The Truth About Intermittent Fasting: Is It Good for Weight Loss and Overall Health?
Ask Keri: It seems like everyone is talking about intermittent fasting. As an RD, do you recommend the practice? Keri says: It really does feel like absolutely everyone is preaching the benefits of intermittent fasting. Weight loss! Brain health! A longer life! My perspective, in a nutshell, is that the evidence on its health and weight-loss benefits are definitely compelling. However, it’s a practice that requires regimented commitment that many people will find is too difficult to fit into their lifestyle, depending on their work hours, social life, and other factors. If you’re not super diligent, you won’t be able to reap the rewards. Here are the details you need to figure out if it’s right for you. What is intermittent fasting? Intermittent fasting is a broad term that covers a pattern of eating that involves a set amount of time where you don’t eat (or eat an incredibly restricted number of calories), followed by one in which you do. The most popular version involves fitting all of your daily food consumption into an eight-hour window, followed by 16 hours of fasting. For example, you could eat between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. every day and fast between 6 p.m. and 10 a.m. (including the hours you’re asleep). There’s also the 5:2 diet in which you split your week into five days of eating whenever you want and two days where you seriously restrict your calories—500 for women, 600 for men. (Personally, I find this one to be the easiest of the options.) While fasting may seem extreme and irregular, proponents argue that humans actually ate this way for most of history, since hunters-gatherers ate when food was available, not at set mealtimes. Plus, fasting is an age-old part of nearly every religious tradition. The potential benefits of intermittent fasting The research on the health benefits of intermittent fasting is pretty interesting. Most people try it for weight loss. Research backs up its effectiveness in patients with Type 2 diabetes. The most basic reason it can work for weight loss is that you’re simply going to eat less when restricting calories to set time periods. Fasting also reprograms your metabolism. When your body isn’t getting energy from food, it turns to its other fuel source: stored fat. By breaking down more fat and shrinking the size of fat cells, you end up with fat loss, and as a result, weight loss. RELATED: Why Healthy Fats Don’t Make You Fat In terms of the bigger health picture, studies link intermittent fasting to reducing markers of inflammation. They also show fasting can affect hormones, increasing production of beneficial ones like HGH (for muscle gain and fat loss) and BDNF (for cognition) while decreasing insulin levels. Fasting may lead to improvements in pancreatic B-cell function and the regulation of the circadian rhythm, which promotes better glucose tolerance. In a randomized controlled study of more than 100 overweight or obese women, six months of intermittent fasting reduced insulin levels by 29% and insulin resistance by 19%. Reductions in fasting insulin and insulin resistance were modest in both the intermittent fasting and continuous energy restriction groups, but greater in the intermittent fasting subjects. Another study on non-obese subjects also found that fasting decreased insulin levels and increased fat oxidation—the process that breaks down fat during energy restriction or exercise. Studies have found that fasting may improve depression and stress levels, and encourage overall positive psychological shifts. Research (some in animals, some in humans) even suggests intermittent fasting’s cardiovascular and brain health benefits could extend lifespan. There are certain groups of women who it may work well for. It’s important to monitor how you feel, how you are sleeping, what your mood is like and what your menstrual cycle is like as well. Also, it may be helpful for women with PCOS. Like most things with diet, it is very individual and if you choose to give it a go, you should probably work with an RD or nutrition coach. RELATED: 5 Foods for Brain Health Are there risks to intermittent fasting? So far, this all sounds really good, right? But there are, of course, caveats. Low calorie intake always comes with risks, which is why it is important to ensure that you are getting adequate calories and proper nutrients while following this style of eating. Hunger can be a real issue, which, in turn, can lead to stress. Prolonged stress of any sort can increase inflammation in the body. RELATED: 7 Delicious Anti-Inflammatory Foods to Eat Daily Confining yourself to a specific way of eating for a short time can also lead you down a long road of yo-yo dieting, and some argue that fasting can lead to disordered eating. Finally, the results of some animal studies suggest intermittent fasting could affect fertility in women, so you should skip it if you’re trying to get pregnant. The bottom line At the end of the day, my feelings on intermittent fasting boil down to a few questions: Is it going to be doable for you? Will it make healthy eating easier or harder for you? Some people say it simplifies their eating, but if you work long, unpredictable hours and have trouble planning meals ahead, trying to stick to a plan like this may drive you crazy. It also won’t work if you’re someone whose social life often revolves around food. Spontaneous dinner dates with friends or late-night tapas after a concert? Buh-bye. If you do think it might work for you, make sure you’re still eating in a healthy way, which means getting all of the proper nutrients from the calories you are consuming. Focusing on real, whole foods and skipping the junk will prevent nutrient deficiencies. If it sounds like the wrong approach, don’t beat yourself up about missing out on potential benefits. Just continue with a balanced, healthy diet and be mindful of your hunger quotient to keep overeating at bay and maintain a healthy lifestyle.
