This site was created many years ago to describe Intermittent Fasting, through which I improved my health. Although Intermittent Fasting gave the site its name and URL, a lot of other information was added since then, including amazing findings related to neurodiversity that improved my mental health the way Intermittent Fasting improved my physical health. So you can interpret IntFast as Intellect Fastlane or Intense Fastforward, ha ha!
In this site, I want to share my joy of finding an unbelievably easy (and absolutely free of money!) way to loose weight with other fat people. Initially, I created it for my friends and acquaintances (including co-workers), who were shocked by the fact that in a few months I lost a lot of weight - it was easier for me to create a site than explain again and again what I did and how the method works.
Those who know me can tell you that, even now, I am not very lean, to say the least. It's true, my metabolic syndrome will stay with me forever. But imagine that I used to be much fatter. I had a bariatric (weight loss) surgery scheduled, but I canceled it since I found a safer and more natural method.
What helped me to loose wight is Intermittent Fasting (IF) accompanied by a low-carb high-fat (LCHF) diet.
• It's simply eating only twice a day.
• The "eating window" (the time period between the 1st meal start and the 2nd meal finish) may not exceed 8 hours (the less the better); no snacks are allowed between the meals.
• The rest of the time (at least 16 hours), i.e. the period between the finish of the 2nd meal of one day and the start of the 1st meal of the next day, is named "fasting window".
• No food is allowed in the fasting window - only drinks with no calories (but NOT only water - you can drink unsweetened tea and coffee with no milk/cream).
• To start your way to slimness and health, simply remove breakfasts (or move it to a later time) starting tomorrow!
• Since the fasting window includes night sleep, the only time when your effort is required is the morning (until your 1st meal).
• After a few days, your body will work in a mode in which hunger will practically disappear - largely due to the removal of fast carbohydrates (sugar, farinaceous foods, fruit, potatoes, rice and corn) and the inclusion in the menu of sufficient amount of fatty foods.
• But if you will occasionally feel hunger, here you will be armed with tips and tricks how to remove it quickly without interrupting fast (looking ahead: main life hack - drink more, so the stomach will be full).
The word "fasting" confuses and... scares!
When you hear "fasting" you probably get instantly turned off. However, the fast lasting just hours (not days!) including the night is not that intolerable. You won't die of starvation! You already fast each night - that's why the first meal of the day is named breakfast.
For daily eating patterns, I prefer the term "Time Restricted Eating". "Intermittent Fasting" should refer to longer fasting and weekly/monthly patterns, like fasting 24-36 hours each week, or fasting one week each 3 months. Since "Intermittent Fasting" is generally accepted as the term for what I am doing, I will use it on this website, but keep in mind that "Time Restricted Eating" is meant.
Please begin your journey with these three pages:
INTERNAL MECHANICS - HOW IT WORKS
HOW TO START: A CRASH COURSE
KETOSIS AND HUNGER
From Quora:
The experts have been wrong a few times and this is one of them. They were wrong when they declared fat to be the enemy. By pushing everyone to a lower fat diet, they inadvertently pushed everyone to a higher carb diet. It turned out that carbs were the real enemy, especially simple carbs, and especially sugar.
The combination of a high carb diet coupled with the other wrong advice of don't skip meals and snack frequently (“6 meals a day”) have been a disaster. The carbs spiked insulin higher than it should have gone for a healthy meal and the 6 meals a day would not let the insulin return back down to baseline. Why? Insulin is fast to rise and slow to fall. You eat a high carb meal (say for breakfast), and it spikes insulin way up. As it is still falling, its time for your mid-morning snack. Next spike up. Lunch kicks it back up again before it has fallen etc. The result is that the cells of your body are marinating in insulin practically all day and if you snack at night before bed, your cells will get very little break each day from the insulin assault.
There are several problems with this way of eating. Insulin is a barrier to burning fat. Your fat cells cannot release fat in the presence of insulin. Usually if you are eating this way, you can live off of the food you are eating but if you are trying to lose fat (weight), it will be more difficult than it needs to be. The other problem is that constant high insulin leads to “insulin resistance”. The more insulin resistant you become, the more insulin you produce at each meal to get the same job done making it take longer and longer to get back to baseline. This means that you'll be spending more time soaking in insulin making you more and more insulin resistant. This is the “vicious cycle” that Dr. Jason Fung describes which leads first to weight gain because fat cannot be burned, and eventually to Type-2 Diabetes when your cells are so insulin resistant, they are burned out. Dr. Joseph Kraft studied over 14,000 people and found that most overweight people are insulin resistant making it difficult for them to lose weight as well as causing other health problems.
