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Hormone modulation/Libido

two 20 hour fasts – more GH response

During Fast
salt
catecholamines too high too long, adrenal fatigue, allocate caffeine to morning, have it in morning to catecholamines aren't constantly elevated
working out in fasted state

Eating during window:
prebiotic fibers (resetting gut biome)
Avoid Grains
higher protein intake
Switching proteins out, get diverse meals
Saturated fats

Additional Supps
men should take boron
iodine in through seaweed
saw palmetto
CoQ10 (foods that boost it)

Diet Breaks
1 full week off after 6-8 weeks "diet breaks" bring calories back up to maintenance

Insulin Sensitivity

When you fast for an extended period of time, the fat deposits that have accumulated over time become the fuel that cells need to operate. As a result, the size of the excess fat droplet gets smaller over time.

As the size of the lipid droplet in muscle and liver cells decrease, those cells become more responsive to insulin. In other words, by reducing the size of the fat droplet, insulin becomes more powerful

Study – American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Nonobese subjects (8 men and 8 women) fasted every other day for 22 d

Subjects lost 2.5 +/- 0.5% of their initial body weight and 4 +/- 1% of their initial fat mass

Glucose and ghrelin did not change significantly from baseline with alternate-day fasting, whereas fasting insulin decreased 57 +/- 4%

Triiodothyronine (T3) is a thyroid hormone that plays vital roles in the body's metabolic rate, heart and digestive functions, muscle control, brain development – it affects almost every physiological process in the body

Thyroxine (T4) is the main hormone secreted into the bloodstream by the thyroid gland. It plays vital roles in digestion, heart and muscle function, brain development and maintenance of bones

Thyroid-stimulating hormone (also known as thyrotropin or TSH) is a pituitary hormone that stimulates the thyroid gland to produce thyroxine (T4), and then triiodothyronine (T3) which stimulates the metabolism of almost every tissue in the body

Length of fasting should be based off the effects of GH and cortisol

Growth Hormone

HGH deficiency in adults typically leads to higher levels of body fat, lower lean body mass and decreased bone mass (osteopenia)

HGH only lasts a few minutes in the bloodstream – it goes to the liver for metabolism, where it is converted into a number of other growth factors, the most important of which is Insulin Like Growth Factor 1 (IGF1)

Study – Growth Hormone & IGF Research

24 h of fasting led to an increase in levels of basal free GH, mean free GH, mean total GH whilst GHBP levels remained similar in 7 female and 4 male normal-weight subjects

Concluded that a 24-hour fast leads to parallel increases in free and total GH levels whilst having no change in GHBP levels or the fraction of free GH

The protein-retaining effects of growth hormone during fasting involve inhibition of muscle-protein breakdown

The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that GH may be a principal mediator of protein conservation during fasting and to assess the underlying mechanisms

During Fast

Lowering insulin rids the body of excess salt and water. Insulin causes salt and water retention in the kidney

Have Majority of Caffeine in the Morning

Elevated catecholamines + caffeine = adrenal burnout

Work Out Fasted

The Journal of Physiology

Exercise in the fasted state facilitates fibre type-specific intramyocellular lipid breakdown and stimulates glycogen resynthesis in humans

Eating Window

Higher Protein Intake

Published in International Journal of Obesity, researchers looked at protein intake and lean body mass preservation during energy intake restriction in overweight older adults


    52 replies to "Intermittent Fasting over Age 40 : The Complete Guide"

    • Brian S

      Thomas – You are the man. I’m 47 years old and dropped 120lbs in 6 months following your recommendations. Thank You.

      • Ozzy Dolla

        😮 wow❗ congratulations 🎉

      • SHARI BOWEN

        @Raja Shahja wow…that is a really rude and hurtful thing to say. When people say things like that it’s usually because they’re hurting themselves. I hope whatever is hurting you is resolved soon and you can stop hurting others

      • John Johnson

        Hope someone can answer this. I work overnights for 3 days but then convert to a day time life on my 4 days off. I want to do a 18/6 fast schedule. Does it ruin everything in that my nights fasting schedule will be different than my day fasting schedule? This because obviously my time awake is different.

