4 Fasting Myths!

Common Fasting Myths

Myth – Fasting is Unhealthy For Me

Fasting is just another natural part of our life cycle. Feeding and fasting is the natural rhythm our bodies ricochet between to keep us alive. When we eat, we store food as body fat. When we fast, we burn body fat. Fasting is a common practice in many civilizations of the past and religions. In fact, that is why we have the word ‘break-fast’ – it’s the meal that breaks your fast. However, you can’t break a fast if you aren’t fasting. So fasting is natural and part of everyday life especially since we do it while we sleep anyway. Prior to the 70s most people around the world ate dinner at 6 pm and broke their fast at 8 am. That’s 14 hours of fasting every day without even thinking about it.

It is important to note thought that certain people should avoid long fasting regimens that are over 24 hours at a time. Essentially these individuals are anyone who is a growth phase of life. So if you are under the age of 18 years, pregnant or breastfeeding, malnourished or underweight, or have a history of anorexia nervosa, you should avoid fasting for long periods of time.

Myth – Fasting Lowers My Metabolic Rate

There is no scientific evidence to support this claim. In fact, the opposite is true. During fasting, our body is not running out of fuel. Most of us have hundreds of thousands of calories stored away as body fat, ready to use, enough for weeks and weeks. If we have such a huge store of fuel, why would we need to lower our metabolic rate? The trick to fasting is to allow our body to access that fuel. Your body needed to relearn how to use body fat efficiently because the habit of constantly snacking through the day has left our bodies reliant on one of the two sources of fuel – food! Fasting allows our body to switch fuel sources – from food, body fat.

I also want to compare metabolic rate differences between people on calorie restrictive diet versus people on a fasting regimen. When we consistently feed our bodies the same number of calories every day (and that amount is significantly lower that what is needed for our bodies to function) the human body lowers the number of calories it’s burning daily to meet how much you are consistently giving it. For example, if my basal metabolic rate is 2000 calories per day and I only eat 1,500 calories daily, my body will lower its metabolism to 1,500 so that it’s not expending more energy than needed. The issue with method is that it is temporary, and our bodies will have physiological responses to push us to eat more (lower energy, make us hungry, make us feel cold). The same thing doesn’t happen when we fast because you are eating big quantities of food at different times of the day and so your metabolic rate doesn’t have time to adapt to a particular number of calories. This also explain why if you have chronically dieted in the past and are having trouble losing weight now, fasting can help reset your body.

Myth – Fasting Burns Muscle

This is one of the most pervasive myths about fasting. Keep in mind that our body is an intelligent machine. It stores energy as fat so that if we need energy, there are reserves to use. It is seriously counter-intuitive for our bodies to store energy as fat, just to burn muscle when the time comes.

The reason this myth persists is because there is a period of time where the body is using protein for energy. At about 24-30 hours of fasting, our bodies have run out of sugar, or glycogen, and fat burning hasn’t yet started in earnest. We metabolize some protein for energy, which gives rise to the myth that ‘fasting burns muscle’. But this is protein, not muscles. Our bodies have lots of extra protein that needs to burn – skin, connective tissue, blood vessels. Some people who lose a lot of weight are left with large flaps of extra skin. That’s all extra protein, not fat. Fasting may activate the protein catabolism necessary to get rid of that skin. This means when you lose lots of weight with fasting, there is zero need to get skin removal surgery.

The other reason that muscle is not affected is that fasting increases human growth hormone. Once you start eating after the fast, the increased growth hormone helps to preserve lean mass. The body builds new protein where it is needed.

Myth – No One Can Fast Over the Long Term

Billions of people throughout history have embraced fasting for their entire adult lives. Almont every major religion in the world has periods of fasting. Sometimes it is also called purification, cleansing or detoxification, but the idea is the same. Occasional abstinence from food is believed to have a cleansing effect on our bodies and mind. Indeed, it cleans out the excess sugar and fat in our bodies but it also helps reset for other benefits. People who fast report better mood, sleep, immunity, and many more! Therefore, it is incorrect to claim that nobody can fast long term when it was a common practice that has shifted due to modernization of food and lifestyle, but also the predominance of advice such as, “eat many small meals throughout the day”.

Fasting can also work with any diet – whether you are vegetarian or Paleo or Keto or vegan. It is simple, it doesn’t take any time, it is available to everybody in the world, and it is completely free!