In this episode, Ian Carlin talks about why low carb dieting is a great place to start but it will most likely will not get you to optimal health. Also, what you need to know about switching gyms. Enjoy!
Tag Archives: Motivation
Ways to Make Your Commitment to Weight Loss Easier (Audio)
In this episode of A Mind For Fitness Podcast, Ian gives advice on how to make keeping your goals much easier. Enjoy!
Intermittent Fasting Wars PT. 3
There are many, many IF plans out there. It is the latest craze (for good reason). However, in my opinion, there are only three main protocols. Everything else is a variant of these three plans. So what are these there plans.
- Alternate Day.
- Eat Stop Eat.
- The Warrior Diet.
Alternate Day
First there is alternate day fasting. It is what it sounds like. You fast for 24 hours every other day. For example, on day one, you would wake up and eat normally until 5 P. M. Then you would stop eating until the next day at 5 P. M. After that, you repeat the process.
Eat Stop Eat
This method advocates two 24 hour fasts a week. Then, the participant can eat normally throughout the non-fast days. So it may look something like this: Thursday, stop eating at 5:00 P.M. Fast until Friday 5:00 P.M. Then eat normally over the weekend until Sunday at 5:00 PM. Fast until Monday at 5:00 P.M. Then eat normally from Monday until Thursday.
It’s important to note that eating normally does not mean that you eat like it is Thanksgiving . However, it does mean that you can eat more high-carb foods. So if you are going out for breakfast, you do not have to eat just the eggs and bacon. You are welcome to eat the hash-browns, and toast as well. Likewise, if you are going to have a steak for dinner. You can also eat a potato.
Warrior Diet
The Warrior Diet is a daily fast of 20 hours. Then there is a four hour eating window. During the four hour eating window you are encouraged to do a few things. One is to eat a salad and a good amount of protean. However, you can eat anything. This would include pizza and ice cream. Also, you are encouraged to overeat. That’s right. You are encouraged to overeat.
Other IF Plans
Many other plans are simply a mixing or modification of the three above. For example Bulletproof IF is like Eat Stop Eat in some ways and in some ways it is like the Warrior Diet. You may only choose to IF two days a week. In that way it is like Eat Stop Eat. But you may fast for 20 hours on those days. In that way it is like the Warrior Diet. However, it is not recommended on Bulletproof that you eat high-carb or processed food. So you cannot eat just anything. Also, you are allowed to have Bulletproof coffee which contains fats.
Another plan in Lean Gains. This is kind of like the Warrior diet. On this plan you daily fast but for only 16 hours. However, your meals should be sensible without a lot of high-carb foods.
Over Simplification
I have to admit that I am over simplifying these diets quite a bit. I do this for two reasons. One is for the sake of time. The second reason is that I do not want to give away these authors diet plans for free. That would be unethical. So if there is something I missed please remember that I am over simplifying on purpose.
Closing Remarks
The list of IF plans is plentiful. In the final article of this series, I will talk about the plan I used to lose 20 pounds in 5 weeks, which plan you should choose, and some closing observations about IF.
The Intermittent Fasting Wars Pt. 2 (Written)
If you really want to lose weight, you need to eat 6 small meals a day. And you never want to skip breakfast! Right? Well, that is what I was told my whole life. In fact, fairly recently I did a review (audio) on Chris Powell’s book, Choose to Lose: The Seven Day Carb Cycle Solution. In that book, he advocates six small meals a day. I followed it for a while and I lost weight!
Well the truth is I lost a little weight. And the reason I lost it was not because the diet was so great. Rather it was due to the fact that I was on a plateau and it changed things up enough to get my metabolism working again.
The six meal a day plan can work for some of the people some of the time. For example, if you take someone who is eating a bowl of granola in the morning and/ or a bagel, and switch them to 4 egg whites and half a banana, you will see results. Out of the two, the former is way worse for your blood sugar. So the six meal a day diet can work, but it does not work nearly as well as intermittent fasting (IF).
Why IF Works
There is lots of science regarding IF. I do not have the time to go into all of it here. However, I will quickly mention that the reason it works is that it allows your body to tap into your fat reserves. Your body only runs on two types of fuel–sugar and fat. When you eat 3 or 6 times a day you are fueling your body with sugar and training your body to prefer to run on sugar.
However, when you go without food for a significant period of time, you use up all your sugar. The only fuel left for your body to run on is fat. And in fact, your body runs better on fat than sugar. And the more often you run on fat, the more your body wants to run on fat preferentially.
There are lots of big words I could have used to explain the above paragraphs, but it really is that simple. If you do not have sugar in your body, you will run on fat.
Starvation Mode
But what about starvation mode? If you have been led to believe that 3-6 meals is the way to go, and that you should never skip breakfast, you may have also heard of the dreaded “starvation mode.” This is the belief that if you do not keep feeding your body every 2 hours or so you will store fat instead of burn it. Why? Because (they say) your body thinks it is going though a famine and will want to hang onto fat.
