Firas Zahabi, head trainer at Tristar Gym is someone that I trust when it comes to getting in shape and losing weight.
The best way to lose weight according to him is to simply stick to 1 meal per day.
This is specially true if you’re not a very active person. If you’re on some hard training regimen, sure, eat all day. But most people, and that includes me these days, don’t have the time, or don’t make the time to work out a lot on a daily basis. And for that, he recommend sticking to one meal per day.
Just eat one healthy meal a day. You’ll have no deficiencies or health problems.
After six months, you won’t be hungry anymore.
Japanese cell biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2016 for his research on how cells recycle and renew their content, a process called autophagy. Fasting activates autophagy, which helps slow down the aging process and has a positive impact on cell renewal.
Basically: If you don’t eat for a prolonged period of time, your body will start to eat the “bad” cells. Your body will start destroying and eating these cells first.
Firas also recommends the work of Jason Fung when it comes to fasting.
When is the best time to eat your 1 meal per day?
The best time to eat is in the afternoon.
Jason Fung did a study around this. He compared the effects of eating in the afternoon vs at night.
The group that ate in the afternoon lost more weight. Because when you eat in the afternoon, you have more energy, and you’re going to be more active.
Here’s a video by Jason on internittend fasting by Jason:
Firas on ketogenic diet
The ketogenic diet is also good for people who aren’t very active. You limit your carbs to around 50g per day, and the rest is greens and fats and proteins. Not even fruits.
Because you never spike your insulin, you’re gonna lose fat. But you’ll lose muscle as well, you won’t be bulky. The people who are on Instagram talking about keto and they’re bulky, they’re on steroids.
When you eat carbohydrates, and thus spike your insulin, it makes your fat cells bigger, but it also makes your muscle tissue bigger.
A lot of people who are on a keto diet actually eat carbs too, right before and after an intense workout to promote muscle growth.
When you eat carbohydrates, you fill your glycogen reserves. The carbohydrates go into your muscle. Now if there’s an excess of carbs, after all the muscles are full of glycogen, you’re body is going to turn that into fat.
If your reserves in your muscles are depleted, you have no glycogen in your muscle, and you eat rice right before when you train, your body is going to prioritize that carbohydrate for the intense training you’re about to do, and to grow your muscle mass. It’s called carb timing. You time your carb intake just right.
The best time to eat carbs is before your workout.
Firas himself eats breakfast, lunch, and at 6 o’clock he stops eating. The only thing he takes in after 18:00 is water.
If he wants to lose even more weight, he’ll stop eating at 15:00.
And for him, when he is about to have some wedding or occasion where there’s going to be a lot of food, he’s going to not eat anything for 24 hours before that.