Obesity has taken the form of an epidemic in modern society. The facts are a clear indicator that we are not learning or improving at all. In the year 1962, on average 13.4% of people were found to be obese in the US. The percentage of people suffering from extreme obesity was very low standing at 0.9%. However, over the years, the increase in this percentage is staggering. In the year, 2016, 39.6% of people suffered from Obesity, and out of these over 9% were extremely obese.

More than 70% of adults in the US are either overweight or obese. It means that more than 2 out of three US adults suffer from weight issues. This doesn't paint a very pretty picture. The escalating rate of increase in obesity is another cause of concern. In 1997, only 39.4% of people were overweight in the US. This saw a rise of 5% in 2004, and again increased by 12% in the next three years until 2007. A decade later the total percentage of overweight people in the US has gone past 70%. 

The rate of obesity in women is even scarier. Data shows that the rate of obesity among women has risen steeply in the past four decades in comparison to men. 

The number of preventable deaths in the US is 900,000 every year. Out of these, more than 400,000 people die due to obesity-related disorders. Restraining this menace of obesity would have prevented most of these losses .

However we may brood about the situation of obesity in the country, the fact stands that third parties have no significant role to play in it. Our wrong choices have led to this epidemic of obesity. The only way out is to improve those choices. Aggressive marketing by food companies, fast-paced lifestyles, stress, and anxiety may take the blame, but still, the bulk of the problem has been on our end.

When it is the time to take responsibility, we try to find an easy target. Food is the easy scapegoat. It is the natural suspect. People easily blame food and eating habits of the victim to obesity. Although it cannot be denied that food is among the chief reasons for causing obesity, however, it is not the lone wolf.

There can be reasons for obesity in which victims do not have much control. Hormonal imbalance, genetic issues, and other such medical problems can lead to abnormal and uncontrolled weight gain. However, many times, it is just our carelessness that leads to excessive weight gain.

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Major factors other than food that lead to obesity

Stressful Life

The stressful life of the modern world is a significant contributor to weight gain. Stress leads to an urge to relax. Certain kinds of products like artificial sweeteners, processed foods, chocolates, alcohol, and nicotine, are used in an effort to reduce stress and relax. However, most of these items, as well as stress, are bad for health. We may blame the obesity on these items, but ultimately, stress it what leads to these indulgences. You become lethargic and stop venturing out. You shirk all physical activities. The extra calories in these products start piling up. Your brain gets slow, and you accumulate weight.

Lack of Time

The hectic life is another reason for dangerous weight accumulation. We are running so fast and so mindlessly that we have lost focus. The need for speed stops us from focusing on even the basic requirements of life, (i.e. healthy food). We start jumping on fast foods to save time. It is cheap and fast—both things nature never wanted food to be. When you start getting such a vital thing so quickly, and effortlessly, you stop thinking about it. Fast foods are full of empty calories and lack most critical nutrients. They are fattening, carcinogenic, inflammatory and lead to craving. This mindless eating leads to excessive weight gain.

Lack of Physical Activity

Lack of physical activity is another big problem. Earlier, we had to fight and put our lives at stake to earn food, but that's a thing of fables now. Money can buy food today, and you need to sweat separately to burn that food. This isn't easy for many. Some don't have that kind of time and luxury; others lack the motivation for it. The little time that's left with them is again spent on eating.

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We see that most of these factors are a result of something else. The food is at the bottom of it, but it is not the only reason weight gain begins.

However, it is also a notable fact that there has been a shift towards the kind of food items we eat these days. The healthy unprocessed food items have been replaced by ready to eat foods. They taste great but are mostly garbage for your body. They fill you with empty calories, lead to weight gain and cause inflammation. We are well aware of them, yet we choose to ignore them.

A big reason for such attraction towards wrong food items is the excessive marketing by the food producing companies. These companies are earning billions by selling you such food products. You feel good by eating them, and therefore you believe everything they say without thinking twice. This leads to the obesity epidemic. They are hammering you night and day with a single motive. They want you to buy their product. They are simply telling you that you can lose weight by eating their products. 

Take a deep breath here. Does this not sound ridiculous? You can lose weight by eating things. Really?

Let's do simple math. Food means calories. There is nothing that doesn't add weight except water. The low-calorie foods fill you with artificial sweeteners, harmful fats, and other more dangerous things. They cause weight gain and a lot of it. The label only serves to mislead you.

Therefore, when you eat anything, you are adding calories. However, you are not doing anything out of the ordinary to burn those calories. There is no way that your weight will go down by eating them. On the contrary, those extra calories, fat, and sweeteners will cause more damage.

If someone expects that weight loss will occur without any sacrifice, then he or she are in a delusion and need to wake up. 

If someone thinks that starting a rigorous diet routine will lead to weight loss, then 9 out of 10 times, the end is sad, as people are not able to retain the rigorous diets for long. The day they start eating their normal diet, they begin binge eating. They try to compensate for the loss of all the time they couldn't eat on their wish.

If someone expects that he or she'll get “fat to fit” by pumping iron in the gym for a month and flaunt the Adonis-like body, then he or she should stop living in a fairytale. It's not going to work out. First, it is not easy for most, especially for obese people for obvious reasons. Second, the day they get back to their regular routine, the gym starts looking tough. The lost weight comes back much faster. 

The weight loss industry is thriving on this. In the U.S. alone, the weight loss industry generated a profit of $66 billion in 2017, yet the percentage of people suffering from obesity has increased this year.

