Caption down below…

I think it’s been *mostly* well established by now that using fasting as a tool for fat loss is useful for the same reasons any energy deficit works. & that with all calories equal — likely doesn’t change *too much*.

But that still leaves plenty of hype around the benefits of fasting for other health promoting reasons.

Fasting DOES have a physiological effect on the body. Without food coming we will have lower insulin, lower glucose, increased fat release and possibly lower appetite — less eating, lower calories.

It’s important to note that a lot of these things are also seen with any energy deficit at some point. But yes, happen with fasting.

Know what else results in these things 👀 EXERCISE! Especially aerobic exercise. When we engage in cardio activities we are actually creating an energy deficit in our tissues. This is part of the cellular messaging 📧 that results in adaptations to our muscle and mitochondria. Specifically the pathways that “burn” fat.

This is because when you engage in cardio your body starts rapidly using ATP— our energy molecule. Causing a “deficit” and whole body response to reduced this by pulling in glucose from our blood to our muscles, releasing fat from fat stores or using what’s in our muscle to create energy.

While I get the appeal to fasting which seems a lot easier to NOT do something vs doing something keep in mind a lot of the benefits to exercise ARE unique to it. And if we get enough of it in we don’t need to stress so damn much about these ideal fasting windows.

I will say & agree — eating all day non stop without breaks for 12-14 hours a day is likely *not* ideal. We should give our bodies a break. We do / should / can have breaks between meals, end our evening eating sooner, etc.

While this post isn’t an all encompassing narrative on fasting for health — it is a comment on how important exercise — YES your cardio — is for this. & to show you how similar these are/can be. 👊🏻 and as we saw in last weeks post Exercise is damn important to even maximize some of these impacts.

We can’t bio-hack our way out of one thing we can be pretty damn confident on — some cardio is likely good! 😉