Diet strategies are not much different: There are a lot of different tools you can use to keep your body working and look the way you want. Understanding what those tools are, and when and how you can best use them, will help you keep your eating on track.

One such dietary tool that’s received a lot of attention is intermittent fasting (IF). Read enough stories about intermittent fasting, and it starts to sound like magic, with benefits going well beyond weight loss. Proponents say—and some preliminary research agrees—that IF can help improve important health biomarkers (like fasting blood glucose and triglyceride levels), turn back the clock on time (anti-aging), and even help fight neurodegenerative diseases (health defense).

Intermittent fasting success depends a lot on your personal preferences, schedule, and how you feel when you fast.

But, as you’ll see, those benefits vary from person-to-person—and also depend on the style of intermittent fasting you prefer to follow.

Should you try IF? Here’s a guide that will help you answer those questions and help you understand the dietary tools that might be best for your body.

What exactly is intermittent fasting, anyway?

At the most basic level, intermittent fasting is something everyone does every day — it’s a break between meals. The most common of which occurs when you fast between your final meal of the day (usually dinner) and breakfast the following morning. (Hence the name, “break the fast.”)

Within the health and fitness realm, however, people use the term “intermittent fasting” to describe times when you intentionally extend that overnight fast for periods of time lasting anywhere from 12 to 24 hours.

The Lean Gains approach, for example, advocates a 16-hour fast. So if you started eating at 8 am, for instance, you would finish eating for the day at 4 pm, then fast for the rest of the day, and start eating again at 8 am the next day. The hours that you fast don’t matter, just that you go 16 consecutive hours without eating followed by 8 hours where you do. That cycle repeats every day.

There’s also the Warrior Diet, which is a 20-hour fast coupled with a 4-hour eating window. And the Eat Stop Eat protocol, which incorporates one full 24-hour break from eating at least one day per week. But then the rest of the week you eat on any schedule that you desire.

We’ll weigh the pros and cons of each of these approaches in a bit. For now, let’s address the even larger question at hand…

Does intermittent fasting work?

For all the health benefits fasting recently linked to intermittent fasting, there’s one overarching reason why most people try it: To lose fat.

And if that’s your goal, then the answer is yes, intermittent fasting might help — but not for the reasons you think.

There isn’t some magic at work that’s responsible for the numerous intermittent fasting success stories.

The reason people following fasting protocols are able to lose weight is quite straightforward: They eat fewer calories than they burn throughout the day because the “eating windows” or weekly fast makes it harder to overeat.

Limiting the hours when you can eat helps you eat fewer calories overall. Think about it: let’s say your plan for weight loss required you eating 2,000 calories per day. It’s going to be easier to stick to that goal if you can only eat for an 8-hour window in a day as opposed to 14 hours. When you consider fat loss alone (more to come on the other health, longevity, and disease-fighting benefits), intermittent fasting provides an easy-to-follow structure that naturally creates habits that make it harder to overeat.

Can you still over-eat within a limited time window and gain weight? Of course. But that’s the case with any eating approach. But instead of thinking about how many meals to eat, you just set a start time and stop time to your meals, and then eat in a way that feels best for you — assuming you stay within the amounts that you should be eating.

The benefit is that this provides lots of flexibility and allows you to select the eating window (or style of IF — we’ll cover all of these to help you find the best option for you) that fits your lifestyle. Perhaps you skip breakfast, have your first meal around noon, and then end in the early evening. Or you could push back later, and then cater to your late-night eating preferences. Or maybe you do the opposite — start eating early and end in the early evening to avoid the late-night snack habit. Any of these approaches can work — it’s all about your preference.

All these intermittent fasting schedules can create an energy deficit that leads to weight and fat loss. (Again, we’ll cover a detailed breakdown of how to make this happen a little later in this post.) And while the details of nutrition still matter — proteins, carbs, and fats — it’s the simplified approach to eating less overall that makes intermittent fasting popular.

“Yes, the macronutrient splits matter a little bit. Yes, timing matters maybe a bit more. But to the largest extent, all the data suggests the real contributor to fat loss and weight loss is total calories,” says Anthony D’Orazio, director of nutrition and physique at Complete Human Performance.

And when you consider that fewer hours during the day to eat means fewer calories (or having one day — like in Eat Stop Eat method — where you don’t eat at all), you can see how week over week, it’s easy to limit your calories. After all, that’s what really works with fat loss. Thinking less about any given meal or one day, and instead of seeing the big picture and trying to limit total calories on a weekly or monthly basis. When the deficit adds up over time, so does your weight loss.

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OK, but will intermittent fasting work for you?

While the answer to that will be different for every reader, it’s worth noting that certain people tend to do better with fasting than others.

For example, research suggests that fasting works well for men. For example, this eight-week study of young males who had experience with resistance-training showed that those who ate only during an eight-hour window lost 16.4 percent of their fat mass, compared to just under 3 percent for a group who ate the same calories over a longer period.

Krista Scott-Dixon, director of curriculum at Precision Nutrition, cautions that those results may not translate to everyone, since the study’s subjects “are naturally lean, and already forget to eat half the time.”

On the other hand, there’s a mixed bag of results for women. While fasting can offer the same daily structure that helps restrict calories by having fewer hours to eat, the problems is that women tend to experience more unwanted side effects from fasting, especially with a prolonged fasting period (think 16 hours or longer) because of their hormonal environment.

“[Women’s] bodies are exquisitely sensitive to nutrient deprivation,” Scott-Dixon says. Women on a prolonged IF protocol may see a reduction in thyroid output, a decrease of estrogen, and other adverse hormonal effects. Pair that with an increase in exercise, and it could bring about menopausal-like effects (i.e. you stop getting your cycle) as well as powerful cravings.

Scott-Dixon also recommends that one group steer clear of IF: Anyone who has a history of, or tendency towards, disordered eating. “If you look at IF forums or groups, people are devoting an unhealthy amount of attention to when they get to eat, how much they get to eat, what they get to eat once they break their fast. It starts to get into a really behaviorally, emotionally weird area.” This behavior, Scott-Dixon warns, “can develop into a disordered eating kind of pattern.”