The reason is plain and simple. It isn't working sustainably. There is no problem with the weight loss measures. You can temporarily lose weight through every method. You either go on a diet, do yoga, dance, exercise, or pump iron in the gym. You will burn calories. When the number of calories burnt in a day exceeds the amount of calories consumed in that day, you will lose some weight.

The real problem is with sustainability. You are not able to carry on most of these activities for long. As soon as you get back to your usual routine, the weight starts piling on.

Intermittent fasting and especially the OMAD technique are here to help you with this specific problem. It is the sustainable way to lose weight. You are not required to do things out of the ordinary. You can and will follow your regular schedule. You do not need to cut out your working hours for hitting the gym. You do not need to restrict your diet extensively. You can eat pretty much anything as long as it is healthy. You merely need to regulate the timing of when you eat.

The timing is of the essence in intermittent fasting. It gives your body the chance to focus on the fat stores in your body. It also ensures that you do not pile up your body with extra calories as you get a very short window to eat. Although you can eat pretty much anything in that window, biology takes over in that period. Your appetite comes into control, and your eating pattern is regulated.

The next few chapters will explain in detail the behavior of your hunger hormones and satiety. You’ll learn that the craving you always had for food is not because of the urge to eat but due to the imbalance in your body that can be corrected. You will also learn that regulating your food intake is an easy and straightforward task. You’ll even get to know the impact of insulin on your body and the wonders that controlling your blood sugar can do.

Intermittent fasting is not just a weight control measure but a way of life. You can get the benefits of a healthy life and body by making some simple changes to the way you eat and you can lose much weight very quickly. The OMAD routine is the key to quick weight loss, and it is a natural and sustainable measure.

For the sake of simplicity, One Meal a Day (OMAD) is the same as it sounds. You can have one complete meal in a day and will have to fast for the next 23 hours in this intermittent fasting routine. Before we move further on this concept, it is also important to understand 'Intermittent Fasting'.

Intermittent fasting is a pattern of eating. It means that you have specified ‘Fasting’ and ‘Eating’ windows and you have to follow a disciplined routine. The numbers of hours you fast will vary upon the kind of 'routine' you choose. 'Routine' is a crucial word here. The absence of a routine is the reason behind the failure of most weight-loss measures. Therefore, practicing intermittent fasting as a routine or a lifestyle is very important for good results.

One Meal a Day (OMAD) is among the several routines you can follow in intermittent fasting. However, it is one of the best methods for fast and extreme weight loss. 

The basic requirement of OMAD is that you will have to fast for 23 hours and then you can have one big meal, preferably in the evening. The evenings are great for one big meal as your day has a fulfilling end. In this meal, you will be free to eat practically anything that you like. However, it is always prudent to choose healthy and balanced food as you are going to draw all your nutrition from this meal. This is one of the most favored methods of extreme weight loss and lean muscle gain even for bodybuilders. It helps in shedding body fat and gaining lean muscle mass.

You can have only one full meal in the day. Therefore, the food should have the right mix of carbohydrates, fat, protein, and fiber. Nevertheless, you can include items for which you have a craving. For instance, eating sweets, cakes and cookies are okay with this routine as long as you follow the 23-hour food curfew. 

Some people might start getting anxious right away at the thought of not being able to eat for 23 hours. The fear of starvation and hunger pangs will have started kicking in. Although their concerns may seem logical, they are unwarranted. You can choose the speed with which you implement intermittent fasting. The transition to the OMAD routine should be slow and well adapted. We will discuss this in detail in later chapters.

OMAD is no doubt a strict routine to endure. However, it will yield great results. OMAD routine will help you in burning the fat stores more efficiently and quickly.

The transition to OMAD is not very tough, as you do not need to begin with the 23 hours fasts from the very first day. You will start with smaller fasts as 16:8 and then move ahead to 20:4 and finally to 23:1. This means, in the beginning, you can fast for 16 hours and then eat 2-3 meals in the remaining 8 hours. Once you get used to it and become comfortable with this routine, you can move ahead with the 20 hours fast and 4 hours of eating window. The last step in this process is the 23 hours fast and 1-hour eating window. To an outsider, it may look like a very restrictive regimen, but in reality, it isn't. 

People are usually very concerned about the hunger pangs while fasting. However, your hunger pangs are not a result of your need for food but are caused by several other factors like the habit of eating and inflammation in the fat cells. Once you start practicing intermittent fasting, these issues are taken care of by your body itself. You'll notice that your need for food is not as controlling as you always believed. 

Intermittent fasting and especially the OMAD routine bring many benefits along with it, and the best one is extreme weight loss.

Firstly, intermittent fasting is one of the safest and most reliable ways to lose weight. 

Secondly, you can lose weight by the OMAD routine even if your weight issues restrict you from working out initially. 

Thirdly, you will not have to abandon the foods you love. This is among the primary reasons other diet programs fail, as people are not able to resist the foods they love for very long. 

Fourthly, it is easy to make this routine a part of your lifestyle. This gives the routine sustainability. You will lose weight and keep it off too. Weight regain is a big issue with people who lose a considerable amount of weight quickly. This won’t happen with OMAD. There won’t be a weight relapse.

OMAD routine will help you in losing weight and staying in shape. It will help you in losing weight even if you are unable to work out initially due to excessive weight. However, workouts will help once you lose weight and will help you not only in losing weight more quickly but also with skin tightening. The later chapters will explain the science behind this. 

Most overweight people are never able to lose weight, as they feel unable to work out in the gym. There are several factors like psychological complexes, fatigue, and inability to work out for long. OMAD helps you in this as you can start losing weight even without strenuous physical activity. Once you have lost a bit of weight, you will feel more able and confident to hit the gym.

