Fasting and undereating are both tremendous tools for losing body fat and living healthier and way longer. Undereating as a way of life is one of the “fountain of youth” secrets that can add years to your life if done properly and there are entire books and studies dedicated to it. There are two types of fasting that I know about: Juice Fasting and Intermittent Fasting.
Juice fasting is a type of fasting where only fresh vegetable and fruit juices are consumed for 3-21 days along with fiber and cleansing supplements like cranberry concentrate, flaxseed oil, psylium powder, chlorella and wheat grass shots and sometimes an herbal laxative. There are many types of juice fasting diets and programs out there and some are better than others. Sometimes they are called cleanses as well and are targeted towards cleansing a part of the body like the colon or liver.
Complete calorie restriction for a period of time or “intermittent fasting” is the other type of fasting that can reap major fat loss rewards and cleanse the body. One popular method is to take 1 or even 2 days per week and have nothing but pure water and black coffee or tea for 24 hours. This should create a huge weekly calorie deficit even if you overeat on the other days. There are complete diets on the subject, like the popular Warrior Diet by Ori Hofmekler. I really like and agree with a lot of the Warrior Diet concepts which go radically against conventional thinking towards dieting and training.
There is, however, one part I don’t like about fasting. The starvation part. Even though I have dieted for bodybuilding competitions to extremely low body fat levels, the idea of going an entire day without food is very daunting. For some people it is not as difficult. Your body type and metabolic rate play a big role in how you will be effected by fasting. Although, I have previously always advocated the popular “Eat 5-7 frequent, small meals” mantra, I have recently become convinced that for most people this is just too inconvenient. When I went for a period of time not working in a kitchen I realized just how unrealistic it was to eat every 3 hours. This is why it may be worth looking at “intermittent fasting” if you feel like you could tolerate it and if you do not already have a sluggish metabolism or sedentary lifestyle.
Nowadays, I eat around 4 times a day and I follow the 80/20 rule. This is the rule that if you eat healthy 80% percent of the time the other 20% will not harm you and will actually help you by keeping you from feeling guilty or bad about your eating. There is no one eating strategy that will fit everyone and what we really need is honest, unbiased health information. From a place of personal truth we can be free to discover what will work for us as individuals in our health journey.
