4 ms·

Is fasting not a type of diet?

• arcticbull 4y ago
  Diet generally implies caloric restriction whereas fasting is complete abstention. There are significant biological differences - for instance, when you restrict calories your metabolism slows down as much as 15-25% over the first three weeks (hence the plateau many dieters experience). Fasting on the other hand raises your metabolic rate up to ~15% for the first 5 days of a water fast. Further, production of HGH is inhibited by consuming any food and while fasting it can increase 3-12X. Autophagy is inhibited by the consumption of any protein (via mTOR). If you want to treat fasting as the special case diet where input=0, I certainly understand that. However, the physiological processes of caloric restriction are quite different than total abstention.