Does that mean that you need to steer clear of IF? Not exactly. It’s more of a general warning for any type of diet behavior. Counting macros and calories can lead to disordered eating just as much as intermittent fasting. So the point isn’t to avoid all potentially helpful dietary strategies, but — instead — consider how you feel and how much you stress while following an intermittent fasting style of eating. If you are stressing less and feel more in control, then great. If food and clock start to dominate your life, you might want to question if it’s helping or hurting.

Ultimately, intermittent fasting success depends a lot on your personal preferences, schedule, and how you feel when you fast.

If you find that intermittent fasting is a fit for you or something you want to try, you can do it and know it works about as well as any diet that results in a calorie deficit. A 2017 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine found that obese people who followed a more-typical daily calorie restriction diet (they ate 75% of their target total every day) and those who followed an alternate-day fasting approach (they ate 25% of their target one day, then 125% the next) experienced similar mean weight loss totals over a year-long span.

Are there other health benefits of intermittent fasting?

Intermittent fasting protocols reportedly slow down aging, improve mental acuity, increase longevity, reduce chronic disease risks, and actually decrease hunger. While many of those conclusions are based on preliminary research, science to date does back up some of them.

In a 2016 study, researchers concluded that intermittent fasting prevented neuron damage in the brain. Animal studies have found an association between fasting and reduced risk of lymphoma. Four different studies have found a correlation between fasting and reduced symptoms of arthritis, and others have suggested that by reinforcing your circadian rhythms, fasting may promote longevity.

What’s fueling these benefits? A process called autophagy. In autophagy, your body essentially kills off old, diseased or otherwise incomplete cells.

“A lot of neurodegenerative diseases are characterized by this build up of crud, [old cells that need to be cleared away,” Scott-Dixon says. “Autophagy is like the cleanup crew that kind of goes in and munches everything up.”

Autophagy is triggered by fasting. When you eat, autophagy hits snooze. Your body has to redirect the energy from the autophagy process to the digestive process to break down your food.

You wouldn’t feel this process at work. But when you fast, you might feel like you have greater mental clarity and better hunger control. Martin Berkhan, who designed the Lean Gains diet, says these effects are at least partially due to chemistry. Your body releases chemicals called catecholamines after 16-24 hours of fasting to keep you from feeling famished.

One of the catecholamines that get released during a fast is adrenaline, a stress hormone that improves mental cognition. “For some people, that feels amazing,” Scott-Dixon says. “[But] You’re not tuning into the universe in any magic way.”

When you read reports of people feeling more productive and focused when they fast, it’s not just your body’s chemicals at work. “There is also a mental component to it,” Berkhan says. “If you know you’re not eating until noon, you will find other things to occupy your mind with, such as work, which also helps keep your hunger in check.”

The transition away from “I’m hungry” to “I’m thinking about something else” can take a few days. But Berkhan says that once you get used to it, the experience is liberating. He says he used to be pre-occupied with food, following a bodybuilder’s regimen of constant feeding and macro-counting, but now he no longer “feels doomed to a life of obsessive calorie counting,” so he can concentrate more on his work.

Which intermittent fasting schedule should you follow?

As we discussed earlier, there are lots of different fasting protocols. Despite some of the marketing copy you might see out there, none have been conclusively proven to be more effective than the others in a clinical study. So the question isn’t which one’s best, but which diet is best for you.

“Like with any sort of plan, if you don’t or can’t follow it, it’s a shit plan,” D’Orazio says. Finding a protocol that you’ll actually follow is more important than believing one fast period is superior to another. So if you know you can’t live without food for a whole day—or at least can’t do it and not rip your spouse’s head off—don’t do it.

Here are some options you can try.

The simplest intermittent fasting approach: 12 hours off/12 hours on

The easiest fasting protocol is probably also the least extreme: Fasting for 12 hours a day and eating during the other 12.

“If you tend not to eat that close to bed—say three hours before you sleep—all of the sudden you’re at 11 hours without eating,” says D’Orazio. Wait an hour after you get up to eat breakfast, and you’re in the clear.

The drawback here is that, as far as calorie restriction goes, 12 hours can be a long eating window. In fact, even if you’re not following an intermittent fasting protocol, it’s possible that your daily meals only span a 13- or 14-hour window. Dropping your eating period by an hour or two may not be enough to put you at an energy deficit or change your habits in a way that will produce the fat loss goals you want.

If you do opt for a 12/12 split, studies indicate that you may experience some of the health benefits of fasting, including increased insulin sensitivity. However, studies on Ramadan fasters suggest that increases in glucagon (an inducer of autophagy) happen more in the 16-hour range, so autophagy may not be maximized with a 12-hour fast.

The Lean Gains approach: 16 hours off/8 hours on

Berkhan’s Lean Gains method is designed for lifters and fitness enthusiasts who also have a real life.  “It’s also easy for people with regular working hours to maintain. It’s not very hard to eat lunch at noon, when you ate something at 8-9 pm the previous day, once you get used to skipping breakfast,” says Berkhan.

The approach is favorable because a 16-hour period is long enough to trigger autophagy (as discussed above), while an 8-hour eating window may be more conducive to fat loss for some. And you can eat around your training, placing an emphasis on eating plenty of protein, controlling carbs, and scheduling meals around your workouts.

Berkhan himself, like many Lean Gains enthusiasts, doesn’t eat a full meal before training. Instead, he opts to consume some BCAAs in advance of his workout. D’Orazio suggests a different approach. He says that in order to maximize training performance and maintain muscle, someone on a 16/8 fasting split should try and eat at least one meal before their workout, and place their training session in the middle of their eating window.

Ultimately, you’ll have to find the pattern that works best for you through trial and error, taking into consideration the time of day when you can actually work out. If your job allows you to train in the middle of the day, then you could try either Berkhan or D’Orazio’s approach. But if your schedule is such that the only time you can lift is first thing in the morning, you may not have time to prepare a meal, eat, and then digest all ahead of your training.

