"Eat Stop Eat" by Brad Pilon

• 24 hours of fasting is enough to see impressive weight loss in both men and women, and while the temptation is there to simply continue fasting for longer periods of time, this may be accompanied by unwanted effects.
• 70% of the reduction in insulin levels occurs in the first 24 hours of fasting.
• A 24-hour period of fasting shifts your body from the fed state to the fasted state, which causes large increases in both lipolysis (fat release) and fat oxidation (burning).
• Almost all of the calories you burn in a day result from your basal or resting metabolic rate (the calories it takes just to be alive). Beyond that the only significant way to increase the amount of calories you burn in a day is to exercise.
• A multi-vitamin is generally not necessary if you are eating a balanced diet.
• Any diet book or diet style that claims they have the secret answer or that their way is the only way that works is instantly proven wrong by the millions of people who have successfully lost weight by using alternative methods.
• As a general guideline eat “lean and green”.
• As a general rule of thumb, if you are having difficulties organizing fasting, exercising, and dieting into your schedule you are most likely doing too much of at least one of these activities.
• As far as I can tell, most research being conducted on food and nutrition these days is done simply for the purpose of marketing.
• As long as people profit from us eating, they will always find a way to make us eat.
• As long as you are using your muscles, they will not waste away during short periods of dieting.
• Athletes performing long endurance activities while fasted actually burn more body fat than athletes who are fed.
• Because of the typical way that we eat, we spend almost all of our time in an 'insulin dominant' metabolism.
• Because you do not consume anything while you are fasting, research on fasting contains very little bias from large food company funding.
• Being in a fasted state for short periods of time does not decrease your metabolism.
• Building muscle does take energy, but it happens very slowly.
• By fasting for two days out of seven, you automatically reduce your sugar intake by about 30%, just by missing two 24 hour periods of eating.
• By increasing intensity, volume, or frequency you can ensure that your workouts remain progressive.
• Carrying extra body fat is really bad for us.
• Consider this; most people get noticeably hungry if they have gone more than 2 to 3 hours without eating, but during this time, metabolically speaking, they are still in the fed state.
• Dietary induced weight loss, with or without exercise, can significantly improve insulin sensitivity in both men and women.
• Drink a lot of calorie free fluids; this will help you avoid getting thirsty, which is often mistaken as hunger.
• During a period of fasting, the systems of your body are relying on fat, and the sugar that is stored in your liver for energy. Your muscles still have their own sugar that they need for exercising.
• During fasting our muscles start to switch over and start oxidizing fatty acid for fuel. In other words, when we fast, our muscles turn into fat burning machines.
• During short-term fasting free fatty acids start to be released from your body fat as soon as you are done burning the calories that you consumed during your last meal.
• Eating and storing calories, or not eating and burning calories.
• Eat less, stress less; move more, lift more, and get a good night’s sleep.
• Epinephrine and norepinephrine are both fight or flight hormones, often called adrenaline and noradrenaline. When they are released into the blood stream, they trigger the release of glucose from energy stores, and increase fat burning. They also make you feel awake and alert. Fasting increases the amounts of both of these hormones in your blood.
• Even in the complete absence of food for three days, your metabolism remains unchanged.
• Even when you do feel hungry while fasting, the hunger sensations usually don't last more than a few minutes.
• Exercising for weight loss has been studied quite extensively and repeatedly proven to be less effective than we have been led to believe.
• Fasting, and even the act of simply eating less has been found to have positive effects on lifespan, disease and aging in research using animals.
• Fasting and low calorie diets do not cause you to lose muscle mass if you are resistance training.
• Fasting doesn’t cause you to lose muscle mass provided that you have to be involved in some sort of resistance exercise, such as lifting weights.
• Fasting for 24 hours, once or twice a week may be the easiest way to decrease your calorie intake by 20-30%, without having to sacrifice or restrict what you eat.
• Fasting has little to no effect on most forms of exercise, and exercising while fasting may actually make your fast feel easier by helping to maintain blood glucose levels and glycogen stores.
• Fasting is the simplest method our body has for maintaining its caloric balance.
• Fasting = not eating and burning calories
• Fat burning is the goal of every diet. You should never lose weight without losing fat.
• Fed = eating and storing calories
• Food has very little to do with your metabolism. In fact, your bodyweight is much more closely tied to your body weight than anything else.
• For healthy people wanting a simple and effective way to lose weight, the combination of short-term fasting and exercise is an easy way to create a caloric deficit and has no negative impact on our metabolism or our muscle.
• For most people you fully enter the fasted state, using mostly body fat as a fuel, by about 24 hours since you finish your last meal.
