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1-Page Summary of The Fast Diet

Overview

When you’re a kid, you need to eat big meals that are healthy. When you grow up, however, your body doesn’t need as much food because it’s already grown into an adult.

However, we consume too many calories in a day. This affects our health and waistline size. The solution to this problem is not another diet plan, but something else entirely.

It’s important to eat less food. We know that this will help us live a longer life, but we can also keep diseases such as diabetes and Alzheimer’s at bay if we fast regularly.

In this passage, you will learn about why your body wasn’t made for the food that is consumed today. You’ll also learn how fasting can lengthen your life and prevent diabetes.

Big Idea #1: Fasting is evolutionarily more “normal” and healthier for us than is eating three meals a day.

The current medical advice for a healthy and happy life tells us that we should eat low-fat foods and exercise more. However, this sort of prescription doesn’t work well.

Today, there is a global obesity epidemic. People are more unhealthy and overweight than ever before, and heart disease is one of the leading causes of death around the world.

People often ask me how to lose weight. I tell them that the best way is by intermittent fasting, which means alternating periods of eating normally and not eating at all. We’ve been doing this for millennia, so our bodies respond well to it. Fasting can reduce oxidative damage and inflammation, optimize energy metabolism and increase cellular protection in the body. This will help you reduce obesity, hypertension, asthma and rheumatoid arthritis.

Other research suggests that eating smaller portions of food increases the body’s metabolic rate. This can help you lose weight, but researchers from the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Prague found out that it isn’t true.

Two groups of people with type 2 diabetes ate the same number of calories, but they did so in either two meals or six meals.

The two-meal-a-day group had the same amount of calories as the six meal a day group. However, the former lost more weight and inches from their waists than the latter.

Big Idea #2: Fasting decreases your probability of getting cancer and can potentially prolong your life.

Intermittent fasting can be a useful way to stay healthy. Scientific evidence supports this claim, and it is growing stronger every year.

A scientific article in the journal Nature says that while research has shown benefits of fasting, we don’t fully understand why it works.

One potential mechanism of fasting may be that it reduces the hormone IGF-1 in your body. This can potentially lead to a decreased likelihood of developing cancer and an extended life span.

When you eat, your body naturally grows and reproduces cells. However, when you fast or starve, levels of a hormone called IGF-1 drop off. This causes your body to enter into repair mode rather than grow mode. The mice in the study were genetically engineered so they wouldn’t produce IGF-1 at all. When this happened, their bodies entered into repair mode instead of growing mode and they lived twice as long without getting cancer or diabetes.

He also studied a genetic mutation in Ecuadorians that causes low levels of IGF-1.

People with Laron syndrome don’t get cancer or diabetes. The author ruled out environmental factors as the reason why, because relatives of those people who had Laron syndrome got cancer and diabetes.

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