I’m pretty geeky, because I love reading about the science behind nutrition. But that’s because these are facts! I’d rather have the scientific evidence behind why I do something. I want it to work, and I want it backed up by real claims! It’s easy for yet another diet guru to come down the pike and start spouting all kinds of ideas about this diet or that diet.
I prefer to bypass the nonsense and go right to the science.
And, do you know what the science behind Intermittent Fasting and weight loss tells me?
That your body is a fuel-processing machine. It really is! Every single process that goes on in your digestive system is all about receiving fuel, extracting the nutrients, separating those nutrients, getting the right nutrients to the right organs, and then eliminating the waste.
In this chapter, we will talk all about glucose, which is your body’s primary fuel source!
Fueling for Fasts
The top three nutrients that you eat in your foods each day:
~Glucose from carbohydrates and sugary foods
~Proteins and amino acids from protein foods like meat and dairy
~Fatty acids from the good fats like olive oil
Glucose is probably the most important sugar of all, because it is such an important energy source. It’s also the simplest sugar, being just a monosaccharide. Glucose is made by plants when they photosynthesize, so that’s its primary source in your diet. Glucose is absolutely key when it comes to your normal body functioning. It is transformed into glycogen in your body.
We measure this fuel as calories, not glucose consumption ? even though that is exactly what’s going on. Glucose also comes from several other types of sugars.
When we talk about carbs, we’re talking about the three distinct atoms of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. The word “carbohydrate” contains these three words. “Carbo” for “carbon,” “hydr” for “hydrogen,” and “ate” for “oxygen.” By themselves, these are three very harmless elements and are the building blocks of life.
But when combined into carbohydrate molecules, these three atoms become a group of sugars, starches, and cellulose (plant sugars) called saccharides. Your body can process four chemical groups of saccharides: the monosaccharides, disaccharides, oligosaccharides, and polysaccharides. It is the fourth group, the polysaccharides, that are processed by the body and then stored as energy in your cells.
Sugars are even less complex carbohydrates than the saccharides. They come in many other forms besides glucose, including:
Sucrose (table sugar)
This is the regular sweet white or brown sugar you can purchase in stores that’s also found in so many food items, especially baked goods. Table sugar comes from the stems of the sugarcane plant and the roots of the sugar beet. It also contains cellulose plant sugars.
Fructose (fruit sugar)
This is what gives fruits like strawberries, cherries, bananas, and apples their characteristic sweetness. It is also present in some natural sweeteners like honey and agave. Fructose is a monosaccharide sugar. It can also bond to glucose and form sucrose. Fructose is easily made into syrups, like the high fructose corn syrup that’s so prevalent in foods these days.
Cellulose (plant sugar)
Cellulose is a polysaccharide sugar that’s found in plant cell walls and certain vegetable fibers. Some of your favorite vegetables have really high amounts of cellulose. That includes potatoes, carrots, and corn. Humans can’t digest cellulose, so it’s usually broken down into its smaller glucose molecules and ? you guessed it ? stored in your cells for future energy.
Lactose (milk sugar)
People who are lactose intolerant can’t digest milk sugars, which are disaccharides made up of galactose and glucose. Cows’ milk is really high in lactose. Dairy cheeses have smaller amounts of lactose.
Too Much Fuel = Stored Fat 먹튀검증
“Fat” is just a short term nickname for the fatty acids that are present in fats. Fatty acids are long chains of molecules with different chemical components that are various combinations of three atoms: carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.
Too much of a good thing really is too much, in this case.
Did you know that all three types of fuel ? glycogen, proteins, and fatty acids ? can be stored as excess in your cells?
Which cells are they stored in? Those cells are called adipocyte cells, which are made of adipose tissue. That adipose tissue’s entire specialty in life is to store that excess fuel or excess energy. Think of adipocyte cells as little tiny storage centers all over your body.
Carbohydrates provide fuel, contribute towards stabilizing your blood sugar, and are also frequently found in many fibrous foods like seeds, nuts, legumes, and vegetables.
It is when you eat too many carbohydrates, but especially glucose (which is found in regular sugar, fructose and cellulose), that things start to go haywire. Your health will start to take a turn for the worst, and you’ll also notice the weight gain, too.