• For short periods of time, every diet will work if it recommends some form of caloric restriction.
• For the most part, I believe that hunger as you and I understand it is a conditioned response created through a mix of tastes, smells, habits, and social influence.
• For the most part, I believe that hunger is a learned response.
• glucagon = fat burning
• Health claims sell food products.
• I believe the perceived need to eat before a workout or a strenuous activity is more of a psychological need than it is a physical need.
• I do not recommend extending fasts by a considerable amount past the 24-hour mark because I believe they become too intrusive on a person’s lifestyle.
• If an idea is published enough times, and if enough people accept it, it becomes true, no matter how inaccurate it really is.
• If [crazy diet] rules were actually true, then Lap Band surgery wouldn’t work. But it does, and it works very well. It is extremely effective simply because it makes people eat less.
• If fasting twice a week helped you reduce your weight, then fasting once a week may be able to help you maintain that new weight for years on end.
• I find sparkling water tends to calm a growly stomach.
• If you follow a calorie restricted diet you will lose weight, guaranteed.
• In actuality you're body begins to burn significantly more fat after approximately the 18 hour mark. This effect begins to level off after 30 hours.
• In dozens of published peer reviewed scientific studies, short-term intermittent fasting has been found to have the following health benefits:
• decreased body fat and body weight
• maintenance of skeletal muscle mass
• decrease blood glucose levels
• decreased insulin levels and increased insulin sensitivity
• increased lipolysis and fat oxidation
• increased uncoupling protein 3 mRNA
• increased norepinephrine and epinephrine levels
• increased glucagon levels
• increased growth hormone levels
• In my opinion, no matter how strong your willpower, it will eventually be overridden by the power of marketing, advertising, and the lure of great tasting food.
• In North America, with the exception of fasting for religious purposes, the practice of fasting has all but disappeared.
• In order for any form of physical training to positively affect your body you must balance the right amount of stress with the appropriate amount of rest or recovery.
• In order to burn body fat, insulin levels must be very low.
• In order to fast for 24 hours, you can simply eat as you normally would until 6pm on one day, and then fast until 6pm the following day. By fasting in this manner you manage to eat every day, however you also manage to take a 24 hour break from eating. More importantly, you manage to break the horrible habit of constantly being in the fed state and thereby resetting your metabolic balance between being fed and fasted.
• I noticed a funny thing about the [fitness/supplement] industry; if an idea is published enough, and if enough people accepted it, it became true, no matter how inaccurate it really was.
• insulin = fat storage
• Insulin is one of the most important hormones in your body.
• Insulin is the dominant hormone in the fed state, which causes you to store food calories in the form of fat and glycogen. Glucagon is one of the dominant hormones in the fasted state the causes fat burning.
• Insulin is the key that drives glucose (sugar) out of your blood and into your fat and muscle cells.
• It is a dietary truism that you can't take off in a day what you put on over years.
• It is virtually impossible for us to always be consciously in control of what we eat and how much we eat. There are just too many environmental factors working against us!
• It seems to be irrelevant whether protein is consumed before, during, or after exercise.
• It would be a huge financial disaster for many food companies, if all at once, everyone in the United States decided not to eat for one day out of the week. This is why the food and nutrition industry is willing to suggest many different theories on how to lose weight, as long as it means we continue buying and consuming foods.
• Juice is high in calories, so it is like drinking liquid food, and much less filling.
• Losing body fat is a great way to improve overall levels of testosterone in men.
• Losing weight can be accomplished using a multitude of different diets, as long as the diet creates some sort of decrease in caloric intake.
• Much to the dismay of food companies, you can't put fasting into a pill and sell it.
• My personal opinion is that the general rules of eating "lean and green" with lots of fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices is an ideal compliment to the Eat Stop Eat lifestyle, but you can incorporate any diet style you wish.
• Never be afraid to adjust the amount you workout or how often you fast in order to maintain your energy levels and overall feelings of health.
• No one really wants to diet, we just want to look better with less fat on our bodies.
• Nothing but good things will happen if you incorporate more fruits and vegetables into your diet and cut back on the sugar, but do whatever is within your comfort zone.
• Not only does reducing your caloric intake not cause your metabolism to slow down, it also does not result in a loss of your hard-earned muscle. There is one imperative rule that goes along with this statement: you have to be involved in some sort of resistance exercise, like lifting weights.
• Nutritionally speaking the human being can only be fed or fasted. By saying this, I mean that we are in the process of eating and storing the calories that come from our food, or burning these same calories as we burn stored energy. This energy is stored in the form of fat and glycogen (the storage form of sugars and carbohydrates in our bodies).
