Benefits of Intermittent Fasting + How to Do It

Hey, Dr. Axe here, doctor of natural medicine and founder of draxe.com. In this video, I'm going to be training you on the many benefits of intermittent fasting, what to do and what not to do, and who should do it when it comes to intermittent fasting, and also some of the key foods you're going to want to be eating if you're going to be following intermittent fasting type of diet.

So let's jump right in. And let me say this, intermittent fasting, you know, the benefits can be pretty profound and what tends to happen When you look at what it is and how to do it, first off, when you look at intermittent fasting, you want to typically eat between a 4-hour to a maximum 8-hour window, but typically that window is about 6 hours.

Now, most people eat first thing when they wake up in the morning, so maybe that's 7 o'clock, and then also will eat a snack or something even up till the time of bed, maybe that's, you know, 11 o'clock. So what ends up happening is most people end up eating for about 16 hours a day or at least 12.

And so your body is kind of always digesting, always processing, and it doesn't have a very long rest period for really cleansing, detoxification, for internal healing. So we'll talk about that more in just a minute. But one of the big benefits is you have a much longer period where you're not eating so your body can recover and heal.

Now, here's one of the biggest benefits of intermittent fasting, it promotes human growth hormone. You know, there was an article written years ago about Herschel Walker, a famous Georgia running back and also was a very prosperous NFL running back. In fact, broke the rookie running record in terms of yards per carry. But it promotes HGH, that's human growth hormone.

You know, most people today, as we age, your human growth hormone declines. And this is what you'll see, a lot of men with low testosterone have low human growth hormone. When women start to age faster, get brittle bones, their human growth hormone is lower. Naturally, having more human growth hormone tends to mean you're younger, you're more vibrant, you're more energetic.

But again, if it's low, that starts leaning towards sickness and disease. Now, some people as they age will start to try and do testosterone injections and other things that are synthetic. The problem is those outside-in things that are unnatural also have serious side effects versus ideally you want to boost the human growth hormone in your own body. And keep it high.

One of the best ways to do that, intermittent fasting. You know, also if you are working out on an empty stomach first thing in the morning, boosts your human growth hormone by sometimes more than 1,000%, can go sky high. So again, one of the biggest ways you can actually increase human growth hormone is by intermittent fasting and coupling it with heavy weight training.

It's a great way to stay younger longer. Number 2, as we've talked about anti-aging, so much of aging is sort of balancing hormones in your body as you age from human growth hormone to cortisol levels to insulin. We want to keep your cortisol levels balanced. Really, one of the keys to doing that is intermittent fasting.

So in an intermittent fasting diet, you know, most people might have their first meal at 1 o'clock. You know, maybe they'll do 2 meals a day. They'll eat at 1 o'clock and around 5 or 6. And that's what they do. You're always skipping breakfast when you're intermittent fasting. Some people eat at noon, 3, and 6. That's another option if you still want to get 3 meals in.

But in general, with intermittent fasting is you're waiting to eat. And it's really eating possibly more like our ancestors did. You know, our ancestors, we don't know that they necessarily ate something every morning and then they might have gone out and worked for a while. And then when they started getting hungry, then they would eat. They were really listening to their body.

But again, intermittent fasting can promote anti-aging because of how it balances out cortisol, human growth hormone, insulin, and other hormones that really affect aging. Number 3, improves sports performance. You know, a lot of this has to do with, again, HGH. You know, the best athletes are faster and they are stronger.

Stronger has a lot to do with that human growth hormone, which a lot of people try and cheat the system and do anabolic steroids. Here's the truth is you can boost your own internal natural steroids and your own anabolic system if you follow intermittent fasting and especially if you couple that with weightlifting and burst training or high-intensity training.

Doing those things together really helps boost that human growth hormone which will boost your strength and help sports performance. Normalizes insulin sensitivity. Now, this is huge. You know, people with diabetes, we know that they have insulin spikes. We know that they are having issues with their insulin receptor sites with diabetes.

