What Is The Best Way To Lose Weight? -Andy

Boy, what a title! It seems that there are as many opinions about that as there are people who theoretically want to lose weight. You can do the Atkins diet, the high carb-low fat diet, the low carb-high fat diet, the Mediterranean diet, the Seafood diet, the see-food diet (if I see food I eat it), the Keto diet, the Vegan diet, the raw food diet, the “green shake” diet, and on and on. Those are just a few of the things that came to my mind off the top of my head after seeing a few internet articles, being curious, and being exposed to various theories and schools of thought.

The problem is, all of these rarely work for the common person, and most people don’t even need it.
Yes, you heard me right, you do not need a diet in order to lose weight! I have not had a diet for nearly a week now, and I have lost over ten pounds.

No, I won’t lead you on about this amazing discovery that I made about how it transformed my life and if you only buy my overpriced supplements you could be as awesome as me, etc. Actually, it only takes a little bit of common sense.

I have no diet right now. None. Nothing, as in no food at all. It’s called fasting.

Yes, the oft-feared, little-tried, and often misunderstood way that God gave us to lose weight. You see, when God created the world and us he knew that there would be times of feast and times of famine, and significant amounts of each. A lot of Western culture has had a feast all of their lives and has never had to do without food for more than twelve hours by necessity. As a result of the continual feast a lot of people are well set for a huge famine for a long time.

One man in Great Britain decided to fast for as long as he could, basically. He weighed 457 pounds when he started and was in a clinical study the whole time. He drank water and took a multivitamin as well as supplementing with yeast, potassium, and sodium. The fast lasted a whopping 382 days! More than a year!

Over the course of that time he lost 276 pounds, ending up at a nice 180 pounds. This guy was set for a famine at the beginning, but after the fast he was in danger of a famine if it ever occured, which is the rationale for most people who don’t want to go through all the work and self-denial of fasting.

Contrast that with how much he would have lost if he had simply reduced his intake. Studies seem to indicate that reducing food intake eventually reduces your metabolism to match the food intake. Our bodies are designed to preserve themselves.

As it was, he lost a little over half a pound per day. How many diets do you know that can match that in your body?

Benefits of fasting beyond weight loss are many, and I will try to draw attention to the best ones here.

It is hard to fast for the first while. The first day is the worst, followed by the second, third, and so on. Sometimes it feels like you just don’t have the willpower to go on. When that happens I just drink plain tea (it works wonders).

The aforementioned fellow said he felt “terrific” and better than normal. Some have stated that after the first day they felt fine, euphoric, even. That has not been my experience yet (I wish it was), although I have had more energy in some ways than I have had before.

I ran across an article just this morning that detailed how some people feel very hungry until they lose the parasites that had been sucking all of the sugars out of their systems. I will spare you the details, but the nasty things generally live on sugars.

Candida yeast is a parasite that is more okay to talk about because it doesn’t conjure images of gross creatures writhing, but apparently if you have a yeast infection it will feast on the sugar that you ingest and reduce your body’s available sugar, causing sugar cravings.

Other parasites are claimed to have the same effect, and when they run completely out of food they have to seek other pastures, and simply leave the empty table that your body has become. You can imagine which door they usually choose.

Parasites are kind of like sin. Having them close doesn’t bother you much because you can’t feel the ways that they are destroying you and robbing from you. Seeing them after the expulsion is revolting and disgusting, but only because we can see them for what they are instead of living intimately with them.

Are you disgusted yet? Good. Imagine how disgusting our sin is to God who can see it in us and wants to help us get rid of it. Yes, fasting can really clean you out, spiritually and physically.

A lot of people believe the myth that eating no food at all will cause you to gain weight. Hmm, where would that weight come from?

Actually, the idea is that if you don’t have enough food that your body will shut down to preserve what energy you have stored. That is true in cases of diets with carbohydrates where food consumption is restricted, but the opposite is actually true of fasting.

You see, when God created the world, I imagine he sat back and designed our DNA in such a way as to improve our chances of survival. If there isn’t much food around, it is more efficient to eat a little bit with a reduced metabolism for a longer period of time than it is to expend energy storing the food as fat, then expend energy again to convert that fat to energy.

However, when a person runs completely out of food he will have to be able to expend a lot of energy in order to find a place where there is more food, or hunt for food. Hence, the Total Energy Expenditure (TEE) is literally boosted, and even the Resting Energy Expenditure (REE) is increased! Adrenal production picks up, increasing metabolism.

I have found that when I am sitting still I am even more restless than normal, always having to do something like wiggle my foot or jiggle my leg. Sometimes I will get up and pace around the cabin just because I don’t want to sit still.

Muscle mass also does not decrease in a fast. In reality, Human Growth Hormone (HGH) is released, allowing you to build muscle! There are bodybuilders who fast intermittently in order to build muscle and cut down on fat. While I don’t know if fat can be used to build muscle during a fast (I doubt it), muscle mass generally does not decrease unless you have no fat left and you need to end the fast. If you are in a reduced-calorie restricted diet with carbohydrates you will lose muscle, since your body can literally make it’s own glucose out of protein. If you have no sugar in your system your body will switch to ketones to run your brain.

Carbohydrates keep insulin going, which blocks Ketones (the fat burning things) from activating, and if you have some glucose but not enough your body is forced to prey on itself to provide the rest of the glucose.
There is a weight-loss clinic that relies on fasting as a primary way to lose weight, and I have drawn on that heavily here. You can visit the blog here https://idmprogram.com/fasting-a-history-part-i/. In their studies their patients routinely fast for several weeks or months, some even going to 200 days and beyond.

