photo by Mrs Maze

I think Fridays I will set aside some time to cover the other IF of the IF Life focus, the “Instant Freedom” that comes from simplicity in pursuing happiness, health, or whatever you choose in life. I have been a big fan of simplicity for many years and have found it to be a great lifestyle choice. Remember that our lifestyle also has a huge impact on our health, so it is important to focus on.

Below are just a few ways to start (this weekend!) and apply to your lifestyle. You may find that freedom that comes from becoming less attached to things (or needing more things) and finding appreciation for what you have. You really have everything you need to be happy right now, but it is all in your perspective.

• Take a Fast From Technology - TV, cell phones, computers, video game, and other forms of technology. While useful, can take away time from other positive life experiences that you may be missing out on. Go for a walk, go hiking, go have a picnic, go to the beach, or just sit around and take time out for yourself to clear your head and get perspective. It’s your time, so use it wisely. Continue Reading »

photo by nathan

The biggest question people have is how to effectively use IF (intermittent fasting) to achieve their goals and maximum results. These results and goals can vary by each person with fat loss, muscle gain, better health, improved performance in your sport of choice and more. With that comes the individuality of what is a person’s insulin resistance, current body composition (bodyfat%), daily lifestyle, eating habits, macronutrient ratios (carbs/protein/fat), type of exercise program, frequency and volume of training, recovery demands, and so forth. You are unlikely to find 2 people with the same set of parameters and same exact responses to an IF protocol. What does this mean? Well just that we need to start with a basic IF program, and then learn how to monitor results and adjust as we go. Even down the road things will change as you will improve health, lower insulin resistance and maybe change performance and recovery needs. So nothing is ever just one set way. Life is dynamic (always changing and evolving) and so should be the way we see our own journey for health and fitness.

What is IF?

For those that may not be familiar to the term, intermittent fasting is just taking times of fast (no food) and working them into your lifestyle. This can be either daily or a couple times a week (will get into that more below). Benefits include improving insulin resistance (which you will hear alot about as being the #1 key marker in so many health factors including weight loss, muscle gain, performance, recovery, anti-ageing and disease prevention) and giving the body a chance to do some internal cleaning (or housework), which can lead to improved immune function and overall health. If you want to see studies of all the benefits of IF/CR, please the resources page.

Continue Reading »

photo by juliagriggshavey

It seems everyone wants (or needs) to lose weight, but with all the information out there it just gets more and more confusing for the average person to know what to do? Let’s back it up a little and start from the basic understand of how fat loss happens in a simple and easy manner. Once you can master the basics, that is probably 90% of where all your results will come from!

Fat loss first and foremost is a hormonal event, the right hormones telling the body to release the stored “energy” in the fat cells to burn off. It is also important to know that there are also fat “storing” hormones that act in the opposite way, triggering the body to store “future energy” into the fat cells. The body triggers these hormones through many different stimulus like food, drink, exercise, stress and sleep. Fat cells are just the body’s emergency storage tanks afterall. If we didn’t have fat cells, we wouldn’t have survived the famines of the past. It’s a built-in survival mechanism that is getting all the wrong signals today. The body wasn’t designed around constant intake of food, especially the processed and high in sugar kind. (as that is not something that naturally grows on trees!)

Continue Reading »

photo by Mrs Maze

Fasting is defined as willingly abstaining from something for a period of time. It is most popularly used in the terms of food, but really can be applied to anything in life. Fasting not only gives us a chance to get away from something, but also the clarity and silence that may be needed inorder to really figure out what is going on with our lives. Here’s some examples of how to fast daily, put some into practice and who knows what may happen!

• News Fasting: Do we really need constant updates on the hour, second about everything that is going on everywhere? Are we so obsessed with things globally that we neglect to focus on the most important thing we in our life, our daily personal journey? Take time away from the TV, newspaper, internet, radio and do something more enjoyable. Most everything we hear about and read is all negative because that is what sells! Who needs that? I sure don’t. You can still keep updated on current events, just don’t let them run your life. I check the head pages of Yahoo or MSN in the morning and look at the headlines, anything that is important will be there. If I find something I want to read about, I will click on it, if not then I am done for the day. No need to sit through 30 minutes of pure negative energy from the local news. Take control over what information comes into your life, and what does not! Just cause an update is there every 5min, doesn’t mean that we actually need it in our life.

Continue Reading »

While I get the content rolling on this site, let’s first get some input from the resident experts of Intermittent Fasting….those people that have been doing it! I’m one of them, implementing more consistently in my life for probably a good 2 years. Although there probably have been plenty of times fasting took place whether being sick or just cramming for a college exam. But even those times were more unintentional, it seemed that nature had a reason for it (curing sickness, increasing mental clarity…that is what I would like to think my days in college were about!).

There are many advantages to fasting including:

• Helping to give your digestive system a break so it can “clean up” (Imagine your gut as a house and it’s dirty from all the people coming in and out. Now no one is in the house and you get a break from the trafffic, lots more can be accomplished). This is also along the lines of the fact that all health does being in the “gut”. (I hope to have more posts on this in the near future but will leave it at that for now)
• Allows your body to use enzymes and other energy to repair cells, boost immune function, clean up deposits, and other health improving functions.
• Most people are suffering from some level (if not a big level) of insulin resistance which has been linked to increase risks of most all diseases including heart disease, cancers, accelerated ageing, diabetes and more. Giving our body “breaks” from the onslaught of insulin allows it to actually start to become less resistant to it. Imagine listening to loud music all day, pretty soon your hearing will get worse and worse and what is the solution? Turn off the source of the problem, the loud music. Chances are your hearing will come back, as the body can repair and heal (thank goodness cause otherwise we would have all been goners long ago)

Continue Reading »