Fasting mistakes can sabotage your efforts to dramatically improve your heath with the most powerful method of detoxification and rejuvenation known to man.

As you are aware, fasting is the #1 way to restore metabolic health through improving insulin sensitivity. Without insulin sensitivity, your entire health profile is affected, and you can experience a host of disorders such as skin problems, hormone problems, stubborn weight gain, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, auto-immune problems, neurodegenerative conditions, cardiovascular disease and more. Basically these conditions are all related to insulin sensitivity and subsequent inflammation – the root of most of our chronic diseases.¹

Most people by now have heard of fasting and have probably tried some version of it with the most common type being “Intermittent Fasting.” This is where you simply create an eating window of 12 hours or less and a fasting time of 12 hours or more. Once started, a few key fasting mistakes occur that hinder results. We’ll cover these top 3 fasting mistakes below.

Let’s cover the basic tenets of fasting that make it a superior health restoration method vs literally anything else:

1. No muscle loss – during conventional low calorie dieting, eating smaller meals multiple times a day (eat less + exercise more,) or undergoing weight loss injections; you lose weight, but you also lose muscle. This is the very tissue that burns fat! It is a majority of your metabolism as well as what determines a lot of your longevity! Fasting preserves muscle through hormone optimization, namely Human Growth Hormone and testosterone. In fact, combining intermittent fasting and exercise is the secret to fat loss while gaining lean mass!²
2. Restoration of insulin sensitivity and overall optimization of hormone function. Your insulin receptors found in muscle now have a chance to rest, to re-set, and to become more sensitive allowing for more efficient handling of blood sugar. The more stable your blood sugar, the better your health.
3. Rejuvenation and healing – fasting allows for your body to shift from digestion to reparation. Through a process called autophagy, unnecessary cells (cancerous, diseased, poor functioning, etc.) are removed. This is true “detox.” Conventional dieting does not allow your body to repair and regenerate as you’re constantly in a fed state. You’ve heard of stem cells which are those amazing cells that replace old or bad cells and re-start the clock! DNA repair at it’s finest. I cannot stress the importance of autophagy enough as it is our built in way of literally improving most all modern chronic disease – even neurodegnerative disease like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s!³

The most popular version of intermittent fasting is the 16:8 method whereby you simply skip breakfast and create an 8 hour eating window followed by 16 hours of fasting. And it works!…Until it doesn’t.

Fasting Mistakes… #1

Staying with the same fasting method too long.

Let’s say you jump on the fasting band wagon and you’ve been eating 2 or 3 times a day with maybe a few snacks here and there starting with breakfast around 7 and ending around 8 or so – pretty common. Then all of a sudden, you skip breakfast, eat the same foods, but you’re eating them between 11am and 7pm. You start dropping pounds! After about 3 or more weeks, your weight loss stabilizes, and you’re stuck.

Why? Your body has adapted to that particular hormetic stressor. No where and in no time (except now) in human history did we eat and very consistent times every day. In fact, there were many days we simply didn’t eat!

Your body is always going to adapt to any consistent regimen you do.

If you’ve been in any of my groups or my clinic, you’ll know I’m always calling for “change-up” which means alternating your feeding/fasting times. Daily is great, but weekly works, too.

For example, set your fasting times up to go 16 hours Monday, 20 hours Tue, 12 hours Wed, 20 hours Thur and 12 hours Fri. Weekends are great to let it ride with hunger as your guide, but I don’t recommend eating after dark.

Fasting Mistakes… #2

You don’t fast long enough

In order to truly get into actual fat burning, you need a good 36+ hour fast! My favorite way to set up fat burning through out the entire week is to start it with a 36-48 hour fast. Stop eating at 7pm Sunday, don’t eat Monday, and eat a carnivore (high protein) meal to re-feed on Tue at 7pm or a little earlier if it’s getting dark. As long as you don’t eat excessive carbs, you will be back into ketosis (fat burning) by the next morning. You can carry this through out the week by staying OMAD then 2MAD (2 meals a day) on the weekend.

Fasting Mistakes… #3

You eat too much bad stuff

Vegetable oils, refined carbohydrates, and other artificial foods will hammer your health. Just because these man-made foods are legal does not mean they are healthy. Initially, you can lose weight without changing your diet when you shorten your eating window, but that soon comes to a halt.

Eventually, you have to clean up your diet!

I’ve literally seen people gain weight eating 1 MEAL A DAY!

Also known as OMAD, this is the ultimate go-to for most people who want to get a guarantee weight loss and quick. Depending on your age and you metabolic health, you quickly lose weight regardless of what you’re eating. Granted, you are much more miserable during your fasting time if you consume carbs.

Remember, there are ONLY 2 essentials to an optimal human diet: 1: Animal-based protein and 2: Animal-based fat. (Ruminant animals are preferred.) We love our carbs and most are addicted. Fruit is the “safe carb,” and I only recommend organic due to the incredible amount of pesticide that fruit absorbs. If you don’t do organic, you can soak your fruit in Apple Cider Vinegar for 15 min then rinse. That can pull out most pesticide. Hope this helps!

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