I Was Wrong About Intermittent Fasting

I've been doing interat fasting for 10 years in different ways it's been one of the best decisions I've made for my own health in my opinion however over the past two years or so many experts and doctors who previously supported invent fasting are now against it today I just don't feel that that trade off is worthwhile at least at that extreme level was I wrong about inent fasting myself and have I changed my mind about it in this video I'm going to outline the most common criticisms of inid fasting and I'll share what are the things have changed my mind about it so make sure you click a like And subscribe for future videos about living longer and staying healthier first off the biggest reason why there's been a downtrend in intive fasting is the idea that it's going to make you lose muscle and it's a net negative for health if a person is intermittently fasting you're going to see a lot of muscle loss unless they're very thoughtful about their protein intake that's a valid concern especially for the elderly people who struggle maintaining and building muscle they claim that fasting is going to make you lose muscle comes from the idea that to build muscle you need to spread your protein intake across several meals ideally up to four meals a day eating too much protein in one or two meals like with inabit of fasting would result in suboptimal results indeed it's been historically thought that you can only absorb 30 grams of protein in one meal everything else would be a waste and that's why you need to spread out your protein intake however a new 2023 study found that a very large protein intake of 100 G after exercise results in a larger and longer anabolic response than a low protein intake of 25 G myofibrillar protein synthesis in the 100 G protein group was about 30% higher than the 25 G group over the 12-h hour testing period now this study doesn't disprove the idea that there's a threshold for maximal protein synthesis it might actually support that idea because the 100 G protein group absorb their protein over a longer period of time so they were just constantly stimulating the maximum protein synthesis within that time frame however what this study does prove is that you can absorb more protein in one meal while it may not be optimal from a maximum muscle growth growth perspective it still shows that you're not wasting your protein if you eat more than 30 gram in one sitting and it still means that you can effectively build muscle by eating more and eating less frequently this study also supports my own experience within man fasting over the last 6 years I've had only two protein meals per day first 30 g of protein before working out and then over 100 G after the workout I went from 65 kg to 85 kg while making continuous progress but what do the actual human studies say about in fasting and muscle growth a 2021 systematic review on 23 randomized and non-randomized control studies found that time restricted eating can reduce body mass and improve nutrient metabolism in both normal and overweight individuals but it doesn't alter protein synthesis and muscle mass nor does it hamper aerobic fitness and muscular performance among Physically Active individuals including athletes another 2024 systematic review on the effects of in fasting on sports performance concluded that individ fasting improves body composition without hampering physical performance lean tissue maintenance or maximum power the key variable here appears to be sufficient protein intake and doing some form of exercise especially resistance trining a 2022 study compared the effects of continuous calor restriction at 20% deficit combined with resistance training and 52 in fasting where you eat 70% deficit for two days of the week and normal calories at other days also combined with resistance training for 12 weeks they saw no significant differences in body composition muscle quality and strength between the two groups that's because both both groups did resistance training and both groups ate over 1.4 G per kilogram per day of protein which is over 0.7 grams per pound per day so if you're getting enough protein and you're doing some form of resistance training than a smaller eating frequency or being in a severe calorie deficit on some days doesn't appear to have any significant effects on muscle loss compared to traditional calorie ruction probably eating once a day isn't the most optimal way to maintain and build muscle you could theoretically do it but you would need at least two to three meals per day to see significant results one thing I do have to agree with the experts is that extended fasting has much worse effects on muscle composition and muscle loss there's no real evidence about the longevity benefits or health benefits of extended fasting that you wouldn't get from otherwise a healthy lifestyle but there is the risk of potentially losing more muscle the more often you do these kinds of extended fasts that last for 3 to 5 days that's why I'm not doing extended fasts anymore I might do them like once or twice a year if I'm traveling but I'm not deliberately like scheduling them into my routine but I am still doing daily Innovative fasting where I have my 30 grams of protein before my workout and over 100 gram after the workout because it works for me the second idea is that Innovative fasting doesn't provide any additional lity benefits that you wouldn't get from regular calorie restriction calorie restriction without malnutrition is one of the few shown non- gentic methods of extending Lipan in all species studied such as yeast flies worms rodents and monkeys in humans calorie restriction improves markers of health and promotes weak weight loss there is some evidence that intive fasting has similar longevity benefits as calorie recption in animals but those studies are usually done on calorie restricted animals and the calorie restricted animals also do some form of innovative fasting when you don't control for calories you can get lifespan extension from those studies but they're always calorically restricted when you do control for calories in other words when you make sure that the mice that are intermittent fasting or time-restricted feeding are eating the same number of calories there's little to no effect on lifespan it's tiny to zero depending on the study you look at so again I think that supports the idea that total calories is really what's most important at least in mice not when you eat those calories or how often you eat those calories as pointed out by Matt cine and colleagues in their 2021 review most studies on un fasting and time restricted feeding in animals are done together with calorie restriction and a lot of the calorie restriction experiments are done together with a component of time red feeding that is I think um interesting there though is that uh if you in in mice if you decouple the Circadian component of when they eat on caloric restriction you do lose some of the benefit so so it's almost as if caloric restriction is necessary for the lifespan extension but it's not sufficient you also need this circadian component of when you eat another way to say it is if you want if you're a mouse and you want to get the benefit from caloric restriction you have first of all have to be the right genotype you have to eat less calories but it is important on when you eat those less calories if you're a mouse and you're not calorically restricted it doesn't seem to matter when you eat those calories so in animals there appears to be some benefits of having your