Episode 189 | Does Intermittent Fasting Work?

Hello and Welcome to the Vegan Body Revolution Show. I am your host, Thomas Tadlock from Smoothyshred.com and best-selling author of the book Miracle Metabolism, which is available on Amazon.com. The full video version of this episode can be found at smoothyshred.com in the video.

So in this episode of the Daily Shred, let's talk about intermittent fasting. So what is it, first of all? Well, it's a strategy for eating. It's not necessarily a diet, it's just an eating strategy. So the idea is that you eat within a specific window of time and then you don't eat outside of that window of time. So uh a very simple way to implement intermittent fasting could be that you don't start your first meal until lunchtime around noon. And then you eat.

And you can eat as much as you want during that time up until around, let's say, four or five o'clock. You decide what that is. But you've got basically a four or five or maybe six hour window to eat. Whatever it is that you want to eat for the day and then you just simply don't after that.

Okay, so how did I learn about it and what are the results like? Well here's here's how I learned about it. When I was interviewing vegan athletes on the Vegan Body Revolution show, I wanted to get an idea of how are these athletes eating. so that they're winning these contests. I mean guys that were winning first place at bodybuilding competitions, how are they pulling it off?

Well this was fascinating because I met some guys that were eating, no joke, seven to nine meals a day, which is the way I was taught when I was going through grad school. And the idea is you eat as soon as you wake up and then every one and a half to two hours after that you eat another meal, another meal, another meal. The theory was that it raises your metabolism. Okay, great. Well I had nothing else to compare it to, so I just kind of took that for granted.

Then I met some vegan bodybuilders that had insanely lean and ripped and muscular physiques. I met Chad Byers. who at the time had won the uh won first place in the uh Mr. it was a natural bodybuilding competition in Austin, Texas, I think in two thousand fifteen, around that time. And he was uh this guy was he's big, he was muscular, and he was he was absolutely ripped.

And he used a strategy called intermittent fasting where he'd basically eat within a very specific short window. He'd only eat about three meals during the day. And that was it. And I couldn't believe the results that he got. I mean he was he was just he was I thought if uh you don't eat throughout the entire day, you're gonna at least lose muscle. This guy was more muscular than I had ever been in my entire life. So

That just kind of blew that idea out of the water. And plus this guy defeated all of his competitors at the contest that he won first place at. I guess that didn't make sense anymore. And then I met another bodybuilder that I interviewed on the Vegan Body Revolution show. His name is Will Tucker. Now, this man was eating seven to nine meals a day, and here's another champion bodybuilder. Then one day he decided.

he's gonna do intermittent fasting as well. And he takes it to a whole new extreme. I mean this is a guy who went from eating seven to nine meals a day, and on some days during his intermittent fasting experiments, he got down to just one meal a day and He was showing that he wasn't losing any muscle mass and he was staying lean and ripped, if not getting more lean and ripped. And

And and winning contests. So that made me realize that, wow, okay, whatever the theories are, they must not be right. So at that point I thought, well, screw the theories. Let's just look at the results. I thought this was great news. Here's a bodybuilder that uh many here's a lot of bodybuilders that can win first place at contests eating a lot of meals every single day. And then now I've got some bodybuilders that are winning first place at contests eating as little as one meal a day.

So I guess it doesn't freaking matter how many meals a day that you eat. You can still win first place at contests, which means you can get as lean as you want, you can get as muscular as you want. No matter how many meals that you eat at the end of the day, I guess all that matters is that you have the uh at least a minimum uh total number of nutrients in. So if you're gonna eat one meal a day, it's gonna be one giant massive ridiculous meal.

If it's going to be a lot of meals throughout the day, maybe they're going to be smaller. Who knows?

But here's what I liked about intermittent fasting. It wasn't until I did it myself and I tried it on my own body before I realized what some of the biggest benefits are. To anybody who has a food addiction, or if the reason that you might fail a fat loss or even a muscle building program is that. You eat the wrong foods or or you snack a lot. That's what that seems to be a big habit that people have that it's hard for them to break.

