Has the coronavirus put you in close proximity to a lot of stored, less than healthy, food for a period of weeks with some stress eating going along to boot? Have you put on a few pandemic pounds during quarantine? Are you planning on wearing a poncho over your bathing suit? Well, you are not alone that is for sure!
Coronavirus and quarantine has placed all of us under some form of stress, whether it is working during the quarantine, staying home during the quarantine or attempting to do both maybe. Coronavirus has taken away a lot of things from just about everyone in some way. But one thing is for sure, coronavirus has also given us at least one good thing in return, in some way, because when something bad happens, God always ensures that something good happens too.
So I hope you can all find at least one blessing in disguise that has been personally delivered to you. And perhaps that one blessing, is that you would like to take control of your weight and your health now, because waiting for it to be completely over is just not an option any more. So, if this is you, let me introduce you to some methods of recharging your body’s health and jumpstarting your weight loss that are tried and true and have been around since Jesus fasted for 40 days. Welcome to fasting.
What is Intermittent Fasting
You may believe that there is only one type of fasting, which may mean to you not eating for a prolonged period of time, maybe as long as a week. But there are actually several types of fasting and there is a whole science as to which kinds of fasting are best, for ease of following and which deliver the best results, for weight loss and overall health. For these reasons, we recommend intermittent fasting for most of our patients, which is an easy and intuitive way to control eating habits based on the time of day, as opposed to just not eating anything for days on end, which most people cannot tolerate. The intermittent fasting we most commonly recommend is the 16:8 method. Meaning that you will eat in between designated 8 hours during the day, and fast for the rest of the day for 16 hours. And this is not as bad as it might sound initially, because you will be sleeping for a lot of that fasting time. For most people this means that the hours that you will eat will be between 11am and 7pm. And for most people this will mean just skipping breakfast and not eating too late before going to bed. Intermittent fasting follows our circadian rhythm, or our sleep/wake cycle, balances periods of food intake with periods of no food intake so that the body spends or burns the calories it ingested rather than storing those ingested calories as fat, which can lead to obesity. This discovery was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2017. Well we all knew this, but 3 American scientists proved it!
Alternate Day Fasting
In addition to intermittent fasting, we may also recommend alternate day fasting. This fasting entails dropping your caloric intake to 500 calories for the day on two days during the week, in addition to the intermittent fasting. This is not usually 2 consecutive days. There are other varieties of fasting, that are healthy, effective and promote even more health benefits in addition to weight loss, such as prolonged fasting which causes autophagy, which is the body’s process for breaking down and eliminating cellular debris that can be initiated by fasting.
What is Autophagy
A Japanese cell biologist, Dr. Ohsumi, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries on how cells recycle their content, a process known as autophagy, a Greek term for “self-eating.”It is a crucial process. During starvation, cells break down proteins and nonessential components and reuse them for energy. Cells also use autophagy to destroy invading viruses and bacteria, sending them off for recycling. And cells use autophagy to get rid of damaged structures. The process is thought to go awry in cancer, infectious diseases, immunological diseases and neurodegenerative disorders. Disruptions in autophagy are also thought to play a role in aging. It takes 7 days of fasting to reach autophagy.
What kinds of food can I eat to help with weight loss?
You can actually eat any kind of food and still lose weight as it is the quantity of calories that you eat during the day that will determine how much weight you lose. That said, if you were to eat a small amount of calories, but unhealthy calories devoid of essential vitamins and minerals, you are not helping your body’s health long term. Dr. Parsons will recommend a diet that is mostly vegetables, the green crunchy variety, not starchy vegetables such as potatoes or rice, and lean meats such as skinless chicken and fish.
How can Dr. Parsons help with weight loss program?
Here at Renove Medical Spa, we will help you understand intermittent fasting and help keep you accountable to your weight loss program. We meet with you once a month, check your weight and your food log and we will also administer B12 to aid with weight loss. The B complex vitamins help convert the food you eat into fuel for your body to use instead of storing that food as fat.
Since it is very difficult for most people to decrease calories that they normally eat let alone fast for more than 1 day, Dr. Parsons may also write a prescription for an appetite suppressant. This will depend on your health, any other medical conditions you may have if this would be suitable for you. Dr. Parsons sees and evaluates each patient for each visit. Instead of a true fasting diet, to stimulate weight loss and autophagy, Dr. Parsons may recommend a fasting mimicking diet. Learn more about Renove's weight loss program.
Fasting Mimicking Diet
Fasting for 4 or 5 days is very difficult to observe. To overcome these challenges, Prof. Longo, under the sponsorship of the National Institutes of Health, developed the Fasting Mimicking Diet or FMD, a plant-based nutritional program which uses a special nutrition program to orchestrate the metabolic pathways responsible for cellular support and rejuvenation, such as autophagy. The formulation of the fasting mimicking diet (FMD) was developed over a decade of research & discovery at the Longevity Institute of the University of Southern California. Because several days of fasting can be difficult, Prof. Valter Longo developed The Fasting Mimicking Diet to nourish the body while keeping its cells in fasting mode. The ProLon formulation contains more than 73 plant-based proteins, fiber-rich source of carbs and healthy fats, in addition to minerals and vitamins (micro-nutrients). It has successfully gone through animal and human trials and was awarded several patents for its uniqueness. For these discoveries, TIME named ProLon discoverer, Prof. Valter Longo, among the top 50 most influential people in Health. With the ProLon Fasting Mimicking Diet, you can get the benefits of prolonged fasting, while eating food. If you would like to try this method enter this website, create and account and search ProLon.
If you would like to come in for an appointment to see if you are candidate for our weight loss program, please reach out to us by booking online, calling us at 302-227-1079 or emailing us at info@renovemedspa.org.
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