Intermittent fasting requires you to not consume any calories during your fasted state, even milk in your coffee – nothing. A popular question is whether supplements are allowed during the fasted window and typically the answer is ‘it depends’…
…So, what about fat burners? Keep reading to find out how fat burners – including our favorite, Performance Lab SPORT Fat Burner – can transform your intermittent fasting routine, helping you to get leaner and fitter than ever before.
Firstly, let’s talk about intermittent fasting. You’ve likely heard about it already but here’s the 411: intermittent fasting isn’t a diet as such, it’s an eating pattern. It is based on the theory that our ancestors did not eat continuously; they instead ate in periods of feast and famine.
Humans were hunter gatherers who would go through long periods without access to any food due to seasonality or not being able to kill an animal to eat. This would then be followed by a short feasting period until the food ran out again. Hunter gatherers wouldn’t have constant access to foods like we do today.
We live in a time where Starbucks have drive-ins, McDonald’s offer three-piece dinners that are cheaper than a fruit salad and CVS is more like a grocery store than a pharmacy. Calorie-dense food is highly accessible, cheap and tastes amazing, which is probably why most of us eat as soon as we wake up in the morning and continue eating every couple of hours until sleep. Most of us don’t have a reason to fast when all the food we could ever want is so easy to get.
But as you can probably guess, this eating pattern often leads to overeating because there is a bigger window of time in which you can eat. When you eat constantly, your insulin is high which can cause health issues, not to mention more food cravings.
That late-night chocolate craving, the 10am need for a caramel latte to pick you up before your meeting… over time, this can lead to weight gain.
So, What Are the Benefits of Fasting?
In research by the US National Institute of Health, intermittent fasting diets were found to reduce oxidative stress, improve memory, increase muscle mass and decrease body fat: amazing benefits from something so simple.
When you fast, your cells are under a moderate level of stress. This forces the cells to adapt which improves the cells ability to control oxidative stress and prevent against disease. Fasting is also beneficial as it stimulates cell turnover, a process known as autophagy, which promotes anti-aging. Great news if you’re edging into your 30s and want to stay there forever.
When you are constantly eating, your insulin is high. High insulin means that you are in a fed state, meaning your energy is directly derived from the food you are eating. But when you are in a fasted state, your insulin is low and your body is forced to use stored energy in the form of fat and glycogen.
The benefit of this? Your body is burning fat.
When you fast overnight and throughout part of the day for 16 hours, it radically decreases your appetite and helps you to combat inflammation, decrease your blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Another benefit of this is that you are likely to lose weight.
So, if you have some weight to lose or some stubborn areas that just won’t shift, get yourself on an intermittent fasting schedule.
What Are Fat Burners?
Fat burners are a supplement popular in the health and fitness industry for people who want to step up their game and speed up fat loss. They aren’t magic pills that will make you drop 10 pounds overnight while you’re still overeating, but if your diet is in check and you’re exercising, fat burners will help you lose extra fat in the most efficient and effective way.
There are a lot of fat burners on the market and they range from terrible to amazing. The bad quality fat burners are filled with stimulants, in the hope that you will burn more calories if you have more energy to work out for longer. I can understand the theory, but that is contingent on the fact you are in the gym pushing harder and longer than you usually would, which would cause you to lose fat even if you weren’t taking the fat burner. You see where I’m coming from?
The most common stimulant in fat burners is caffeine, which increases a hormone called epinephrine. When levels of epinephrine increase it stimulates the breakdown of fatty acids into your bloodstream to use as fuel for energy. But why not just have a cup of coffee? It is best to avoid these cheap, stimulant-based fat burners as they have very limited effectiveness and can have some negative side effects like the jitters, disturbed sleep and leave you feeling drained due to adrenal fatigue.