The anxiety of fasting is common in people, especially the overweight. They feel that staying away from food is impossible. Today's youth feels the same for social media. A decade ago, it didn't even exist, and humanity had survived for hundreds of centuries without it. Just one generation ago, staying away from the TV was impossible, yet humankind had survived. This is just like the fear of cold you experience before entering the water. Once inside, you don’t want to get out of it. Centuries ago, our ancestors lived on only 'One Meal a Day' as the food was scarce, yet they thrived. Food has become our habit; it isn't a necessity of our body in the quantities we consume it.

The daily calorie needs of any healthy individual can be consumed easily even in one meal. We are overloading our system by taking several meals a day, and we can see by the obesity stats that it isn't helping. 

As far as the hunger pangs are concerned, in most cases, they either are a result of your habit of eating or are caused by inflammation in the fat cells. Regular eating creates an imbalance in our hunger and satiety hormones, and this leads to frequent cravings for food. Once you start intermittent fasting, things come into harmony, and your body regulates these hormones. Your hunger pangs will subside quickly. There are several measures to suppress these hunger pangs without consuming calories that will help you initially. We'll discuss all these measures in detail in the coming chapters. We will also examine how the hunger and satiety hormones function and ways to balance them.

The OMAD routine is straightforward. It has no complexities involved. You get to choose the time you want to eat. It can be morning, evening or afternoon. The choice is up to you. The only rule of the routine is that you can have only one full meal and that's it. It will be your body that will be working overtime to burn the excess fat in your body. The how and why of the process are explained in detail in the upcoming chapters.

Therefore, if you are troubled by your excess weight then read the coming chapters very carefully.

Weight loss is a complex process. As the saying goes, “Rome wasn't built in a day,” and the same goes for your accumulated weight and fat. The excess weight and fat have been piling on for a long time. Mostly, fat accumulation is a result of your negligence about your lifestyle choices. Here, considering the word 'mostly' is key, as it is not the sole reason that can lead to weight gain.

Genetic problems, other health issues leading to immobility and hormonal issues can also lead to weight gain. However, this book is about the weight gain issues in individuals who have gained excess weight and belly fat due to poor lifestyle choices. Therefore, we’ll stick to it. 

Our body has a very sophisticated and detailed system of functioning. It is crucial that you comprehend the way our body functions to understand the causes that lead to excess weight gain. The first concept to grasp is that your body doesn't consider the weight as a liability but an asset.

Like all other organisms on this blue planet, human beings were also created to survive for long periods. The food is a prized commodity for all creatures, and so it was for humankind. In the beginning and, until the past few centuries, getting food was not that easy. Men had to put up a fight against beasts to get every morsel of food. It was tough, and there was no certainty. There were seasons of feasts and famines. Our body has a system of accumulating energy in the form of fat to survive the times of famines. This fat is used in times when there is no supply of food. This mechanism is still used for all other beings. However, there has been a slight change for humankind in this regard. The seasons of famines have almost ceased to exist thanks to the abundance of food brought by modernization. This mechanism is still in place and functioning.

When you eat anything, your body processes that food into the form of glucose. Your body then assesses the current need for energy. The required energy passes into your bloodstream in the form of blood glucose. All your organs and cells can access this as direct energy. Your pancreas gets to work and releases the hormone insulin that helps the cells to absorb this energy. However, when the produced energy is more than is required our body stores that extra energy in the form of glycogen. This is directly stored in the liver and muscles. The insulin present in your blood will direct this transformation. However, when the present energy is much higher than the amount which can be stored in the form of glycogen, it needs to be stored as fat. Insulin sends signals to the fat stores and places the extra energy in the form of fat cells. This is the process of accumulation of visceral fat, the fat around your belly, thighs, hips, and all the odd places.  

Now, there is a fundamental question here. When our body has such an efficient system, why doesn't it target this fat on its own? Why is burning this visceral fat so tricky? Here, you will have to return to the earlier point that our body is following the feast and famine system. The fat stores in the body are not a liability, but an asset for our body. Our body tries to keep the fat stores intact to be used in the rainy days when food is scarce. However, those days rarely come in modern society. In today’s reality, that fat is a liability to you. Your body will never try to burn these fat stores on its own until it necessarily feels the need to do so. 

The fact is clear that your body will not burn this body fat until it is forced to do so. If you believe that by dieting or exercising in the usual way you can force your body to burn this beloved fat, then you are mistaken. Your body will only take these steps when it feels that it is in short supply.

Our body will burn the tough visceral fat only when it is in dire need of energy. This can't happen while you keep feeding it with more and more food at regular intervals. Therefore, intermittent fasting is the best way to cut this continuous supply of readily available energy to our body. It helps you in forcing your body to start burning the fat stores that can supply clean energy to our body. However, there is a big misconception that intermittent fasting, or for that matter, any fasting can make you weak. 

Once again, think of our ancestors. They were hunter-gatherer nomads. There was no surety of food for them. With their primitive weapons and limited knowledge, the odds of getting food on a daily basis were low. However, their bodies needed more strength on the days when they didn’t have food for long periods, to hunt more aggressively. Their minds needed to think more clearly on the days they didn't get food. If not, their odds of getting any more food would reduce drastically. Therefore, the misconception that the lack of food for some time of fasting will make you weak or take away the clarity of thoughts is wrong. Once your ready supply of energy is cut-off, your body will switch to burning the fat for energy. It needs to be even stronger and more robust on those days to survive in a hostile environment.