      • Brian S

        @John Johnson – Not at all don’t sweat it, don’t overthink it…Not everyday needs to be 18/6 either…16/8, 20/4, 14/10 on your switch days won’t set you back, stay the course and you’ll see amazing results.

      • Paul Cialini

        i’m 55 got to loose a tun did keto 3 yrs ago since then I had two hip replacements and a shattered femur repair plates nuts bolts rods etc. just getting back into the swing on keto and doing intermittent fasting great story that you have hats off to you that’s a great accomplishment I hope I can do just as good

    • Michael barnes75

      I went from 512 to 360 in about six months and I attribute intermittent fasting along with working out. Also videos like this is so rewarding because the more you understand how your body works the better choices you can make

      • Herstory 101

        Congratulations

      • Handsome Gorgeous

        How are you doing 2 years later Michael??

      • Kal -EL

        Good for you!!

    • Huzefa Hamid

      Intermittent Fasting over Age 40: The Complete Guide
      (notes on the video).

      1. You’re not old at 40, just your hormones are a little different.

      2. You should fast for 20-hours at 3-4 times per week every other day; rather than an 16-hour fast for 7 days a week. In other words, have a long fast with restricted calories one day, and the next day have a day of a regular calorie intake. Longer fasts have a higher anti-ageing (telomere length) affect. At 40+ years old, with fasting every day and restricting calories every day, you have more of a potential to slow down your metabolism. And HGH increases really come into play with longer-term fasts and HGH is increasingly important as you get older.

      3. What you can have during the fast: water; black coffee; black tea; green tea (this goes for every age group).

      4. Increase your sodium level with salt. This makes sure you get the benefits of fasting at 40+ and helps prevent you feeling fatigued and stiff during your fast. Use high-quality salt, for example, Himalayan pink salt, Celtic sea salt, Redmond real salt (not regular iodized salt). Have one teaspoon of salt per half-gallon of water.

      5. Keep your caffeine intakes to the morning only. You’ll avoid adrenal fatigue. You’ll get better results and you’ll feel better.

      6. Train in the morning in a fasted state – you’ll get a lot more benefit for working out in this state because you’ll burn 2-3 times more intramyocellular lipids (fat droplets next to you muscle fibers). The benefits for 40+ people are that you can do lower intensity workouts for the same effect and help preserve your body and recover more easily.

      7. Avoid vitamins and supplements especially antioxidants during the fast. They negate the effect of your fasting.

      8. Break your fast with a smaller meal, lean and high in protein. This is a psychological thing that helps you from raiding the fridge. And then have a larger meal 1-2 hours (or even 3 hours) later. For 40+ people, you want to break your fast with a meal higher in protein because of muscle atrophy. When breaking your fast, eat 25-35% of your body weight (in pounds) in grams of protein. Recommend to keeping it just lean protein. When you have your main meal later, you can eat a regular meal as you’ve had your protein.

      9. Pay closer attention to prebiotic fibers. You can get them from vegetables such as asparagus, artichokes bok choy and cabbage. It feeds the good gut bacteria. You can introduce these in your second meal. Artichokes especially promote bile salts or bile activity (which reduce when fasting – and when this activity reduces, it’s harder to digest fats).

      10. On your fasting days, avoid grains (e.g. rice, barley, corn, rye, quinoa – even the so-called healthy grains) – because of their wheat germs agglutinins, or WGAs). The WGAs can cause leaky gut and you’re more sensitive to it on fasting days. This can be very unhealthy and unpleasant, and you won’t know it until you take them away and realize how good you feel. Some of the starches and carbs you can get away with are potatoes (red or white), sweet potatoes, parsnips, beetroot, cassava, plantains…

      11. Switch your proteins out. Don’t have the same protein every day. This will give you a diverse bacterium in your gut. If you usually do whey protein, try a pea protein; if you usually do chicken, try to go for beef. Try to switch it up as much as you can.