So obviously, this helps that, but a lot of people don't also realize that insulin has a lot to do with weight gain. Also, insulin has a lot to do with other hormones being balanced in the body like progesterone and estrogen. And oftentimes what happens if insulin stays imbalanced, progesterone gets low, estrogen gets high, that can lead to issues like infertility in women.

It can lead to PCOS, that's polycystic ovary syndrome, severe PMS symptoms. A number of hormonal health conditions are related to insulin imbalance. So again, insulin, your energy levels all day should kind of be Like this, okay? They should just be high, they should be feeling good.

What happens to a lot of people, we eat these carby breakfasts, which your body can deal with because you fasted for 8 hours, but then for lunch we do a lot more carbs. So what happens is you hit that like 2 or 3 o'clock coma, you want to go and do a nap. That's what happens when you have insulin levels that aren't balanced. So ideally what you do is you miss breakfast.

And then you're eating a diet that's high in protein, fiber, healthy fat, and other antioxidants, okay? So again, notice I didn't say carbs in there.

You want to keep insulin levels balanced, do intermittent fasting, and follow a diet that has protein, fiber, healthy fat, some other antioxidants in it, and that's what's going to keep you really level and energized all day long and help normalize insulin sensitivity. Number 5, it helps regulate hormones in your body like leptin and ghrelin. Now, ghrelin is known as your body's hunger hormone.

So maybe you've been in that position where you are just hungry, you're famished, and your body says, I need more food. Well, when you start intermittent fasting, you might have that for about 3 days, but after 3 days, that starts to go away.

And when you do intermittent fasting the right way and eating foods That are high in fat, protein, and fiber like, you know, an example of a meal would be for breakfast, you know, doing a smoothie, doing bone broth protein with some coconut milk with maybe a little bit of fiber like a chia seed or flaxseed. You can even do a few berries in there. I'm sorry.

And by the way, your breakfast is at noon, okay? And then at 3 o'clock, maybe you're eating another meal, you know, a 3 o'clock lunch and you're doing a, you know, like a big salad with lettuce and chicken breast and olive oil and that type of thing. And for dinner, organic meat like triple dose of vegetables, some more healthy fat like an avocado. That's the ideal meal plan.

If you eat meals like that at like noon, 3:00, and 6:00, it's going to help kill off that hunger hormone or balance that out. And also, there's another hormone that intermittent fasting helps balance out called leptin, and leptin is really released by Some of your fat cells, and it's really what tells your body that you need to burn fat or to store fat, more fat in your system.

So again, intermittent fasting can also help in a major way with balancing out those hormones that cause cravings. Also, it can lower triglycerides. You know, it's interesting, there's this debate between the holistic natural health community and the medical community, and the medical community saying cholesterol is what causes heart disease.

Really, it's not cholesterol, it's high LDL cholesterol and low HDL cholesterol. But one of the things you want to do look at with your heart health is overall triglycerides. We know triglycerides, when those get high, those can actually increase your likelihood of having clogged arteries and a heart attack or stroke. So what we want to do is balance out those triglyceride levels.

You lower triglycerides, by consuming a lot of herbs, okay, things like cinnamon and ginger and turmeric, and also by intermittent fasting. Doing those things together is going to help bring those triglyceride levels back into balance. Number 7 here, detoxification. This is probably one of the greatest benefits of intermittent fasting.

So think about this, when you wake up and eat first thing in the morning, let's say it's 7:00 a.m., and you eat another little snack at 8:00 or 9:00, You know, your body is only getting about maybe 8 to 10 hours of rest while you sleep at night. If you eat a meal, let's say at 1:00, and your next meal at 6:00, well, your body is digesting for about 5 hours there, or maybe let's say 6 even.

Well, your body is having an extra 8 hours, let's say 18 hours for your liver to detox, for your colon to cleanse, For your lungs to filter, for your kidneys to balance out these fluids in your system. It's giving your body more time to not have to work. Here's the thing, your body— this is a really important thing to remember. Foods don't heal you, your body heals itself.