Intermittent fasting is the way our bodies have been designed to function by Mother Nature. Your work schedule and type of job won’t be a problem. Your energy needs are also no factor when considering intermittent fasting as you get the required amount of energy in your eating windows. The OMAD routine of intermittent fasting gives you an eating window so that you can get the supply of energy needed. This will ensure that your body doesn't feel it is in a starvation situation. Nevertheless, it will keep your body in a fasted state for long enough so that it feels the need to start burning the fat stores. Whether you are doing a white-collar job with a 9 to 5 shift or pumping iron in the gym for bodybuilding, intermittent fasting can work for all.

It is the best and most successful way to reduce weight and burn the tough belly fat. The OMAD routine gives your body a fasting window of 20+ hours. This fasting window helps in speeding up the weight loss and fat burning procedure.

The OMAD routine also has several other health benefits. It has incredible anti-aging benefits and improves your overall health biomarkers. This routine improves your insulin sensitivity and cures the chronic inflammation in the fat cells.

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Some fantastic benefits of the OMAD routine

• Improved Insulin Sensitivity
• Better Ghrelin Release
• Effective Leptin Sensitivity
• Immense HGH Boost
• Accelerated Metabolism
• Autophagy (cellular repair) is activated
• Relief from Chronic Inflammation in the Fat Cells
• Reduction in Cardiovascular Issues
• Reduction in Oxidative Stress and Free Radical Damage

The best thing about the OMAD routine is that it is sustainable. This term has been mentioned several times. The real significance of this term is that you can actually follow it for a long-term. This outcome is quite tricky to achieve in other weight loss methods. 

People who don't have any experience of fasting of any kind feel quite intimidated by it. They think that fasting for so long would be next to impossible considering their current state. Some believe that the idea of staying hungry for so long would crush them, but believe me—you will have several things to worry about while on intermittent fasting. Your worries could range from old clothes not fitting you anymore, the added expense of buying new clothes, but hunger pangs wouldn't be one of the troubling issues.

Intermittent fasting and the OMAD routine is no magic trick. You will not be taking any special medicines or supplements. You will be rubbing no lotion on your tummy. All you would be doing is training your body to burn the excess fat for access to easy energy. This is one of the healthiest ways to lose weight. It’s the reason your body has been storing fat all these years, to BURN it eventually.

To understand the process of losing weight through intermittent fasting and the OMAD routine, you will need to understand in detail the way our bodies function. The next few chapters will walk you through the whole process and tell you how you will benefit.

If there is one hormone that affects your weight the most, it is the insulin hormone. Our pancreas releases the insulin hormone as soon as the digested food comes into your bloodstream in the form of glucose. The insulin hormone functions as a key to your cells. Your cells cannot absorb glucose energy until insulin is present. This hormone enables the cells to absorb this blood glucose as a direct energy source. 

Any food that you eat takes around 5-8 hours to process completely. This means that if you are living a so-called normal lifestyle, then you can consume 5-6 meals a day. Your day will start by eating breakfast in the morning, some snacks before noon, lunch in the afternoon, and snacks in the evening and dinner at night. In that case, you will always have a high blood glucose level. Your pancreas will always be at work and continuously producing insulin. This is a clear invitation to a dangerous condition called pre-diabetes. 

If you do the math, limiting your calories is a tough task with so many meals to eat, even if you are eating carefully. 

If your taste buds easily control you, then staying away from fast food will also be very difficult. This means that you will not only be eating more calories, but you'll also be consuming empty calories, added sugar, and unhealthy food.

Five to six meals a day means that your insulin levels would always remain spiked from absorbing so much energy from all the meals.

The insulin, although a vital hormone, can wreak havoc on your health when unregulated. Your pancreas can come under high stress when it has to work continuously for so long without a break. This is a hazardous situation.

Insulin is the most powerful fat storage hormone. This means that it tells your fat cells to store more and prevents them from breaking apart. Let us understand this procedure clearly.

Whenever you eat, your blood sugar levels increase as the energy derived from carbohydrates comes in the form of glucose. Your pancreas is the first to respond, and it releases insulin from the beta cells. The insulin binds to the cells and helps them in absorbing the required glucose. The extra energy is stored in the muscles and liver in the form of glycogen. However, when there is still excess, that energy is stored in the fat cells with the help of insulin. It is the primary hormone that is communicating with your fat cells and instructing them to store more fat. 

When there is a steady supply of energy in the bloodstream, and insulin levels are always elevated, your body will never start burning fat cells. The insulin will always send a message that there is an abundant supply of energy and there is no need to burn fat.

In this state, if you exercise more, you will feel weak and drained as your body would keep sucking the readily available glucose in the blood but not affect your fat stores. If you follow a low-calorie diet, then also there would be a minimal effect, as the blood glucose levels would remain high. Your fat cells would never get the message, as there will be the barrier of insulin in between.

This is where the current mechanism fails. It doesn't matter how little or how healthy you are eating. If you were frequently eating, then your blood glucose supply would always be abundant. This means that the pancreas would have to keep pumping more and more insulin into your blood. This is the point where another problem starts which is called insulin resistance. 

You must have heard 'familiarity breeds contempt.' This is true to a great extent as far as overexposure to insulin is concerned. When your blood sugar levels remain unusually high, your pancreas needs to keep pumping insulin at a faster pace. This causes inflammation in the cells, and they start responding to insulin with intensity, which means that although your pancreas is producing insulin, your cells react slowly to them when required. This means your pancreas will have to provide more insulin. It creates a vicious cycle. 

