Fasting: Effective strategy for maintaining weight during the holidays?

So you over-did it during the last dinner or party. You may feel like skipping (fasting) the next couple meals You may be feeling like a failure and may wonder if it’s even possible to maintain your fitness level during the holidays. How do you get back on track? We’re here to talk about the most talked about strategy for maintaining weight during the holidays: intermittent fasting.

What is Intermittent Fasting?

Some say that intermittent fasting is not eating for 1-2 meals in a 24 hour period. Others say it’s not eating anything for 12-18 hours. There has been a lot of recent hype about fasting and how it’s better than sliced bread because you don’t eat the bread to begin with.

3 Reasons to intermittent fast

There a several reasons intermittent fasting is effective.

1. Children consume ~350 more calories/day and adults consume ~500 calories/day than our counterparts did in the 1970’s. So if we go without 1 meal a day, we’d be consuming the same amount of calories that our 1970’s self would. I think we can all agree there wasn’t the obesity problem in the 70’s like there is today. Bottom line, it helps us achieve that all important negative energy balance (a.k.a. you are burning more calories than you are consuming, i.e. losing weight). 
2. Another benefit from intermittent fasting is that it can help ‘reset your bodies’ preset’. Some people call it ‘shrinking your stomach’. While I haven’t found much research about this, it does seem to have a bit of merit, especially when coupled with smaller portion meals.
3. The biggest benefit of this type of fasting comes when combined with exercise. It was found that when you exercise (lift weights or aerobic training) while fasting you maintain your muscle (fat-free mass) and can lose a significant amount of body fat (1, 2, 3). Isn’t that the real dream? Lose fat, not muscle? It’s almost too good to be true.

Intermittent fasting can also be very effective at losing weight-particularly body fat, but is also an effective strategy in maintaining your weight because you are limiting your overall caloric consumption. Now if you aren’t looking to lose weight or body fat (yeah, right), you can just increase the protein intake so your ratio of carbs to protein is 1.5:1 and keep exercising and you’ll have a great recipe for weight maintenance during the holidays.

Downsides to fasting

Now while some research suggests this is a good idea, it may not be a good long-term strategy if you hope for great/high performance out of your training. This is because you need food for fuel, especially when training. However, doing this on the short-term of the holidays when you are bound to overeat and are worried about maintaining weight during the holidays, then sure, give it a try, just know that you may not have as much energy as you usually do.

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References:

1. Bryner RW. Effects of resistance training vs. Aerobic training combined with an 800 calorie liquid diet on lean body mass and resting metabolic rate. Journal of the American College of Nutrition 1999; 18(1): 115-121.
2. Rice B, Janssen I, Hudson, R, Ross R. Effects of aerobic or resistance exercise and/or diet on glucose tolerance and plasma insulin levels in obese men. Diabetes Care 1999; 22: 684-691.
3. Janssen I, et al. Effects of an energy-restrictive diet with or without exercise on abdominal fat, intermuscular fat, and metabolic risk factors in obese women. Diabetes Care 2002; 25:431- 438.