Review: Intermittent Fasting: Everything You Need to Know About Intermittent Fasting For Beginner to Expert - Build Lean Muscle and Change Your Life
Intermittent Fasting: Everything You Need to Know About Intermittent Fasting For Beginner to Expert – Build Lean Muscle and Change Your Life by James Sinclair
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Over the past two years I have been living the Primal Lifestyle. There are people for and against this way of life; it works for me. I have more energy, less allergic reactions (used to impact me a lot) and I have shed body fat. One of the recommendations on Primal was to fast at least once a week. After doing this for a while I have read more about it and found Intermittent Fasting (IF) has become one of the newest trends that is resulting in increased benefits. After reading many posts about IF on the Internet I decided to read a book on the subject to get the A to Z.
It is a pretty quick read and covers all of the topics from what fasting is, the different types of fasting, how to approach it, the rules and how it impacts on your daily life whether that be working or exercising. For example, if you want to have a cheat day where you indulge there is an approach you can take. The book isn’t heavily technical but does give you a flavour for what is happening at the hormonal level and its impact to body’s functions.
I would recommend this book as a starting point for anyone looking to understand and try out Intermittent Fasting.
Three key takeaways from the book:
1. Types of Intermittent Fasting (i.e. Leangains, Eat Stop Eat, The Warrior Diet, Fat Loss Forever). Choosing an approach depends on how you work and whether you can fast for long periods of time. For example if you want a day to indulge with food then one type of intermittent fasting may be more beneficial
2. Impact of Growth Hormone (GH) when fasting. One of the big fallacies of fasting is that it impacts on muscle growth. Apparently your growth hormone increases during sleep, when you work out on an empty stomach and during/post fasting.
3. Incorporating high interval training (HIT) on your cheat days is beneficial to reduce the impact of a high calorie day