Up until fairly recently, a popular dietary approach for weight loss was to consume several small frequent meals throughout the day.  The rationale behind this strategy is that eating every 2-3 hours would increase metabolism and the pounds would drop off.

A popular new dietary strategy called Intermittent Fasting is questioning this previous approach.  We know that employing a caloric restriction based diet will always fail to produce lasting weight loss results. Successful weight loss is about changing hormones, not reducing calories.  This is of course easier said than done.  It is easy to drop calories, it is a bit harder to change hormones, specifically insulin.

The goal behind Intermittent Fasting is to lower the body’s insulin burden overtime by eating less frequently.  Excess insulin makes the body store fat, but unfortunately also inhibits the body from burning fat effectively.  If the insulin burden is reduced, this will allow the body to easily burn more fat.  

There are two keys to Intermittent Fasting, the first is to consume a low carb – high fat (LCHF) diet and the second is related to the timing of meals.  There are several fasting strategies, but a common option is to skip breakfast, then eat lunch and dinner within a 6 to 8 hour window.  For example, you would eat lunch at 12:00 pm, then dinner would be between 6:00 to 8: 00 pm.  This  allows you to fast for roughly 16 – 18 hours everyday, which helps to lower the insulin burden overtime.  

Keep in mind, the low carb part is relative.  It not intended to be another version of a ketogenic diet, so there are no daily carb maximum.  Typically, ketogenic diets recommend 20-50 grams of total carbohydrates daily depending on the person.  Because carbs are only being consumed at dinner, the overall grams of carbohydrates is important, but not critical.  

One mistake many people make with low carb diets is that daily calories drop as well as carbs.  This is the proverbial double whammy – low carb and low calorie.  Low carb is fine, but it should not be both.  The high fat part is important to control appetite and to increase daily calories, so caloric intake does not drop too much overtime.  Plus, fat only has minimal impact on blood sugar and insulin.  

In conclusion, the key to remember is your body burns what you give it, so by having fat first thing in the morning, it encourages the body to burn fat more efficiently.  Plus, having a decent amount of healthy fats in the morning helps to improve energy, manage appetite and minimize cravings later in the day.  Having carbs with dinner will help to raise serotonin levels and may help to improve the quality of sleep

There is no magic bullet or a way to speed up the weight loss process without negative consequences.  The key to weight loss success is a good strategy, consistency and time.  However, the nutrition strategy someone implements needs to be simple, easy to follow and the most important is it needs to be maintainable.  Consider Intermittent Fasting as a viable weight loss strategy.  

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