relationship with food. It’s not good. We’re extremely addicted to it.
We used to eat just 3 meals a day back in the 60’s and 70’s and obesity wasn’t a problem. Seriously. Ask your grandma if snacking was a thing back then. She’ll most likely say no, because it’ll ruin your appetite.
Now, we have small meals in between our regular meals. We eat 5, 6, or even sometimes 7 meals and nobody bats an eye.
That’s why fasting gets a bad rap. It goes against the grain. It goes against conventional wisdom. And, there’s nothing sexy about it. It doesn’t sell products which is a multi billion dollar industry
Think about it this way. I’m a numbers guy. If you eat 3 meals a day, that’s over 1,000 meals in year.
If you eat 6 meals, then it’s double that. To think that one day of fasting for example, if you do a 24 hour fast, will somehow cause irreparable damage is comical.
Back in the ice age, and if you’ve been following my YouTube channel, you’ll know that i’m a big proponent of following key concepts from the primal way of living because that’s how we evolved as human beings.
Back then, food was scarce. Especially in the winter. Sometimes our Paleolithic ancestors would go a full day or even a few days without food.
If fasting put our bodes in “starvation mode”, then we wouldn’t have had the energy to hunt and that would’ve been the end of our species. And you wouldn’t be here reading this right now.
Myth #2. Fasting will slow down your metabolism
This goes hand in hand with the first myth.
Because the idea of “starvation mode” refers to the notion that our metabolism decreases severely and our body shuts down in response to fasting.
No. There is zero research that fasting, even fasts up to 3 days, decreases your metabolism.
In fact, metabolism actually increases during fasting. You’re wondering, what? How?
Let me explain.
There’s a study where 4 days of continuous fasting actually increased Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) by 12%.
Noradrenaline, a counter regulatory hormone, is also increased by 117% keeping your energy levels high. This is how we’re still able to hunt and stay focused.
I experienced this when I did a 7 day water and I worked out every day. You should check my video about it if you’re interested.
I felt like I could see through walls and taste sound during those 7 days. I also did it with my 60 yr old mom and she got amazing results and felt great the entire time.
Going back to the study. After 4 days of fasting, fat oxidation was also increased by over 370%. Which means that your body simply switches to burning fat for energy when there’s no food available.
That’s what body fat is there for. It’s stored energy waiting to be used. And you have at least 100,000 calories worth of stored energy in your butt, thighs, and belly.
Again, this makes sense from a survival standpoint. If we don’t eat, our bodies use our stored energy as fuel so we can find more food.
Our Paleolithic ancestors would’ve considered us gluttons for eating 3 meals a day; let alone six. Scheduled meal times are completely made up anyway.
Think about it. We, the ultimate apex top of the food chain predator, are the only species on the planet that feels the need to shove Fruit Loops down our throats first thing in the morning.
Sharks don’t do that. Lions don’t do that. We’re also the fattest species on earth.
Do you know what actually slows down your metabolism? A calorie restriction diet.
Yup. Cutting calories slows down your metabolism. You know, also known as calories in versus calories out? Yeah, that messes up your metabolism.
Myth#3: Fasting makes you burn muscle
Another big one.
Ask your average bro at the gym and they’ll tell you with full conviction that fasting will burn your muscles. You’re gonna wither away and you’re gonna be skin and bones. T
his person is completely misinformed and probably graduated from the Bro Science Academy.
The problem is, a lot of trainers, “influencers”, and so called experts also believe in this myth.
Here’s the scientific truth. The only time that your body starts burning muscle when you’re fasting is when body fat is at 4% or less.
Even elite marathon runners still carry around 8% body fat. And as mentioned earlier, we have at least 100,000 calories worth of stored energy in the form of body fat.
We survived 2.5 million years of evolution through the harshest conditions known to man.
Why would your body burn muscle, when you have an abundant amount of body fat? The human body is a little bit smarter than that.
If we did not preserve muscle when food was scarce, when we were forced to fast, we wouldn’t have survived as a species because we wouldn’t have been able to hunt.
There’s a study where they did Alternate Day Fasting (ADF) for 70 days and the results were decreased body weight by 6%, fat mass decreased by 11.4%, and lean mass (that’s your muscle and bones)s, did not change at all.
In simple terms, the participants lost a lot of body fat and they did not lose muscle.
Here’s how your body actually burns energy so you can tell your bro at the gym the truth.
Your body uses up stored glycogen first for the first 24-48 hours when you stop eating. After that, it switches to burning fat.
While protein oxidation actually decreases. So rather than burning muscle during fasting, we start conserving it.
Because the human body is extremely efficient at recycling old protein and making new ones out of it.
How? Because fasting is one of the most potent stimuli for growth hormone (GH) secretion. And increased GH helps maintain muscle mass.
Some people even refer to growth hormone as the real fountain of youth because of its anti aging effects.
There’s one study that shows a 5-fold increase in GH in response to a 2 day fast. Simply put, fasting doesn’t make you lose muscle.
In fact, short term fasting is four times better at preserving lean muscle mass compared to a calorie restriction diet.