The Warrior Diet: 20 hours off/4 hours on

In The Warrior Diet, author Ori Hofmekler took inspiration from history to design a 20-hour fast with a 4-hour feed—the idea is to mimic a hunter/gatherer lifestyle where you worked or battled all day, then chowed down at day’s end. Small snacks, like a piece of fruit or yogurt, are allowed during the day, but Hofmekler recommends eating most of your food in a giant, Viking-like feast at the end of the day. In this way, you’re not fully fasting on the Warrior Diet, but underfeeding all day, then overfeeding at night.

“Our ancestors consumed food much less frequently, and often had to subsist on one large meal per day or go for several days at a time without food,” Hofmekler’s book quotes researcher Mark Mattson as saying. “Thus, from an evolutionary perspective, human beings were adapted to intermittent feeding rather than to grazing.”

Whether or not this is historically accurate or makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint is for the anthropologists to debate. From a dietary perspective, one thing is clear: If you did limit your eating to just four hours a day, it might actually be difficult to overeat. Studies support this analysis. For example, a 2007 study found that having one meal per day was associated with a greater loss in weight and fat mass compared to eating three daily meals.

Note that we said “difficult” but not “impossible.” Roman soldiers and Vikings didn’t have high-calorie fare like Big Macs to chow down on. Fasting for even an extended period like this doesn’t give you license to eat straight-up anything and expect to lose weight.

If you find that a 20-hour fast isn’t so much a path to mental clarity as it is the road to hangrytown, then this kind of protocol can be a tough one. You might have trouble concentrating at work, or worse, find you have a short fuse and lash out at people. In that case, a warrior approach is not recommended.

Also, if gaining muscle is your focus, based on what we know about muscle protein synthesis (a key role in gaining muscle), having protein at just one meal (or maybe 2) per day within a 4-hour window is not ideal for building muscle.

Eat, Stop, Eat: Take 24 hours off of eating once per week

Brad Pilon’s “Eat, Stop, Eat” protocol calls for a weekly fast of 24 hours. During that time you can drink non-caloric beverages (think: water, coffee, and tea—all without milk or sugar, of course), but otherwise, you take a break from eating.

For some, this single, extended fast can be less disruptive. Instead of thinking about when you’re going to eat or not eat every day, you only have to consider it once a week. And the approach is helpful from a weight loss perspective too—again because of calories in/calories out.

The simple way to look at it is this: You know how, on any given day, you have a target number of calories to hit. The same is true for your total across the week. So using the earlier example, let’s say your target is 2,000 calories per day. That would mean you’d have a 14,000-calorie allotment throughout the week. If you went one entire day without eating, you could then spread the calories you saved across the other six days, meaning you could consume about 2,300 calories per day. Even though you’re eating more than you should be able to, because of the day where you eat 0 calories, this results in an overall energy deficit for the week and still lose weight.

There’s a way to structure this approach so that you can go for a 24-hour time period without eating, but not actually go an entire calendar day without eating a meal. Let’s say you finish your last meal on one day by 7 pm The following day you’d skip breakfast and lunch, then eat a little later—after the clock strikes 7. Voila! You’ve just done a 24-hour fast but still eat on consecutive days.

You might think that you’ll really struggle with hunger during such an extended time period of fasting. But gaining insight into this—what true hunger really feels like—may help you distinguish between those times when you’re really hungry, and those times when you may eat out of habit in response to something like boredom. Which is why Scott-Dixon suggests trying a fast like this at least once to change your relationship with the feelings of appetite and hunger.

“You learn you can be hungry and it’s OK, you’re not going to die,” Scott-Dixon says. “For people who are looking to lose fat, that can be very helpful.” Why? Because you’ll be better equipped to deal with those feelings on other days when you’re restricting calories or fasting for shorter periods.

The 5:2 Diet: Restrict yourself twice…and have more freedom

If you think a 24-hour fast is no problem, then why not go for two? That’s the rough concept behind the 5:2 Diet, which originated in the United Kingdom and has since been gaining in popularity. (It’s the diet that Jimmy Kimmel credits with helping him lose 25 pounds without exercise.)

If going without food for two whole days in a week sounds daunting, fear not. This is not a full-on “fast” (i.e. go completely without food) as much as it is a twice-per-week extreme restriction. That means eating about 500 calories for women and 600 for men of “fasting days.”. (The founder of the diet, Dr. Michael Mosley, has more recently stated that going as high as 800 calories is ok.)

The good news? On the other five days of the week, there aren’t many restrictions because the two days of undereating create a big calorie deficit for the week. Much like Eat Stop Eat, that allows you to eat a little more on the other five days than you “should,” meaning more flexibility. If you do the math on a 2,000-calorie per day diet, you can add up to 600 calories per day more than you would expect—or about a third of your total daily intake. You could essentially eat an extra meal on those days and be fine and still lose weight. (Remember, weight loss doesn’t happen in one day or one meal. Undereating by so much for 2 meals per week, simply enables loser calorie goals for the other 5 days.

Mosley, who is a TV personality in England that’s been compared to a “Dr. Oz crossed with Sanjay Gupta,” helped propel the 5:2 Diet’s popularity with a documentary and several books. But other than the two days per week at 800 calories or less, the fundamentals of his protocol are very similar to what you’d see in any healthy diet. The 10 elements he considers essential, which Mosley lists in this article, will sound very familiar to you: Eat protein and vegetables. Drink plenty of water. Be more physically active. Clean out the junk food from your house. Take it easy on the booze. But nothing is off limits.

But hey, basic fundamentals work—that’s why they’re the fundamentals. You could (and should) apply them to all of these approaches.

Some Helpful Intermittent Fasting Ground Rules and FAQs

If you try fasting, start slow.

Whichever fasting protocol intrigues you, give it a trial period before turning it into a commitment. Take breaks from it and notice: How do you feel? Does fasting make you have more or less energy? Were you irritable or happy? How does it affect your sleep? How did it affect your workouts? Take all of these factors into consideration to see if this kind of protocol is right to help you reach your goals.

You could start with a lower fasting period (like a 12:12) and work your way into longer durations. Gradually increasing your fasting time can help get used to some of the feelings of hunger you’ll experience. It will also help you notice and change the emotional attachment you might have to eat at certain times.

Berkhan suggests that as you’re getting accustomed to the feeling of fasting, drink coffee or other caffeinated beverages. “[It’s] quite beneficial for hunger suppression, since caffeine works better on an empty stomach.”

