One of the best ways to lose weight and build muscle at the same time is through intermittent fasting.

• Fasting promotes the production of HGH and stabilizes insulin levels allowing for lean muscle mass.

In recent years, intermittent fasting has exploded in popularity. In reality, fasting is not a new concept.

Before the age of agriculture, man had to adapt to scarce food sources. From an evolutionary perspective our bodies have not changed much since then.

Fasting daily provides you with a plethora of health benefits like:

• Less hunger overall.
• Rapid fat loss and increased potential for lean muscle mass.
• More energy and focus.

Contrary to popular belief eating when you first wake up is not the best decision if you are looking to lose fat and build muscle.

When you eat as soon as you wake, you flood your body with glucose. Your body must burn of all glucose stores before turning to its fat stores for energy.

Depletion of glucose in your body happens around the 12 hour mark. If you allow your body to remain in a fasted state for a few hours after waking, you allow the continued release of the human growth hormone (HGH).

HGH production is at its highest in the morning and levels off throughout your day. Eating as soon as you wake impedes this process from happening.

In his article, The Benefits & Dangers of Human Growth Hormone Dr. Axe speaks HGH of being a natural testosterone booster.

Having more testosterone allows you to:

• Have more muscle mass.
• Have high energy levels so your workouts are more effective.

When you allow the release of HGH to continue in the morning, your testosterone is increased making lean muscle mass easier to have.

Fasting also permits your insulin levels to be more stable. Not eating in the morning won’t spike your blood sugar.

A sudden spike in blood sugar will cause a crash a few hours later making you hungrier throughout your day.

The more you practice intermittent fasting, the better your body will become at burning its fat stores for energy.

A great way to start practicing intermittent fasting is to follow the 16:8 protocol.

You stop eating at 8pm the night before and to start eating at 12pm the next day.

Having your body in a fasted state for longer periods over time will compound making it easier for you to lose fat and gain muscle.

Check out the link below to get more detailed information on IF.

The Ultimate Beginners Guide to Intermittent Fasting goes into more detail on how fasting will benefit your fat loss goals.

Remember:

Fasting, when done right can certainly be helpful for weight loss. Done wrong it can be destructive, but that is true of anything. If you want to use fasting as part of your weight loss, you will need to do some learning, and some testing to determine what works best for you. The two approaches that seem to be most effective are either occasional fast days (less effective) or the 16/8 approach where you only eat during an 8 hour window each day. I personally like the 16/8 approach, it is easy and it works for most of them.

If you go back to the nutrition that helped make you overweight, it will make you overweight again. That’s not rocket science. Same action, same results. You have to find long term changes you can sustain, and reducing your snacks and skipping breakfast is an easy change to make long term. Sixteen hours a day seems like a lot, but unless you eat in your sleep, eight of those hours is easy. Your body is a long term project. Some people just naturally maintain high activity levels and good nutrition habits and are not looking to lose weight. For the rest of us, it takes active effort to get the results we want. Stop putting forth the effort, stop getting the results.

You cannot expect to lose weight when you keep your insulin levels high. Insulin stores sugar in your body as fat. If your body is storing fat, it’s not losing fat. Fasting for 16 hours helps clear out that insulin, and allows your body to make use of it’s stored fat. That’s why you have fat, your body stores energy when it has surplus, and uses that stored energy when there is a deficit. The goal in weight loss is to create that deficit. If you restrict calories, but maintain your insulin levels, you make results harder to obtain.

Hope this information is helpful.

Source: Jerome Huff , Writer on Healthy Living, Studied Certified Health Coach at Institute for Integrative Nutrition