Hey everybody, this is Mike Uhrlaub with another episode of Power Your Life. I am sure that you have tried to lose weight at some point in your life. You have probably tried the latest fad diets or crazy new workout routine and if you are like me it failed. Over the years I have tried many things to lose weight and get healthier and the problem is that most of these things are not sustainable. The one thing that I have found to be both sustainable and easy is Intermittent Fasting. So today I want to share with you the fast and easy way to use intermittent fasting to lose weight. But before we get into that I had something happen this last week that I wanted to share with you.
Last week I had the opportunity to help my church youth group. It was such an amazing and awesome experience. We had a great time and the topic for discussion that night was true. Strength comes from the inside out. The question we discussed was how do you strengthen your spirit? This was very thought-provoking for me because as a physical therapist we all know how to strengthen our bodies. Most of us know how to strengthen our minds, but how do we strengthen our spirit? Why is that important? As we talked about this, I thought about all of the times I had to draw upon the strength inside myself to overcome a difficult time or difficult experience.
December of 1989
When I was 18, I joined the US Army. In December of 1989, I was sent to the Army Airborne School in Fort Benning, Georgia. I really wanted to be a paratrooper. I remember when we pulled in the sheer size of the training towers, intimidating jumpmasters called the black hats, and just the legacy of the US Army Airborne. It had me wondering if I would be able to make it through. Let’s face it jumping, out of a perfectly good airplane really doesn’t make much sense. I probably should of have had my head examined for even taking this on. But the fact was, I was there and there was no way I wanted to fail.
I quickly found out the issue wasn’t so much the physical challenge of the school, but the mental challenge and fear. Fear can do strange things to you. Many of my fellow soldiers in class with me quit; Many of them quit because of that fear and the black hats. They used that fear to separate those who had the inner strength to make the jumps from those who didn’t. Every single day, I still remember this, I would wake and would wonder, am I going to make it, is this the day I’m going to quit? Is this the day I’m going to be successful? What’s going to happen? Those questions would go over and over in my head. You would see folks, guys that were going on the runs with you were dropping out and guys you didn’t think should be doing it and they weren’t making it.
What Are You Made Of?
You start to question yourself, start to see what you’re really made of. I found out all I had to do was focus on taking it one day at a time. I had to look deep within myself and draw upon the inner strength of my spirit. We all have it. I had to draw upon that every single day, day after day. There was no looking ahead, I couldn’t think about what’s going to happen in tower week? What’s going to happen in jump week? I couldn’t think about that. All I could think about was what am I doing right here, right now? What do I have to do in order to make it through?
You see, the inner part of us that leads us to do what is right. That leads us to do what I like to call the next right thing. That’s the part I had to tap into and listen to.
Listen To The Inner Voice
As we progress through ground week, then on to tower week, and then under jump week, the anticipation and fear that I felt increased. But we were getting top-notch training. The faith and training I was given by the elite black hats as I successfully passed each week helped tremendously. Then the day arrived when I was in the harness shed, they put our shoots on and walked us out onto the tarmac. We went up the rear of that C130 and I just get goosebumps even thinking about it to this day. I walked up the back of that plane and we sat down. You’re looking all around you and see all these guys you’ve been training with. You all have your shoots on then all of a sudden, the back of that plane closes, you feel that C130 rolling down the airstrip.
You can hear the rumbling of the engines and you can feel that plane lift off. I knew right then that I was at the point of no return. Then I wondered again, can I really do this? Am I really going to be able to answer that call? When the green light goes, am I going to be able to go out that door? Then something funny happened as we were taking off, our jump master, the black hat, was walking down the line, we call them sticks. He’s walking down our stick and starts counting us off one by one up to ten. He gets to 10 then comes to me and says one. I’m like, well, nobody told me about this so what do you mean by one? He said, you’re the first out on the next pass.
Immediately, I felt my hands sweat.
I could feel my stomach right up into my throat. I could feel every fiber of my being telling me, Mike, don’t hook up. Don’t hook up on that static line. My spirit eventually took over and pushed that fear aside, this is what I had been trained for. Have faith is what I told myself.