Which brings up a good question: What can you consume without “breaking” the fast?

You don’t have to go hungry and thirsty during your fast period: Coffee’s fine (and in fact, it can help boost autophagy). So are other zero-calorie drinks like unsweetened tea.

Supplements are OK too. Berkhan recommends 10 grams of BCAAs shortly before a workout. Now depending on the brand, that’s between 40 and 70 calories. And some studies suggest this little bit of amino acids may be enough to stop autophagy.

So you could say this counts as “breaking the fast.” But Berkhan thinks it’s worth it: “The positives—higher protein synthesis—outweighs the negatives—‘breaking the fast,’ Berkhan says.

How long should you follow a fasting plan?

Some people stay on fasting plans indefinitely after they discover the one that works for them. Berkhan is one example. He says that “once you go IF, you don’t go back. You might change or modify the protocol to better fit your needs, but you’re probably never going to go back to eating breakfast in the morning once you find that everything works better without it.”

Here’s where you could get into a bit of uncharted territory, scientifically speaking. There aren’t a ton of longer-term studies on the effects of nonstop intermittent fasting. Most studies have lasted 8 weeks or less, with many conducted during Ramadan. There have been some indications that prolonged fasting could have adverse side effects. For example, in the recent yearlong study that compared alternate-day fasting with calorie restriction, the fasting group saw increases in both HDL (“good”) and LDL (“bad”) cholesterol.

Other research—and, according to Scott-Dixon, anecdotal evidence among coaching clients—indicated that long-term fasting can depress thyroid function and reduce testosterone. For example, in the eight-week study of resistance-trained males where the group following a 16:8 fast had a sharp decrease in overall body fat, those same men also experienced a significant drop in testosterone.

“If you do [IF] for 6 months or a year, that really changes the game,” Scott-Dixon says. “We’re seeing guys now who are 20 who have the T-levels of a 70-year old,” like in this case available on Precision Nutrition’s website.

When Scott-Dixon uses fasting with clients, it’s usually with overweight clients who are suffering the effects of metabolic syndrome, a series of risk factors that can lead to heart disease and premature death. Even with these clients, Scott-Dixon says she’ll only have them fast for about 4 weeks.

For most of her non-metabolic clients, her advice is to keep the “intermittent” in intermittent fasting. “I’d suggest no more than once every two weeks for most folks,” Scott-Dixon says.

While there’s no research that tells us the “best” amount of the health benefits of fasting, a bi-weekly fast is “enough to give you the health benefits of periodic fasting, but without most of the problems.”

Are there any times when you wouldn’t want to try intermittent fasting?

D’Orazio says he wouldn’t give a fasting protocol to an athlete who works out more than once per day. It’s a fairly common practice in his work, as some clients at Complete Human Performance are triathletes who lift in the morning and do endurance training in the afternoon or evening. In order to properly fuel for these workouts, D’Orazio says this sort of person shouldn’t follow an IF protocol.

The other time when you may want to steer clear of IF? Occasions when you are experiencing a lot of stress. Fasting, or even just energy reduction, is a stressor on the body, just like exercise or lack of sleep or a really intense job. When there are lots of stressors adding up in your life, one more may not be beneficial

“I think one of the problems with any kind of diet or exercise intervention is that people consider it out of context,” Scott-Dixon says. “Even something that is “good” may not be good for YOU. We have to consider the whole picture. We can respond really well to intermittent, surprise stimuli, whether that’s an exercise challenge or a fast. What we don’t respond to as well are chronic stressors.”

Are there any times when intermittent fasting might be especially helpful?

We’ve mentioned that IF is a great way to help you “tune in” to your body and its hunger cues. Another use for intermittent fasting is during what’s politely called “hypercaloric eating”—basically, those times when you know you’re going to eat more than you should (think: you’re off visiting friends and know you’re going to have a huge meal followed by some bar-hopping later).

On this sort of day, restricting your eating window can be helpful. Just follow two guidelines: 1) Make sure the first meal you eat when you break your fast is packed with protein and veggies (they promote satiety and will help prevent you from way overdoing it), and 2) Use this technique only occasionally. It’s not meant to set up a lifestyle where you gorge yourself in the evenings. Having a big meal is not meant as a precursor to “punish” yourself with a fast. So if that’s your reasoning, then this approach is not best for you because it can lead to a bad relationship with food.

READ MORE: 

Breakfast is Not the Most Important Meal of the Day

Winning the War on Hunger: Practical Solutions to Overeating

Big Meals vs. Small Snacks: What’s Best For You?

The post Is Intermittent Fasting Right For You? appeared first on Born Fitness.

Can a new way of looking at diet plans and eating, a new fat loss formula, along with a new way of exercising make a chronic disease go away and restore health? For David Musikanth, the answer is a resounding yes.

The Ultimate Weight Loss Battle

A good plan is one where you eat what you like. It’s something you don’t see in most diet plans.

For most of his life, Musikanth had suffered from Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel disorder that brings on unpredictable spells of pain, diarrhea, bleeding, and constipation. It also causes fatigue and, in general, makes your life miserable.

“You can be at home and you want to go out and all of a sudden your stomach isn’t 100 percent and you can’t go out,” he says. “You absolutely can’t. You have to stay somewhere where you have facilities. Crohn’s ruled my life.”

Musikanth was medicated for the condition, and he did exercise, but even then he says it’s still difficult to control symptoms. Finally, a little over two years ago, at age 43 with a wife and two children, he reached a point where something had to change.

“You realize you’re not getting any younger,” he says. “Health is a bigger issue and it was hitting home much harder than it ever did. I wanted to do something for myself that didn’t involve doctors and treatment.”

His first stop, as it is for most of us, was the internet. What could he find? Who could help? He didn’t really have a set diet (“I didn’t think much about it at all”) and his workouts had never changed his body in any meaningful way.

Soon he stumbled on trainer Adam Bornstein’s Twitter feed. “I was intrigued by his posts,” Musikanth says. “So I just asked him some basic questions about nutrition and exercise.”

