Ramadan Fasting :- (how ramadan fasting helps to lose weight?)
Intermittent fasting and Ramadan fasting:-
They are quite different it's almost like comparing apples to oranges because intermittent fasting is awesome but there's one big glaring difference between intermittent fasting and ramadan fasting.
In Ramadan you are dry fasting so you are putting yourself in this hypertonic state where your body is really seeking out fluids which triggers a whole different kind of autophagy and it triggers a whole different response that we have to pay attention.
Now there was an interesting paper that was just published not that long ago published in the complementary medicine research journal that took a look at an extreme.
How Ramadan fasting helps in weight loss?
I know it's a lot more than a typical ramadan fast five-day dry fast but what it did is it illuminated some of the things that are going on within the body because it's the first formal look at dry fasting so now i'm able to provide better context for those that are going through ramadan or fasting.
Because a lot of times end up happening is you would think that someone would have this ideal body composition change during ramadan but oftentimes you find it's the opposite and the reason behind that is well they're still getting this bolus of calories coming in they're just getting it in at one sitting and they're getting it in.
You know after it's dark which is not ideal for body composition to begin with but then there's other things that are just compounding it so we can make some simple changes here
Now i want to jump in and talk about like one very important thing because i know the attention span of people is small and the very important thing i need you to know is that you do not need to be taking in any form of electrolytes during a dry fast during a ramadan fast.
limit the intake of sodium:-
Sodium levels chloride levels and potassium levels stay very elevated during a dry fast i didn't say elevated but they say stable okay we have this thing called vasopressin.
Vasopressin is also known as antidiuretic hormone and what it does is it sort of hijacks the water that would normally be coming from our kidneys to our bladder and reroutes it back to our body because it knows we're somewhat dehydrated as a result of this it's also rerouting sodium back to our body.
So if you were to like take a salt tablet or anything like that you could really skyrocket your electrolyte levels and throw things off additionally you do not want to be taking electrolytes right after your fast either.
Take plenty of water:-
Now i want to just touch on the most important stuff first after you're fast you really should go slow with how much water you bring in.
You should intake 300 milliliters or so every hour for a couple of hours and i know it's hard because you're going to bed shortly thereafter but i would rather you to consume 300 to 500 milliliters of water in shorter sense.
Then completely dilute your electrolytes right before going into another fast because what's going to happen is your body's going to have this natural response to urinate after you drink water which is going to change your electrolyte levels once again.
So then you're going into your next fast the next day in an already diluted state then you're having a decrease in water volume so you're going to really throw off electrolytes.
Consuming Dates:-
Then i' m going to get into some more details of what's happening during your actual dry fast.
When you break your fast i know that it is generally customary to have dates i know it's generally customary to you know enjoy food a little bit but i just encourage you to do one very important thing.
Its okay with you having a little bit of dates as a matter of fact i 'm okay with that combination of fructose and glucose but i really would not exceed three dates if you can i know it's easy to just go ham on them just have a bunch of them but if you can limit it to three you actually do yourself a good favor you get a nice little insulin spike and you get a nice little fructose ride which does not spike insulin and allows you get a little bit more out of it.
Protein Intake:-
When you break your fast try to break it with lean protein of some kind now if you are vegetarian or if you are vegan i would recommend like a simple lean protein shake made with almond milk or coconut milk first.
its very simple and then an hour or so later then go ahead and have a little bit more variety. If you eat meat i would recommend leaning into fish and poultry so you can get your thymine levels restored.
Diet Recommendations for Ramadan:-
I would recommend you keep it as bland as possible. I know this might not be the most fun thing to hear because i know you want to enjoy food but the reality is i see way too many people just completely blowing their diets and ruining their body composition and taking months to get their metabolism back.
I would say the 30 days of ramadan is your opportunity to get in the best shape of your life .You just need to modify things.
1- I do not recommend that you have this massive like consumption of carbs and fats consolidated you really should allocate your first meal towards being just that protein.
