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10 Intermittent Fasting Mistakes That Stop Weight Loss

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10 Intermittent Fasting Mistakes That Stop Weight Loss

Today I want to talk about the top 10 mistakes that people make during intermittent fasting that rob them of the results and the success that they’re looking for when starting out on fasting or intimate fasting.


And when I say success, I’m talking about long-term success because if you get healthier but then you stop doing it and you get right back to being unhealthy where you started, then what was the point of changing anything at all?


So have the mindset of changing for a lifetime. Another problem is that people don’t understand that we are different. It’s like they think there is the right way.


Tell me the right way, as if someone could do all the research and just figure it out and come up with one magical answer that’s going to apply to everybody.


And there is no such thing, so stop looking for the right way. But if you understand the different principles and the mechanisms, then you use trial and error and you figure out what the right way is for you.


And then there are some people who can make every single mistake I’m going to talk about and they succeed anyway, at least in terms of weight loss. They eat the pizza; they eat the ice cream, they just do it once a day and they lose weight.


Now I’m happy that they’re getting some weight loss results or whatever they’re looking for, but it doesn’t mean that that is healthy in the long run.


But then there are other people who have much more stubborn situations and they have to be very meticulous and follow every single rule in the book.


So keep in mind as we’re talking about these 10 mistakes that when we talk about results, they have to be sustainable otherwise it doesn’t work and if it’s too painful for you’re not likely to carry it through but many people will quit.


10 intermittent fasting Mistakes

The number 1 mistake:


  • People probably make it when they’re fasting is that they’re depriving themselves.
  • They’re allowing themselves to get too hungry and when that happens, all they can think of is all the things they’re going to eat when they’re allowed to eat again.
  • They’re dreaming about it and what ends up happening is they just consume three meals in one sitting. They’re eating all the things that they didn’t eat when they were fasting, so they might consume everything on here just to make up for it.
  • Besides that, they might sort of stray a little extra and start eating carbs and junk.
  • And that’s another reason I usually encourage people to do it gradually. Do it at a pace where your body gets used to it because it’s not about depriving yourself, it’s not about suffering.
  • So what you want to do when you get back to eating is to eat a normal to an enormous meal.
  • Don’t make up and eat three meals in one sitting and you want to look for low carbohydrates because when you eat carbohydrates, that’s going to stimulate those cravings again.
  • They’re going to make you hungrier and you also want to focus on eating quality nutrients. Eat nutrient-dense food, eat whole food unprocessed foods.


The number 2 mistake:


  • Is not eating enough salt we hear so often that salt is unhealthy. Salt raises blood pressure, and that is not true.
  • Excess salt can aggravate an existing health condition if we can not regulate, but a healthy body can regulate salt perfectly.
  • The only time you want to restrict it is if you have something like kidney failure because now your body has lost the ability to regulate, so you have to help your body out. But when you’re fasting, your insulin will drop.
  • That’s the entire purpose: you eat fewer meals, fewer carbs. Your insulin drops and insulin keeps sodium.
  • Insulin acts on the kidneys to recycle more sodium, more salt, so when insulin drops, then we’re going to lose salt. Therefore, take a little extra also glycogen binds water.
  • Glycogen is the carbohydrate storage form in the body and when we eat fewer carbs and we eat fewer meals now, we’re going to use up those carbohydrates and when we use them up, they can no longer bind water so we lose additional water that way and salt, sodium always follows water.
  • They go hand in hand with their buddies. They go together, so now you’re losing water and salt because of insulin. Drops, you’re losing water and salt because you’re using up carbs and losing it that way.
  • Therefore, when you’re fasting, make sure that you get a little of extra salt and water compared to what you usually do.