Bornstein engaged and suggested that Musikanth overhaul his approach to both eating and working out. The first change? Instead of eating the way he’d always had, Bornstein suggested intermittent fasting. It’s a simple concept: Between the hours of noon and 8 p.m., you eat all your normal meals. The rest of the time you consume nothing. “It sounded completely crazy,” Musikanth says.

Ditching Diets for Nutrition Plans

He and his wife decided to try it together – “It’s a lot easier if you have someone to do it with” – along with a change in what he was eating. “Before, there was no concept of diet. A typical meal would be like hot dogs or hamburgers and chips. And a Coke. I wouldn’t even think twice about it.”

Musikanth eliminated the garbage food, but also changed what he eat for the majority of his diet. He’ll eat chicken and vegetables. Fish. Eggs for breakfast. An occasional steak. “It was very strange at first, fitting all my meals into a set timeframe,” he says.

The biggest difference, though, was the flexibility. There was no talk of removing family favorites like pizza night and sushi. Instead, it was understanding how to build a eating style around a lifestyle, and then make sure the plan was doable.

The first three months were tough because of the adjustment of the “good foods” to eat, not because of what was restricted.

“What was amazing was where I initially struggled,” says Musikanth. “It’s not strict in terms of avoiding all foods. A good plan is one where you eat what you like. It’s something you don’t see in most diet plans.”

“But the bigger issue is how much you stay on plan versus having flexibility. In time, your body becomes trained for it. Now it’s second nature. More importantly, Adam set expectations so that when progress stalled, we knew that the plan didn’t stop working. Instead, we discovered how plateaus can be part of progress.”

Bornstein also gave Musikanth a new approach to fitness – a combination of strength and metabolic training that he’d never encountered before. “I did go to a gym, but what I did was very old fashioned, very boring kind of stuff,” he says.

“Now I walk into the gym and have to do all these strange movements. It was very weird at first. But in four months, my whole body changed. Even the people at the gym were asking me, ‘What kind of training is this?’ These were exercises that no one had ever seen.”

Reinventing The Fat Loss Formula

In those first months, Musikanth dropped 22 pounds, which took him from flabby to shredded – an unexpected side benefit. “I hadn’t been majorly fat. It wasn’t like I needed to lose this weight, but it was simply my body shedding fat. Now I look completely different.”

But again, to really appreciate Musikanth’s story, you have to look past the aesthetics. In those first months, along with the physical changes, all of his Crohn’s symptoms disappeared.

Musikanth has been on Bornstein’s plan for 2 years, is now 45, and is quite literally a changed man. “I changed everything. I did a complete change in what I ate, a complete change in how I train. I’m still on the Crohn’s medication, but I have no side effects. It’s in complete remission.”

There’s one more eye-opening bit of information you should know. Musikanth lives in South Africa. Bornstein splits his time between Denver and Los Angeles. This man managed to engage a trainer and successfully implement his plan from half a world away.

Think about that. Some people live 10 minutes from their gym and still can’t make it work with trainers.

Musikanth has thought about this. “I go to a beautiful gym,” he says. “But you look at the trainers and they’re very young. To me, what makes the relationship work is having commitment on both sides. When you see the results, obviously, you see the results. Then it doesn’t matter which side of the planet you’re on.”

The Born Fitness Family: David Musikanth

The Results

I went from 83 kgs to a constant 69-70 kgs. My body fat dropped from 20 percent to below 10 percent and my fitness level just improved like mad enabling me to do my 1st 10km run as well as complete 2 Impi challenges, which is a 12km trail run with 20 odd obstacles in between.

These would never even have been contemplated before Born Fitness online coaching. More importantly to me is that in the now 3 years of Born Fitness I have not had one incident of  Crohn’s disease throughout this period which is quite astonishing!! Even my doctors are at a loss. For me this has been the real success of Born Fitness, helping me get my life back.

Why Born Fitness

I grew up in a home where diet certainly wasn’t an issue, so I was always overweight even though as a kid I went to the gym and did routine weights. In my 20s I was diagnosed with the chronic disease Crohn’s which affected me really badly both from a diet perspective and a training perspective, it all went flat from there on.

Even though I still trained I just had no plan and I ate pretty freely as well as being on chronic medication daily. This went on until I discovered Born Fitness when I was 44! Once I had joined Born fitness my life did a complete u-turn even at this late age. I got a managed, educated, designed and completely different training and eating plan that delivered the results I so desperately craved in its 1st month!!

Certainly a plan designed just for me and diet constructed around what I eat just made it easier and much more simple to negotiate. I would definitely say that a new world of exercises in a structured plan was what instantaneously made a difference. A mix of functional cardio and focused weight training just breathed new life into my system.

Want to Join the Born Fitness Family?

Learn more about your personalized approach to fitness. Apply here. 

The post The Fat Loss Formula for Any Age: The David Musikanth Story appeared first on Born Fitness.

Should I take BCAAs for muscle growth and why?

Ever since I wrote a book about intermittent fasting, the level of intrigue about BCAAs (branched chain amino acids) hit a new level. I have no one to blame but myself.

I admitted that when I train “fasted” I like to have BCAAs before my workout.

BCAAs are good, but be aware that adding more aminos on top of hitting your protein goals is not likely to spark extra muscle magic.

Unfortunately, this was translated as: BCAAs improve muscle gains, so I should drink them. A lot.

Much like protein dosing, the story of BCAAs is that more is not necessarily better. And in some cases, taking them separately as part of your diet and supplement plan might not even be needed at all.

What Do BCAAs Really Do?

You, see, BCAAs are a collection of three amino acids with a side chain that is branched. They are leucine, isoleucine, and valine (usually in a 2:1:1 ratio).

Leucine itself is known to be an “anabolic factor” and signal for muscle protein synthesis, when calories or protein is low, this anabolic signal appears to help prevent muscle loss or even promote muscle gain.

Naturally, it would make sense to take BCAAs. But your needs depend more on how much protein you’re eating during the day.

You see, while BCAAs tend to be high in leucine, so are all complete protein sources.

So whether you’re chugging down a protein shake or chomping on a steak, you’re taking in BCAAs and a pretty significant dose of leucine.