      12. Consume more saturated fats. [Sugar and stress are the result of inflammations and blockages, not saturated fats.] Saturated fats are good for myelin – critical for nerve signaling.

      13. There are lots of little things you can eat, for example, seaweed, to get iodine (critical for your thyroid).

      14. Keep supplements to a minimum. For a male, consume boron. You need 6-9 mg of boron per day. It helps you unlock bound up testosterone to make it free testosterone (most of the testosterone in our body, 98-99%, is bound-up and not usable in the body). It will help you get more muscle mass, more strength, more energy, more libido.

      15. For men and women, saw palmetto is great. For men, it gives prostrate support.

      16. Coenzyme Q10 – good for both men and women. It’s everything when it comes to energy. It’s recommended for everyone but especially if you’re over 40 years old, and even more so when you’re doing intermittent fasting. When you’re intermittent fasting, you’re consolidating eating windows, which means your body must become ruthlessly efficient at utilizing nutrients. Coenzyme Q10 helps take energy (in the form of electrons) from the food we’ve eaten and takes it to electron accepters within the cell. It takes you to that last mile. You don’t always have to take a supplement with Coenzyme Q10. If you do take a supplement, 300-600 mg of solid. If you want to get it without supplements, eat lots of fatty fish, for example, salmon and halibut, and organ meats, such as liver, kidney, and hearts. Additionally, broccoli, cauliflower and spinach are pretty high in Coenzyme Q10 (although nowhere near as high as the animal sources). On a side note, the broccoli gives anti-estrogen effect which is good for men and women over 40.

      17. Take a diet break. This isn’t the same as a cheat meal. This is even more important for any older population, for 35-year old plus people. When we diet, we have a severe decrease in our metabolism. It doesn’t take long to happen: 3-5 weeks, maybe 6 weeks. The metabolism slows as much as 28% when we reduce our calories. When we’re intermittent fasting, a lot of the benefits are coming from the change in hormonal changes and the different things we’re doing with growth hormones etc., but a lot of the benefits are coming from simple calorie restrictions. That means we’re not immune to this overall metabolic slowdown. One study took two groups of individuals: Group 1 did 16 weeks of continuous dieting; Group 2 did 16 weeks of dieting with a break every few weeks lasting for 1-2 weeks. Group 2 had significantly more muscle and significantly less body fat because the body had a chance to get the metabolism back up. The whole purpose of our metabolism is to preserve – our body sees we’re hurting; one cheat meal doesn’t solve the problem. Hence, we need to go back to 1-2 weeks of normal eating (not surplus eating!). Go 4-6 weeks with intermittent fasting aggressively, and then go 1-2 weeks of no fasting where you make sure you get back to a normal maintenance level. This will help prevent an obesity rebound.

      • Huzefa Hamid

        @Tremain Cheerful You’re most welcome Tremain!

      • Carenina Aesha

        Thank so much

      • marie coletti

        I wish I could copy this

      • marie coletti

        How can I copy your notes

      • Huzefa Hamid

        @marie coletti If you go to my comment from a regular web browser (not through the app), you can highlight my notes and copy and paste them. It’s probably easier done from a computer rather than a phone, but both work as long as you use a browser and not the app.

    • Lisa Baker

      Loved this video and how amazingly things were explained. I started IF after following a Keto way of eating for 3 years. I’m 57 and I cannot believe my body composition at this age. I’m seriously in better shape than I have ever been in my life!

    • Dani B

      Thanks Thomas for this great info for us over 40 people! Question: do your recommendations change for women who are definitely in menopause? I am in medically induced menopause and I’m thinking about ways to stay looking younger and healthy. Intermittent fasting is at the top of my list as a method to increase autophagy. Definitely curious what you think. Thank you again!