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This process is so bad that it can flush all your weight loss efforts down the drain. People with insulin resistance can have 5-7 times more insulin in their blood as compared to insulin sensitive people. The sad part is that this is not the end of it. Besides diabetes, there are other issues associated with high insulin levels in your blood. You cannot lose weight if your insulin levels are high, as it will keep sending the signals of surplus energy to your brain. It will also lead to stress.

When the insulin levels remain elevated for long, our body starts the chronic stress response. It sends a message of attack on your body and slows down the metabolism. The stress hormones give a push to the defensive mechanism. Your heart rate, cardiac output, and blood pressure will go up. Immunity, growth, repair, and similar mechanisms will take a back seat, and the body will start pumping out lots of cholesterol. The cholesterol is vital for the production of hormones in your body. This means that you will have not only high insulin levels but also high cholesterol levels. If you already have diabetes, then the problems have no end for you, and if don't, then it is at your doorstep. This is a big reason that obese people are at such a high risk of diabetes and other lifestyle disorders.

Regulating your insulin production is one of the most important steps towards effective weight management. Insulin is a hormone that not only prevents fat burning but also prohibits the production of other hormones that lead to weight loss and fat burning. One such important hormone is Human Growth Hormone (HGH). 

HGH is an essential hormone as far as cutting your belly fat, and building muscle. If you are trying to trim your belly fat and build muscles, then this is the hormone for you. It can accelerate the whole process with unimaginable speed. It is a vital hormone responsible for most of your growth-related activities. However, production of this hormone is not possible as long as insulin is present in your blood. Insulin will remain present in your blood for 5-8 hours after your last meal. If you are taking short meals throughout the day, then it means that there can be no production of HGH at all. 

Intermittent fasting and especially the OMAD routine ensure that you only have an eating window of 4 hours. You remain in a fasted state for around 20 hours. When you minus the 8 hours of insulin present in your blood, there are still 12 hours when your body is free to burn fat. After a few hours after your last meal, your body will start feeling the need for blood glucose to continue its operations. As you wouldn't have eaten anything for a long time, there would be no blood glucose. The body would look for alternative sources of energy, the glycogen stored in the liver and muscles. However, the glycogen stored in the muscles can't be utilized for the whole body as it is specifically for utilization by the muscles and the organs. The specific enzymes to make use of it are not present in general. This paves the way for burning the visceral fat, as it is the next significant source of energy. This is the time for which the body had been conserving energy.

Apart from the first couple of days when you start intermittent fasting, you won’t feel weak or have other signs of fatigue. The reason is straightforward; the energy produced by the fat cells is potent and clean. It is capable of running your body smoothly. The first couple of days are the adjustment days. Your body is transitioning from burning energy produced by carbohydrates in your food to burning fat in the cells. Fat is a clean fuel for the body. It leaves no toxic waste, and you will not only feel more energetic and healthy but more relieved too. 

Accumulation of fat cells around your vital organs causes several types of inflammation. You may not be able to feel it, but your organs always remain under stress. The continuous production of stress hormones makes you deficient in many things as your body is always on the defensive.

Once you start losing the abdominal fat, you will feel more energetic, lively, and fresh. The stress levels will go down, and you will be able to cope with diseases and situations even better. 

The insulin resistance is a problem you would most certainly like to avoid. However, recent reports suggest that almost 50% of Americans are insulin resistant. A study published online in JAMA stated that more than 50% of the adults in the US are either suffering from diabetes or pre-diabetes. Obese people are at the highest risk of developing pre-diabetes as suggested in the same report. This all indicates that insulin resistance is becoming a big problem. It is an open invitation to a number of issues in your body, and it is a definite 'No Trespassing' sign for all fat burning efforts. You can help yourself by adopting intermittent fasting, as it is an easy and viable solution. 

You can easily recover from insulin resistance and develop insulin sensitivity. Your body starts responding better to insulin in this state. This means your pancreas does not need to pump out more and more insulin. Your pancreas gets time to recover, and the insulin and blood glucose levels remain in control. You will be able to burn your fat faster and with greater ease.

This chapter explained to you how insulin affects our body and fat burning. It puts your body in a defensive mode. However, the provocative question of hunger is still looming large in the air. You may now have a healthy fear of too much insulin, but fear of staying hungry is still there. It is important to address this concern, as intermittent fasting cannot be done without being in a fasted state for extended periods.

The next chapter will shed light on your hunger mechanism and how it affects intermittent fasting.

Ghrelin is the hunger hormone. When your stomach is empty, it releases the ghrelin hormone in large quantities. This hormone then sends signals to the hypothalamus of your brain to eat. In a healthy body, the ghrelin levels are at the peak when you have an empty stomach, and the levels start to drop as you eat. Around an hour after you have eaten the meal, the ghrelin release completely stops. You will not have any craving to eat anymore. 

However, this is not the case with obese people. Their ghrelin release is never very high, nor very low. Before taking a meal, the ghrelin release in obese people is comparatively lower than it is for healthy people. Even after eating the meal, their stomach keeps releasing the ghrelin hormone is small quantities. This creates the whole problem of craving. You are never completely satisfied. You want to eat all the time. This frequent eating leads to excess weight gain. 

Ghrelin is a crucial hormone. It not only regulates your hunger but also helps in the production of HGH. Frequent eating messes with the ghrelin release function. The low but constant release of ghrelin hormone confuses your brain about your hunger. 

Intermittent fasting puts a stop to this confusion. You get a long fasting period in which your stomach is completely empty. Your stomach is then able to produce an ample amount of the ghrelin hormone. This hormone also helps in the production of HGH. If you work out in the fasted state, your body will be able to burn fat faster as there will be much HGH in your system.