As the plane turned and started around the band towards the landing zone we got the command from the black hat to stand up. I stood up. He said, hookups so I took my shoot and hooked it to the static line of the plane. As we connected our shoots to the static line the door opened and we shuffled down to the door. I’m standing in the door that C130 looking out at about 1,250 feet. I can still feel the rush of the wind, still smell the engines exhaust, and I remember could see for miles. When looked down that was kind of scary, but I when looked out at the horizon and suddenly that light turned green and boom, out I went.
The fear that I had gave way to the most exhilarating feeling I’ve ever had. I did it. I answered the call and made five successful jumps that week. It all came from my inner strength. It came from the spirit of leading me to do the next right thing. Life is just like that. We’re all faced with decisions in situations that we fear. It’s when you learn how to strengthen your inner spirit and do what is right, that it all works out. Then you wonder why you were even afraid in the first place.
I remember landing. The shoot opened up and I was so thankful the shoot opened up.
I Am Alive!
I didn’t land very easy, I landed pretty hard. As I’m lying there and I’m like wait a minute. I didn’t break anything. I’m in one piece. Then you look up and see all these other paratroopers coming out of the sky. You jump up and realize, you did it! I successfully jumped. I landed. It was okay. And guess what? Jump number two was even easier. In fact, it was fun. Jump number three was even easier. The more I did it, the more fun it became and the easier it was.
Don’t let fear rob you of your life. Focus on strengthening your spirit. Many of us don’t take action on what we know we should be doing because we have a fear of failure. Or the fact we’ve tried so many other things that didn’t work out, we’re just afraid nothing’s going to work.
Reason #1: Fear of Failure
Losing weight is one of those things. Many of us have tried and failed we just don’t think anything will work. As we talk today about the Power of Intermittent Fasting, there’s something I’m going to say. There’s a lot of people out there who know about intermittent fasting and they flat out don’t do it. Even though intermittent fasting has been proven to be extremely effective for weight loss and carries awesome health benefits. There are many of those who simply won’t try it.
The fear of failure keeps many of us from realizing our true potential. I get it. After several failures, many of us learn to deal with the fact we haven’t been able to lose weight effectively. We get stuck in that rut. But when you learn to deal with it you are in, not so many words, just accepting it. You’re accepting you are heavier than you want to be.
You are unhealthy and can’t find the energy to live life like you want. Then you become complacent and don’t try anymore. The problem just gets progressively worse. You get unhealthier, you get even heavier, your joints start to hurt even more. Your blood pressure begins to rise. Your blood sugar goes up, you start to lose energy, and you start losing your self-confidence. Later, you’re going to regret accepting that and allowing it to get worse.
Reason #2 : Where To Start?
Another reason people won’t try intermittent fasting is they don’t know where to start. The idea of not eating for a length of time seems so confusing and alien to people they start to create this extreme overwhelm and anxiety. When you get into this analysis paralysis mode, you don’t take action. Something I want you guys to remember…The old Nike ad campaign that says, “just do it.” Most of us remembers that’s what you have to do. You just do it. Today I’m going to show you how. okay.
Reason #3: Self Worth
A third reason people won’t do intermittent fasting is deep down they don’t think as a person, they are worth success. I’m going to dive in deep with you guys. I’m going to go out on a little bit of a limb because I believe in speaking the truth. I know it can seem hard to believe. When you’re given all of this information and given all of this guidance on how you can achieve something you really want, but you don’t act on it. You in fact, are performing an act of what we call subconscious self-sabotage.
When you are self-sabotaging yourself, you’re doing that out of lack of belief in your own self-worth. When that happens, usually it means you need to forgive yourself or someone else for wrongs either you have done or had done to you. Forgiveness is the way out of subconscious self-sabotage and the fastest way to take action. It’s the fastest way to take actions on these steps you know will help you.
The last time we talked about what intermittent fasting is. Now, let’s dive into how we can use it to force our bodies to use and burn the excess body fat.
What Is Happening?
What’s happening in your body when you start to fast for a few hours? There’s a hormone at play I’m sure all of you have heard about called insulin. Insulin effects is so much more than just diabetes.
One of the main job’s insulin has is the gatekeeper to body fat. When we have insulin in our system, any energy, which is usually broken down into sugars, we don’t need right away is stored as body fat. Sadly, while our insulin levels are up, we also can’t burn any body fat for energy.
