Intermittent Fasting

To control insulin in our body, we must fast.  Fasting is the simplest and surest method to force the body to burn sugar and fat.  While it may sound severe, fasting is literally the oldest dietary therapy known and has been practiced throughout human history without problems.

16/8 intermittent fasting involves eating only during an 8-hour window and fasting for the remaining 16 hours. We recommend fasting between the hours of 8 pm to 12 pm the next day and eat between 12 pm and 8 pm.  Intermittent fasting is tool or a technique, it’s not a diet.  It’s a pattern of eating and not eating. Intermittent fasting has been shown to support weight loss and improve blood sugar, brain function and longevity. Eat a healthy diet during your eating period and drink calorie-free beverages like water or unsweetened teas and coffee.

Obviously, some people cope with hunger better than others. For those of you who can’t stand hunger, I suggest you take a natural appetite suppressant.

It’s very important to primarily eat healthy foods during your eating window. This method won’t work if you eat lots of junk food.  You can drink water, tea or coffee during the fast, which can help reduce feelings of hunger.

Fasting also gives your vital organs, digestive and absorptive hormones, and metabolic functions a “break,” according to a recent study published in Cell Metabolism. Since our bodies secrete insulin to help our cells absorb sugar, fasting is linked to reducing our susceptibility to insulin resistance over time. (High insulin levels ultimately put us at risk for a whole host of diseases).

The benefits are clear: intermittent fasting can be easy to follow, it does not require any calorie counting, it can make people healthier and may even delay the symptoms of Alzheimer’s.  Intermittent fasting also does not lead to eating disorders or slow down a person’s metabolism.

The first five fast days are pretty tricky, but once your body gets adjusted to that kind of up-down pattern of eating, it actually gets really easy.

Intermittent fasting is not for everyone, including people with type 1 diabetes, pregnant women and lactating women.

Exercise before you eat because people get hungry about half an hour after they finish working out and may find it too hard to stick to their plan if they cannot eat anything at all afterwards.

Insulin is the Key to Metabolic Function

The body needs energy to accomplish its metabolic functions.  The body get that energy from what we eat.  We have 3 main parts in our diet also called the 3 micronutrients.  They are carbohydrates, proteins and fats.  However, the body mostly uses two of them as fuels, carbohydrates and fats.  Whether the body uses fats of carbohydrates as fuel source depends on the hormone insulin.  Insulin figures out or decides what source of energy the body should use as fuel. When someone eats pure carbohydrates (bread, white rice, etc…) we have a substantial increase in insulin in our body where insulin can climb 10 times more than normal and stay elevated for up to 4 hours.  In contrast, if someone eat fats in their diet, insulin is low and the levels won’t even vary. Fat alone has a negligible effect on insulin.

So, when you eat carbs and insulin is elevated, the body decides to get more of its energy from carbohydrates.  Basically, the body start to burn sugar, sugar in the blood, not in the body.  In contrast, if insulin levels are low, the body starts burning body fat for fuel.  So, the body has options, it can use 2 fuel sources and It shifts its energy source depending on insulin levels.

You can now clearly see that elevated insulin levels means that the body is going to burn sugar as its energy source.  So, the solution is quite simple.  If you want to burn fat, you lower your insulin levels. Consequently, if you want your body to use abdominal fat as source of energy, you need to lower your insulin levels, then your body starts using body fat for fuel. Body fats, therefore become the main source of energy for the body. And that means your fat tissues start to shrink and you start losing weight.

When insulin is too high for too long, it leads to a condition called insulin resistance. Insulin resistance can cause almost every chronic disease.  If you fear chronic diseases, you should be fearing high insulin levels, therefore insulin resistance.

Insulin resistance syndrome, you might also hear it called metabolic syndrome includes a group of problems like obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, etc. It could affect as many as 1 in 3 Americans.

Key Takeaways

Here is what you need to remember and practice. If you eat carbohydrates, insulin levels in your body climb, that means your body will start to burn carbohydrates for fuel.  And insulin is what tells the body to do that. In contrast, fat in your diet helps insulin stay low, so if you eat fats, insulin levels remain low and because insulin levels are low, your body will use body fat for fuel instead.  And when your body uses body fats for fuel, your fat tissues start to shrink and you start losing weight.

The more carbohydrate you eat, the higher your insulin levels get and the hungrier you get and insulin gets stuck in carbohydrate burning mode. Because insulin is chronically stuck in sugar burning mode, your body never switches to fat burning mode and you just keep gaining weight. The solution in this case is simply to start to reduce or get rid of the carbs in your diet, then insulin levels drop and the body starts using fats as energy source.

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Mamadou Diakité
Clinical/Consultant Pharmacist
Board Certified Consultant Pharmacist
Chairman & CEO – DiakPharmaceuticals, LLC
diakite@diakpharma.com
www.DiakPharma.com