In fact, the best fat burners don’t contain caffeine at all; they contain an array of other ingredients that are scientifically proven to increase thermogenesis, stimulate the breakdown of fat stores, increase the metabolism and create an improved hormonal profile to facilitate effective fat burning. We mentioned Performance Lab SPORT Fat Burner earlier; it’s a great stimulant-free fat burning option, and the one we recommend. Read on to find out more about it shortly.
Can You Take a Fat Burner while Intermittent Fasting?
Yes, and if you’re looking to lose some extra fat then you should be taking a fat burner while intermittent fasting! But the key is to make sure you’re taking the right one.
While fasting is great for fat loss, it can break into muscle mass to burn for fuel so taking a fat burner that preserves lean muscle mass is important. This is because even in a fasted state your body needs energy to function and if you’re not getting that from your diet, your body needs to look for it elsewhere, and it finds it in fat mass and muscle mass.
But you want to avoid breaking down lean muscle mass at all costs. Lean muscle mass is integral to looking fit and lean, and to keep your metabolism running at a high rate. Fat loss is great, but if you’re losing fat and muscle, you’re probably not going to feel or look your best.
So, you need to be looking for a fat burner that is stimulant free, helps to preserve muscle mass and does all the other great things that a good fat burner can help you with i.e. burn fat. Which leads us on to the next question…
Which Fat Burner Is Best?
The best fat burner that we’ve come across is the Performance Lab SPORT Fat Burner. It’s completely stimulant-free which is rare for fat burners in this price range, which is great. It contains four ingredients that have been shown in research to stimulate the breakdown of fat stores and accelerate weight loss. Even better, it helps to preserve muscle mass. The ingredients include:
HMB (B-Hydroxy B-Methylbutyrate) is the first ingredient, which is the key ingredient for preserving lean muscle mass during intermittent fasting. This ingredient is so important and it’s one of the main reasons that Performance Lab SPORT Fat Burner is winning.
Not only does HMB protect muscle mass, it also increases muscle strength during a workout and improves oxygen consumption to burn more calories during a session. This ingredient makes you perform better and recover quicker to build and maintain more muscle mass.
Coleus forskohlii (Forslean): this ingredient works similarly to HMB in terms of preserving muscle mass and accelerating fat breakdown. But it does so via a separate biochemical pathway. Without getting into the science too heavily, this ingredient regulates cyclic adenosine monophosphate (AMP) which in turn increases the metabolism and thermogenesis, to help you burn fat faster.
Coleus forskohlii is a superior ingredient for fat burners because it creates a better hormonal profile for fat loss, which a stimulant-based low-quality fat burner would never be able to do. It stimulates two main pathways: hormone sensitive lipase for fat burning and anabolic hormones to increase muscle mass.
Cayenne pepper helps to boost thermogenesis. You may have heard people say that spicy food speeds up weight loss and it’s true (to some degree). When you eat spicy food, your body temperature naturally increases – think of the curry sweats. Sound familiar? Cayenne pepper boosts your body temperature, thereby increasing the number of calories you burn at rest (this is known as the thermic effect of food).
Black pepper extract is a surprisingly powerful ingredient that works similarly to cayenne pepper as a thermogenic. But it’s a great component in this fat burner because it aids the absorption and bioavailability of the other ingredients making sure you get the most bang for your buck.
In addition, Performance Lab SPORT Fat Burner is one of the cleanest formulas you’ll find on the market today. It is GMO, soy, allergen, synthetic additives and gluten-free, as well as being suitable for vegans. Performance Lab also has a well-earned reputation for excellence and superior quality, and its products are made in an FDA-approved facility and are GMP compliant. Performance Lab is also transparent about its ingredients and dosages and makes a point of never including any banned substances.
So, if fat burning is your thing, you need to start implementing two things into your health and fitness routine: intermittent fasting and the Performance Lab SPORT Fat Burner. These things will individually give you great fat loss results, but when you combine them, you will notice that you are losing fat quicker and easier than ever before.
If you’re interested, check out our Best Fat Burners for Intemittent Fasting page.
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