• Obesity is not created by one single macronutrient in our diet. In fact, it’s not the diet at all. In my opinion, the number one cause of our obesity epidemic is abundance. There is simply too much food available for us to consume.
• Often times, periods of fasting have been associated with being more alert, ambitious, competitive and creative. Not only that, but you are no longer having to continuously plan your day around the timing of your next meal.
• Our bodies are designed to eat food when food is available and use the calories we stored when food is scarce. These are the only two options.
• Our entire style of eating in North America has been molded to support the interests of major food companies.
• Our metabolism, or more correctly our metabolic rate, is based on the energetic costs of keeping the cells in our bodies alive.
• People with vested interests in selling consumable products have no interest in studying fasting.
• Prevention is better than a cure.
• Profits are the cause of our weight problem, food is just the tool.
• Research completed back in 1987 found that a three and a half day fast caused minimal impairments in physical performance measures such as isometric strength, anaerobic capacity, or aerobic endurance. This means fasting does not negatively affect anaerobic short-burst exercise such as lifting weights, nor does it have a negative effect on typical 'cardio' training.
• Research does seem to suggest that children do better in basic school tests after they have had breakfast as opposed to when they skip breakfast.
• Research has found that any effect that brief periods of fasting has on exercise performance is small.
• Research has shown that short-term fasting can increase growth hormone levels by nearly six fold.
• Research has shown that you will lose 2-3 pounds every time you fast. This is not all fat. Much of this is extra body water being lost. You are also losing fat, but it's a slow and steady process.
• Research suggests that animals age slower and live longer when they consume less calories.
• Resistance training is an essential part of the Eat Stop Eat lifestyle.
• Resistance training must be occurring at some point for your muscle mass to be preserved in the face of a caloric deficit.
• Simply put, fasting allows your body to take a break from storing fat, and start burning it!
• Since creatine is not metabolized for energy and does not raise insulin levels, taking creating on your fasting days is perfectly acceptable.
• Spend less time stressing over the types of food you are eating.
• Testosterone levels are actually the highest during the morning after an overnight fast.
• The act of eating can increase your metabolism by a very small amount, this is referred to as 'the thermic effect of food.' This increase in metabolism is a result of the extra energy your body uses to digest and process the food. 
• The amount of time an athlete can exercise while fasted before becoming exhausted is less than the amount it takes for a fed athlete to become exhausted.
• The anabolic effects of resistance training appear to last at least 24 hours.
• The average body fat for men is 25%.
• The best definition of fasting is the following: The act of willingly abstaining from some or all food, and in some cases drink, for a predetermined period of time.
• The best diet is the one you enjoy and can stay on the longest.
• The bottom line is food has virtually nothing to do with your metabolism. In fact, your metabolism is much more closely tied to your bodyweight. If your weight goes up or down, so does your metabolism. The only other thing that can affect your metabolism is exercise and weight loss.
• The cause of our obesity problem is that we our failing to realize that we're looking for the answer in the wrong place.
• The combination of caloric restriction with resistance exercises has been proven to be very effective at preserving your muscle mass.
• The Eat Stop Eat lifestyle is simply taking a 24-hour break from eating once or twice per week and a commitment to a workout routine.
• The exact details of what equipment and program you use and how you use them probably does not matter too much as long as you are sufficiently stressing your muscles.
• The idea of people eating less is bad for business.
• The key to making Eat Stop Eat work for you is self-control.
• The key to [preserving] muscle mass is resistance exercise; your diet has almost nothing to do with it!
• The key word in this definition is "willingly" as it is the difference between fasting and starving.
• The minute your fast is over, simply eat as you normally would. No extra rewards, no giant portions, simply return to exactly the way you would normally eat.
• The minute you start fasting (stop eating) your body slowly begins to enter the fasted state.
• The more lean mass you have, the higher your metabolism.
• The number one thing you need to remember to do is to drink a lot of fluids; this will help you avoid getting thirsty, which is often mistaken as hunger.
• The one supplement that is proven to increase strength and muscle mass in the long term is creatine monohydrate.
• The only other thing [besides lean body mass] that can affect your metabolism is exercise and movement.
• The primary role of glucagon is to maintain your blood sugar levels while you fast. It does this by shifting the body into 'burning' mode.
• The problem is, you simply can’t follow a restrictive diet for a long period of time.
• The purpose of the fast is to add breaks to your normal eating routine.
• There are a few very important steps in the process of burning fat. First, your fat has to be 'released' from your fat stores. Scientists call this lipolysis, and it involves the process of releasing the fatty acids that make up your fat, and moving these fatty acids into your bloodstream. After a series of steps that allow these fatty acids to get to the mitochondria (the furnace of every cell in your body) these fatty acids go through a process called oxidation. This is the final step of fat burning--once this has happened your body fat has now been used for energy. It is gone and it cannot come back.