Several studies have also found that the ghrelin hormone has a good impact on your memory and learning as well. You might have noticed that you can think better and work fast when you haven't eaten for some time. As soon as you eat, you start feeling lethargic and fuzzy. 

Intermittent fasting is one of the best ways to normalize your ghrelin levels. It gives your body the time to develop hunger completely, and once you have taken a meal after a break, you will stop feeling hungry completely.

One important point to add here is that the kind of food you eat also has a powerful impact on your ghrelin release. If you eat healthy food with lots of fiber and nutrients, your ghrelin levels will be better. If you have a habit of eating a lot of processed food, fast food, and added sugars, then your ghrelin release will always be erratic.

Shakespeare once said 'a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.' I'm afraid that can't be said about the food items we eat. Fruits and vegetables that we eat contain glucose. Our body can quickly use this glucose in the form of energy. However, the added sugar that we eat contains fructose. It is also sugar like glucose, but our body cannot use it in the same manner. Only our liver can metabolize fructose and stores it as visceral fat. The process of metabolizing this glucose leads to the creation of a ton of toxic waste. The buildup of uric acid, high blood pressure, and gout are some of the harmful results of fructose consumption. 

When you eat glucose, not even a fraction of it will be converted to fat, whereas a major portion of fructose is converted to fat. 

Glucose consumption will directly lead to a lowering of the ghrelin level. However, your ghrelin levels would increase after the consumption of fructose. 

Have you ever noticed that you still have a craving for food and drinks after you have had fast food and carbonated beverages? This is due to the presence of high amount of fructose in these items. Fructose is present in all kinds of processed foods with added sugar. 

Some fruits also contain fructose but consuming them isn't unhealthy. They are rich in fiber and have lots of water. Chewing them negates most of the negative impact caused by fructose. On the other hand, eating processed food or carbonated beverages will cause considerable damage.

If you are aiming to lose weight, then wisely choosing your food items will be important. The food that creates cravings will make it difficult for you to remain in a fasted state.

You cannot lose weight by merely counting calories; you will also have to watch the kind of calories you are consuming. Eating a low carb diet will not only suppress your hunger and make you feel more satisfied it would also help your body to work correctly.

Intermittent fasting is for those people who have been in the habit of consuming too many empty calories. It will help you in normalizing your ghrelin levels and adjust them as per your routine. Higher levels of ghrelin in the fasted state will give you better clarity of thought and increase the production of HGH. It will also help in establishing harmony with your satiety hormone.

Hormones from all parts of your body are sending signals to your brain all the time. These signals direct your brain to do the right things. Similarly, hormones are released by your fat cells too. The fat cells send messages to your brain that your fat storage is complete and you need to stop eating. This is a natural process, and those hormones are called Leptin.

The leptin hormone is also called the satiety hormone, and that's for a reason. Whenever you eat something, your body starts releasing leptin. An increase in leptin levels sends a signal to the hypothalamus of your brain that you have eaten enough and you should stop eating. Leptin and ghrelin levels should be inversely proportional. This means when you are hungry your ghrelin levels will be high and leptin levels will be low. When you have eaten a meal, your leptin levels will be high, and ghrelin levels will be low. This is the standard way these hormones are designed to function.

However, the problem begins when there is chronic inflammation of the fat cells. Frequent eating and excess fat accumulation can lead to such inflammation. The more fat you have, the more leptin there will be. Your fat cells keep releasing leptin and hence you shouldn't feel hungry at all or should feel satiated most of the time. Ideally, the answer will be yes. You should feel less hungry, more satisfied, and never have cravings for food. However, this doesn't happen thanks to the problem called leptin resistance caused by chronic inflammation in the fat cells.

In the case of obese people, the leptin levels are generally high. However, the hypothalamus of the brain stops registering these signals due to the unusually high levels of leptin all the time. This creates a severe problem. Your body keeps releasing the leptin hormone, but your brain doesn't recognize them. When an obese person is hungry, the change in the levels of the hunger hormone 'ghrelin' is also low. It is neither very high nor very low before or after eating. This also starts happening with the satiety hormone 'leptin.' In that case, an obese person will neither feel very hungry nor satisfied. There will always be a craving. This starts a vicious cycle of food consumption.

Feelings of hunger and fullness in an obese person are not the natural and appropriate responses of the body. The obese can perceive hunger when they see food and may never really get truly satisfied with the food. In this way, the quantity of ideal food consumption can never be a consideration for them. Such people will always have an irresistible craving for food and insatiable hunger. They will feel hungry in short bursts and food will always look like an irresistible option to them. However, this hunger is not driven by a requirement of their body, but a malfunction. The word 'malfunction' is key here.

We have understood that the obese person’s response to food is not appropriate and it leads to more weight gain. We also know that their weight is also mostly responsible for it. Therefore, the repair of the system will also come from regulating these hormones. 

Intermittent fasting can play a significant role in regulating the leptin hormone. You must make it clear in your mind that leptin is the master hormone for fat regulation in your body. It tells your body that the fat stores are abundant and therefore it should slow down the consumption of food. If the brain stops registering this signal, the fat stores will keep increasing. Chronic inflammation in the fat cells will drag you to that point. Overexposure of any particular hormone to the brain is responsible for the problem. If your body keeps releasing hormones all the time, the responsiveness of the brain to that hormone will decrease. The same happens with leptin too in the case of chronic inflammation.

Intermittent fasting helps you in normalizing the leptin release function. When your body remains in a fasted state for an extended period, it stops releasing the leptin hormone. During intermittent fasting, the release of leptin hormone slows down. Therefore, the leptin resistance starts to go down. Your sensitivity to leptin hormone improves, and you can feel satisfied more easily. 