The fact of the matter is that this is simply not true. In order for your body to go into “starvation mode,” you have to go without food for a few days. But even then, you will eventually start losing weight. So do not fear. Going without breakfast, or even going without food for a day, will not not make you gain weight!
IF Programs
There are many IF programs to choose from. In the next article, I will list them and let you know which protocol I chose to lose nearly 20 pounds in about a month!
The Intermittent Fasting Wars PT. 1(Written)
I recently did a podcast on different intermittent fasting protocols. In light of that, I thought I would write this blog based on that podcast. I’m doing this because I want to get the information out there and realize that not everyone listens to podcasts. That is to say that some people like to read more than they like to listen.
This will not be a word for word transcript of the podcast (that would just be too lengthy). What I wanted to do was talk about the different kinds of intermittent fasting plans available and which one is right for you. However, before I do that, I wanted to write a little on why I have taken up this topic.
Last October I had a shocking eye opener. Over the course of the summer, I had re-gained about 15 pounds. While I was no where near 300 pounds (the estimated weight I was at when I started to take my health seriously), I was still very depressed to have gained that amount of weight back.
How did I re-gain the weight. Well quite honestly it was just though neglect. One too many cheat meals, eating too often, not pushing myself as hard as I could have in the gym…the list goes on. And also, the fact that I was not near my original 300 pounds made it easy to over look the “relatively” small amount of weight I was gaining back.
At the first of the year, I once again got serious about my health. In about 5 weeks, I had lost the 15 pounds plus a few extra. I started giving it my all in the gym, making sure I was counting my carbs. I was also eating clean. But the big factor was tighting down on my intermittent fasting.
But one of the decisions I had to make was choosing an intermittent fasting (IF) protocol. This caused me to study which IF programs were available. So which ones are available, and which one did I choose to lose about 20 pounds? And which one should you choose? These questions will be addressed in our next post.
The Intermittent Fasting Wars (Podcast)
On this episode of A mind For Fitness Podcast, Ean Carlin talks about intermittent fasting. Also, a lot of time is spent on evaluating the different kinds of intermittent fasting protocols. Enjoy!
Why Traditional Diets Work For Some People
In this episode, Ean gives the straight scoop on why low calorie, Low fat diets work for some people some of the time. As well as why it does not work for others and why you should never make it your lifestyle.
Five Factors That Will Either Make or Break Your Weight Loss
Another episode of A Mind For Fitness podcast is now available. In this episode I talk about the difference between those who succeed at weight loss and those who fail. Which camp are you in? Listen and find out.
How Much Do Calories Actually Matter? (audio)
There is a new episode of A Mind For Fitness Podcast. In this episode, Ean Talks about why it is more important to count carbs rather than calories. Also, what is a calorie and how you can avoid overeating. Enjoy!
What Not To Do About Your Weight-Loss Plateau
In the previous blog post I talked about why we hit plateaus in our weight loss. In that blog, I talked about the two main causes. The first was not appropriately sticking to your diet. And the second reason simply has to do with the fact that our body likes to adjust to what we are doing. In this post, I want to address what not to do when you stop losing weight.
Two Big Don’ts
In my experience, I see two major mistakes people make when they hit their plateau. The first is psychological, namely discouragement. The second mistake is attempting is to be supper strict with your diet or workout plan.
Discouragement
It is easy to get discouraged when you hit a plateau. Particularly when you are doing everything right. But the truth is stalling out in your weight-loss is, as far as I can tell, universal. It does not matter how good the diet is, or how strictly you are following it, at some point it will stop working. And by stop working, I mean that your weight-loss will either slow down or stop altogether. I do not mean that your plan will stop being healthy, rather what I mean is that your body will adjust and you will stop losing weight.
In light of this, there is no reason to get discouraged. Like I mentioned above, stalling out is universal. We all go though it.
Also, discouragement does not help. In fact, It leads to self destructive behavior. Those who stay discouraged for too long eventually fall back into old habits and gain back all the weight that they have lost. This is a story I have seen and heard too many times to recount. Don’t get discouraged. There are things you can do to get off of your plateau.
Super Strict
If the cause of your plateau is that you have not been following the diet correctly, then being more strict is the answer. However, like I wrote in the last post, even those who do a low-carb, paleo, ketogenic diet correctly, will still stall out. It’s easy to think that you just have not done the diet correctly enough. It’s easy to think that all you need to do is dial it down more on how many carbs you eat. As a result of this kind of thinking I see many people eating nearly no carbs at all. This is a big mistake.
Going supper strict is not the answer to your problems. In fact, you are just setting yourself up to prolong your plateau and more discouragement.
So now we know what not to do. This leads us then to ask: What can I do to re-start my fat-burning hormones? This will be the subject of our next blog.
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