Here’s where it gets tricky. Most research on BCAAs compares the consumption of the magical three ingredients to low- or no-protein intake at all.

In those scenarios, yes, you want to pump those BCAAs to help prevent muscle loss or even spark muscle gains. So if you’re struggling to eat enough, BCAAs are a great option. But in the few studies that do compare BCAAs to adequate protein there really wasn’t any difference.

Do You Need Extra BCAAs?

What does it all mean? Consume enough protein and there’s no need to worry about purchasing extra BCAAs, which tend to be rather expensive, especially compared to whey.

If you’re eating your protein, the speed of absorption and the amino acid amounts take on secondary importance. Why? The total amount of protein you eat is what matters most in terms of what your body needs to grow bigger, stronger muscles. 

The exception to the rule occurs when you’re dieting or eating fewer calories.

Some research does suggest that taking in more BCAAs might help you preserve your muscle as you drop fat.

It’s not that the BCAAs are better than protein, per se, it’s simply a calorie saving move.

While many BCAA products appear to be “calorie free” don’t be fooled. (This is an FDA loophole where anything that has less than 5 calories per serving doesn’t need to be listed.) One gram of BCAAs is 4 calories. So 10 grams of BCAAs is 40 calories, compared to a 30-gram scoop of protein powder (with a similar amount of BCAAs) would be 120 calories.

At the end of the day, your muscles need and want BCAAs for growth or holding onto muscle when losing weight. But how you receive your BCAAs—from foods, protein powders, or straight BCAA supplements—is ultimately up to your preference and bank account.

Just don’t expect that adding more aminos on top of hitting your protein goals will spark extra muscle magic.

READ MORE: 

Why Creatine is Even Better Than You Thought

The Curious Case of Why People Fear Protein

Fix Your Diet: Understanding Proteins, Carbs and Fats

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post BCAAs: Effective Dose for Muscle Growth and Fat Loss appeared first on Born Fitness.

These are the juice cleanses or liver and kidney detoxifiers that are marketed as a way to rid your body of toxins, improve the functioning of your internal organs, and help you age better.

All of these products are created with a lack of understanding of how your body works. Or, maybe they know exactly how your body works and are just selling you a pet rock.

The alleged benefits and glossy marketing of juice cleanses (heal this, fix that) just aren’t accurate with what’s happening in your body.

The only real cleanse occurs at the cellular level. It’s called autophagy (aw-tof-a-gee), and it’s your body’s ability to regenerate and become better.

Autophagy helps you repair injuries, makes your brain function a little better, helps with muscle growth and fat loss, and even assists in your ability to walk and breathe.

You see, every day there are millions of cellular reactions occurring in your body. Some of this activity causes damage within your body. As with any equipment that is used a lot, the daily stress causes breakdown.

Fortunately, your body is built for such circumstances and can naturally heal anything that isn’t working at an optimal level. This is autophagy.

So what happens when your internal repair is slow and lazy and doesn’t get the job done? That’s when you have a damaged internal environment. More specifically, when your workers don’t repair your mitochondria—the cellular power plant of your body—then your body is basically screwed.

Fortunately your body has a built-in cleansing system that is working 24 hours a day; and I’m not talking about your liver or your kidneys.

I’m talking about true deep-down cleansing – the cleansing that occurs on the cellular level. The cleansing that is far beyond anything a lemon juice/milk thistle cocktail could ever provide.

So if you want to know how to potentially help your system–as well as what benefit you’ll really receive from those juice cleanses–then it’s time to sip on a drink called truth serum. In this case, the information is powered by Brad Pilon, author of Eat Stop Eat, research genius, and pioneer in intermittent fasting. Bottoms up.

The Real Body Cleanse

Autophagy is a process within your body that is responsible for degrading damaged and defective organelles, cell membranes and proteins. Or put more simply, it is the internal ‘custodial system’ that your body uses to identify and discard the damaged or malfunctioning parts of a cell.

During any given day of your life there are millions if not billions of cellular reactions that occur in your body, and over time, some of these reactions can lead to damage – just like adding miles to a car eventually leads to wear and tear on its parts.

But unlike a car, your body has its own built in mechanics that can identify and repair this damage. But without the proper repair we can build up broken cellular machinery (like damaged mitochondria). When this happens, it is truly toxic to the human body.

Damaged mitochondria are at the top of the list of things that are ‘bad for you’.

The only reason you probably haven’t heard of them is because we don’t ‘consume’ them through our diet, instead they’re a by-product of the normal functioning of your body.

An accumulation of damaged cellular machinery like this can cause a wide range of unhealthy effects. Damaged mitochondria can cause damage within your cells and the cells around. This process has been linked to an accelerated aging rate[ii], and many types of chronic disease.

Autophagy is also of increasing interest as a target for cancer therapy,[iii] treatment of alcoholic liver disease,[iv] and as a crucial defense mechanism against malignancy, infection and neurodegenerative disease.[v]^{,[vi],[vii],[viii],[ix]} What’s more, research has even found a that autophagy can help the body defend against both bacteria and viruses.[x]^{,[xi],[xii],[xiii]}

Fasting vs. Juicing: The Non-Debate

There’s no mystery why juicing has been offering as a cleanse solution. The theory is simple:

Take a bunch of nutrient rich foods in high concentrated doses and feed them to the body over and over and over again.

Is it healthy? Sure. A kale-romanaine-broccoli-lemon-apple infusion never hurt anyone.

And it’s no surprise that people lose weight. Drinking 800 calories per day of liquid greens is simple math, not magic. It’s not the juice doing the work; it’s the lack of food.

But the alleged benefits and glossy marketing of juice cleanses (heal this, fix that) just aren’t accurate with what’s happening in your body.

Specifically–and almost ironically for the juicing companies of the world–the act of eating actually works against autophagy, which as you now know is the real way to cleanse your cells.

According to research in both humans and animals, the more time spent you spend the fed state, the less time you have to really ramp up the autophagic (cellular cleansing) process within your body.

This is originally where short-term bouts of fasting became part of a healthy routine (if done correctly). One of the major health benefits of fasting is that it improves autophagy.

The principle signal to “turn up” autophagy the act of entering the fasted state.