The number 3 mistake:


  • Is high cortisol to have a high-stress lifestyle that maintains high cortisol.
  • Poor sleep is one more factor because if you don’t sleep enough or if your quality of sleep is poor, then you run higher cortisol levels as well.
  • And the problem with cortisol is cortisol is produced in the body in response to stress and when you’re stressed, your body is looking to raise blood sugar.
  • So cortisol helps the body get more blood sugar but that higher blood sugar triggers insulin, which triggers insulin resistance and fat-storing and so forth.
  • So for some people, a chronic high cortisol level could hold them back.
  • Now the problem with stress or a mental state of stress is I tell this too many people and they will tell me that oh but I’m not stressed and then we check their adrenals which handle the stress and their adrenals are totally shot.
  • Because stress is not how stressed you feel, it’s not about how you feel or how you think you feel. It’s about how you have conditioned your body over a lifetime.
  • Many people will tell me I was stressed 20-30 years ago but today my life is very peaceful well it’s during your years of growing up and during your years of living you condition your body into certain responses and it’s not about the stress out there, it’s how your body responds to it and that’s a conditioned response at the cellular level.
  • Another way to raise cortisol is to do too much anaerobic exercise so anaerobic is when you’re huffing and puffing when you’re pushing yourself and if you do a class like this and they’re trying to whip you on and they’re trying to encourage you and they tell you how many calories you’re burning and you’re doing well but you’re huffing and puffing for 40, 50, 60 minutes now you’re producing cortisol during all that time and that cortisol is going to backfire on you because if you’re huffing and puffing and you’re making cortisol than your body has to use up carbohydrates, and if you didn’t eat very many carbohydrates then it’s going to break down muscle or it’s going to make you consume more of the next meal.
  • So it’s going to make you hungrier the one type of anaerobic that’s okay is called high-intensity interval training which is anaerobic but it’s very short term so whereas a class might last 45 minutes or more, high-intensity interval training is where you warm up a little and then you go super high intensity for just a few minutes and then you get certain benefits, but you’re not staying in that state long enough to make a lot of cortisol.
  • Another thing to be aware of is that if you’re on a medication called corticosteroids, then that is a man-made version of cortisol so even if you’re doing everything else right then they are giving you cortisol and that’s going to mess things up.
  • So just be aware of that if you’re on steroids, that’s probably going to make you extra hungry and that may not be the best time to be super strict with this, but just try to get over the steroids and then start over.

The number 4 mistake:


  • Is to eat too many calories, and it is possible if you’re a really excellent cook you cook gourmet foods and you eat twice a day and you have rich sauces and you like to add the garlic butter.
  • It’s still possible to eat a little beyond satiety. You have this the temptation to finish things just because it tastes great. So be aware of that if you eat twice a dah this, but just try to get over the steroids and then start over.
  • Another thing I talk a lot about is breathing exercises and meditation because that is the best way long term to handle to reprogram that conditioned stress response so that the world outside may still be the way it is but your body reacts your body interprets that differently and you can get back into balance.


The number 5 mistake:


  • Is to eat too much fat, so this is a little confusing to people because they think that low carb and keto and intermittent fasting are about eating as much fat as possible and that’s not true.
  • It’s about reducing the carbohydrates so that you lower the insulin, so you can burn the fat now that’s a good thing if you can burn fat because then you can burn the dietary fat but the real purpose is to burn the fat off the body and you still want to be in a caloric deficit so that your body has an incentive to burn the fat off the body.
  • If you keep giving your body all the fat it needs for energy through the diet, then it’s never going to get around to burning it off the body.  
  • So for some people, it takes care of itself because when they eat fewer meals their appetite goes down and they burn the fat but for others; they have a tendency to keep eating a little more than they should.
  • So this is something that you want to be aware of that if you’re not losing the weight, your body is not burning it off the body. Maybe you’re still eating too much fat. 


The number 6 mistake:


  • Is to eat too much protein for most people I’m not talking about the meat and fish chicken eggs I’m not talking about whole food good sources of protein if you eat that in moderation it’s totally okay and for the vast majority of people you don’t really need to restrict these at all.
  • But we still have to be aware of what happens to excess protein because the excess gets turned into glucose.
  • Whenever you eat protein, it can only end up two ways either your body uses it for something structural meaning muscles, bone, skin, hair, collagen, it can use it for hormones small amount so the structure is one way but the other way anything the body can’t use for structural becomes energy it converts it into glucose and it uses it for fuel and then the glucose gets stored as glycogen up to the limit which isn’t very much of how much glycogen we can store and the rest gets converted to fat.
  • So what I really want to get at is that some people have heard that sugar is bad and carbohydrates bad and fat is bad and then they think that the only thing left to eat is protein and they eat as much as they can of meat and fish and chicken but then they might also in between start eating things like protein powders and protein powders are not a great idea.
  • I’m not totally opposed to it if you want to use it here and there just don’t think of more protein is always better and this protein powders most of them are plant-based but even the ones there are things like whey and collagen have a very poor conversion into the structure into the tissues meaning over 80 percent of these protein powders and the protein in the powders gets turned into glucose and then some of the protein powders even have other sugars or carbohydrates or even artificial chemicals and sweeteners.