8 Important Factors That Affect Weight Loss
How each of Nutritious Life’s pillars relate to reaching your ideal weight.
Will Counting Macros Help Me Lose Weight?
Ask Keri: I see a lot of people posting about counting macros. What exactly does that mean and will it actually help me lose weight and get lean? Keri Says: Tracking what you eat can be a helpful tool for weight management, but there isn’t any strong research to suggest that counting macros will offer greater weight-loss results than other calorie-counting diets. The same pitfalls of counting calories also apply to counting macros — it’s tedious, hard to sustain, and ignores food quality. You may know, I’m not a big calorie counting fan. Unlike some popular diets today, macro counting doesn’t eliminate or demonize a single macronutrient group. Fans of this diet approach argue that it provides flexibility, as you can still enjoy your favorite foods as long as they fit into your macro and calories goals (#IIFYM). When you’re counting macros, you’re calculating and monitoring how many grams or calories you consume from three macronutrients (aka macros) — carbohydrates, protein, and fat. Specific target numbers will depend on sex, age, physical activity and weight and fitness goals, but the premise is the same — properly portion how much protein, carbs, and fat you eat each day and you’ll achieve your desired weight. Counting Macros Lacks Evidence With any form of calorie restriction, you’ll probably see weight-loss at least in the short-term. But, there isn’t evidence to suggest that specifically monitoring macronutrients will provide greater weight-loss benefits. A 2012 meta-analysis of randomized control trials found that both low-carb and low-fat diets produced similar weight-loss results. Similarly, a 2-year clinical trial randomly assigned participants to four different reduced-calorie diets varying in macronutrient composition; however, they did not find any clinically meaningful differences in weight loss. What macro counting does do is ensure that you’re consuming all three macronutrients — they all play a different and vital role in your health. But you don’t need to count macros to make sure you’re getting enough. What’s easier — just look at your plate! Fill it up with healthy veggies including lots of greens, high quality lean protein, whole grains, and healthy fats should be enough to achieve a healthy balance. Just be mindful of those portions. Counting Macros is Not Sustainable Counting macros may not offer additional weight-loss benefits when compared to calorie-counting, but it probably will add additional stress. While there are apps and fitness trackers that can help you monitor your macro intake, it still requires a lot of legwork on your part. Calculating, planning, and tracking your macros every day can be time-consuming and difficult to sustain over time. Plus, monitoring your intake can promote an unhealthy obsession with food and induce stress and anxiety. Healthy eating needs to be fun and enjoyable if you’re going to stick with it for the long-haul. Counting Macros Ignores Food Quality While this dieting approach takes macronutrients into account, it still ignores essential micronutrients and overall food quality. Eating 100 grams of carbs from bagels, chips, and cookies will not provide the same health benefits as eating 100 grams of carbs from whole grains, vegetables, and fruit. Research shows that quality, not just quantity, matters when it comes to your diet’s impact on your overall health. One randomized controlled trial found that participants gained weight on an ultra-processed diet and lost weight on an unprocessed diet — even though the diets were matched for calories and macronutrients. So what you are putting in your body matters. Not all calories are created equal. The Bottom Line There’s nothing magical about this diet approach aside from creating a calorie-deficit and ensuring you’re consuming all three vital macronutrients. And, really, what’s so magical about that? For many, calculating and monitoring macronutrient intake will just cause unnecessary stress and be difficult to maintain. Rather than putting stress on yourself to track every bite you take, focus on eating whole, unprocessed foods and listen to your hunger and fullness queues, which will naturally produce a healthy weight and provide essential nutrients for overall health.
