For individuals over 40 seeking effective weight loss strategies, combining intermittent fasting with a low-carb, high-protein diet may offer a safe and efficient approach. This article explores the benefits of this combination, provides guidelines for implementation, and addresses potential considerations.
Understanding Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting (IF) involves cycling between periods of eating and voluntary fasting on a regular schedule. It's not about what you eat, but when you eat. The premise behind intermittent fasting is that it lowers your insulin levels, allowing your body to burn fat for fuel.
There are several popular methods of IF, each with their own intermittent fasting times and rules:
16/8 Method: Also called the Leangains Method, this involves restricting your daily eating period to eight hours. For example, you could stop eating at 8 in the evening and then not eat again until noon the next day. This is the most popular intermittent fasting protocol because it’s the easiest one to stick to.
5:2 Diet: With this method, you consume only 500 to 600 calories on two non-consecutive days of the week, eating normally on the other five days. This type of intermittent fasting can be a bit more difficult to stick to because you have to be very disciplined on the 2 days that you’re fasting.
Read also: High-Fiber Diet for Better Health
Eat-Stop-Eat: This involves fasting for 24 hours, once or twice a week. Here, you would fast from dinner one day until dinner the next day.
Warrior Diet: Similar to the 20:4 diet, this splits your day into the same time periods. In the warrior diet, however, you eat very little during the 20-hour period and overeat during the last four (typically in the evening). This type of intermittent fasting can be difficult to stick to because you’re going for such a long period of time without food.
Alternate-Day Fasting: An alternate-day fasting plan is exactly what it sounds like: eat one day, don’t eat the next. So, for example, you would fast on Monday and then eat normally on Tuesday. This type of intermittent fasting is also tough to stick to because you’re going an entire day without food.
One Meal a Day (OMAD): This form of intermittent fasting takes careful planning as you need to meet your daily requirements within one meal per 24 hours.You basically have to try them out and pick the ones that you can stick to.
Benefits of Intermittent Fasting
There are many benefits of intermittent fasting, both physical and mental, which is why so many people choose to do it.
Read also: Delicious High-Fiber Smoothie Recipes
- Weight Loss: One of the most common reasons people start intermittent fasting is for weight loss. When you fast, most people tend to eat fewer calories overall, which can lead to weight loss. Intermittent fasting for weight loss has been associated with substantial losses in short periods of time, as well as changes in body composition.
- Increased Energy Levels: Intermittent fasting can also help to increase your energy levels. When you’re not eating for long periods of time, your body has to find other ways to fuel itself. This process of breaking down stored sugar and fat for energy is called becoming Thin Adapted.
- Reduced Inflammation: Inflammation in the body is linked to a whole host of diseases and health conditions, like arthritis, gastrointestinal issues and even depression. If it’s right for you, intermittent fasting can certainly have health benefits, including helping to manage inflammation-related health conditions like arthritis and asthma.
- Control blood sugar and insulin: The premise behind intermittent fasting is that it lowers your insulin levels, allowing your body to burn fat for fuel. There is some preliminary research from a very small study of prediabetic men that suggests IF may improve your body’s ability to control blood sugar. This is great news for prediabetics, but the lowering of insulin levels has also shown a positive effect on a host of other conditions including irritable bowl syndrome, fatty liver disease, and polycystic ovary syndrome.
- Cognitive function: Research has also been done on the protective benefits of fasting to neurons in the brain. Reducing oxidative stress has many positive effects, but if you’re experiencing brain fog, intermittent fasting has been shown to support both memory and learning functionality. This is good news, especially when it comes to brain aging.
The Role of a Low-Carb, High-Protein Diet
A low-carb diet involves reducing carbohydrate intake while increasing protein and fat consumption. If you want to go low carb, we recommend getting between 50 and 130 g of carbs into your diet each day. Here’s the most important take-home point: low carb doesn’t mean no carb.
Benefits of a Low-Carb Diet
- Promotes Fat Burning: When your blood sugar is low enough, your body has to use your stored glucose (aka glycogen) in your liver for energy. Once that’s used up, your body prefers to use the next energy source: stored fat.
- Reduces Cravings: That’s because when you’re reducing your carb intake, increasing protein and fiber helps a lot with feeling full and satisfied and helps keep hunger and cravings under control.
- Stable Blood Sugar Levels: Eating fewer carbohydrates means there’s less food for your body to turn into glucose.
Combining Intermittent Fasting and a Low-Carb Diet
Intermittent fasting and a low-carb diet can be a match made in weight loss heaven. A low-carb diet can boost intermittent fasting results because they produce results by similar mechanisms.
Synergistic Effect: Intermittent fasting, specifically, may improve metabolic flexibility, allowing the body to more efficiently switch between using carbohydrates and fats for energy. This may lead to greater fat loss during fasting periods and potentially contribute to weight loss.
Easier Transition to Ketosis: A low-carb diet can mean less stored carbohydrates are available, so when you fast, you get into ketosis more quickly.
Reduced Hunger: A low-carb diet can help you fast more comfortably. So not only do you get the most from your fasting because it’s easier to sustain, the experience is less of a struggle. Fewer hunger pangs = happy days!
Read also: Explore the pros and cons of a high metabolism diet
Foods to Focus On
- Lean meats
- Fish
- Eggs
- Dairy products
- Legumes
- Tofu
- Tempeh
It’s important to ensure your overall diet is balanced while protein pacing. While focusing on protein, ensure you are also consuming a balanced diet with plenty of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and healthy fats to meet your overall nutritional needs. Focus on consuming whole, minimally processed foods. Whole foods are typically richer in nutrients and free from added sugars, unhealthy fats, and artificial additives, thereby promoting overall health and well-being.