The number 7 mistake:


  • Is to eat too much carbohydrate and why is that a problem because carbohydrate raises insulin and the whole reason we’re doing intermittent fasting is to lower insulin.
  • We do that two ways by lowering carbohydrates and by eating fewer meals because what increases insulin is whenever we eat something and whenever we eat, especially carbohydrates. So for some people, it’s enough to just reduce the number of meals, but for many people, you have to do both.
  • Reduce the carbs and eat fewer meals and why is that so important to lower insulin? Because insulin is fat storing and if insulin remains high, then we’re going to stay in a state of fat-storing we’re going to prevent fat burning and if we eat less but insulin is high, then we still can’t get to those fat stores on the body.
  • And if we can’t get to them and the body senses it needs energy but it can’t find it on the body, then it says you have to eat more and you end up getting hungry. So high levels of insulin make you hungry and too many carbs will maintain those high insulin levels.


The number 8 mistake:


  • Is to not eat enough food and it could be because you don’t understand intermittent fasting or maybe you’re just too hung-ho and you just want the results super fast.
  • You decided I’m going to do this once and for all and you just go all in and that may not be so smart. The idea of intermittent fasting is that you eat less food overall because you eat fewer meals, but when you eat; you allow yourself to eat until you’re full.
  • That way you can eat to satiety. You don’t feel deprived, but you are eating less food overall. You’re allowing your body to get into fat burning and you can start burning some fat off the body instead of from what you’re eating.
  • But for some people who are a little too eager, they end up eating low carb, which is a good thing, but then they also eat low fat and low protein, right?
  • You can’t eat less or very little of everything that will not work there’s a word for that it’s called starvation and there are two problems with that first you’re shocking your body you’re not allowing it to get into that healthy, peaceful place where it finds its homeostasis long term.
  • And the other problem is that you’re going to be suffering, and it’s going to be very difficult to sustain it.


The number 9 mistake:


Is that we think of it as a quick fix?


  • We’ve all heard about these diets we see the magazines every day that lose 30 pounds in 30 days or some ridiculous thing like that and the problem is we get the mindset that we can do anything for a period but what happens then is we plan to go back to doing what we used to do and create the problem all over. So get over the idea of a quick fix.
  • Don’t think of this as a diet. Think of it as a lifestyle and stop thinking short term.
  • Just because it’s powerful does not mean that it’s the short term you can get results within weeks, but it doesn’t mean you can go back to doing what you used to do.


The number 10 mistake:


Is that people often change too quickly?


  • So if you’re like most people and you’ve never really tried to do anything then you probably wake up and you have breakfast you eat a mid-morning snack you have lunch mid-afternoon snack dinner and an evening snack and the only time you’re not eating is when you’re sleeping.
  • So if you sleep for eight hours, you might fast for 10 hours and all the rest of the time you’re basically eating. So what I suggest is that you allow your body to get used to this gradually don’t shock your body.
  • Do it nicely, then your body is going to work with you, so if you just move your evening snack back an hour, you gained an hour of fasting.
  • If you skip it all together, you gain another couple of hours. If you move your breakfast up after that and you skip the snacks, now you have 15 hours of fasting and you’re only stimulating insulin three times a day.
  • And then the next step, you probably realize you don’t need breakfast at all, so you just eat lunch and dinner and now you have an 18-hour fast.
  • So you’ve almost doubled your fasting period and your feeding period has shrunk by more than half and some people do really well just going cold turkey going from six meals a day to two meals a day and if that works great I don’t recommend it I recommend you change gradually because your body is going to be much happier in the long run for many people if you change too quickly it’s unnecessarily painful and if it’s painful, many people are going to quit and then we don’t get the results.


Conclusion

In this article, I explain 10 common mistakes people make while fasting. These errors are often the reason fasting does not lead to weight loss.


If you want to see results, follow all these tips and you will get the result! It is recommended for those who want to try intermittent fasting to lose weight to be careful and research what they will do first.

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