This is me “fasting.”
Fasting is when you don’t eat for a while and only have water or coffee or tea, for example.
Some people fast so they can not eat as many calories and other people fast to get into ketosis. Fasting is a good thing, and I have talked about it a lot.
But let me give you some ideas on the different ways you can get started.
Micro Fasts
Many of the benefits of fasting happen within the first 12 – 16 hours, which this includes increased fat burning and growth hormone and these sort of things. So you don’t have to fast for long to get something out of it, is what I’m saying.
The easiest way to fast is to say skip breakfast and have your first meal around noon which is 12 o’clock. This is what I do, is I have coffee or tea in the mornings and then workout and eat afterwards.
Another idea is to use a 5/2 fast where twice a week you only have two 500 calories meals. This isn’t “technically” fasting it’s more calorie reduction but calorie reduction is one reason fasting is so helpful.
Intermittent Fasts
Intermittent fasts are more along your, “Well just skip a day of eating kind of thing.” That’s really all there is to say about that, is once a week (starting out) eat dinner and then don’t eat again until dinner on the next day. I don’t know why people write whole books about intermittent fasting when I just told you everything you need in one sentence.
Extended Fasts
Extended fasts (up to 3 days) are useful for getting into ketosis, if that’s something you’re into. Also there is this guy Dom D’agostino who says longer fasts are useful for cancer prevention and such and he would know because he’s a researcher. He was on Tim Ferris’s podcast once.
The short of it is longer fasts seem to clean out your cells and help you to feel kind of new again. Obviously longer fasts will be effective for fat loss also because of how many calories you are omitting but that is not the reason you do them.
I am going to write a program with longer fasts as part of my Inner Circle soon, if you are even man or woman enough to do it, but in the meantime this Dom guy says to do a longer fast about once a quarter.
OK, well that’s the end of this post.
Strong ON!
– Pat
PS – You might also enjoy my Inner Circle because there is already a fasting program in there, I think.
For some reason I didn’t think you could have coffee when you fast. Doesn’t coffee speed up your metabolism? I feel like it would upset your stomach drinking coffee while fasting? Maybe each person is different.
Good post. Dom is a strong dude! 500lbs deadlift for 10 after 7 day fast!
Yeah, that is pretty nuts!
I have made attempts at fasting without success I think its because I was brought up not to miss breakfast so I really find it difficult not to have my breakfast.
I have fasted before but it has been many years. The easiest fasts I have done involved using soup broth. This way I still got a boost of nutrients and salt to keep me going. I can easily do a 3 day fast on soup broth. I would like to do a straight up water fast once or twice a month for 24 hours. I may try to do one this month and see how it goes. Can I actually work out during this without worrying about getting lightheaded or dizzy?