    • Gale Dacalio

      I’m 61 and fasted 21 days last year. Just no calorie drinks, electrolytes, sea salt. I felt great and cured several medical issues. As soon as I started eating some of my aches and pains came back. I’m into the third day of a fast now. This time when I add food back I will use it to eliminate foods that affect me.

    • Deb Sycks

      I am over 60 and IF . Never have I felt better. Had diabetes six months ago lost 60 lbs and my diabetes numbers are almost normal. And I feel great. I do 16/8

      • Rayman67

        do you do it every day or what he suggests?

      • Pmaio

        @Jennie Lauderback hi Jennie, sorry for crushing in but I think my experience could help you. I’m 47 and did try the every day fasting (18 hours fast and 4 hours feed). I managed it for a couple weeks and it was very effective for the first week but I began to feel very tired and I felt my metabolism slowing down. My workouts at the gym were getting harder and harder. Cutting to the chase I decided to to 1 day 1 meal and next day normal meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner). I must say my energy level went up and also family live cause I’m now able to eat at the table with the girls and have a dinner with them 3 times a week

      • Valerie Ann

        @Hollyhock If you fast for 20 hrs as he encourages, that leaves only 4 hrs left in a 24hr period, therefore, you would have to quickly eat and then immediately sleep. Then start over the next day. I think he said to throw in some days during the week where you don’t intermittently fast, so maybe that means intermittent fasting every other day.
        Then, after ~5 weeks of doing that, you don’t wait 20 hrs before eating. Since it’s easy to fast upon awakening because you’ve just fasted when you were sleeping and will feel no pangs of hunger. Still taking advantage of that, perhaps you might eat your first small something, 7 hrs after waking. And you do that for about 1 week. Then you would go back to fasting for 20 hrs before eating. That 20/8 ratio is off as there’s only 24 hrs in a day. Deepak Chopra told about a scientific study that showed people can get well rested in half their normal time if that sleep period begins at 11pm, which would mean if you are most well rested w/6 hrs of sleep, you could be just as well rested with 3 hrs sleep IF you go to sleep at 11 pm and wake at 2am (3hrs, leaving 1 hr to eat before sleeping This would not work with your schedule however.

    • HHHHappYYYY

      Wow! ALL of the information I’ve needed right here in ONE PLACE. I’ve saved this video to refer to it every time I need. I’m 63, keto IF for almost a year now. Right about at my goal weight and now really focusing on being as healthy as I can get.

    • Jo -SWEETS- C.

      The alternating day 20hr fasting was the solution I was looking for. Thanks Thomas! I’m a 66 year old female, 5’10”. My starting point was in June 2020, I was at 31% body fat and 170 pounds. In Feb 2021 I got to my goal. I am now back to a 19-20% body fat level and weigh 140-142 lbs. Very happy with this new maintainable lifestyle. Your simple suggestions helped me get back to my healthier self!

      • Cori Koch

        Thanks for writing this…do you happen to know, for the days when you aren’t fasting 20/4, when should you eat? What restriction is there on the off day? Much appreciated!

    • boot neck

      Dude you’re freaking awesome, thankyou so much for your videos, you literally saved my life by bringing my health back on track away from obese diabetes with all your keto intermetant fasting videos, you’re a Legend 🙌

    • Thomas DeLauer

      Free Intermittent Fasting Meal Plan (downloadable): https://thomasdelauer.lpages.co/fastandfeast/
      Free Keto Diet Meal Plan (downloadable): https://thomasdelauer.lpages.co/real-person-keto/

      • TheOneYouHateToLove 2

        I’m trying to do 30 day water fast would be able to help me please. 200lbs, 35 year old. I’m on day 2 any suggestions?

      • Ennio Samayoa

      • Andrea LeBaron

        @Claudian Reyn it’s totally fine!