What is the antidote to all of this? Intermittent Fasting! Intermittent fasting is compressing your eating time into a smaller than we are used to window so as to MAXIMIZE the time that we are at low (baseline) insulin. The most common (and easiest to do) form of IF simply stops eating around 7 or 8pm and skips breakfast so the first meal of the day is around noon. This gives your body 16 to 17 hours of a break each day with about 12 of those hours (or more when you become fat adapted) are with insulin at base. These extended times each day of low insulin allows your insulin resistance to *reverse* itself, healing over time. The extended time of low insulin also gives your body a lot of time to release fat and get its energy from fat. As your insulin resistance heals, you will return to baseline insulin levels faster and faster after a meal making it easier to switch to burning fat even between meals. This is part of what is called being “fat adapted”. The other part is that as you spend more time in low insulin burning fat, your body makes more fat burning enzymes converting you from a sugar burner to a fat burner. (or at least having plenty of both kinds of enzymes on hand).
ADDITIONAL BENEFITS OF INTERMITTENT FASTING
In addition to losing weight, you will enjoy other benefits of IF - that's why even slim people practice it:
- IF unbelievably improves brain function: boosts mental clarity, concentration, learning, memory and creativity.
- The heart and other organs work more efficiently.
Our body organs and tissues work much better when they use ketones as a source of fuel, including the brain, heart and the core of our kidneys. If you ever had a chance to see a heart working in real time, you might have noticed the thick fatty tissue that surrounds it. In fact, heart surgeons get to see this every day. A happy beating heart is one that is surrounded by layers of healthy fat. Both the heart and the brain run at least 25% more efficiently on ketones than on blood sugar. Ketones are the ideal fuel for our bodies unlike glucose – which is damaging, less stable, more excitatory and in fact shortens your life span. Ketones are non-glycating, which is to say, they don't have a caramelizing ageing effect on your body. (source)
- IF and LCHF are heavy weapons against cancer
- IF has anti-inflammatory effects on the body. It has been shown to significantly reduce inflammation (the cause of many chronic diseases that we face today), boost immunity and enhance tissue healing. This is one of the reasons why many people feel nauseated when they have infections. This innate mechanism is the body's way of influencing us to fast so it can produce the right environment to boost natural immunity. There are many methods for how IF reduces inflammation:
- If old or damaged cells remain in the body, they create inflammation. IF and low-carb diet stimulate autophagy, helping the body to cleanse itself, thereby reducing inflammation.
- Ketones. One of the most abundant ketones, ß-hydroxybutrate, actually blocks part of the immune system responsible for regulating inflammatory disorders like arthritis and even Alzheimers.
- Less free radicals. Fat, used as energy supplier in ketosis, is actually a better and cleaner source of fuel than carbohydrates. Not only does fat produce more energy per gram than carbohydrates do, but it actually produces less free radicals, which cause inflammation. When your mitochondria, your cells batteries, use carbohydrates to make energy (in contrast to fat), there is a waste that gets produced in the form of free radicals.
- Insulin sensitivity. Fasting has been shown to help resolve insulin resistance. When the body becomes resistant to insulin, insulin and glucose build up in the blood and create inflammation. IF allows your body to take a break. Since there is no food to digest and your body uses up all it's sugar stores, insulin levels begin to drop, allowing the body to re-sensitize to insulin again.
- IF helps to improve stress levels. Today, mental chronic stress is one of the most ignored conditions. Host of diseases start to bud from regular stress. Few of the effects of stress on human body are aging, strokes and fatigue. Free radicals are the main damaging molecules. They tend to react with our DNA and other important molecules at cellular level, thus, damaging them. Numerous conducted researches have data that conveys about the improved resistance to stress after switching to intermittent fasting.
SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE... SOMETHING MUST BE WRONG HERE...
One can read all the way to this point and think: "He is about to peddle me something like a weight loss online course, or a dietary supplement...". Well, generally I have nothing against making extra money, but my problem as a seller is that eating twice a day doesn't require any supplements and online courses (this site contains all the basic instructions, and other information is easily googlable). Can I sell you removing one or two meals from your daily schedule? That is why corporations are reluctant to tell the truth, this is why we were jumping from one wrong method to another for decades. The hypnotic mindset to "eat often by tiny portions" has harmed life of many, but it is a source of huge profits for the multi-billion machine of doctors, pharmacists, dietitians, fitness clubs, healthy life coaches and food production/selling sector:
WE ARE HYPNOTIZED AND ZOMBIFIED BY FOOD INDUSTRY
Books:
All these books were found in the Internet in free access and just copied here.
I know that you are busy, so the books are listed in the order of their importance (by my opinion). The first two books are an absolute must read!!! Lifehack: download files to your smartphone and listen as audiobooks using any TTS (text-to-speech) app.
The Obesity Code. Unlocking The Secrets Of Weight Loss by Jason Fung (pdf)
Why We Get Fat And What To Do About It by Gary Taubes (pdf)
Fat For Fuel by Joseph Mercola (pdf) (epub)
Grain Brain. The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar - Your Brain Killers by David Perlmutter (pdf) (epub)
The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes (epub)
The Complete Guide To Fasting by Jason Fung (pdf)
The Diabetes Code by Jason Fung (epub)
The Fast Diet - audiobook: listen on Youtube, download (then click Audio to download the sound only)
ATTENTION!!!
If you have excess weight, then there is a good chance that you are also suffering from a syndrome of Obstructive Sleep Apnea!