Intermittent Fasting (IF)

I’ve never really thought of myself as a diet person. With degrees in Exercise Science and Physical Therapy, I have always thought training was more important. Also I came at exercise from the thin side, starting weight training as a teenager, who was 37 lb underweight (105 pounds at 5’6″). So I understand the desire and what it takes to bulk up with bodybuilding and weightlifting, but never so much what it takes to lose weight. But it’s truth that time does becomes limited as life’s responsibilities grow, and after some injuries prevented me from lifting weight like I would like, I became overweight, and not the muscular kind, and I thought, “OK, I guess this is how it is.”

However, reading the research I review below, “Eat Less for More Muscle,” it woke me to the health, and still MUSCLE GAINING benefits of Intermittent Fasting. As of now, I have been doing IF continuously since 2015, so I’m pretty good at it. I’ve tried many variations, I know what to expect, what makes IF easier, harder, work and not work. I was doing IF the entire time I was developing SpineFitYoga, including when SpineFitYoga evolved from just Spine Rehab, into a total body strength and stamina system. As I made SpineFitYoga ever faster and more efficient, culminating in SpineFitYoga Muscle-5 (M5), my 5-minute exercise program, I had to get my fasting more on point. Incorporating several ideas together, I came up with the idea of Protein Sparing Intermittent Fasting (PSIF). I wanted to see, “what can ultimately be done” muscle and fitness wise, with only 5 minutes of exercise. psIF, so far, being what I have found to be the best synergy.

From my old physical therapy blog I wrote a fair amount on IF, but three articles stand out and are listed below.

But before going further I think it’s worth pointing that I don’t think everyone should do IF. If you are already at or near optimal weight, and you are happy with your diet, and it’s healthy, congratulations because that that’s a hard thing to do these days. Thus I’m not comfortable telling you anything that might unbalance what’s a finely tuned machine. IF is what works best for me, and I think it’s what will work best for a lot of people who have failed at regular dieting, and who want to eat typical American portions and not look like it. However, if you are not one of us ‘disordered eaters,’ I wouldn’t worry about it, and would focus on the other components of SpineFitYoga, either for neck and back pain relief, with P5 and M5, or total body strength, power, and stamina training with just M5 by itself.

Likewise if one is underweight, M5 should help gain strength and muscle without any big dietary changes other than maybe increasing calories and protein. I really don’t know if IF is good for gaining muscle mass if you are underweight. I know it CAN work, as I have successfully bulked with a 4-hour eating window, just to see if I could. But I don’t know that IF would be my first choice for others. I wouldn’t say not to either, but if you desire, test and see using the scale, ideal, optimal weight, and M5 performance as your guides.

I like to think of SpineFitYoga as a modular Gestalt. A system where the whole is certainly better than the sum of its parts, but if some of your parts, like diet are already good to go, there is not a lot to gain by focus on that aspect. On the contrary if you think IF can help you, or you’re just curious, the following are my more important blogs (all free) and psIF (member only content, that’s only $20 for a year, with M5 and P5 included).