After you eat good fats, your cells break them down into both glycerol and those fatty acids. This process is called lipolysis. Both the glycerol and those fatty acids are released into your blood and travel through your bloodstream to your liver.
That’s where those same fatty acids can then be either broken down directly and used for that day’s energy, or they can enter into a new multiple step process called gluconeogenesis, which turns those fatty acids into glucose. Amino acids are combined with the fatty acids to manufacture glucose. Then the glucose is used the same way as other carbohydrates are processed, which is explained below.
What about extra fats? Are those used as energy, like glycogen, or are they stored, like excess protein and carbohydrates?
The answer is yes: those fats are stored. They are stored as triglycerides in fat cells called adipocytes. Those cells can expand, but they do have a limit. In addition, that stored fat can also be stored in your muscles to provide extra energy for when you need it. When you’re doing moderate intensity exercising, your muscles open up those stored fat cells and use that energy to meet your fuel needs.
After you eat your protein serving, it is digested in the stomach and absorbed by the intestines. Then it goes directly to your liver, where the nitrogen and the amino acids are broken down and separated. Your amino acids are sent to your muscles for fuel. There are nine essential amino acids in protein, and if all of those are present, then your body uses them all up happily. However, any excess protein that’s not used by your body is then turned into either glucose (sugar) or fatty acids and sent to your cells for energy and storage purposes.
That’s right. If you eat too much protein, it is stored and causes you to gain weight!
Excess Fuel Storage = Excess Pounds to Lose
Now that you’ve learned exactly how your body processes each nutrient (carbohydrates, fats, and proteins), let’s put the whole scenario together in a real-life example.
This is exactly what’s happening in your body every day of your life!
Let’s say that you eat a balanced dinner with chicken, potatoes, green peas, and an orange. The chicken is made primarily up of proteins and the good fats. The potatoes are carbohydrates, mostly starches, cellulose (plant sugar), and glucose. Both the green peas and the orange are made up of fructose (fruit sugar), cellulose (plant sugar), and glucose.
Then let’s say that after you ate this dinner, you watched a half-hour show on TV, and then took your dog out for a fifteen-minute walk around the block. Well, in that time frame, you are going to use a certain portion of that fuel that you just ate at dinner. You will use the proteins and amino acids and fats from the chicken. You will also use the sugars from the orange, potatoes, and peas, which all have been processed into glycogen.
But you won’t use all of that fuel. The rest is stored in that adipose tissue present in your adipocyte cells. There are two storage processes: glycogenesis and lipogenesis.
~Glycogenesis is when excess glucose is converted into glycogen and stored in your liver and muscles. Your body stores up to 2000 calories of this! If you fast for up to 24 hours with no incoming glucose, then your body will use this glycogen storage first.
~Lipogenesis is when there’s enough glycogen in your muscles and liver, so the glucose is converted into fat and stored in those adipocyte cells. Your fat stores are pretty unlimited, unfortunately. This is the kind of storage we’re trying to shed!
That extra fuel is stored for as long as it needs to be, until your body requires it during a time of calorie and nutritional deficiency. Historically, this would have been winter! Today though, our modern American culture doesn’t have a starvation period.
Still, your body just keeps on storing those excess nutrients. Too much fuel of all three kinds (proteins, fats, and carbohydrates) makes you gain weight.
That is the real picture of what’s going on inside your body.
You ate plenty of the right types of fuel. It was just too much of it!
So, now you want to shed your extra fuel storage. It would be so much easier if we could just reach inside those adipocyte cells and extract that storage. That process would be similar to decluttering your basement. You want to get rid of the excess fuel storage that you’ve been carrying around for months or even years.
Intermittent Fasting is the most natural way to declutter all of this extra fuel storage that you want to shed from your body.
Fasting Burns Fuel Storage
While we can’t just mentally tell our adipocyte cells to start decluttering, Intermittent Fasting is the process that kickstarts your body into doing that!
On a typical day, you eat a lot of those three types of fuel sources ? carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. That’s plenty of incoming glucose to store as glycogen or convert to fat and store.
But what if you stop eating and start fasting instead? When your body isn’t receiving any more incoming fuel sources, what does it do then?
Well, you still need energy to run your brain, organs, skeleton, and muscles. You still need fuel. So, your cells look elsewhere for that fuel source. That’s why they go right to those adipocyte cells, into the adipose tissue, and start extracting the stored fuel.