If fasting is the signal to turn on autophagy, then eating is the signal to turn it off. Even small amounts of glucose or amino acids are able to inhibit autophagy, as amino acids together with the hormone insulin are its principle negative regulators.[xiv]

Recent research has shown that as little as 10 grams of amino acids is enough to decrease autophagy markers in otherwise fasting humans. So even a small meal in the middle of a fast may be enough to blunt the increased autophagic processes associated with fasting.

Does this mean aminos are bad or offset all of the potential benefits of intermittent fasting? Of course not. But it does mean that the rise insulin can simply mean that from an autophagy, cleansing perspective that taking in aminos won’t optimize the autophagic process.

Intermittent Fasting: How it Fights Disease, Improves Health, and Builds Muscle

The process of autophagy and its importance in cleansing is the main reason why some researchers are speculating that intermittent fasting can improve neuronal function and overall health in a way that is unique from any other style of dieting or calorie restriction.[xv]^,[xvi]

The research on fasting and neuronal diseases such as Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s is looking very promising, as fasting has been found to cause a rapid and profound upregulation of autophagy in the brain.[xvii]^{,[xviii],[xix]}

Translation: fasting has the potential to remove toxins and damaged mitochondria from your neurons that cause or augment these diseases[xx]^{, [xxi],[xxii],[xxiii]}

It is also the reason why some people think that intermittent fasting can help regulate and fight against the aging process.

‘Aging’ occurs because our internal system wears down over time.

We have less resistance to stress, increased vulnerability to disease, and an increased probability of death. That’s what makes autophagy and fasting so interesting; research suggests that it can improve many of these areas.[xxiv]

And the benefits of understand how to turn autophagy “on and off” even extends into the health of your muscles. That is, when you have excess levels of autophagy, you can experience a loss of muscle mass, skeletal fiber degeneration, and weakness.[xxv]

In other words, the goal isn’t to be in a constant state of autophagy. This where people go on super long fasts thinking that more is better. You still need food and periods when autophagy is turned “off” for your body to grow and function as best as possible.

Remember: It’s not just your workouts that break you down and build you back up. Everyone focuses on rest, but your diet does the same thing, and this break down is just as vital to your long term health as the building back up.

This is what you want for the your best health: by allowing for growth when you eat and the autophagic process of repair maintenance and cleansing when you are fasting, you can help restore a balance to how your cells function, not to mention potentially prevent muscle loss as you age.

This will sound obvious, but you need balance to create your best health plan.

This is why going on juice cleanses are never the answer. There’s nothing balanced about 5 days on nothing but juice.

Just that same, you can’t overeat all the time or fast all the time without expecting some sort of negative repercussions.

By allowing for growth when we eat, and the autophagic process of repair, maintenance, and cleansing when we are fasting, we help restore a balance in the body that may be a missing link in the prevention of many of today’s deadly and debilitating diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease, liver disease, and even loss of muscle size and function.

READ MORE: 

Is Intermittent Fasting Right for You? 

How to Fight Aging

Winning the War on Hunger: Practical Solutions to Overeating

If you love research…

Sourcing information is always a slippery slope. Just listing resources doesn’t do much, but without the research some people don’t trust the information. So here’s a boatload of references used as background for the information shared.

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post The Body Cleanse: Does Juicing Really Work? appeared first on Born Fitness.

All of this was indisputable until intermittent fasting came into the picture, and the importance of breakfast was brought into question. Or more accurately, the timing of meals was analyzed in a new way. If you’re not familiar with this style of eating, intermittent fasting focuses on control over your appetite. It’s an approach that has several variations, such as offering an eating window during the day (think “Lean Gains 16/8” where you only eat for 8 hours a day), or days where you don’t eat at all. (A la Eat Stop Eat, with one weekly 24-hour fast.) Some methods even combine fasting modalities with certain types of training (As was prescribed in Engineering the Alpha.) Each approach is designed to take advantage of the growing evidence of the benefits of fasting, an area that is admittedly still young in terms of research.

Although intermittent fasting became synonymous with being an anti-breakfast diet, it’s an inaccurate generalization of a style of eating that attempts to remove rules (you must eat breakfast within 30 minutes of waking!) and replace it with a simplified approach that offers flexibility. For example, you can still wake up, eat breakfast at 9 and then stop your meals at 5. This would be considered intermittent fasting. Or you could have breakfast 5 days a week and fast one day per week. This is also intermittent fasting. [Eds. note: I practice a style of intermittent fasting—and wrote a best-selling book that shares an IF style diet—but I do not think it’s the only diet approach or the best for everyone. Every eating style should be dependent on an individual’s goals.]

Whether you practice intermittent fasting or not, it’s important to know that you don’t have to eat a meal at any particular time of the day. Just as it’s ridiculous to insinuate that having a meal after 6 pm will make you fat, it’s just as careless to make a blanket statement saying you must eating upon waking and enjoy a big breakfast.

Some people don’t do well when they are forced to eat first thing in the morning. Others prefer this style and find that it helps them prevent overeating. Both models work, with the main message being your eating schedule should fit into a sustainable lifestyle pattern. Saying “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” is a misnomer; every meal is the most important, and your food choices are much more important than the times you eat.

But I heard Skipping Breakfast is Bad For Your Heart…

Fasters and non-fasters should be able to get along just fine—if not for some dangerously misleading research that was recently published. Scientists from the Harvard School of Public Health (or maybe more accurately the PR department at the school) made the all-too-broad claim that skipping breakfast was tied to an increase in heart attacks and coronary heart disease.

Wait.

One.

Second.

Skipping breakfast does what?

After a close look at the study design and the results, that conclusion couldn’t be more inaccurate or misleading. If you only look at the study abstract, it appears that skipping breakfast leads to a 27% increase in heart issues. That’s what you’ll hear in the news and see published at all the main outlets. What a shame.

