English Muffins and Intermittent Fasting

By now you understand that inflammation in the body is the true cause of disease, and that sugar and starch...even rice causes inflammation (if you didn't please click HERE). BUT so can over-nutrition. Numerous studies show that periodic fasting can have dramatic results not only in areas of weight loss, but in overall health as well. An article in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition explains numerous benefits which include improvement in insulin sensitivity, decreases in blood pressure, reduction in free-radical damage to cells, protein and DNA, and weight loss. If you think about it, our ancestors didn't have access to food at 8am, 12noon, 3pm snack and 6pm dinner every day; they went through regular cycles where food was either abundant or non-existent. This contradicts the idea that your metabolism will ?slow down? causing you to gain weight if you don?t eat 5 meals per day. In fact, intermittent fasting is more effective than calorie restriction at reducing insulin resistance.

WHY FAST:
1. Reduces insulin resistance: Insulin is drastically reduced in a glucagon dominant state (Imagine a "see-saw"; one goes up when the other goes down). When insulin is reduced it can't cause inflammation on tissues, which is associated with pain/fibromyalgia/heart disease/asthma/diabetes.
2. Reduces blood pressure: As your insulin level increases, so does your blood pres­sure. Insulin stores magnesium, but if your insulin receptors are blunted and your cells grow resistant to insulin, you can?t store magnesium so it passes out of your body through urination. Magnesium in your cells relaxes muscles. If your magnesium level is too low, your blood vessels will constrict rather than relax, which will raise your blood pressure and decrease your energy level.
3. Reduces triglycerides: Insulin upregulates LPL on fat tissue and inhibits activation on muscle cells. On the other hand, Glucagon upregulates LPL on muscle and cardiac tissue, while inhibiting activation of fat.
4. Weight Loss
5. Reduces cancer: Fasting cleans out damaged mitochondria. It ?turns on? certain genes that repair specific tissues that would not otherwise be repaired in times of surplus. Intermittent fasting has also been shown to reduce spontaneous cancers in animal studies, which is due to a decrease in oxidative damage or an increase in immune response.
6. Longer Life: Fasting allows certain cells to live longer (as repaired cells) during famine since it?s energetically less expensive to repair a cell than to divide and create a new one.

So how do you put this into practice? There are a lot of ways.
1. The morning fast. The purpose is to not break the human growth hormone and glucagon-dominant state that is dubbed the ?fasted state.' This works best for people who do cardio in the morning or afternoon. This will keep the fat burning hormone (human growth hormone) high. Whenever you eat, insulin rises, which pushes human growth hormone down. Your body will derive energy from food sources (calories) or from body stores (glycogen, body fat, muscle). If you want to burn sugar, go ahead and eat before your workout, BUT if you want to burn fat, skip eating beforehand. It should last about 8 hours.
During the morning fast you are allowed:
-Coffee (if you don't have anxiety/adrenal fatigue/thyroid disorder)
-Tea/Water
-Small amounts of fatty acids (fish oil) but stay under 50 calories. Dietary fats have very minimal insulin secretion rates. If you are susceptible to anxiety or adrenal fatigue, I suggest a quality fish oil (click HERE to find the Krill Oil I like) to balance our brain chemistry and for its anti-inflammatory effects.
-Amino Acids, such as l-carnitine are recommended upon arising. This will help shuttle triglycerides to the mitochondria where we burn fat.

2. The Evening Fast: If you aren't exercising, I like this fast a little better because it keeps you from binging later in the day. Consume breakfast and lunch, then fast for the rest of the day until the next morning. I'm not a huge fan of Dr. Oz, but I know he often recommends skipping dinner once a week also. I recommend taking l-glutamine to help with muscles going into a catabolic state. It builds muscle: Muscle burns 50 calories/day, Fat burns only 2 (even when sleeping). There is a phenomenon called Sarcopenia, where we lose 1% of muscle/year starting at age 25. When you skimp on protein your body NEEDs amino acids to function properly so it eats your healthy muscles to get it?NOT GOOD!

3. Combination: Intermittent Fasting should last at least 8-10 hours when you are awake. One way to accomplish this is to have dinner no later than 3pm. Then for example you go to bed around 10pm (taking proper amino acids) and wake up at 6am. When you wake up, consume only calorie free liquids; such as water/green tea/coffee (decaf if adrenal/hormone issues), I take my l-carnitine at this time. I then recommend doing cardio (I like to run from 7:30-8:30am), I also recommend l-glutamine to repair muscles after a hard workout. Then eat at 9am. This would be a total of 18 hours in between meals, being awake for 10 hours in between meals.

STOP LOSING MUSCLE: If you continue to eat a high carb diet, you will continue to be a sugar burner. As you switch to be a ketone burner, aside from using fats for energy, it also prevents muscle loss because the need for glucose is reduced. Muscle tissue breakdown occurs when there is a need for glucose which exceeds the stores of glycogen. Fasting will also accomplish this. The dominant hormones in a fasted state (Human Growth Hormone, Glucagon, and Adrenaline) are responsible for catabolizing tissue and can aid in the breaking of fats from the glycerol backbone and uses fats for oxidation for energy instead of sugar.

So by fasting and not working too hard, we derive energy in the form of fat. You can do anything for one day/week!

To read more on fasting check out my book, Secrets to a Healthy Metabolism.



"HEALTHIFIED" ENGLISH MUFFINS
6 egg whites, whipped
3 TBS psyllium husk POWDER
2 TBS coconut flour
4 TBS cream cheese, softened (if dairy free, add in the yolks of eggs)
OPTIONAL: additional spices (cinnamon, garlic or other)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Separate the eggs and discard the yolks. In a large dry bowl, whip the egg white until VERY stiff. Slowly sift in the psyllium husk and coconut flour. Gently stir until well encorporated. Slowly add in the cream cheese (and spices if desired). Grease a pan with coconut oil spray. Dollop the dough into the pans (it will not rise much). Use your hands to shape into English Muffins. Bake for 17-20 minutes. Once totally cool, cut in 1/2 and store in the freezer for easy breakfast options! Makes 4 muffins. NOTE: Bake the dough right away and then freeze the baked product if you want.  The dough doesn't store well uncooked.

NUTRITIONAL COMPARISON (per muffin)
Thomas English Muffin = 270 calories, 4g fat, 6g protein, 55 carbs, 8 g fiber
"Healthified" Muffin = 104 calories, 4g fat, 7g protein, 11.6g carbs, 8.8g fiber (2.8 effective carbs)