The whole process looks like this:
You Eat Your Daily Calories
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Fuel is Extracted
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Some Glucose is Used for Today’s Energy
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Rest is Converted to Fat
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Fat is Stored in Adipocyte Cells
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Stored Fat Adds up to Weight Gain
This is what’s currently happening, and the whole process happens every day inside your body. It’s very gradual, but it adds up to increased weight gain over time.
Unfortunately, the absolutely domineering message in our American food culture is that we are eating the wrong things! Too much fat, too many carbohydrates, too little protein, and on and on it goes.
But, as you’ve seen in this chapter, it’s not so much that we are eating the wrong types of fuel. Your body is extremely well adapted to process carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.
It’s that we’re eating too much and too often!
The more you eat, the more excess glucose is converted to fat and stored in your adipocyte cells.
It really comes down to this:
Eat Larger, Healthier Meals Less Often
That’s a very good mantra to post on your wall, on your fridge, or in your kitchen somewhere. It will help you stay focused on the bigger picture!
You’re going to eat larger meals less often than you have been eating your regular three meals a day plus snacks, and you’re going to eat healthier ingredients. We will definitely cover which ingredients in the next chapter!
Then on top of this mantra, we’re going to add Intermittent Fasting periods to your weekly schedule.
Putting All the Pieces Together
What does your body do after you’ve eaten all your meals for the day? I’m glad you asked!
After your eating window is done and you’re fasting, your body has to seek elsewhere for fuel.
Here is what that process looks like:
You Stop Eating and Fast for 18 Hours
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No Additional Glucose or Proteins or Fatty Acids Enter the Body
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Cells Still Need Fuel
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Cells Extract Stored Fat from Adipocyte Cells
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Fat is Sent to Liver for Processing
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Liver Turns Fat into Ketones (called Ketogenesis)
Ketones Used as Fuel
The more consistently you keep up a fasting schedule, the more weight that you lose! That is because your liver is using all that stored fat to make ketones.
What are ketones? Ketones are small organic compounds of fuel made up of carbon and oxygen that are bonded to hydrocarbon groups. That’s a fancy scientific way of saying they are an alternate fuel source to fatty acids, proteins, and the glucose from carbohydrates.
When your body is subsisting primarily on ketones for fuel rather than glucose, you are said to be in ketosis. We’ll talk more about that in Chapter 10 when discussing the Keto Diet. Many of you will want to get into ketosis and stay there, because you are consistently burning more of that stored fat in your adipocyte cells.
But, you don’t have to be on a special diet for your body to use stored fuel. You’re just going to eat larger, healthier meals less often.
The Intermittent Fasting will help you take care of the rest!
How Intermittent Fasting Affects Women
So now, you know exactly how your body processes carbohydrates to turn them into glucose and glycogen, fats to turn them into fatty acids, and proteins to turn them into proteins and amino acids.
Yet, there are so many other ways that Intermittent Fasting affects your body. We are not just different than men physically. We are also affected differently when we abstain from eating. Since so much of the female body and our monthly cycle is about preparing for pregnancy and carrying healthy babies, getting the proper nutrients is of the utmost importance. That is why fasting from foods is such a big deal for women. In some ways, we don’t have all of the positive benefits that men experience.
So, when you fast, there are certain side effects that you will definitely notice. Let’s go through them one by one to explain what they are and what you should expect when you fast.
Your Ovulation Hormones
Intermittent Fasting definitely affects your hormones. Your body is so sensitive to calorie restriction. So, when your calorie intake is low, from fasting for long periods of time, that affects the hypothalamus in your brain. This in turn disrupts the secretion of a hormone called gonadotropin (GnRH). GnRH helps release two reproductive hormones, luteinizing hormone (LH) and follicle stimulating hormone (FSH).
Those two reproductive hormones ? LH and FSH ? are the ones that communicate with your ovaries to release eggs each month. They trigger the production of both estrogen and progesterone, which are needed to release an egg each month so you can either become pregnant or have your period in your normal 28-day cycle.