After a close analysis, here’s what the research really found:

• The study compared more than 23,000 breakfast eaters to a little more than 3,000 breakfast skippers.
• The incidence rate of heart attacks in breakfast eaters was 5.77% whereas the incidence rate for the skippers was just 5.05%. In other words, those who ate breakfast had a 14% higher incidence of cardiovascular problems during the duration of the study. Not quite what the press release suggests. But wait, there’s more.
• The study becomes even more interesting when you review the lifestyle behaviors of the subjects. As we all know, smoking isn’t good for your health and is tied to heart disease. So that would be an important variable to consider when drawing any correlational conclusions between a behavior (skipping breakfast) and a health condition (heart attacks). In research we call these confounding variables, and all too often they are completely ignored. This study was no exception. From the subjects used, breakfast skippers were three times more likely to smoke than breakfast eaters. (And no, this does not mean skipping breakfast leads you to smoking). Naturally, it would be fair to question: Is it skipping breakfast that’s causing the heart issues or the smoking? This study was not designed in a way that could answer that question, but it needs to be asked.
• The smoking relationship wasn’t the only red flag. The breakfast skippers also exercised less, consumed more alcohol, and sat on their ass and watched more TV per week. All of these factors could easily be tied to an increase in heart disease, but instead it was breakfast that received all the attention.
• If that wasn’t enough, the “fasters” were also more likely to be single. This is important because prior research shows that single men are likely to more stress and heart issues.

I could go on—such as discussing how the real variable in this study appears to be age—but that would be belaboring the point. When the study was adjusted for factors including high cholesterol and diabetes, blood pressure, and BMI, the link between skipping breakfast and the increased risk of heart attack was no longer statistically significant.

Or in layman’s terms, there was no connection between fasting and heart attacks.

To Breakfast or Not to Breakfast: The Choice is Yours

I’m a big fan of science, but I take much of it with a grain of salt. We need to use research to test informed ideas, not twist results to scare people and complicate health decisions and daily behaviors. It’s very easy to look at data and make association conclusions and find links between seemingly unrelated behaviors. But unless a study directly tests for that and can prove some sort of causation, it doesn’t benefit anyone to spread information (and panic) to the mass media that won’t provide any real service.

If a man who doesn’t eat breakfast starts eating tomorrow, there is no guarantee that he will lessen his chance of having a heart attack. In fact, if you take the hard numbers of this study, just 1 out of every 292 breakfast skippers have heart disease and 1 out of every 249 breakfast eaters have it. Do these numbers really mean anything?

As always, we must continue to keep an eye on what science tells us and learn so that we can become healthier, but we also must be critical enough to ask the questions that allow us to draw the line between a cool statistic and reality.

So eat breakfast. Or don’t eat breakfast. Choose the one that works for you based on whether you feel better, have more energy, want to gain muscle, lose fat, or know if one eating pattern will give you more control over your diet.  But don’t make that choice based out of fear that isn’t rooted in valid claims that will impact your health.

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post Does Skipping Breakfast Cause Heart Attacks? appeared first on Born Fitness.

Men—and women—are aging at a more rapid pace than ever before. The reasons are lifestyle factors that have caused mutations to your mitochondria—the cellular energy plants of your body.

Mitochondria perform the lion’s share of work turning your food into energy. But in men, certain mutations of the mitochondria might be impacting how quickly you age, says Australian researchers. Meaning that not only are you starting to look older at a younger age, but as a result your health is declining faster, too.

Exercising helps and so does sleeping. These should be the foundations of your “stay young” plan. Beyond the basics, there’s a reason intermittent fasting (IF) has increased in popularity. Most assume it’s for weight loss, but the real benefits of IF relate to your health.

If you want to really improve the mechanisms that influence again, the quick fix is not waiting in spa treatments, OTC products, and anti-aging cleanses that make promises that go beyond their abilities.

Exploring The Fountain of Youth

If you want to age better you have to focus on where the aging problems begin: the cellular level. The natural cleansing of your body is called autophagy and it is part of the process of helping ensure you don’t look older than your age.

Autophagy helps you repair injuries, makes your brain function a little better, helps with muscle growth and fat loss, and even assists in your ability to walk and breathe. You see, every day there are millions of cellular reactions occurring in your body. Some of this activity causes damage within your body. Like any equipment that is used a lot, the daily stress causes breakdown.

Fortunately, your body is built for such circumstances and can naturally heal anything that isn’t working at an optimal level. This is autophagy.

So what happens when your internal repair is slow and lazy and doesn’t get the job done? That’s when you have a damaged internal environment. More specifically, when your workers don’t repair your mitochondria—the “cellular power plant” of your body—then your body is screwed.

You age faster. You suffer from chronic disease. You lose your hair. And you get fat.

You don’t want any of this. Which brings us back to hormones, and in particular growth hormone, which helps the natural process of autophagy. And lower levels are the real reason your reaching for the wrinkle cream.

The Anti-Aging Eating Plan

What’s the best way to pump up the autophagic process into a group of grind-it-out interns that will work when needed? Strategic eating and variations of intermittent fasting.

This isn’t about specific foods or how much protein, carbs, and fats you eat. It’s simpler than that. This is about when you eat. Or more specifically, when you don’t eat. The more time you spend eating—as in actual hours during the day eating—the less time you spend enjoying the “benefits” of autophagy.

Listen, I’m not the first to suggest this. Far from it. The first time I learned about how to manipulate it came from Brad Pilon, of Eat Stop Eat fame. That’s why intermittent fasting fires up the autophagic process and cleanses your cells.

The upside is that this type of eating still offers you the freedom to still eat the foods you love, and follow the diet of your choice—whether it’s low carb, vegan, or the meat-eaters delight (our personal favorite).

By turning on autophagy you’re going to promote cellular repair, which is going to give you all the benefits you can’t immediately see—but are exactly what you need to help facilitate a healthier internal environment.

More importantly, the cells that keep you looking your age—or younger—will be healthy and refreshed. And your brain should age more efficiently. Research even suggests that you can even fight off disease such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

It’s not magic and it won’t be anything you can “feel.” But if it’s a strategy that can work within your lifestyle, it might be one of the best health maintenance strategies you can add to your life.

READ MORE: 

Is Intermittent Fasting Right for You? 

How to Lose Weight: Why Sleep Can Make You Fat

Winning the War on Hunger: Practical Solutions to Overeating

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post How to Fight Aging: Hidden Benefits of Intermittent Fasting appeared first on Born Fitness.