Eat Stop Eat: Intermittent Fasting for Health and Weight Loss

by Brad Pilon

Finally, I can tell you that based on my research studying nutrition, fasting, and weight loss in graduate school, I have realized that there are only two absolute truths when it comes to nutrition and weight loss. 1 Prolonged caloric restriction is the only proven nutritional method of weight loss and 2 Human beings can only be in one of the following states: fed or fasted.

To be clear, our entire style of eating in North America has been molded to support the interests of major food companies.

the research was trying to uncover the completely backwards idea — “What should we eat to lose weight?!”

the best definition of fasting is the following: “The act of willingly abstaining from some or all food, and in some cases drink, for a pre-determined period of time.”

The minute you start fasting (stop eating) your body slowly begins to enter the fasted state. As you slowly use up the energy and nutrients supplied by your last meal, you also slowly begin to ramp up the amount of energy you supply from your body fat. For most people, you fully enter the fasted state using mostly body fat as a fuel, by about 24 hours since you finished your last meal.

I mean that we are either in the process of eating and storing the calories that come from our food, or burning these same calories as we burn stored energy. This energy is stored in the form of fat and glycogen (the storage form of sugars and carbohydrates in our bodies).

Recent research suggests the problem is that we spend as much as 20 hours a day in the fed state.6 We are constantly eating and storing food and we never really give ourselves a chance to burn it off.

To the food industry and various government agencies, the idea of people eating less is bad for business.

In my opinion, no matter how strong your willpower, it will eventually be over-ridden by the power of marketing, advertising, and the lure of great tasting food. After all, no one really wants to diet, we just want to look better with less fat on our bodies. (Dieting just happens to be a rather uncomfortable means to this end.)

I would argue that the less complicated a diet is, the better its chances of helping you obtain long lasting weight loss.

In other words, a diet’s success can be measured by how well they can enforce my first nutrition “truth”—prolonged caloric restriction is the only proven nutritional method of weight loss.

Most likely, what we call hunger is really a learned reaction to a combination of metabolic, social, and environmental cues to eat.

we make as many as 200 food related decisions every day and are subjected to countless food advertisements.

I believe that hunger as you and I understand it is a conditioned response created through the mix of tastes, smells, habits, and social influence.

Or put more simply—as calories consumed at breakfast go up, so does overall calorie intake for the day.

the people who skip (delay) breakfast select more calorically dense foods later in the day than do those who regularly eat breakfast.

In other words, even though breakfast skippers eat slightly more calories at dinner and lunch, they still eat less total calories over the entire day.

Not only is fasting an effective way to reduce our calorie intake, it also helps to restore a normal balance between fed and fasted metabolism.

Not only do most of us eat too much, but most of us have no idea why

There is no free pass to weight loss. Or, as science fiction writer Robert Heinlein would say, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”

Eat less, while enjoying the foods you eat. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables, and lots of herbs and spices. And maybe most importantly, spend less time stressing over the types of food you are eating.

Attempting to adhere to a very strict diet with large lists of foods you are not allowed to eat typically ends up in failure, due to something called the “disinhibition effect”—a paradox where merely labeling certain types of food as “off limits” or “forbidden” creates a disinhibition; where eating the foods you consider forbidden leads to increased eating afterwards.

Finally, when it comes to eating—no one eats perfectly because perfect eating does not exist.

The first and most important thing you need to remember is to drink a lot of calorie-free fluids; this will help you avoid getting thirsty, which is often mistaken as hunger.

You may also find it helpful to stay busy while fasting.

In fact, you will probably find that you have a lot of spare time on your fasting day.

view every single fast you complete as a small win towards your weight loss goals.

Stay positive and flexible with fasting. Every single 24-hour fast you complete is small win towards hitting your weight loss goals.

Or put differently, regardless of whether you are a man or a woman, young or old, bad things start to happen when your body fat levels become too low.

Resistance training is an essential part of the Eat Stop Eat lifestyle.

If there is any secret to weight training it is simply that consistency, effort, and proper recovery are what will get you the best results,

Most of the time people say the reason that they stop exercising is that they are tired or because of lack of time.

When it comes to exercise, balance seems to be the key. Too much exercise and you increase the risk of overuse injuries and you could become obsessive, defining yourself as a person by your exercise program. Too little exercise and you lose the muscle maintaining and myriad of health benefits.

I recommend keeping your exercise plans as uncomplicated as possible.

I have found from both personal experience and from reviewing clinical research that the work-to-reward benefit of cardio for the purpose of burning more fat is relatively low. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT CARDIO DOESN’T WORK.

Obviously, the goal of any weight loss program should not be quick, short-lived weight loss.

Your ability to keep the weight off is directly related to your ability to maintain a flexible amount of dietary restraint.

Your ability to keep the weight off is directly related to how well you maintained your lean body mass while you were losing weight.

To obtain the full benefits of fasting you must temper the time spent in the fasted state against the time spent “recovering” or eating.

Another of the main philosophies behind Eat Stop Eat is that once your fast is over you pretend it never happened. You go back to eating as you normally would—in a responsible way that will maintain your weight.

The bottom line is that with Eat Stop Eat, we can lose weight while creating a healthier relationship with food and accepting that food is: 1 A fuel for your body when you need it. And… 2 To be enjoyed.

Eat less, stress less; move more, lift more, and get a good night’s sleep. For physical health, that’s pretty much as good as it gets.

There is no scientific evidence to prove that breakfast is any more important than lunch or dinner for adults.