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Hey guys, Dr. Berg here. In this video we're going to share with you the power of intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is a tool. It's not a diet, and it doesn't tell you what to eat. It's a pattern of eating and not eating. It's not about cutting calories; it's just changing when you eat and when you don't eat. That's what we're going to talk about.
So why would you want to do this? Because it is one, if not the most important, factors in weight loss. It triggers two main hormones in your body, the most powerful ones. The first is growth hormone, which is anti-aging and the most powerful fat-burning hormone. There are six fat-burning hormones, and growth hormone is the most powerful of them. It protects your muscles, helps build lean body mass, and helps you lose actual fat.
The second is insulin. Insulin is also a very powerful hormone. It will help you store fat if you want to gain weight, which you don't want to do. You want to lose weight. But in the presence of insulin, you cannot lose weight. It is such a dominating hormone that it will block growth hormone. So it's the hormone that makes you fat, the hormone that gives you the gut. If you see someone with a fat gut, they have too much insulin. These are the two powerful hormones you're going to influence.
Now let's look at what's happening. This tool or technique can really heal insulin resistance, where the pancreas is pumping out way more insulin than you need, five to seven times as much. When you have too much insulin, the cells start blocking it, and your body doesn't get the return communication. It's like talking to your child when they have earplugs: you increase your volume because the person is ignoring you. There's no two-way communication. If the pancreas doesn't get the feedback that the insulin is connecting, it sends more insulin through the channel. So you have a situation of insulin resistance. It's not working. There is low insulin in the cell and low glucose, but then there are high amounts of insulin in other places, which is very destructive. It causes pre-diabetes and creates a lot of problems.
So what we want to do is start where you're at and graduate over time. There are different levels of intermittent fasting, from not intermittent fasting to some serious fat burning. Let's say you start with five or six meals a day. Many people have breakfast, lunch, snacks, dinner, and a snack. The principle of intermittent fasting, hormonally, is that every time you eat, you spike insulin. People have thought that only eating carbohydrates spikes insulin, but no. Eating in general increases insulin, regardless of what you eat, even a healthy snack. So this person is spiking insulin all day long. Our bodies are not designed to eat and graze all day long. So we want to switch to three meals a day with no snacks. That's the first step: three meals a day, no snacking. The ability to go from one meal to the next without being hungry involves eating more fat, so you have to add more fat to that meal. I'm going to put some links down about what to eat, but this video is not about what to eat. It's about the pattern.
If you want to take it to the next level and burn even more fat, you can do a pattern of 16:8, which is 16 hours of fasting and an 8-hour window of eating. Let's say you get up in the morning and you're not hungry. Don't eat; wait until you're hungry. The ideal situation is to go at least four hours after you wake up before you eat the first meal. Say you get up at 6:00 in the morning, so your last meal will be at night. You have an 8-hour window. You might eat at 8 in the morning and again at 8 at night. You really haven't given enough fasting in between, but the real power of intermittent fasting comes through the night and into the morning, when you're sleeping. That's when you really have uninterrupted, serious fat burning. It's not necessarily as much between the meals, but it is a factor. That's why we want to keep that window, with three meals. Does that make sense?
If we want to take it even further and really turn on the fat burning, we want to go to two meals with a window of 20 hours of fasting. You know what that would do to your waistline and stomach. So we go for 20 hours of fasting and only a four-hour window of eating. We want to get up and wait until, say, 1 p.m. to have the first meal, then have the next meal four hours later, at 5 p.m. You have four hours where you eat, but then you have 20 hours of serious fat burning. If you then add intermittent fasting with exercise, specifically high-intensity interval training, that's over the top. That would be the icing on the cake. Well, maybe I shouldn't say icing on the cake; that's the meat and potatoes. No, don't listen to me. The point is that it will take some time to transition to these different levels. Don't think it happens in a minute. If you've destroyed your metabolism through dieting, the HCG diet at 500 calories, or some other stress event, it will take time to gradually move to the next level. You want to be comfortable. We don't want you to have headaches or many side effects between meals. Over time, this transition from here to here could take about three weeks, but moving from this level to the next could take a month or two, or even three months, before you get to this point. It could take even longer, but then you're really burning fat.
So I just wanted to cover the power of this, what it is, and how you would do it, starting here and gradually moving over here. Put your comments below. Thanks for watching.
I just want to take a moment to thank you for your amazing feedback. It's mind-blowing, and the successes are the wins. I created a link below so you can type out your full success story. If you have a before-and-after with weight loss, that would be awesome. If you don't have a weight loss success but other wins, put an image of yourself and your personal success story. I would love to read it and share it with others. Thank you in advance for doing that. There's a link below; fill it out, and I can't wait to read it.