food in a smaller eating window or at least in alignment with the circadian rhythms a 2022 study saw that 30% of color restriction was enough to extend the lifespan of male mice by 10% however a daily fasting window combined with 30% calor restriction and circadian rhythm alignment extended the lifespan in these mice by 35% independent of body weight fasting with 30% calor restriction and misile Lancer Caden rhythms resulted in a 20% longer life but what about humans human research about in fasting has found that it can improve markers of metabolic Health such as blood sugar triglycerides waste circumference and cholesterol in obese as well as non-obese individuals a 2020 review found that some randomiz control trials have shown that in fasting offers metabolic benefits and improves glycemic control in people with diabetes but are those benefits derived from being in a calor deficit a 2023 meta analysis of seven randomiz control trials found that those following time restriced eating saw greater reductions in body weight fat mass and waste circumference compared to just calorie restriction however these time resed eating studies weren't controlling for calories people doing it fasting ended up eating fewer calories which resulted in greater benefits so how does inward fasting compared to regular car restriction multiple randomized clinical trials from 2022 and 2023 have shown that when calories are equated time restricted eating is effective for weight loss but not Superior to regular calor restriction without restricting the eating window so it doesn't appear that confining your eating into a smaller window would be superior to regular calor restriction as long as the calorie intake is the same but many people just find confining the eing window and doing it fasting a much more effective way to induce a calorie deficit which I think is a net positive fortunately I've never believed that in fasting is like a magical weight loss tool but I have changed my mind about the timing of when you should eat there is evidence from Human trials that eating most of your food during the daytime as opposed to at night is healthier even without causing weight loss so eating earlier is generally healthier than eating later but your total calorie intake also matters a lot in determining this it doesn't matter if you overeat in the morning in the lunchtime or at evening they're all bad options so does it mean that you should be eating breakfast and skipping dinner skipping breakfast is often seen to be a associated with a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes heart disease obesity and old cause mortality in observational studies however breakfast Skippers then to have poorer lifestyle habits they're more likely to be smokers be less physically active and have worse healthy eating scores a 2019 metaanalysis of prospective studies found that skipping breakfast was associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes but this Association was mediated primarily by BMI metabolic W studies show that skipping breakfast also reduces the amount of physical activity people do skipping breakfast without eating late or overeating calories isn't linked to weight gain and poor metabolic Health as long as you don't overeat calories later in the day but from the perspective of suc and biology it is better to have your calories earlier in the day than later this doesn't mean that you have to stop eating at 2 p.m like some people do you can still have a regular dinner just stop eating about four to 5 hours before bait that's going to give you plenty of time to digest the food and also lower your blood sugar levels melatonin the sleep hormone causes some mild insulin resistance and reduces your glucose tolerance which is why you don't want to be eating large amounts of carbohydrates immediately before bed another point is that you need to fast for 3 to 5 days anyway to activate aavaj which is this process of cell cleaning so there's no reason to do daily inovative fasting that's not really the case while there are many other things that increase aagy such as calor restriction and exercise you don't need to fast 3 days to activate it in fact there are studies finding that even 16 hours is enough to see an elevation in aagy genes now we don't fully understand the role of aagy in longevity we don't even know how to measure it directly and interpret it it's certainly a very important process of clearing out the waste material inside cells but it's very difficult to measure and even if we are able to measure it we don't know how much is enough for how much aage you would need because sometimes aage is also found to be involved in some malignancies and other diseases so you don't want aavi all the time so I wouldn't inherently worry about trying to maximize aagy just follow the healthy lifestyle habits and make sure you practice some aspects of calor restriction in fasting and maybe consuming teas and coffees that promote so what should we make of all of this is in fasting debunked and worthless here's how I do in fasting based on the newest research number one I have two protein meals per day one is 30 g of protein before my workout and then over 100 gr after the workout that's just my personal preference it doesn't matter that much how many meals you have as long as you get adequate amount of protein which for most people would be at least 1.6 G per kilogram per day or 0.8 G per pound per day having four meals is probably Superior for muscle growth than two meals but the differences are very small for most people what's more important is the training stimulus are you training properly and are you seeing Progressive overload the meal timing is micromanagement number two I stop eating 5 hours before bed this is generally better from a Sleep Quality and circadian biology perspective however you do have to experiment with this yourself because some people can't fall asleep without having a snack if that's you then I recommend having a lower glycemic higher protein snack for better blood sugar regulation such as cotage cheese and number three I skip breakfast and have coffee in instead as long as you're not overeating calories and are Physically Active then you don't need to have breakfast however if you like it then go ahead just know that the link between breakfast skipping and higher mortality is mediated by unhealthy lifestyle habits that you can easily avoid overall I haven't changed my mind about inid fasting that much over the last 5 years I have made some adjustments to my routine but I'm still practicing pretty much the same routine I have done for the last five to six years there's actually been studies that support my personal experience such as the 100 G protein study and scientists have now recognized ized aagi being a major Hallmark of Aging which it wasn't back in 2019 inp fasting isn't Magic and it doesn't make up for other unhealthy lifestyle habits however it can certainly be an effective tool for many people to manage their calorie intake and manage their body composition so you don't have to be afraid of it as long as you're getting enough protein as long as you're exercising and as long as you're lifting weights if you want to learn how to build muscle and what's the most optimal way to do so in terms of training and nutrition then check out my video about my evidence-based muscle growth routine but I that thanks for watching this video make sure you click a like subscribe for future videos about living longer and staying healthier thanks for watching my name is SE stay optimized stay empowered