10 Smart, Healthy Ways to Lose 10 Pounds
We don’t talk about weight loss often. Instead, we embrace the idea that if you live a well-rounded nutritious life 24-7, a healthy weight will naturally follow. But no matter the approach we preach, everyone wants to know how to lose ten pounds. Look, we get it. Maybe you had a particularly stressful month, leading to sky-high cortisol levels and overeating. Maybe you went on the Italian vacation of a lifetime and decided pasta was going to be a main food group for that period of your life (duh). Or maybe you’ve simply been sticking to healthy habits but still feel like there’s just a little bit of extra weight that won’t budge. The fact is: there’s nothing wrong with setting out to drop a few pounds if you do it in a healthy way while respecting your body. But crazy diets that lead to yo-yo dieting are not the answer; the key is figuring out how to lose 10 pounds without losing your sanity, self-esteem, or social life. Try these 10 steps, first. How to Lose 10 Pounds the Healthy Way 1. Learn to calculate your Hunger Quotient. Learning how much to eat by listening to your body is key when it comes to losing weight. I teach my clients to rate their hunger using the ‘Hunger Quotient.’ This is the number (related to a feeling) that describes how hungry you truly are. You want to aim to be between a 6 and a 4 at the beginning and end of your meals and snacks. A 6 is “slightly hungry” and a 4 is “slightly satisfied.” When you skip meals and snacks during the day, your HQ gets thrown off, and you end up making poor food choices and overeating. 2. Set and stick to a bedtime. When you sleep more, you simply have less time to eat, and studies have shown you may also make better food choices. But it’s deeper than that. Those who are sleep deprived have higher levels of ghrelin—a hormone that stimulates appetite—circulating in their blood, which causes an increase in hunger. In other words, your body’s hormonal response to being tired is to tell you to eat more. Give it a rest, instead. It’s really just as critical as choosing kale over cookies. RELATED: The 4 Most Convincing Reasons You Really Need to Get More Sleep 3. Put orgasms on your to-do list. Ok, maybe not literally, because that may take some of the magic out of it. But when you have sex—and orgasms in particular—your body releases a hormone called oxytocin. Oxytocin chills you out and reduces levels of cortisol, the stress hormone that makes you hold onto belly fat. So not only will you feel amazing, you can write off time in the sheets as part of your weight loss regimen. (And don’t forget the fact that you don’t need a partner to take advantage of this happy tip.) 4. Start your day with water and drink it consistently. Drinking water is important for all cellular functions, and hydration aids in weight loss. One reason? That 3:00 pm slump may actually be due to dehydration, but many people confuse thirst for hunger and end up eating extra calories. Aim for 64 ounces a day. 5. Eat your veggies first. During meals, fill up on greens first. They’re packed with fiber and water volume, both of which help you to stay full and regular. So, you’ll find that you naturally begin to eat less of other less healthy food groups. Greens are also high in antioxidants, which fight inflammation, that nasty process linked to obesity. Foods high in the antioxidants vitamin C, E, and beta carotene—like greens!—may even help reduce fat storage by regulating your body’s use of the hormone insulin. RELATED: The 5 Most Filling Vegetables 6. But also prioritize protein and fat. Studies show that eating protein for breakfast may help increase how satisfied you feel throughout the day and help prevent nighttime noshing. It also helps build muscle, and more muscle means more fat burning. Fat, meanwhile, also helps you burn fat! Portion control is key, but be sure to get about 30 percent of your calories from fat, and eat it consistently throughout the day. 7. Meditate. Diet and exercise are important but if stress is throwing your hormones out of whack, you’ll still be out of luck in terms of weight loss. Prolonged excess stress not only causes an imbalance in your hormones which can lead to weight gain, it can also lead to emotional eating. Meditating, even for just five minutes a day, has been shown to reduce anxiety in really impressive ways. RELATED: 3 Reasons Stress is Tied to Weight Gain 8. Exercise regularly, but don’t overdo it. Set a workout schedule that fits into your life (i.e. you’ll actually stick to it!) but that doesn’t leave you exhausted and starving, AKA ready to emotionally overeat. Doing High Intensity Interval sessions seven days a week, for instance, will just send you off a cliff and stress your body. Instead, alternate high-intensity workouts with rest days and lower intensity forms of exercise like LISS Cardio and yoga. 9. Make friends with a foam roller. Most people ignore their lymphatic system, but it needs to function efficiently for the rest of your systems to work well. Pros like Lauren Roxburgh say that stimulating lymph—by foam rolling regularly, for instance—gets rid of waste buildup that may be causing your body to hold onto weight. While there isn’t a lot of research indicating a direct link, research does also show foam rolling affects the nervous system, stimulating a relaxation response—and you know what we said earlier about how crucial stress relief is here. 10. See yourself succeeding. Finally, your mind is a pretty powerful tool. If you start out assuming you’ll never figure out how to lose ten pounds effectively, you probably won’t. Try using visualization to picture yourself happy, at a healthy weight, thriving in that beautiful