• There are only two absolute truths when it comes to nutrition and weight loss:
• Prolonged caloric restriction is the only proven nutritional method of weight loss.
• Human beings (nutritionally speaking) can only be in one of the following states: fed or fasted.
• There is a growing body of research that suggests that many people may be addicted to sugar, and that sugar can have psychoactive attributes similar to many drugs.
• There is an obvious caloric need for muscle building, but it does not seem to be any higher than your daily caloric needs.
• There is little evidence to suggest muscle loss should be a concern during short term fasting.
• There is no magic way to end your fast. The absolute best thing you can do is simply pretend your fast never happened and begin eating in the exact way you would normally eat at that specific time of day.
• There is no scientific evidence to prove that breakfast is any more important than lunch or dinner for adults.
• There seem to be two basic nutritional requirements to ensure muscle growth:
• caloric adequacy
• protein adequacy
• The result of most scientific research seems to do nothing more than add to the already confused and muddled nutritional theories and diet recommendations that exist, and the cause is clear as day--research on nutrition and food is no longer conducted to improve our health and well being. It is conducted as a method to get us to by one product over another, and it's all based on us being 'constant consumers'.
• The role of insulin is the storage of nutrients. Insulin is the primary signal that tells your body to store the energy from your food as body fat and glycogen.
• The success of any diet can be measured by how closely people can follow the rules of the diet and how long they can maintain caloric restriction.
• The sugar in your muscles is used up quickly during high intensity exercises like weight training and sprinting.
• The “thermic effect of food” is the increase in metabolic rate as a result of the process of digestion.
• The three best ways to get natural increases in growth hormone are fasting, exercise, and deep sleep.
• The true feeling of hunger is difficult to explain and I’m not sure many of us have ever really experienced it. Most likely, what we call hunger is really a learned reaction to a combination of metabolic, social, and environmental cues to eat.
• Think of all the diet suggestions you know. They all rely on the continued intake of food. Whatever the recommendation, it always revolves around us constantly consuming food and food supplements.
• This is the problem with nutrition today--it's made out to be so complicated and confusing that nobody knows what to believe.
• Unless you have drug-treated diabetes, hypoglycemia just isn’t that prevalent in healthy people.
• Using short-term flexible intermittent fasting combined with resistance training remains one of the most effective and simple ways to lose weight and reduce your body fat.
• View every single fast you complete as a small win towards your weight loss goals.
• We are constantly eating and storing food and we never really give ourselves a chance to burn it off.
• Well I can tell you that there are indeed two absolute truths when it comes to nutrition and weight loss.
• We lose weight when we are not eating.
• We should forget the idea of losing weight and focus on losing fat.
• When insulin levels are high, you are in storage mode. What’s more, when insulin is elevated, you are unable to release fat from your fat stores.
• When you eat, the insulin levels in your body increase.
• While the amount of time it takes before a fasted athlete becomes exhausted is decreased, it actually has positive effects on these athletes fat burning.
• While the common belief is that you need to “eat big to get big”, recent research has shown that any extra calories consumed above your estimated daily needs do not contribute to muscle gain. In fact, almost every single extra calories can be accounted for in fat mass gains.
• “willingly abstaining” is the key difference between fasting and starving.
• With as little as two fasting periods added to your week, you can create the equivalent of a 20% reduction in Calories.
• With ESE you should be able to lose weight at a rate of 1-2 pounds per week.
• Women enter fasted state metabolism quicker than men.
• You can’t put fasting in a pill and sell it.
• You can workout on your fasting days without having to worry about post-workout nutrition.
• You may also find it helpful to stay busy while fasting.
• Your ability to keep weight off is directly related to how well you maintained your lean body mass while you were losing weight.
• Your ability to keep weight off is directly related to your ability to maintain a flexible amount of dietary restraint.
• Your muscle cells have the ability to store sugar as something called 'glycogen.' The interesting thing about this process is that your muscles lack the ability to pass this stored sugar back into the bloodstream. This basic rule goes for all your muscles.
• Your muscle cells have the ability to store sugar in a modified form called glycogen.
• Your once or twice per week fasts are meant to be a replacement for traditional dieting.
• Your workout routine should revolve around the simplest and easiest methods that get you the results you want.
• Your workouts need to be progressive if you want to gain or even keep your muscle mass.
• You should eat in the way that fits your lifestyle best, while allowing you to keep your calories under control and still be able to eat the foods you enjoy.