The Complete Guide to Fasting.

Overview
Jason Fung’s book promotes fasting as a treatment for obesity and diabetes. He argues that weight gain and type 2 diabetes are the result of insulin resistance, which can be corrected through fasting.

Obesity is a widespread problem in the United States. Doctors usually recommend that patients eat less and exercise more, but this method rarely works for most people. Most diets fail because they increase insulin levels, which ultimately makes it harder to lose weight. When insulin levels are high, the body stores fat and burns sugar easily available from food instead of tapping into its fat reserves. Therefore, when someone with high insulin goes on a diet (which lowers their insulin level), they can’t tap into their fat reserves to burn calories or energy; therefore there’s no weight loss.

Fasting can be a solution to weight loss. When you don’t eat, your insulin levels go down and allow the body to burn fat instead of storing it. Fasting also helps keep weight off long-term by recalibrating insulin in the body and keeping it low.

Fasting can help with diabetes by reducing insulin resistance, a condition that leads to heart disease and eventual blindness. Fasting reduces the need for insulin, which helps reduce insulin resistance. This lowers the risk of developing diabetes further. Current treatments don’t help people with type 2 diabetes; they only make it worse.

However, fasting can reduce insulin levels and lower the amount of insulin treatments that a patient needs. It also helps to bring type 2 diabetes under control. Fasting is easier than most diets because it’s simple and inexpensive to implement. Patients find it hard to stick with complicated diets that require them to eat only certain foods or expensive organic food items.

There are many myths about fasting. For example, some people believe that it places dieters in starvation mode and causes the metabolism to slow down and the body to shut down. Others think that it can cause muscle degradation rather than fat loss, or make a person feel shaky, nauseous, or ill. Finally, some people think that fasting is crazy or ridiculous. These myths have been perpetuated by food industry interests as well as unfamiliarity with the practice of fasting.

Fasting has no negative side effects on the majority of healthy adults. However, children, pregnant women and people with anorexia should not fast. People who are taking medication should consult their doctors before fasting. Fasting is a safe and effective way to lose weight. It offers numerous health benefits without any downside for most people.

For example, fasting increases the production of growth hormone. This benefits athletes by maintaining muscle and bone mass and decreasing recovery times. Fasting breaks down old cells, including brain cells which can help with memory retention. In the evolutionary past when humans weren’t eating they were more likely to be thinking about how to get food than anything else, so this made them sharper thinkers. The rats who fasted also had improved motor coordination skills as well as a better memory because their brains were able to clean out unneeded information.

Fasting is a good way to lose weight, but it should be combined with healthy eating. A low-carb diet can provide some of the benefits of fasting. Dieters should avoid processed foods and eat real food instead.