Leptin hormone regulation is essential for your fat burning process. As you know, it is a master hormone for fat regulation; it also controls the release of thyroid hormones. The thyroid hormones are the primary metabolic hormones. They increase metabolic functions and speed up burning of fat stores. If your body becomes resistant to leptin release, it will also have a slow metabolic function. Improved leptin sensitivity will mean that your metabolic rate will be high and you'll be able to burn fat more effectively. This is the way it should work. 

You eat food, and your body starts releasing the leptin hormone to indicate fullness. The increase in the leptin triggers the thyroid hormones to step up metabolism to increase the fat burning process. However, the opposite happens in the case of obese people. Your leptin levels generally remain high, and other organs become resistant to it. Your metabolism stays slow, and you never achieve full satiety. Your brain also starts responding negatively. Instead of recognizing that your energy stores are full and sending signals to stop eating, your brain feels that you are starving. It sends messages to eat more and slows down the metabolic functions to conserve energy. Your capacity to burn fat drops drastically and your intake increases. 

Improving leptin sensitivity is very important. It cannot be done until there is a constant focus on the reduction of your fat stores. Intermittent fasting can help in improving this issue. 

Intermittent fasting helps in improving leptin sensitivity by normalizing leptin release. It also helps in curing the chronic inflammation in your fat cells. Your thyroid function also improves with the normalization of leptin release, and this speeds up the metabolic rate. 

It becomes more natural and easy for your body to burn fat and to remain satiated for longer. After eating a meal once, you will feel satiety for longer. This puts an end to an incessant craving for food. Your ghrelin levels are also regulated, and HGH gets a considerable boost. Your metabolic rate also increases and you can lose overall weight fast.

In the past few years, the focus of the weight loss and wellness industry centralized towards one specific hormone, the Human Growth Hormone (HGH). This is an amazingly powerful performance-enhancing hormone.

This hormone accelerates fat loss like no other hormone.

• It helps in building muscle which explains the high focus of the bodybuilding industry towards it
• This hormone fills you with energy. You feel more lively, energetic and agile
• It has powerful anti-aging effects, and it promotes longevity
• The complete healing, growth, and repair function of your body gets a significant boost from this hormone

These are some of the reasons the HGH craze has emerged. However, after a certain age, our body slows down the production of this amazingly helpful hormone. The output of HGH is high in childhood as those are the formative years. Your body is growing fast, and it needs to build muscles and bones. The production of HGH is at its peak during puberty, but from there onwards, its output goes downhill. Our body still produces HGH but in small bursts and only in the right conditions. This hormone has such a substantial impact on growth, longevity, and aging that it’s the reason people still want it in large quantities. This has led to the invention of synthetic HGH.

People are going left, right, and center to get synthetic HGH so that they can enhance their performance in competitive sports or reverse the signs of aging. The strong impact of HGH on athletes is a reason its use is banned in all competitive sports. Apart from the legal restriction, there are medical constraints too that require consideration. The natural HGH produced by our body has a unique structure. The synthetic HGH boasts of copying that structure, but that is far from being the truth. It will always remain a poor copy as our body has a very different way of functioning. The synthetic HGH boosts your performance for sure, but that enhancement doesn't come without side effects. People taking synthetic HGH can have joint pain, fluid retention, carpal tunnel syndrome, diabetes, heart diseases, and cancer. Because of these concerns, the use of synthetic HGH is prohibited in the US. However, the benefits of this hormone still lure people into taking the risk. In the year 2002 alone, around 100,000 people in the US received HGH illegally. The craze has been on a steady rise among teenagers too. A confidential survey conducted by Partnership for Drug-Free Kids revealed that the percentage of kids taking synthetic HGH doubled in one year from 2012-13. In 2011, 5 percent of teenagers were found to be taking synthetic HGH, and that figure reached 11 percent in the year 2013. This is an alarming number. However, considering the performance enhancing, fat burning, and anti-aging effects, people are ready to take the risk.

However, there is no need to take this risk when your body can still produce HGH if appropriately conditioned. The pituitary gland in our body produces HGH. This gland releases HGH in short bursts in special conditions.

The three most favorable conditions for HGH production are:

• When you are sleeping
• When you are doing high-intensity exercise
• When you are in trauma

However, there is a catch. Your body cannot produce HGH if there is a presence of insulin in your blood. Insulin blocks the production of HGH completely. If you have insulin resistance, then the situation gets even worse as the insulin levels in your blood remain consistently high. This inhibits the growth of HGH even more. One hormone that promotes the growth of HGH is ghrelin, the hunger hormone. 

This is where intermittent fasting helps you. When you are following an intermittent fasting routine, you remain in a fasted state for an extended amount of time. Suppose you are following the OMAD routine and have your meal at 7 in the evening. Ideally, your body would release glucose from your last meal up to 8 hours. That means by 3 in the morning your insulin production would stop, as you wouldn't have any blood glucose. By this time, your hunger would have also picked up. Commonly, people are sleeping at this time of the night. It creates an ideal situation for the high growth of HGH. One study undertaken by the American College of Cardiology showed that the levels of HGH production increased up to 1300% in women and 2000% in men in this state. 

Therefore, if your aim is fat burning, bodybuilding, better immunity, growth, anti-aging or longevity, intermittent fasting provides the best solution with the help of high HGH production. However, the benefits don't end here. You can give a further boost to your HGH production by exercising in the fasted state. The longer you remain in the fasted state and exercise, the higher the production of HGH will be in your body.