Training in the fasted state is actually starting to become more mainstream. And that’s actually myth number 4
Myth#4: You shouldn’t workout on an empty stomach
Again, you can tell your your trainer that this isn’t true.
Because the elevated GH stimulated by fasting, which is extremely anabolic, should increase muscle mass and make recovery from your workouts easier and faster.
Fasting was how I was able to transform myself to a chubby dude to a national level weightlifter.
But don’t just take it from me. If you’re from North America who watches Football, then you should be familiar with a guy named Herschel Walker.
He’s been doing a daily 24 hour fast, he just eats once a day, for the last 20+ years. And he played in the NFL, the highest level of football. Then he transitioned to MMA afterwards and he looks like an action figure.
Speaking of MMA, UFC Champion Georges St. Pierre also routinely trains in the fasted state.
Myth#5: Fasting will make you sick
Quite the opposite.
Here are some of the benefits of fasting:
- Improves mental clarity and concentration
- Induces weight and body fat loss
- Lowers blood sugar levels
- Improves insulin sensitivity
- Increases energy,
- Improves fat burning
- Lowers blood cholesterol
- Prevents Alzheimer’s disease
- Decreases inflammation (the root cause of all sorts of disease)
- Extends life
- Reverses the aging process (this is because of that increase in GH response and its anti aging benefits)
There’s even studies that shows that it can help prevent cancer because of Autophagy, which is a detox on a cellular level, that only gets triggered when you fast.
Animals inherently knows the healing benefits of fasting.
Think about the last time your dog got sick. Was it ravenous? No. Your dog instinctively knows that it shouldn’t eat.
Long story short, fasting will not make you sick. It’s the complete opposite. It heals your body.
Hippocrates, often considered the father of medicine said it best. To eat when you’re sick, is to feed your sickness.
Do you know what actually makes you sick? Eating a lot of refined carbs and highly processed sugary foods. You know, foods from the base of the infamous food pyramid that a majority of people follow?
Myth #6. Fasting will cause your blood sugar to crash
False. You need to give your body a little more credit than that.
Your body is extremely smart. It does an amazing job especially when it comes to regulating your blood sugar levels in the proper range through the secretion of specific hormones.
This is especially true if you just do short term fasting because your body will simply break down glycogen from the liver.
Even if you do a longer fast, your body can manufacture it’s own glucose through a process called Gluconeogenesis, using the glycerol that’s a byproduct from breaking down fat.
Myth#7: Fasting causes brain fog
This is simply not true.
The human brain can actually run on an alternate fuel called ketone bodies. A byproduct when fat is metabolized.
Yes, your brain has been running mostly on glucose all this time. But that’s only because you’re always eating food that contains carbs.
When you start fasting and our stored glycogen runs out, we start burning fat and we start producing ketone bodies, which are able to cross the blood-brain barrier to feed our brain cells.
In fact, ketones are a much cleaner burning fuel compared to carbs. Which leaves free radicals that can cause oxidative damage that leads to inflammation in the body.
Chronic inflammation can cause all sorts of disease including diabetes, cancer, arthritis, IBD, autoimmune and cardiovascular disease just to name a few.
Think of your body as a car. When it’s running on ketones, think of it as an electric car like a Tesla. It’s running on clean fuel.
When it’s running on mainly carbs, especially refined carbs and sugar, think of it as an old car running on diesel which is dirty fuel.
This is why pairing intermittent with a keto diet has gained a lot of popularity because it keeps you in nutritional ketosis.
Myth#8: You’ll die of hunger when you fast
This is one of my favourites.
Have you ever skipped a meal or inadvertently skipped a meal because you were too busy?
Maybe you had a meeting or you’re too busy studying. What happened? Nothing. You didn’t die.
A lot of the time, we eat mostly out of habit. Hunger is simply a learned response through years of practice.
Fasting is nothing new. We’ve been fasting since the beginning of time. A lot of religions which has been practiced for hundreds of years also incorporate some form of fasting in their beliefs.
Think of Muslims fasting during Ramada. Simply put, the human body is designed to fast. It comes with our default setting.
It’s really only when we start eating 4, 5, or 6 meals a day where things start to go sideways.
Now I have to point out that you have to pair intermittent fasting with the proper diet to get its full benefits. It doesn’t just give you the green light to hit up your local all-you-can-eat buffet when you break your fast.
There’s definitely a right way and a wrong way to fast. There’s gonna be an adaptation period of 2-3 weeks. You need to teach your body to be fat adapted and metabolically flexible first.
If you’re new to the world of fasting, don’t think of it as a punishment. Think of it as simply taking a break from eating and giving your body a chance to reap all of its amazing benefits.
Do it enough times and I can almost guarantee that you’re gonna feel amazing, you’re gonna have more energy, you’re gonna be healthy, you’re gonna lose a lot of weight, and your clothes are gonna fit better.
As always, if this was helpful, share it with a friend who could benefit from it as well!
Need More Help?
Use this simple 4-step process to melt ALL the fat around your stomach and look good shirtless WITHOUT going on a crazy diet or wasting hours at the gym. Get the Lean Body Blueprint here for free!
Leave a Reply