2- your second meal an hour later towards being a little bit of carbs and protein your dates maybe a little bit of quinoa, maybe a little bit of tef ,maybe a little bit of some gluten-free starch of some kind and again more protein.
3- Then your third meal if it's not too late at night that's when you bring the fats in because what that's going to do is that's going to trigger what's called cholecystokinin cck
It's going to start this sort of metabolic digestive response that's going to allow you to be satiated but i also want to make sure that you are getting in enough soluble fiber this is so critical for that short chain fatty acid production now for two reasons.
one you need your fiber okay i don't want you just going cold turkey off of fiber because then you're going to be constipated the whole time
Secondly and actually even more importantly is because that short chain fatty acid production that you get from good soluble fiber like flax , chia , artichoke like asparagus that actually helps your body utilize glucose better which means when you do come off of your fast your body is going to suck up the nutrients better.
Workout Tips for Ramadan:-
Now i know i' m breezing through this really quick but i wanted to give you the most information possible in this article. your workouts ideally since you are dry fasting you would actually be better off getting a very mild workout towards the end of your fast.
Where you know that right after your fast you can hydrate and you can actually consume some foods.
when you are dry fasting and ultimately going to be at the end of a dry fast which means you already have a 600 percent increase in cortisol during a dry fast.
That is huge there's a huge stress response but i also don't want you to go through your whole period not working out i understand that so what do most people do well they'll usually work out early in the morning in a fed state and then go into their fast completely just depriving themselves of nutrition after their workout.
Why not flip the tables a little bit do a mild workout so that after your workout you're also breaking your fast you'll be extra insulin sensitive because you're at the end of a fast .You'll be extra insulin sensitive because you just worked out and the protein that you consume when you break your fast is going to allow you to actually like build some muscle from it.
Then the food that you're consuming after that is actually going to have a stronger metabolic drive to trigger some protein synthesis but again i cannot over stress you are going to be dehydrated your cortisol levels are high i would not recommend you do anything high intensity.
What i would recommend is focus on time under tension do slower moves where you're focusing on muscle focusing on toning focusing on that trust me you're gonna have plenty of time to hit your cardio later.
If you wanted to do cardio i would recommend you do cardio upon waking just in a fasted state and then eat something prior to going into your fast so cardio and if you sweat then you may want to consider taking in some electrolytes for the food selection during your eating period there are honestly a lot of things on the table.
Once you get through that phase after breaking your fast i put a link down below for what is called thrive market who i talk about all the time because i have specific fasting bundles and keto bundles and just specific shopping lists for people that are doing intermittent fasting and keto and stuff like that .
Iodine for your thyroid function which i would highly recommend you consume seaweed snacks during your eating period also like flax crackers ,chia things that i' m talking about so do recommend them.
Food Intake before Fast:-
Prior to starting your fast i would recommend that you do not have a whole lot of veggies and a whole lot of fiber in the morning.
so if it was a traditional fast where you were hydrated i would actually want that because it would keep you satiated but during a dry fast what i don't want to have happen is have water drawn into the intestines,. soluble fiber just as the name implies is soluble water. soluble draws water in you need to hang on to every little bit of water that you can your body is in a very stressed out state trying to get water in.
So we do not want that getting drawn to the digestive process because that is likely not going to reabsorb once it is gelatinized and taking that chia soluble fiber in the morning it's there.
It's not getting reabsorbed it's more than likely just going to get past this stool so the fiber can come in later on after you break your fast not the morning prior to your fast even though it might keep you quote unquote satiated.
Food Intake after Fast:-
So cinnamon is an insulin mimicker .it is has something that's called a methyl hydroxy chalcone polymer and it mimics insulin allows the cell to take up glucose better so you're getting very insulin sensitive at the end of a dry fast or any fast right.