Your liver detoxes, so milk thistle or turmeric or beets or none of those things actually heal you, they support your organ in functioning. Your liver detoxes, your body heals itself. Okay. So an important thing to remember is the best thing you can do for your body is practice fasting and really resting your body. This is why fasting itself has been practiced for thousands of years.

It's referenced throughout the Bible for fasting for spiritual insights and for overall health. It's referenced in Chinese medicine fasting, Ayurvedic medicine. So we know that fasting was recommended by Hippocrates and Galen, the fathers of Western medicine. So we know there are many benefits of fasting. One of the biggest reasons is it supports detoxification of your organs.

Number 8 here, weight loss. Probably one of the biggest reasons people will use it is when you're intermittent fasting, again, you're experiencing the benefits of killing off your hunger hormones, balancing out insulin levels, having more anti-aging hormones, detoxification, all of these things. Benefit weight loss.

And also, when people tend to eat less meals or closer meals together, they tend to eat less calories. Overall, it supports weight loss in a major way. And also, doing this combination of a diet where you mix intermittent fasting with a ketogenic diet for 30 days, marrying those 2 diets together is the fastest way to burn fat and lose weight you could ever imagine.

That's a combination of a ketogenic diet plus intermittent fasting. For about a 30 to 90-day period really leads to rapid weight loss. So who should do it? Anybody who's looking for these benefits.

If you want to experience the benefits of intermittent fasting, again, if you're a person who wants to lose weight, you want to balance insulin levels, you want to balance hormones, you want to age slower, you want to get rid of brain fog for a lot of people, you want to support detoxification, that's who should do it. People that shouldn't do it? Or potentially women that are pregnant.

You know, you want to just make sure that you're eating when hungry, that you're listening to your body during pregnancy, of course, and anybody where it's been contraindicated. You know, if you have diabetes, you want to work with a practitioner on this to make sure at least you're getting some food so you're not having these spikes.

But over time, most people with diabetes can start to see that reverse by practicing that diet that I talked about. Fiber, fat, protein, get rid of the sugar and carbs. Consuming a diet like that with intermittent fasting over time can really help with those insulin levels and blood sugar levels. And then how to do it. Ideally, with intermittent fasting, I kind of went through this earlier.

Again, you want to start eating your first meal around noon or 1, last meal around 5 or 6. I typically recommend like a 6-hour window of when you can eat. Okay. And then the rest of the day you don't eat. Now, you can drink fluids during that time, get plenty of water, but that's really what you want to do on an intermittent fasting diet is not eat during those 6 hours.

And remember, when you're doing intermittent fasting, eat a diet that's high in protein, fiber, healthy fat, and lots of nutrients from herbs. When I say herbs, throwing turmeric in with your chicken or with your hummus or something like that that you're eating, using— if you're making an Italian chicken dish, Lots of basil, lots of oregano, lots of rosemary.

You know, if you're making a smoothie, a big teaspoon of cinnamon in there. You know, using lots of herbs, lots of vegetables as well on this diet is something you absolutely want to do as well. And again, you can see all of these benefits here.

So hey, if you want to experience the benefits of intermittent fasting, you know, go ahead and I would just simply just know that there's really nothing complex about it. You're eating less during a 6-hour window during the day. It's really that simple to following the diet.

And hey, the first 3 days you start to have a lot of those cravings, but listen, after a few days you don't even get hungry in the morning and you won't even be hungry till lunch. So again, try out an intermittent fasting diet. I know you're going to see benefits. And hey, if you've enjoyed this video, make sure you subscribe here to my YouTube channel.

And hey, we've got a lot of great content coming out about essential oils. Other advanced diets like the ketogenic diet and really just teaching you how to use food as medicine. Hope you've enjoyed this video. Hi, Dr. Axe here.

I want to say thanks so much for checking out this YouTube video and also don't forget to subscribe if you want to get more great content on things like herbs, essential oils, natural remedies, and how to use food as medicine. Also, check out more of our content on my YouTube channel. Thanks for watching.