Just for fun sometimes people refer to this as a caveman diet because it depends on a key feature for fat loss in modern times. And it has to do with hormone balance that depends on what you eat, when you eat, and how much you eat for ideal weight management. The single most important factor in almost all diet programs involves what you do for losing weight and body fat based on naturally boosting your own levels of growth hormone. And this depends on how or when you eat your meals. It’s surprising to find out what that is and how to optimize your lean muscle and get the body fat composition that you’re supposed to have. The good news there are lots of easy ways to lose fat without really going too heavily into dieting. That really is kind of depressing if you think about it. Just meal spacing is one of the key factors that’s missing in most dietary programs. You can see what other kinds of things I have to say about fat loss in my free belly fat book, which you can download now at BellyFatScience.com.

All the best with getting rid of fat,

Dr. D

Studies: Burn More Fat on Empty Stomach

This is a great title for a news article headline, don’t you think? Unfortunately, the media failed to cite the original work. After some digging I found it on Pubmed. The research focused on world class cyclists, and the results showed that ultra high intensity training with low muscle glycogen led to burning more fat. This, of course, is common sense.

How do you get to a level of low muscle glycogen? Since this is the form of carbohydrate stored in muscle, the only way to go low is by not eating. Of course, this is complicated by the fact that liver also stores glycogen, and that not eating may also lead to muscle loss. No matter to the journalists. The whole idea that research on world class cyclists could apply to you an me is ridiculous from the get-go. Might as well compare us with lab rats.

Of course, if you do ultra high intensity training and are a world class cyclist, then this research may be good news for you.

The Real Story Behind Fasting for Weight Loss

Meal spacing leads to all kinds of hormone changes involving insulin, growth hormone, insulin-like growth factor-1, and leptin, among others. The pattern of release of these hormones after a meal follows a prescribed response to food and its digestion over time. The most effective fat loss period, due to these patterns, is the 12 or so hours between dinner and breakfast the next day. This is your daily fasting for maximum benefit for weight loss.

Extended fasting all by itself can boost the daily dinner-to-breakfast fasting results. What I mean by extended fasting is no more than 24 hours. The 3-day or 8-day fasts that some people love to do are too extreme.

Weight Loss With Fasting

Fasting specifically directs your body to go after fat, once stored glycogen becomes unavailable. However, there are certain strategies that you must follow for fasting – before, during, and after – to make sure that fat loss is the target and not muscle loss.

Brad Pilon is the world’s leading expert on how to do this right. Fortunately, he has put together a manual for all of us normal people (not world class athletes) to get rid of belly fat through proper fasting. He calls his program Eat Stop Eat, which is cute and clever and to the point. I have linked an icon above to the page where he explains it better than I can. It is also here:

Unlike the stupid media reports that pushed my buttons on this topic, Brad’s ideas are spot on. Go ahead and read what he has to say and you will see what I mean.

All the best for fasting and weight loss,

Dr. D

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