So when you eat your food you want to make sure that your body is able to suck up that glucose and do something with it rather than keeping your glucose levels elevated so cinnamon can just kind of help modulate that a little bit.
So add it to your dishes add it to whatever i mean if you're going to just put it on your dates just something to kind of help out your body with utilizing that glucose a little bit better a question that comes up a lot as well is going to be
Intake of Supplements:-
what supplements to take i wouldn't really recommend adding anything new to your protocol but if you want to get i guess a little bit of extra sort of metabolic benefit you could try taking in what is called coenzyme.
Q10 supplement:-
Q10 which can just help out your body with manufacturing energy during this process so during Ramadan the benefit is you're probably developing a lot of what is called mitochondrial efficiency.
You're developing an ability for your cells to manufacture energy outside of food it's getting more efficient okay you're getting more mitochondrial density.
One of the ways that you can improve how your body creates energy with this newfound mitochondrial density is utilizing coenzyme q10 taking that during your feeding period might not be a bad idea.
Magnesium:-
Another thing you probably want to take in is going to be magnesium now i know i said don't take a bunch of electrolytes but that means don't add in a bunch of extra sodium
i would say magnesium would probably be an important one because if you get sodium potassium and chloride stay relatively elevated but some of the other ones tend to drop because we oxidize magnesium like crazy.
We don't necessarily oxidize a bunch of sodium but magnesium is required in over 300 different enzymatic processes within the body so as our body is up regulating a lot of things because of autophagy related to dry fasting.
Well then of course we're going to burn up a lot of magnesium and oxidize it so that one might be something so like a longer chain dye magnesium melts that takes a little bit longer to break down that would be something that i would consider adding in another one that's very important is going to be algol oil or fish oil.
Fish oil:-
Now i understand that with fish oil a lot of people that are doing ramadan are going to be vegetarian or vegans they can't do regular fish oil
I would recommend algal oil what it is is an algae source of omega-3 that is still going to get you what is called the docus hexanoic acid that you need for good brain function my bigger concern is after 30 days of ramadan what's going to happen to your omega-6 omega-3 ratios within your body.
your omega-6 ratios are going to go way up because you're consuming a bunch of grains and starches and whatever you can get your hands on and probably process food in a lot of cases and you're not getting enough omega-3s to balance it so i would tremendously upregulate how much you take in the way of an omega-3.
I would recommend taking like five to eight thousand milligrams like five to eight grams of good quality fish oil or algal oil that'll help you out a lot.
Autophagy condition during Fasting:-
let's jump in really quick to a specific kind of autophagy that's occurring during dry fasting .so autophagy is where you have cellular recycling that occurs the cellular recycling is awesome during any kind of fasting but with dry fasting it's accelerated.
It's a much more intense dry fast sort of autophagy because the body has no choice but to instead of just recycling unused components of proteins it kind of freaks out and recycles all components of proteins in an effort to trigger a better cell structure.
So you have a lot more autophagy happening in a shorter amount of time it's called the hypertonic autophagy and there is a study published in the journal autophagy that found that it completely rewires how a struct cell structure is built
So my point in saying this is in 12 to 16 hours of dry fasting you're probably getting the same amount of autophagy that someone would get in like 48 hours of wet fasting that's somewhat speculated but based on the research it's kind of what you see .
Dietary tips for Ramadan:-
So in order to kind of continue this autophagy on and get more benefit out of this after you're done with your 30 days of Ramadan.
-I would highly recommend you consume a lot of green tea.
-I would recommend you consume a lot of ginger.
-I would recommend you consume a lot of turmeric
what that's going to do is that's going to help stabilize and help that autophagy process even more so you can potentially carry on some of the benefits and then i would recommend that you implement intermittent fasting a couple days per week
So that way your body's going to be a little bit more adapted to this whole process next time around your body's used to it and then when you throw in the wrench of making it a dry fast versus a typical intermittent fast ,wet fast well then you're going to be in a lot better position.
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