After reading my brief summary of some human metabolism basics, a reader asks:

I am about 50 pounds overweight just bought an exercise bike. Should I fast 16 hours a day and eat during the 8 hours window to keep my insulin lower and start the fat burning process?

Also should I exercise while fasted to burn more fat before my insulin spikes. Thank you for your post very informative and made a lot of sense and changed my out look on eating!

Dear Reader:

Glad ya liked it.

If you are fifty pounds overweight, you've probably tried all the traditional bluepilled advice by this time. "Just eat less and move more, bro! It's like... thermo-dianetics, bro! It can't not work!". So, presumably you're sick of it. Time to stop treating your body like a passive box that holds calories, and treat it like an active engine that does stuff.

The basic idea here is to spend time in a low-insulin state, so that you can get energy-storing compounds out of your cells. So the lower your insulin levels, and the longer you spend with low insulin levels, the more opportunity you have to burn both the stuff that makes you ugly (subcutaneous fat), and the stuff that's going to kill you (liver fat and pancreas fat). Fasting puts you in this state without lowering your metabolic rate. (Because primitive man would truly have been fucked if he couldn't chase meatbeasts while he was hungry.)

Many physicians who recommend this approach will start their patients with an 8-hour eating window each day, followed by 16 hours of fasting. This is a good start, and gets your body used to the idea. You will be hungry at first, and, since you are probably obese, you be more hungry... you may feel like you are going to die, or to give in and start shoving bagels in your face.

The thing to keep in mind is that courage is knowing the difference between the hard and the impossible. The reason you're not going to give up is that you know that this bad period will be very brief. Soon, you won't be hungry anymore.... because your body doesn't get hungry.

Your stomach doesn't get hungry... it is perfectly happy being empty. It only has stretch receptors to tell you when it is full. It's your blood that gets hungry. And if you don't feed it when it's hungry, your insulin will go low, your glucagon will go high, and your fat cells will unpack the cooler and serve it up a sandwich.

You will know this is happening when you get hungry, and then it goes away again.

When you are fasting, stick to water, coffee, or tea. Anything non-caloric, but avoid artificial sweeteners; they can spike insulin, and some are unhealthy in other ways.

When you are eating, eat big meals and stop, rather than grazing constantly. Avoid bad stuff like processed food and sugar/fructose. But don't consciously try to eat less calories overall. Don't leave the table hungry. It's okay for your insulin to go high when you eat. Insulin is not the devil, high insulin is not bad. Insulin just needs to have the chance to go low instead of staying high all the time.

Pretty soon this will be comfortable. Then you can slowly raise the time limit as your body adapts, either by shrinking the eating time window, or skipping it once a week... whatever is most comfortable for you.

Then you can combine this with more good strategies like cutting carbohydrates, building muscle mass, doing cardio work, whatever. I recommend doing your lifting during eating windows, because high insulin assists muscle growth, and, while your body WILL NOT cannibal muscle to any great degree until your bodyfat gets low, your muscles WILL be weaker during the time you are fasting, simply on account of less fuel. The same applies to HIIT.

During fasting periods, you can walk or ride a bike or something if you want. But remember that the king of fat burning is not exercise, it's basal metabolic rate. The average human, depending on size, burns enough calories over the course of a day to run 6 to 10 miles. That's not including your regular activity. That's just lying still in bed keeping your body temperature up, your heart beating, your lungs breathing, etc.

So exercise helps, but above all, you wanna keep that metabolic rate high... so LIFT. Muscle mass burns that excess fat just by existing.

So, to summarize:

1. Start with an eat8/fast16 model.
2. No sugar, no alcohol.
3. During the 8, eat big meals, not little snacks.
4. During the 8, lift.
5. During the 16, non-caloric liquids only.
6. When 8/16 is a comfortable routine, experiment with finding ways to stretch that fast that your body likes. Shrink the eating window, or add one or more full-day fasts to your week.
7. Add in keto or low-carb if your body likes it.
8. Keep it at a pace you can sustain. Just like in lifting, the discipline that makes you go steadily is more important than the discipline that makes you go hard.
9. Ignore people who are angry that you can get results without suffering. If they want to suffer, they can go squirt pepper spray in their eyes or something. The red pill is about winning through knowing real shit.

Good luck.