The Fast Diet: Get Thin Quick By Starving Yourself Two Days A Week

Photo courtesy of Atria Books

A typical FastDiet meal.

When you don’t eat, your body must turn somewhere else besides food for energy and begins to feed on the glucose in your blood.

Once all of the glucose in your blood is eaten up, your body turns to stored glucose — which is kept in complex carbohydrate molecules called glycogen.

And finally, when all of that stored glucose is used up, your body taps into fat stores for energy and glucose.

But, continuing to do this for long stretches of time is not sustainable. In fact, your body might go into starvation mode, where your metabolism actually slows down in response to a decrease in calorie intake.

Source: The FastDiet

Intermittent fasting is not the same as prolonged calorie restriction, or starving. That would be when our body doesn’t take in enough nutrients to maintain a normal, healthy lifestyle.

Intermittent fasting involves “eating fewer calories, but only some of the time,” Mosley writes.

Mosley admits that prolonged fasting is not sustainable and will ultimately result in muscle loss.

With the FastDiet, you never go for longer than 24 hours without eating.

Source: The FastDiet

In a study with mice, neuroscientist Mark Mattson found that intermittent fasting increases levels of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF.

This, in turn, stimulates new brain cells in the hippocampus, the region of the brain that is responsible for memory. (Shrinking of the hippocampus has been linked to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease).

In the lab, Mattson fed one group of mice a diet of junk food, while a different group of mice ate a low fat diet and fasted for part of the week. The mice fed junk food became fat and had more problems navigating the maze to find food. The fasting mice had more BDNF in their brains.

Source: The FastDiet