The Fastest Way to Lose Weight This Week
You’re searching high and low for the fastest way to lose weight this week. You’re stressing. You’re kicking yourself for eating pizza over the weekend and missing your Sunday morning hot yoga class because you were hungover. Whether it’s for a date with the hot new guy at the office (our lips are sealed), that tropical vacation you’ve been waiting on for months, or as a jumpstart to your weight loss plan, you need to drop a few pounds stat. We’ve all been there. If you want to look amazing in your LBD but the zipper is way tight and you can’t quite sit down in your favorite jeans at the moment, read on for the fastest way to lose weight in a jiffy. And no, starving yourself is not the answer. The Fastest Way to Lose Weight This Week 1. Eat Empowered Eat real food. Often. Stop worrying about what extreme diet you need to start. Stop counting calories and start thinking about the real food you’re going to eat. Eat breakfast, lunch and dinner—and at least one snack a day (no skipping meals!)—consisting of whole, real foods. I’m talking loads of veggies, lean protein such as grass-fed steak, chicken, fish and eggs, and healthy fats as in cashews, pecans, olives, avocado and coconut. Ditch the packaged and processed foods—especially anything that includes added sugar. If you need an exact plan, I’ve got you covered here. Begin your day with breakfast and eat every few hours or when you feel slightly hungry and stop when you feel slightly satisfied. Not sure what that feels like? Check out this hack . Eating real food combined with listening to your body is your new winning combo. Fact: Eating real food makes you feel better and that alone can make you look better. If you’re skimping on nutrients or need a way to boost your protein, check out our Nutritious Life-developed Life’s Abundance Greens Blend and Life’s Abundance Vanilla Plant Protein. It’s the fastest way to up your nutrition game. RELATED: Sugar Cravings: 4 Reasons They Happen and How to Stop Them 2. Sweat Often Get 45 minutes of movement in—every day this week. I’m a fan of mixing up exercise. This might mean getting in HIIT workouts one day, long bouts of cardio or a hike on another, and pilates and yoga on other days. But, most of all, I’m a fan of being consistent with exercising and moving, in whatever way, shape or form makes you feel your best. The fastest way to lose weight means sticking with whatever movement makes you feel good. When you feel good, you’re more likely to be consistent. Also, when you feel you good, you eat well and you sleep well which, guess what … helps you eat well again. This intertwined cycle is what a Nutritious Life is all about. This week, I want you to focus on being consistent with your exercise and doing it daily. You don’t even need to hit a gym to get it in. Here’s a quickie workout I do just about anywhere. Five-mile run sound good? Do it. Spin class right up your alley? Get that in. Hike in the hills all you want to do? Go for it. Fact: Yes, you’ll shed pounds by burning calories when you exercise, but exercising also increases blood flow. This helps with circulation and gives your skin a healthy glow. Exercise can also help reduce stress, which will help you sleep better. Both exercise and sleep are needed to calm your nerves. RELATED: Quick 5-Minute Full-Body Workout You Can Do Anywhere 3. Sleep Deep Aim for 8 hours of sleep a night, settle for no less than 7. For some reason, sleep is still one of those things that we give up in order to fit everything else into our busy schedules. Many of us still feel like we should get a gold star when we triumphantly go without sleep to log more hours at a bar chatting it up with friends or burning the midnight oil at our desk. Unfortunately, no medals awarded here. Sleep should be a top priority. It’s right up there with what we put into our bodies, especially when we want to be looking and feeling our best. This week, practice good sleep hygiene by picking a bedtime and sticking to it. Allow yourself 15 minutes of winding down time before your head hits the pillow. Fact: They don’t call it “beauty sleep” for nothing. While we sleep, our body’s natural antioxidant and sleep hormone, melatonin, fights off free radical invaders. If you’re not getting enough sleep at night, you’re reducing the amount of time that melatonin gets to fight off wrinkles, and those bags under your eyes will only get worse. By getting enough sleep at night, you not only look and feel well-rested, but your immune system will be strengthened. RELATED: Sleep Procrastination: What It Is and How to Stop Doing It, Pronto! 4. Drink Up Drink eight glasses of water and two cups of green tea a day. For two days before your special occasion, drink one cup of dandelion root tea as well. Trust me, this one is important. Being properly hydrated is linked to metabolism, energy and skin health. Fact: It might sound counterintuitive, but drinking water throughout the day, helps you to reduce bloating, flush out toxins, hydrate your skin to achieve a healthy glow, and keep your digestive organs in good working order. On top of that, green tea has been shown to boost metabolism and dandelion tea will help flush you out, further reducing toxins and any bloating. RELATED: Do I Really Need to Be Drinking Water to Lose Weight? 5. Nurture Yourself No time or money to book that expensive facial? Have no fear, your DIY cleansers are here. Give these easy homemade facial cleanser and mask a try. You’ll almost be able to feel the antioxidants and nutrients seep into your skin making it soft, smooth
