3 TIPS TO GET STRONG AF PART III – FLEXIBLE FASTING & KETO

Now more than ever we have to look at our health and do everything possible to improve our physical and mental well-being.

Fasting more than anything has changed my life.

I feel stronger physically and mentally than I have ever felt in my entire life – and I am not just saying that so I can convince you that fasting is an amazing tool to improve your life, but because I 100 percent believe in its power and its benefits.

To be honest and 100 percent transparent, I have struggled with food anxieties in the past. Unfortunately, I believe that almost every woman in today’s time has some sort of food anxiety and/or body dysmorphia, simply because we get told from a young age on how to look. THAT IS WRONG.

Fasting has allowed me to change the way I look at food. Fasting to me is almost a spiritual experience, because you STOP and LOOK DEEPLY into what you are eating in order to provide the best possible nutrients to your body.

Fasting is not starvation. It is about changing your feeding window, which does not mean that you are consuming less food. In fact, ever since I started fasting, I developed a much healthier relationship with food and started eating more. This helped me mentally, but also improved my physical performance in the gym and on the soccer field.

Three most common fasting regimes:

• Time Restricted Feeding: done daily, with a fasting and feeding window; Most popular: 16-8.

• Alternate Day Fasting: one full day of fasting followed by one regular day of eating.

• OMAD – One Meal A Day, which can extend over 2+ hours.

Benefits. There are many reasons why one should fast, at least occasionally, and at least 12h/day, meaning if you get done eating dinner at 8pm, don’t eat breakfast before 8am the following day. I fast because….

✔ Reduced inflammation

✔ Enhance athletic performance

✔ Improve lean muscle gain – favorable hormonal shift takes place aids in muscle building.

✔ Cell recycling/ Autophagy – improves recover

✔ Anti-aging

✔ Improved insulin sensitivity

✔ Improved fasting insulin

✔ Increased weight loss

✔ Flexible and sustainable in the long run

I have read many scientific, peer reviewed articles about fasting…the literature is vast, let me tell you. I will release a more detail post about how fasting works soon, but if you want to, you can contact me anytime and I am more than happy to discuss anything in more detail – I love science :)

KETO. KETO. KETO. What a word…No carbs? Man, that sounds crazy…but is it? There is just as much literature about the ketogenic diet and its benefits as there is about intermittent fasting. Therefore, I will give you only a quick crash course and leave the juice details for another post.

Benefits of a ketogenic diet. They are very similar to the benefits of fasting.

✔ Reduced inflammation

✔ Enhance athletic performance – due to improved metabolic pathways

• Improved fat oxidation

• Spare muscle protein synthesis

• Decreased accumulation of lactate & H+

• Steady, sustained fuel source

✔ Improve lean muscle gain – favorable hormonal shift takes place aids in muscle building.

✔ Increased mental acuity.

✔ Anti-aging & overall health

✔ Sustainable in the long run, because it is a satiating & satisfying way of eating.

✔ Improved weight management

✔ Improved insulin sensitivity

✔ Improved fasting insulin

✔ Increased weight loss

✔ Sustainable in the long run, because it is a satiating & satisfying way of eating.

Carbs.

• I strongly believe that the traditional way of carb-loading for physical performance is absolutely unnecessary and will actually lead to the opposite effect of a good performance.

• There are good and bad carbohydrates – but in general, most carbohydrates cause inflammation all over the body.

• Carbs make you hangry – you become dependent and almost addicted to them.

• I personally do a cyclical carbohydrate regime. I eat carbohydrates post exercise, especially on high CNS days.

IN SUMMARY – fasting & cyclical keto have benefited me greatly in that I have hit PR’s in the gym, my stamina, endurance, and power on the soccer field is better than ever before, and best of all, my recovery time is shortened.

Talk soon - Coach Hanna :)