Foods to Limit
- Refined grains (white bread, pasta)
- Sugary drinks
- Processed foods
Let’s think about which foods don’t feature as much in a low-carb intermittent fasting diet plan. None of these foods are “bad,” and they’re not “forbidden” - in fact, they’re wonderfully nutrient-dense. These foods aren’t “forbidden” either, but they are lower in nutrients. So, when you choose carbs to include in your low-carb diet plan, choose the nutrition-rich, whole-food options for best results.
Intermittent Fasting with Protein Pacing
New research suggests that intermittent fasting combined with protein pacing may be more beneficial for weight loss and gut health than calorie restriction.
Protein Pacing Defined: “Protein pacing involves eating four high protein meals, containing 25-50 grams of protein each, at regular intervals throughout the day, typically every three to four hours,” Marilia Chamon, a registered nutritional therapist and gut health expert, explains.
Benefits of Protein Pacing: Distributing protein intake evenly throughout the day - can help maintain muscle mass and promote satiety,” she says. This can be a good approach to weight loss as it typically makes you feel fuller for longer, reduces cravings, and, in the long term, can contribute to the development of muscle mass.
Synergistic Effects: Intermittent fasting promotes periods of low insulin levels, which can enhance fat burning,” Chamon notes. It may also, as the study suggests, positively impact gut microbial diversity. “A diverse gut microbiome is associated with better digestive health, reduced inflammation, and improved metabolic function, all of which can contribute to more effective weight loss,” Chamon explains.
How to Implement: To effectively implement protein pacing for weight loss, consider spacing meals by 3 to 5 hours and aim to spread your protein intake evenly across each meal,” advises Costa. She says specific protein goals are individual depending on factors such as body weight, health conditions, and physical activity levels. You might like to look at how much protein you’re already consuming and aim to increase it.
Practical Guidelines
Consult a Healthcare Professional: First of all, if you are insulin resistant or have Type 2 diabetes, it’s important to check with your doctor before starting any kind of dietary change or new exercise regimen.
Start Slowly: Secondly, when you are first starting out with intermittent fasting, it’s important to go slowly and listen to your body. Once you’re comfortable with that, you can start increasing the length of your fasts until you’re up to 16 hours or more.
Stay Hydrated: Finally, make sure you’re drinking plenty of water and electrolytes (salt) when doing intermittent fasting and low carb.
Monitor Blood Sugar: It’s important to monitor your blood sugar levels closely.
Listen to Your Body: If you find that you don’t have energy and you feel extremely hungry while you fast, don’t do it.
Choose a Sustainable Approach: You basically have to try them out and pick the ones that you can stick to.
Potential Side Effects
The early stages of both a low-carb diet and intermittent fasting come with side effects, but don’t worry too much. Ride these out, and your body will likely settle into the groove and shake them off. You won’t have bad breath forever! (Your partner and co-workers can breathe easy … as can you!).
Considerations and Limitations
- Not for Everyone: The low-carb intermittent fasting lifestyle isn’t for everyone, so check if it’s safe for you before starting.
- Individual Variability: How much weight you can lose with low carb and intermittent fasting will depend on lots of factors, like how active you are, your age, which intermittent fasting schedule you choose, any medical conditions, and so on.
- Long-Term Sustainability: Research suggests that low-carb diets can work for weight loss, but they aren’t necessarily more effective in the long term than other diets.
Research Findings and Recommendations
Carbohydrate-restricted diets and intermittent fasting (IF) have been rapidly gaining interest among the general population and patients with cardiometabolic disease, such as overweight or obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. However, there are limited expert recommendations for these dietary regimens.
Overweight or Obesity: In adults with overweight or obesity, a moderately-low carbohydrate or low carbohydrate diet (mLCD) can be considered as a dietary regimen for weight reduction.
Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: In adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus, mLCD can be considered as a dietary regimen for improving glycemic control and reducing body weight. In contrast, a very-low carbohydrate diet (VLCD) and IF are recommended against in patients with diabetes.
Hypertension: Furthermore, no recommendations are suggested for VLCD and IF in adults with overweight or obesity, and carbohydrate-restricted diets and IF in patients with hypertension.
Initiating a Fast with Macronutrient Manipulation
A low carbohydrate pre-fast meal can reduce time-to-ketosis in older, sedentary, overweight adults. Altering the time to metabolic switching and the tolerability of a fast may also be accomplished by manipulation of the pre-fast meal. The quantity and the quality of food that is consumed prior to fasting likely impacts the time frame in which metabolic fuel switches from primarily carbohydrate to greater fat utilization [24]. If the pre-fast meal has a lower carbohydrate load, the metabolic switch may occur more quickly, potentially resulting in greater ketone production and utilization earlier during the fast.
Study Design
A randomized crossover design with counterbalanced treatment conditions was used. One condition provided the participant with a commercially available low-carbohydrate shake to initiate the fast. The other intervention provided the participant with a commercially available high-carbohydrate, yet isocaloric, shake to initiate the fast. The effects of these conditions on markers of glycemic control were assessed. These two conditions involved a 24-hour water-only fast beginning at 8:00 am and ending at 8:00 am the following day. Participants completed both fasting conditions outside of the lab with a 7-day washout between each session.
Key Findings
Glucose levels were higher in the HC/LF group 15 min to 2.25 h after fast initiation (p < 0.05 for all). There was a significant condition by time interaction for BHB (F = 3.84, p < 0.01). Nutritional ketosis (BHB ≥ 0.5 mmol/L) was reached on average by 12 h in the LC/HF condition but was not reached at any point during the fast on average in the HC/LF condition.