Types of Dieting – Intermittent Fasting

Video Transcription:

Hi, this is Elizabeth Hanawalt. And I am a diabetes educator in Austin, Texas. And I thought I would cover today a little bit just a little bit of details about different diets that you might have heard of over the last couple of years. And the one that makes the most sense right now or the one that's got the most talk is intermittent fasting and basically intermittent fasting as a practice in which individuals fast for 24 hours every other day or they do 16 hours every day.

Now, that that schedule right there, the 16 hour every day is the most common, the most people do. And basically, they you know, they take the last meal the day at eight o'clock and then they don't eat again until the next day at noon. So you've only got eight hours of which to eat. You know, the studies that have been done it, there's long lasting effects as far as metabolic things and weight loss. So the fasting stay, this this is part of the reasons why this diet sometimes works for people in the fasting state.

It results in increased glucagon, secretion from the liver then which in turn promotesglycogenolysis. Now, if you don't know whatglycogenolysis is, that's the break down of the storage form of glucose into glucose. So it releases that free glucose to prevent hypoglycemia. Well, intermittent fasting tends to not do that. And so sometimes that's why intermittent fasting actually doesn't work in the long term. That's why they they've done no long term studies on it. Its short term, it works pretty well.

Long term, they're still having to try to figure out why it doesn't work. But short term, it seems to work pretty well. But like I said, there have been no long term studies on this. So one benefit of it, of restricting feeding times and extending the fasting time, it promotes weight loss. And it's they think it's in you know, it's modulating the gut microbiome. And that's all the good bacteria that grows in your gut all the time.

Unfortunately, over the years, what we've done with our feeding, food supply, feeding, you know, lifestyles and things, we've interrupted that and kind of I don't wanna say disabled it, but it's not what it used to be.

And that's why a lot of different diseases are on the rise. But this tends to get it back to, you know what? It should be another diet. That is, you know, it's been around for a long time.

They go by different names, but a low carb diet and technically low carb diet is 60 to 130 grams of carb a day. Now, most people, when you hear 130 grams, people go, that's a lot of carb. It's like, well, technically, no, it's not. But you'll know this this kind of diet, it is, you know, titled South Beach or the Zone Diet.

I mean, that that was pretty popular, you know, back when. But it you know, it's it's a good diet to be on. It's healthy. If you follow the tenets of that diet, the other one that is kind of hot right now is the ketogenic or the very low carb diet. And this is a diet where less than 50 grams of carb are eaten a day and a lot of people go all the way down to 20.

So, unfortunately, I mean, the reason it works is it it it instead of your fuel being glucose, the fuel is ketones and most of your body can run on that pretty well.

The brain can, but it doesn't like to. It doesn't choose to. It can be dangerous for type one diabetics ketosis.

You know, if if you look at the body in the long run, the body would rather be inanabolism notcatabolism. So it would rather be building things than breaking things down. Yeah, we want to lose weight, but that might not be the best way to do it. As far as our body is concerned, over the long term, most people can't keep it up for the long term because it's basically meat, fat and, you know, non starchy vegetables and, you know, 20 grams a carb.

That could be a slice of bread. And that would be all you'd get for the whole day. So a lot of people cannot do that. Now, the good diets that actually have been shown to work and are really healthy for you are the low CARB Mediterranean diet. And it has been linked to lower mortality and improved a onesie and fasting blood. Blood glucose and what it is, is if you can think of the cultures that live in it along the Mediterranean.

And in that part of the world, they're basically it's a more of a plant-based diet. It's a whole lot less beef and a whole lot more fish.

And it's you know, the fat principally is is olive oil. And there's low levels of saturated fat and limited sweets.

And so that actually would be good for everybody.

The other diet that's very healthy, that's similar to Mediterranean is the dash diet.

And that was of originally same same tennants, basically, but that was developed for hypertension.

But in the long run, the more it's been studied, these two have shown to be on the top as far as the healthiest diets that you can be on for a long term. So, you know, by that point, you don't call it a diet.

It's a way of eating. So if somebody else hasn't has a diet, that's that's real popular right now.

You know, give me give me a holler and I will see what I can do about posting another blog about it.

But thank you and have a good one.