One thing they mentioned is that it is important to make sure you take some salt for an electrolyte. I would reccomend reading the entire 16 pages to get a good grasp on how to do it properly.

According to my neighbor, fasting for the first three days allows your body to heal the short-term stuff that it hasn’t been able catch up on, then it turns to the longer term stuff, and after two weeks it starts to destroy cancer cells and extra fat cells.

Fasting is not a cure for cancer, but it can help as a preventative by forcing your body to use cancer cells up before they become dangerous. Everyone has cancer cells in their body, it is just those cases where it gets out of control that kill people.

Most Americans never have to go without food long enough to destroy the sleeping cancer cells unless we decide to, and since that is hard to implement and follow through most people end up not doing it at all.

Simplicity is one of the best benefits of fasting as a weight loss effort. If you are too poor, no problem! If you are too fat, no problem! If you don’t have enough time, it will give you more! It is gluten-free, dairy-free, peanut-free, soy-free, egg-free, and just all around free.

Last Saturday night I was laying in bed thinking. My excess weight came into mind, and the desire to not be the run-of-the-mill middle-aged man who looks pregnant with quadruplets came to the forefront. I haven’t gotten that far yet, but I was starting on my way toward looking pregnant! Thankfully that progress had been stunted by working hard physically, so it wasn’t too out of control yet. I had been thinking of fasting as a weight loss idea and believed in it, but it was at that point that I decided to go ahead and start.

Sunday we always have a fellowship meal and I forego breakfast to make room for the delicious goodies at lunch. When lunch came Tabitha was telling me that I had better go through the line if I wanted the Tater Tots and green bean casserole and all the other delicious food that can make a full man’s mouth water. I just laughed it off, thinking that she was remembering that I was fasting since I had told her that morning. She kept after me until I jokingly told her that she was being mean, and then she remembered.

It’s not always easy. Actually, it often isn’t. Fasting when there is food around is exceedingly difficult. I heard that one of the kings of England had some trouble with others rising up, and he ended up just killing a bunch of the rivals off, but his brother he put into a room with a very narrow door.

The brother was known to be a glutton and was really large, too large to get through the narrow door, and the condition of his freedom was that he could go free when he could fit through the door. The king then proceeded to order his servants to keep a lot of delicious food available to keep the brother tempted to eat. It worked. The brother died in that room, unable to control himself long enough to lose the weight needed to gain his freedom. His appetite was his worst enemy, and it kept him a prisoner.

So the story goes, but it is a very good illustration of our efforts to lose weight. We are continually bombarded with temptations to eat just a little bit of food when we are fasting, but most of those little bits of food have sugar that will kill the ketone activity by forcing insulin through our system to deal with the sugar. It takes a few hours after eating sugar or carbs for the body to empty itself of insulin and for the liver to start producing ketones again and you have to go through all the pain of witdrawal all over again! The world is not set up to help us lose weight.

Thursday was Thanksgiving day, so I broke my fast the day before and then had a good Thanksgiving dinner!

Friday I started again after breakfast. We were having leftover apple pie for breakfast, and I decided that I would wait just one more meal to start the denial and suffering again. I just could hardly help it.

Each day I feel a little less hungry, but the desire for food is still there. Finally last night I started to get used to the hunger pangs and I feel like I can get used to it from here. It is very helpful for me to drink plain hot tea, especially black tea. The black tea has caffeine in it and it gives me energy, which burns more fat! You need to stay hydrated, so drink up, especially with non-caffeinated tea. Don’t forget to take some salt every day as well to keep up your electrolytes.

I have found that it is also very helpful to have a digital scale to be able to keep track of the progress. When you still have that belly fat and other fat it helps immensely to be able to track your weight loss measurably. It’s all about morale when life is kind of hard.

I was ecstatic to realize that I had lost nine pounds by Monday, and by now I have lost 12.4 pounds in five days. Did you notice the .4? Yes, it makes a difference too, but mostly in morale.

I have felt lighter since I have been on the fast. We all carry around a bunch of stuff in our intestines, and that all leaves after a few days, giving a feeling of internal lightness that is indicative of an actual lightness.

My energy has increased, although it is a weird kind of energy. It is like having energy but also being tired and hungry. Kind of weird, but it’s the truth. I have wanted to go jogging for the first time in a long time, and I have done so, further increasing my weight loss.
How long will I go? Until I am satisfied with my weight. I have had extra weight for years, and I want to make sure that once I lose this weight it doesn’t come back right away. This fasting works and is good for me but it is miserable in some ways and if I don’t have to repeat it soon I will be better off.

Fat cells are one of the only cells in our bodies that reproduce, and after they exist they sit there like balloons, filling up and emptying out instead of popping.

After the second week of fasting the unnecessary ones start being dismantled and used for fuel along with the cancer cells and a lot of other cells that are along for the free ride.

Some rascally people who I know might jokingly suggest that my brain might get dismantled and used up since it seems to be along for the free ride without contributing much, but we don’t need to pay attention to them.

There are risks to fasting for certain people, so partake at your own risk, but remember that it has been done for millennia, you just have to use common sense.

They say that when your hunger returns in force that you need to start eating again, but you have to break your fast slowly, carefully and correctly. Just exactly when the hunger returns will vary with each person, so listen to your body’s signals, just don’t let them control you.

If you want to fast for health but don’t want to do it for weeks or months at a time you can always fast intermittently. To do that you can skip either breakfast or supper every day, or just fast one or two days a week.

That works for me too, it just takes longer than I like it to. If I am going to sacrifice pleasure in order to obtain the prize I would rather do it all at once and get it over with. To each his own.

If you are reading this and don’t have any weight to lose then congratulations! Don’t end up where I did, but if you do just remember that there is a way out.