      • Kago Tshabota

        The links are dead

      • Johannes Dolch

        As someone over 40 wouldn’t it be better to do Alternate Day Fasting then instead of IF 3x per week?

    • Dear Sir or Madam

      🙂 Have you ever noticed when you go to bed hungry you wake up feeling fine, but go to bed after eating a giant meal and you wake up starving? 😊

      • minding my business

        Yes

      • Astroboy Skygazer

        If you go to bed full, you’ll have nightmares. 😂😂😂

      • Melissa Lewis

        yesss

      • Taron Harris

        Almost like you stretch your stomach out 😂

      • sean weir

        Yes I am starving at bed time but not hungry till afternoon the next day.

    • J Girl

      Yeah… tell me again how important the thyroid is! I have a slow functioning thyroid and find it soooo difficult to lose weight. I am definitely going to give this type of IF a try. Thanks Thomas. Your videos are just so well done and so informative. I really appreciate the time you spend trying to help us!

    • Time Traveler

      I am 62 years old. I did not have any problem with fasting. I use OMAD (one meal a day) every day and walk almost daily. My endurance went up and my body returned to medium slim. Fasting trained me well to survive without feeling hungry. I could be one of a few handfuls of human survivors on the apocalypse Earth when our human civilization collapses. 👍😇👍

    • MeBob

      I’m 76 started intermittent fasting two months ago and went from mid 150’s to low 140’s in those two month, I also started a keto diet, I’m easing myself in the keto diet the more I learn but I’m not strict. There are certain foods I enjoy and know they benefit me such as “whole” oats that I won’t give up because of the carb content, I just cut down my portions. I’m a very healthy 76 year old from cycling, walking, light weights and eating healthy these last 40 years, my fasting regimen teeters between 8/16 to 6/18 depending on outside social influences. I’ve found fasting really makes a difference in ones quality of life when you can have control over your weight, health and mindfulness.

    • Joe Trolo

      Thanks Thomas. I’m doing intermittent fasting for a little over 5 months now. Pretty much 20-4. Have done two 48-hour fasts. Thanks for the extra tip, I was taking my vitamin C in the morning, because it had no calories and I take so many later.. adjustment made. Also found the information about caffeine to be helpful and makes sense. Will try to adjust accordingly. I’m 57, 6ft tall was 205 this morning 172. Feeling like I did in my twenties. Appreciate your videos and the heavy research you must do, to speak so knowledgeably. Thanks again Thomas, you’re helping my journey.

    • Toby Woodson

      Bro let me just express, how much I respect and appreciate the information/content…. your balance of keto to just basic overall health is amazing. I’ve been doing keto off/on for at least 10 years, just piecing things together… unscientifically finding results, until I fall off the keto wagon gaining and losing weight over this period BUT, knowing all these great/new facts help me enjoy keto now even more than I have in the past. While digging deeper into my own research. Keep it coming .

    • moonfish1967

      I’ve been doing this now for 8 weeks. My eating window is 6 hours from 730am to 130pm and fast 18 hours. I also walk ave 6km daily. The weight is dropping off nicely and I feel way better overall.

      • blissfulbaboon

        You Rock!Keep it up!

      • js whosoever

        Awesome job!

      • Isabel Buelna

        Are u watching carb intake

      • Rocco R

        ive tried eating in the morning hours, its hard for me to fall asleep on a empty stomach. ive been eating at or around 4 when get off work and then i cut food off at 7 or 8.

      • Rocco R

        ​@Isabel Buelna i dont but you will get better results if u do.

    • leticia little

      I’m 61 and have been doing 16/8 intermittent keto fasting for about 6 months 5 times a week. Have 5 lbs to reach 125. I feel great!

    • Saint Boo Boo

      Thomas I have tried everything at 62 then I started following your channel. I followed your program and it to 2 years and to date and I have lost over 100lbs. I have another 30 to go and with the energy I have now hope to be there before the holidays. Diets don’t work but life style changes do. Thanks for your support.

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