What breaks a fast?

A lot of my clients love incorporating intermittent fasting when learning the benefits of it, especially for those who don’t like eating breakfast or have busy mornings.

Intermittent Fasting (IF) involves fasting for approx 16 hours between your final meal and the following day’s first meal.

The objective of intermittent fasting for body composition is to switch your metabolism into fat-burning mode, which gets activated when insulin levels remain low.

“When you eat, the amount of glucose in your blood (blood sugar) will increase. Then, your pancreas releases insulin, which facilitates the uptake of blood sugar into fat cells.

Insulin also inhibits your body’s ability to use fat as fuel. When insulin levels are high, the body stores glucose as fat while simultaneously shutting down the body’s ability to burn fat. When the glucose runs out, you dip into your fat stores for energy.” (Www.getkion.com)

This is how and what I teach my clients about! Eat as best as you can to keep your insulin levels low, so your body can burn body fat as long as possible.

The purpose of intermittent fasting is it allows you to burn through your body’s glucose and utilize stored fat as fuel and energy.

For something to break an intermittent fast, it needs to elevate blood glucose and insulin levels enough to switch your primary fuel source from fat back to glucose.

As a GENERAL rule of thumb, anything with carbohydrates, sugars, or more than 10 calories will likely spike blood glucose and insulin and break your intermittent fast.

MY RULE I give my clients is stay under 50 calories and no sugar. So, of course, everyone wants to have their favorite coffee drink ☕️ so, I tell them if they have coffee + no calorie sweetener (truvia best) + 1 tbsp heavy whipping cream (no lactose or sugar) = about 30 calories..

An important note: that there are certain nutrients like MCT oil, butter, and ghee that technically break an intermittent fast, but don’t have an effect on blood glucose and insulin. In other words, consuming them doesn’t necessarily take you out of fat-burning mode.