#87 The Goals of Intermittent Fasting + Q&A

Siim Land (0:00)

What are the goals of intermittent fasting? Why do people do it in the first place, and what are the reasons? Why? These were some of the topics I talked about in my recent YouTube Livestream, The Goals of Intermittent Fasting. Unfortunately, the video had some issues, so this episode is gonna be the audio version of the YouTube Livestream, The Goals of Intermittent Fasting. Body Mind Empowerment. Get stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven. Everything the body needs. Control your mind.

As you can see from the title, then the topic of this Livestream is gonna be The Goal of Intermittent Fasting. And yeah, like there are many ways to do intermittent fasting. There are many reasons why you would want to do intermittent fasting. And we're gonna talk about these different scenarios, these different methods in this Livestream. And before I continue on, or yeah, like we can't just, I'll just, you know, if you're watching this on a replay, then you can, you know, speed up the replay in some way or skip to some of the more juiciest questions, but awesome. So yeah, seems like the audio is going great and we're rolling. Sounds good, that's good.

And yeah, I wanted to maybe start off by talking about, you know, the different goals or the different reasons why you would do intermittent fasting. And generally they're gonna fall into, let's say, three main camps, in my opinion, or three main groups. Well, the first one is of course weight loss. And in terms of using intermittent fasting as a tool for weight loss, then the main mechanisms for that is to kind of have this period of time restricted feeding, where you consume most of your calories within a smaller timeframe. And that is going to benefit your weight loss in several ways. First of all, it can help you to eat fewer calories without feeling that you're depriving yourself. For instance, if you have only 2,000 calories per day to eat, then it may be more difficult for you to spread it out, or it may be more difficult for you to stick to smaller meals of let's say only 500 calories per meal, versus if you were to do intermittent fasting and you have less frequent meals, you eat your food within a smaller timeframe, then that's simply gonna increase the total amount of calories within each meal. And you don't necessarily feel like you're depriving yourself. You can kind of fit in more calorically dense foods that can satiate you longer. And you can even squeeze in a few of the additional treats. So that's one of the best perks for intermittent fasting as a tool for weight loss. You're gonna not feel you don't miss out on some of the foods. And you've probably seen some people doing some crazy diets with intermittent fasting and still eating a bunch of junk food and such, and they're still able to lose weight. I'm not saying that it's necessarily healthy or something, but it comes to show that as long as you still maintain a caloric deficit, you can kind of play with a lot of the calories and such. So it can still work, so to say. Secondly, while you're doing intermittent fasting, then you will also kind of predispose yourself or you'll protect yourself against a lot of these metabolic issues that may arise, whether that be with a poor diet or also like protecting yourself against some of the negative side effects of dieting, such as lowering your metabolic rate as well as like protecting against muscle loss. For instance, well, this study was done on mice, but not in humans, but if you've heard about the research of Sachin Panda, then they found in one of their studies on mice that the rats or the mice who consumed their food within eight hours lost significantly more body fat than those mice who were able to eat their food at libidum, throughout to 24 hour period. And those mice who were able to eat whenever they wanted, they still ate the same amount of calories, but they were still gaining weight versus the ones who were eating within like the intermittent fasting schedule within eight hours or so, they were able to still lose weight and they didn't get like diabetes because those rats were still fed like a really junk food diet with high amounts of carbs and high amounts of fat. So it comes to show that the period of being in a fasted state has like a unique metabolic benefit in terms of preventing the accumulation of oxidative stress and also like the rise of blood sugar and such. So the period of being in a fasted state of being in mild ketosis and triggering autophagy, those things are very preventative against those things or against a lot of these metabolic disorders.