I'm a proponent of Intermittent Fasting of which there are many calories. Many women report this is not as effective, but the more l lean, the more I see it's not just the fasting, but that in combination with a good diet. I've been spending a lot of time on a website that someone else from these boards recommended. A Dr. Jason Fung is a kidney specilist working out of Toronto Candada and he has used fasting as a method of not only curing obesity, but type 2 diabetes. You can spend days reading his blogs and watching his lectures, but the bottom line is: Insulin makes you fat. The effort then is to reduce the insulin.
Different foods elicit different insulin responses, but its not that simple (what ever is?). Carbs elicit the most, but this seems to be mitigated in the presence of fiber. Protien is pretty high too, especially whey protein, but that's mitigated by low blood glucose and slow digestion. Good fats like olive oil, coconut oil and even butter have the lowest insulin response. Fructose is bad because it isn't metabolized into blood glucose, but directly sent to the liver where it's forced into fat IN the liver and that quickly drives up insulin resistance.
The answer seems to be combining some foods, eliminating others and reducing the amount of insulin and the amount of time insulin is produced. When you fast, once blood glucose is low, insulin isn't produced giving your cells time to regain their sensitivity to it. When you do eat, you should eat high quality fats with protiens and high fiber carbs.
Other phenomenom of fasting isn't it's lack of impact on Basil Metabolic Rate (the rate at which your body burns calorie just surviving). When you do pure calorie restriction, you body will reduce the amount of calories it needs by slowing down your metabolism. This causes the typical yo-yo dieting because its easier to put on weight when you stop restricting calories. But when you fast, your body turns to fat stores to get it's energy and it will take the energy it needs from the fat rather than slowing down your metabolism. This seems all to be triggered by insulin and a few other hormones, but during fasting, your metabolism actually increases.
There is a worry about lack of nutrients and muscle burning when fasting, but that seems to be avoided. There is a genius record of a scotsman who fasted for over a year. He started out at something over 400 lbs and only drank water and other non-caloric drinks, but didn't eat a bite. He lost down to 181 lbs and during this process, they continually tested his blood and everything was good. Muscle loss seems to be more of a problem with calorie restriction vs fasting. When fasting, muscle loss is a very tempory effect, but is soon haulted once the body becomes a fat burner. It aslo doesn't occur at all until after 60 hours of fasting.
Studies also show that the effect of exercise for fat burning when fasting is small. That doesn't mean you shouldn't exercise as there are many other benefits to be achived through it, but it doesn't significantly add to the amount of fat burned.
I'm still reading blogs and watching video's from this site, but what I like is all the actual scientific studies that are refernced in this body of work. The other thing is corralation studies are used sparingly as he regards them mostly as garbage and he debunks quite a few of them. I encourage anyone with a desire to get fit to study this and other sites. Here is a link: https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/
“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.”
― Isaac Asimov
“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.”
― Benjamin Franklin
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