Intermittent fasting gets your mind literally off of eating because you've got a short window to eat. And then after that, you make it a rule: you cannot eat. So there's there is no snack. There's no your brain just decides to just stop thinking about it. So it can literally reset your eating habits.

so that you can stick with a specific diet way more strictly than ever. I mean, especially now the results are showing that uh you don't need to have a lot of meals every single day to be able to be perfectly healthy and also achieve your fitness goals. Great. That's perfect. That's awesome. That's convenient. So when I did my experiment, it was actually during a muscle building.

cycle that I was doing. I I was doing a 28-day muscle building experiment. I got I gained so much weight. I gained over 10 pounds. But it was in s it was interesting because I was also able to shrink my waist by a full inch during that time. So how how do you make sense of that? I gained 10 pounds and I lost an inch off my waist. Well, I had to have lost body fat. I mean, that's the only way I can make sense of it, right?

I mean it showed my clothes fit even better on my body, but I had bigger, wider shoulders and I was able to lift a lot more weight. And I did it eating only three meals a day. I would start my first meal at eleven o'clock. Because, well, out of convenience, I didn't really feel like eating until around 11 o'clock AM. And then I would stop eating.

And around dinner time, so from eleven till around five or six o'clock, that's it. That's the only time that I ate. And I didn't eat after that. I ate a lot of food during that time to be able to put on muscle, but it it it was uh it I wasn't snacking, I wasn't eating foods that are off the plant. Because my brain simply wasn't

Thinking about it. So I think intermittent fasting is someone is something that anybody who's struggling to lose any amount of body fat off their body because you can't stick with the program. I think intermittent fasting is a strategy that is worth trying. Give yourself like a day or two days. See how you do on it. Because what's gonna happen for almost everybody who does it is after about three days, you're just gonna stop thinking about food outside your feeding window.

So to implement it, I think the easy way to do it is eat your first meal at lunchtime and make dinner the last meal that you eat and then you can eat all in between those two periods and that's it. So from 11 o'clock till around five. Eat till your heart's content, or stick with the strategy or the diet that you're on, and then you don't eat after that. Give that a shot. See how well it works.

My guess is that your mind is gonna be more on point with the diet. You're gonna do a lot better, you're gonna get sensational results. Now, what the hardcore intermittent fasters say is that. Your body burns more body fat because it's in this uh fat burning window and stuff. That might be true.

But I don't know if we really know. I'm not sure if we really are measuring the hormones in real time to find out how much more fat is being oxidized when you're intermittent fasting versus when you're not. I only say that is because the macro results are, well, there's people that win first place at bodybuilding contests all the time doing intermittent fasting, and then there's just as many, if not more, people.

winning first place at bodybuilding contests all the time, not doing intermittent fasting. So I don't think it really makes that much of a difference in terms of how much fat burning per minute or hour is actually happening. But one thing that's definitely for sure is that mentally, psychologically, and emotionally, it's gonna work a whole lot better for you to help you get rid of any sort of cravings of foods that are not working for you that you might be addicted to.

So give it a shot. Intermittent fasting. It can't hurt you uh and and I think there's a lot of benefit to be had if you're trying to lose body fat. Hey make sure if you haven't already go to smoothiesred.com. I've got so much more free content over there. People are asking me all the time about smoothie recipes. I've got smoothie recipes right there, my favorite best tasting smoothie recipes that'll raise your metabolism.

and help you lose fat and build muscle even faster. I don't even need your email address. Just go there, click on the link that says smoothie recipes. They're all right there. I also have tons of video trainings which are of course on this channel. But I have it sorted in a much more convenient way on smoothieshred.com, and it also gives the opportunity to join our vast

community of thousands and thousands of people that were helping to raise their metabolisms, reverse their diseases, and get in the best shape of their life every single day. That's all 100% for free. Go to smoothyshred.com to get that information.

Thanks so much. And also don't forget to buy my book too. On Amazon.com, you can get yourself a copy of Miracle Metabolism, my best-selling book, which will teach you step by step how to raise your metabolism. And it follows the same principles that I teach every single day on a daily strike. Take care.