Therefore, your weight loss and fat burning goal can be achieved with greater ease. This is among the prime reasons most of the bodybuilders have now started following OMAD routine for lean muscle gain and fat loss. 

HGH is an essential hormone responsible for the healing, growth, and repair of every tissue in your body including the bones. Weight loss isn’t the only benefit you'll get by high HGH production, as it will also boost your libido. Additionally, it improves your immune system and fills you with energy.

Intake of synthetic hormones for other than medical purposes is not only illegal but dangerous too. If you are following the OMAD routine, then you will never feel the need for synthetic HGH. The HGH produced naturally in your body is very helpful and effective. Your metabolism will surge, and you will be able to reduce your belly fat much faster than you can imagine. This is one of the primary reasons OMAD routine has become so popular. It strikes the belly fat where it hurts the most. It brings a positive change to your health biomarkers and makes you healthy.

Obesity is a metabolic dysfunction. This term means that your calorie burning mechanism malfunctions and you are not able to burn as many calories as you consume. This is a problem state. The extra calories that you store daily are stored as fat, and you accumulate belly fat and weight.

The process is simple. Whenever you eat anything, the processed energy releases into your bloodstream in the form of glucose. The glucose is very easy to use as is it is a direct energy source. Our cells can use it in that form itself. The pancreas detects high levels of glucose, and it releases insulin to transport that glucose to the cells. Insulin acts as the power broker here. However, when you are consuming more energy than you can use instantly, it is initially stored as glycogen. Your liver and muscles store this as a backup source of energy and use it when you do not have a readily available supply of glycogen. However, if there is still excess energy, then the insulin deposits the surplus as fat in your abdominal tissues as visceral fat.

It should be clear that glucose is the preferred fuel of the body. As long as there is a supply of glucose in your blood, your body won't think of burning any other kind of fuel. This becomes a problem when you are frequently eating. Your body has a ready supply of glucose after short intervals. Even if you are on a calorie-restricted diet, your body keeps getting glucose spikes at regular intervals, and that prevents fat burning. Frequent meals also send a message to your body that it has an abundant supply of energy and it doesn't need to burn the fat reserves. This is among the primary reasons you are unable to burn excess fat even after being on a calorie-restricted diet.

The OMAD routine gives you an easy way out of this. Your blood sugar levels remain low. Your body takes around 12 hours to burn all the glucose in the blood and the glycogen stored in the liver. Once this reserve is depleted, it has no other option than to burn your fat reserves for energy. Hence, your body starts using the fat reserves and your belly fat burns. Intermittent fasting has a powerful impact on the improvement of your metabolic function. 

Intermittent fasting leads to hormonal changes that ensure that insulin sensitivity improves. Higher insulin sensitivity improves your metabolic function. It leads to an increase in the growth of two important fat burning hormones. HGH and Norepinephrine. The whole process speeds up the fat burning, and you lose weight very quickly. Various studies have found that you can lose 3-8% weight over a period of 3-24 weeks on intermittent fasting. These studies have also concluded that you can also lose 4-7% of your waist circumference by intermittent fasting. Your overall health biomarkers improve, and you lose more body fat and less muscle mass. Several studies have also demonstrated that your metabolism increases up to 14 percent during fasts. This is a clear indicator that you can improve your metabolic function by intermittent fasting, burn your fat and experience weight loss.

Chronic inflammation is a significant problem these days. Inflammation, in general, is a positive reaction of your body to any infection, disease, or germ attack. It starts the repair procedure and tries to heal your body. Nevertheless, an excess of anything is dangerous, and prolonged inflammation is very dangerous. When you have inflammation in any area of your body, it starts to affect your system negatively. In place of curing your body, it starts bringing it down. When an inflammation stays for too long, it is termed as chronic inflammation.

The thing that makes chronic inflammation more serious is the fact that usually, it is very low lying. It means that it's possible that you have chronic inflammation in any part of your body and you may remain oblivious to it for too long. This also means that it will keep affecting the proper functioning of your body, but you won't do anything for it, as there will be no apparent sign. It works like a slow poison. Obesity is also the result of one type of chronic inflammation; inflammation of the fat cells.

As previously discussed, fat cells release a hunger-suppressing hormone called leptin which makes you feel full and satisfied. The controlled release of this hormone is essential for maintaining a healthy body. However, problems arise when there is chronic inflammation of the fat cells. This inflammation can be caused by some things like eating inflammatory food or frequent eating at short intervals. When your fat cells get inflamed, their leptin release function gets unregulated. Your fat cells continuously release the leptin hormone in small quantities all the time. This will make your body unresponsive to the signals it is designed to send. It will result in overeating and imbalance in your thyroid secretion as well, and these hormones have a direct relationship. Most people remain unaware of this fact and hence do nothing about it. When there is inflammation in your fat cells, suppressing the craving for food will be difficult for you. You will feel the need to eat more frequently, and that will cause weight gain. It will form a vicious cycle, and you will keep on putting on lots of weight. 

The best way to heal such chronic inflammation is to avoid foods that cause inflammation and practice intermittent fasting. Anti-inflammatory foods will help soothe the causes of inflammation and give your body the ability to recover. Intermittent fasting, on the other hand, will give your body the time to recuperate. Regular intake of food keeps the leptin release constant and creates leptin resistance in your body. While you are on intermittent fasts, your body gets the time to recover from this resistance. Anti-inflammatory foods and intermittent fasting is the best combination to beat chronic inflammation. 

Obesity is a condition that occurs due to a combination of several factors. If you try to overcome it by treating any one issue, the other factors will keep pulling you back. Taking a comprehensive approach that presents an answer to most of those issues is the best resort.