But, when those hormones aren’t released and there is no communication with your ovaries, that definitely affects your ovulation cycle. No egg is released, because the hormones haven’t told it to. Your periods might become irregular, and it can cause problems with fertility, too. This is especially true if you spend a long time on Intermittent Fasting, going up to three to six months at a time or longer. It even causes a reduction in ovary size and irregular reproductive cycles. Some women have reported, and this is in more extreme cases, that it brings on early-onset menopause.
From a historical standpoint, this makes sense! Thousands of years ago when times of food were scarce, the last thing your body wanted to do was bring a baby into the world. It was too high a risk for the infant and the mother, who would probably starve. Your body doesn’t know it’s the 21st century. So, Intermittent Fasting definitely affects your ovulation cycle.
Your Hunger Hormones
Fasting also affects three hormones that both regulate and react to either hunger or satiety ? leptin, insulin, and ghrelin. These hormones’ goals are to maintain homeostasis, which keeps everything in balance. That means not too much hunger or too little, as well as not feeling too full or not enough. When you fast and reduce the calories you eat compared to what you’re burning, you get hungry.
Both leptin and ghrelin regulate appetite. Leptin is secreted primarily from your fat cells, but also in your stomach ? it decreases hunger. Whereas ghrelin is secreted in your stomach lining, and it increases hunger. Both of them are responding to how much you eat!
When you fast, you’re reducing those fat cells and secreting a lot of leptin! It decreases your hunger, making you feel less inclined to eat those calories. Oh, cool! You’re thinking. I can just fast and won’t feel hungry? That’s awesome! Well, not so fast. You still have to take in enough calories to eat during the day. We’ll talk more about that in the next chapter.
As for ghrelin, that’s the ‘rumbling in your stomach’ hormone, causing you to go to the fridge or poking through cupboards. When your stomach is empty, it makes ghrelin, which travels through your blood up to your brain and triggers that peckish feeling. When studies have been done on ghrelin, scientists have been surprised to discover the levels have stayed stable during longer fasts up to 33 hours. So, eating nothing for a day makes you no more or less hungry! As a bonus, being a woman, your ghrelin hunger hormone decreases much, much faster than a man’s when you abstain from eating. So, you will feel less and less hungry the longer you fast.
Your Thyroid
How does Intermittent Fasting affect your thyroid? For women with thyroid conditions, like hypothyroidism, can Intermittent Fasting help you with thyroid issues? Fasting decreases the concentration of the T3 thyroid hormone, while the T4 (thyroxine) levels stay the same. The thyroid stimulating hormone TSH does not increase, either. These changes only occur if you do more serious multi-day fasting, like three days or longer.
So, in effect, when you fast for two days or just Intermittently each day, that has very little scientific bearing on your thyroid function. You’re free to continue managing your thyroid condition the same as you would if you weren’t fasting.
Your Sleeping Patterns
Another side effect of Intermittent Fasting is that your normal sleeping patterns get disrupted. You’ll find you have difficulty getting to sleep, staying asleep, and waking up feeling refreshed. This is especially the case if your shorter eating window is a big change from any previous meal time habits. While this is unfortunate and makes you feel tired, it actually clears up after about a week or so. That’s because your circadian rhythm needs some time to adapt, just like when you deal with jet lag by crossing time zones.
Like the hormones, this also has to do with brain function. Your brain needs hours of sleep in order to perform all its processes when you wake back up, like reading, learning, memorizing, coming up with new ideas, remembering, thinking, and everything else. After you get used to Intermittent Fasting, you’ll find that it helps to make you feel more calm and grounded throughout the day, with less nervousness, tension, anxiety, and stress.
Remember that your body adapts very well to Intermittent Fasting because this was such a necessary survival mechanism centuries ago.
None of these side effects are guaranteed for every woman who tries Intermittent Fasting! But if you do have them, now you know why. You’re advised to keep your fasting to a minimum of every two or three days.
Some women pick up fasting with no problem, have no issue with it, and don’t experience any of these symptoms at all. Everybody is different.
Positive Body Changes!
When you incorporate Intermittent Fasting into your life, you are going to see some wonderful and positive body changes!
As you’ve read in this chapter, there is an amazing wealth of scientific information out there as to how your body processes every nutrient you eat. So, exactly what kinds of foods are you going to be eating in between your times fasting?
I’m so glad you asked, since I love to talk about food. Who doesn’t, right? That is exactly what we’ll discuss in the next chapter.
