Fasting and Weight Loss Myths Busted: How To Eat For A Healthy Body And A Longer Life

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On this fascinating interview, Brad Pilon and Faraz Khan bust a lot of myths related to fasting, weight loss and saving muscle during fasting. This is a fun, lighthearted conversation rooted in science. Check it out.

Brad Pilon is an expert on fasting and the author of Eat Stop Eat. Brad helped usher in the popularity of intermittent fasting back in 2006 and has focused on the role that health, fitness and body composition plays in longevity and quality of life.

How Brad Pilon Got into Health and Fitness?

He was fascinated watching “Incredible Hulk” TV series when he was 8 years old.
He got a degree in Applied Human Nutrition, then worked in supplement industry in R& D.
Got another degree in Nutritional Sciences focusing on protein amino acids and the role they have in health
He conducted a study on the effects of short-term fasting on metabolism.

Prolonged Caloric Restriction and Being in Fed or Fasted State

No matter what diet a person is following, if he’s losing eating less calories than he burns, then he must be losing more weight than he’s gaining.
A person have to be eating less than he’s losing.
Being in a fed/fasted state, there are no building blocks but the body is still repairing and moving things around so it still needs energy.

Does Everyone Have A Certain Number of Fat Cells and Gaining Weight is Just a Matter of Filling Up Those Fat Cells?

Your body decides how many fat cells to keep around at the age of 18 or 19
When fat cells are stretched to the max, they will signal for new fat cells to be created.
Once new fat cells are created, we can shrink them but it’s difficult to get rid of them through nutrition.
When someone gains a lot of weight, he can increase the number of fat cells that he has just by diet he cannot decrease the number, he can just shrink them.

Do Women Gain More Weight In Midlife than Men?

Yes, it is true.
Men have a bigger frame so adding 10 pounds body fat is barely noticeable.
Women are much smaller, when they gain 10 pounds body fat, it is noticeable.

Is It True That Women Should Not Fast More Than 12-14 Hours?

Only extremely lean women had irregularities when fasting for 36-48 hours
There are people who shouldn’t be fasting regularly for a long period of time.
The leaner a person is, the shorter the duration or least frequency of fast.
But for most women, fasting for 24 hours is not a problem.

Does Bariatric Surgery Work?

There are very few people who want to lose weight, but they want to weight less.
They don’t wanna go to the process of losing weight because it is a change to the way they live.
Bariatric surgery is a short cut, but most people gain back that weight within 18 months

Can You Lose Muscle During Fasting?

Muscle building is incredibly a slow process.
Should think of muscle growth as a “Captain America” process–there is a “normal” you and there’s “weight-trained” you. Weight-trained you is much more muscular than the normal you.
Once you’ve attained the weight-trained you level, you’ve probably not going very far beyond it. You just have to maintain it

How Much Protein Do You Need To Build Muscle?

For an average person, it’s 100 grams of protein.
If you are larger, you need a bit more.
Protein is essential to muscle building. It’s very important during times of high growth.

How To Save Muscle While Fasting?

The way to maintain that muscle mass is to use it.
Do the stuff that you normally do to challenge your muscle.
If you want to lose muscle, stop challenging your muscles.

Can People Follow the Fasting Lifestyle Long Term?

When it comes to diets, most diets cannot be done forever.
Once intermittent fasting becomes a way of life, it’s quite easy to maintain it forever
What’s good about fasting is that you can be flexible and move your fasting days around if you have social events.

How Common Is Hypoglycemia During Fasting?

If you measure the blood sugar of people who are experiencing symptoms of hypoglycemia when fasting, it’s probably in the normal range.
They definitely feeling something–it could be blood pressure, it could be just the feeling of being fasted, or it could be something learned that if you don’t eat, you will faint.
But it’s really not for glucose.
Most healthy people do not need to worry about hypoglycemia