How Intermittent Fasting Boosts Your Body’s Fat Burning Abilities
Intermittent fasting, a.k.a. only eating within a set 8-hour period each day, is a critical component of our paleo program. This part of the protocol isn’t about what you eat, which matters greatly as well, it’s about WHEN you eat. Intermittent fasting matters because it enables your body to enter its natural fat burning mode (ketosis) more easily and stay there longer.
Even if you eat a healthy protein meal, it still takes your body out of its nighttime ketosis mode. They burn up the food energy fast, leaving you hungry mid-morning or by lunchtime at best.
Have you heard of ketosis? Here’s the skinny – literally.
Your body enters into a ketogenic state, ie. fat burning mode, while you sleep each night, and you wake up still in this state every morning. As we like to say here, “your bed is your treadmill!” Truly, getting lots of sleep helps lose weight.
So what happens next to most people when they wake up? They eat toast or cereal, immediately reentering their body’s old way of burning sugar and carbs for energy. Even if you eat a healthy protein meal, it still takes your body out of its nighttime ketosis mode. They burn up the food energy fast, leaving you hungry mid-morning or by lunchtime at best.
But what if you could keep your body in fat burning mode a few hours longer each day, even all morning and maybe even in the afternoon?
That’s where daily intermittent fasting comes in. Why intermittent? You aren’t permanently fasting, for one thing. You’re still eating two delicious, nutritious, sizable meals a day: lunch and dinner. But both of these meals are eaten within the critical window of roughly noon-7pm so that the rest of the time, other than your morning Bulletproof Coffee of course, which helps sustain the fast more easily and without hunger, you are fasting while also teaching your body to burn its own fat as fuel more of the time.
The advantages of intermittent fasting, beyond helping support ketosis, are vast. Recent studies on ketogenic diets show decreased body fat, increased muscle mass, increased energy, and decreased workout time needed for the same results. Further anti-aging benefits are described here in detail.