On the other hand, if there isn’t any insulin in our system, our body switches over to burning body fat for energy and we lose weight.
How can intermittent fasting help us manipulate this hormonal system into losing weight?
When you eat, insulin levels go up and helps your body process the energy for food. Over the coming hours, those insulin levels start to drop down. Once you get to a certain level, the body starts to switch to burning body fat for energy. It’s just a flip of a switch. It switches over and that’s what we call ketosis. You start getting into burning the body fat for energy until your next meal, which spikes insulin and the cycle starts over again.
Why Does Intermittent Fasting Work?
The reason intermittent fasting works so well for losing weight and burning body fat in particular is because we’re extending the window of fat burning during the fasting hours. If you only eat during an eight-hour window on any given day, which quite honestly isn’t hard to do, then you’re burning fat for the remaining 16 hours. Something else amazing happens and is really cool. When the insulin levels drop, your adrenaline and human growth hormones start to go up. The adrenaline will help keep your energy up which in turn helps your metabolism burn high. The human growth hormone helps you maintain your muscle mass and keeps you in shape. If you keep your muscle mass, you get lean. As your insulin levels drop and stay low, you’re going to notice you crave less foods and sugars, especially carbs. That’s a good thing!
While traditional fasting can take quite a bit of willpower, particularly during the first few days, intermittent fasting is actually fairly easy. You just have to postpone indulging in food for a few hours. That’s it. It’s easier to tell yourself you can have something to eat in two hours than it is to not eat or not eat certain foods for days or weeks.
Intermittent Fasting Looks Like…
Just eat your dinner at the regular time. Let’s say 6:00 PM. Eat your fill and don’t do any snacking after dinner. If you ate a decent dinner, hunger’s really not going to be an issue. It may take you a little while to establish a new habit. If you’re a late-night snack-er, you have to let that go. If you are late night snack-er, one of the things you can get around is get yourself a glass of water or fix yourself a cup of herbal tea. Just don’t put any honey in it. If you really feel like you need something, that’ll help you out. Then go to bed and get eight hours of sleep.
Let’s say you go to bed around 10:00 PM and you wake up at 6:00 AM. The good news is you’ve already made it through 12 hours of fasting. All you have to do is see if you can make it 14 hours by postponing breakfast until maybe 8:00 AM. Grab a cup of coffee if you have to. Don’t eat breakfast until maybe 10 o’clock on another day. See how that goes. Just keep pushing that out. Work yourself up to a point where you can easily fast for 16 hours at a time. During that 16 hours, you’re burning fat.
That’s easy enough, isn’t it?
The key thing to remember here when you’re getting started is, you’re not dieting. Don’t think of it like a diet because a diet has a beginning and an end. This is a new lifestyle. This is a new way of living. Unless you choose, otherwise, there are no forbidden foods. You don’t have to make do with certain foods for days on end. All it takes is postponing food for a few hours. Since you sleep through the majority of your fasting time, it’s surprisingly easy to do. While you burn excess body fat simply by fasting16 hours a day it may take you a while if you pig out during your eating window. You need to be careful with that because if you eat more than you really should, you can stall any weight loss you might initially see.
There are a few things you can do to supercharge your fat burning and weight loss with intermittent fasting. The good news is you don’t have to do all of these things all the time. Do them the best you can and you will see the results that motivate you to keep going
The few things you can do to supercharge your fat burning and weight loss are…… Well, guess what? That’s all I got for you today. We are going to cover that next time!
Do You Want Extra Help?
I have to leave a little something for you for next time. Right now, I’m just giving you the fast and easy way to implement intermittent fasting. I know there are some of you out there who may want a little bit of extra help. That is why I have created a weight loss system that follows intermittent fasting. It guides you through the process and is available online. You can start this right away. It’s called The Four Week Weight Loss System for Busy Moms and Dads. You don’t have to be a mom or dad for this system. It’ll work for anybody, I created it to fit into anyone’s schedule. You can learn more here.
As always. I’m going to leave you with a very thought-provoking quote. This time it’s from Rick Warren.
“Fear is a self-imposed prison that will keep you from becoming what God intends for you to be. You must move against it with the weapons of faith and love.”
I want you to think about that for a while.
Until next time, Power Your Life and keep moving forward.
