Fasting: The Science-y Way!

Fasting seems to be all the rage these days.  And with the whole society looking to lose a few pounds, it’s understandable.  After all, “not eating” is certainly one way to go about weight loss.

Now I’m gonna keep this post short because I’m merely looking to expand your horizons a bit.

First off, let’s be clear about what I’m NOT talking about.  I’m NOT talking about the Master Cleanse.  Nor am I talking about weird ass Hollywood style detoxes.  In fact, I’ll even be diplomatic and say those things MAY have their place in one’s pursuit of health and hotness.  But at the moment… I think they totally suck, are based on no known principles of science and phisiology, and are totally ridiculous.  As always, if you know something I don’t, feel free to email me and educate me!

What I’m talking about is the use of shorter targeted periods of fasting in order to maintain or attain ideal body composition.  There are several “styles” currently floating around the fitness industry.  A gentleman named Brad Pilon wrote a book called Eat Stop Eat that encourages a weekly fast of 24 hours.  Loyal readers may remember me discussing the work of Martin Berkhan at leangains.com. Berkhan’s system is based on only eating for 8 hours of the day.  And The Warrior Diet is a book by artist/soldier Ori Hofmekler which details an eating plan based around one mega large evening feeding via 20 daily hours of undereating and a 4 hour window of overeating.

Martin Berkhan

Martin Berkhan;

Not a fat ass

Now I don’t know about you, but when I first came across all this “fasting” talk, I thought it was a bunch of horse shit.  However… the research and the real life results tell a different tale.

Unfortunately, the word “fasting”, particularly used in the context of hotness, has a dirty connotation.  And that’s not without reason; it means NOT EATING.  However, upon closely examing all three styles of fasting above, you’ll see none of them are really that unreasonable.  Furthermore, both Pilon and Berkhan have a lot of actual research to back up the safety and efficacy of their methods.

As promised, I’m not going to go into great detail about these methods, though curious readers are encouraged to click on the links and explore them further.  To be totally honest, I don’t feel like I’m enough of an expert on any of them to be able to counsel a client into trying them just yet (though I do own both The Warrior Diet and Eat Stop Eat and they’re on my reading list for the second half of 2011; sadly Berkhan has yet to release a book about his variation).  I share this with you purely to expand your horizons as to the viable strategies one can use when seeking health and hotness.

And if I may, allow me to make a bold prediciton: Science-y Fasting is going to be one of the hot nutritional trends of the next decade.  It’s bound to be controversial for the same reasons I initially was skeptical: people understandably freak out when it seems you’re telling them to not eat, because fasting in a haphazzard, foolish way is NOT gonna make you healthy and hot.  However, because of the growing research behind it, the results of many of fasting’s adherents, and the simplicity of some of the methods’ application, you can be sure you’re going to be seeing more mainstream coverage.

And just think.  You already knew about.  Gosh you’re savvy.

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