Welcome to the Get Fit Guys, Quick and Dirty Tips to Slim Down and Shape Up.

My name is Ben Greenfield, and I'm the Get Fit Guy.

In her episode, What are the Health Benefits of Fasting?

My fellow Quick and Dirty Tips host, The Nutrition Diva, tells you how fasting can reduce oxidative stress

and inflammation in your cells, prevent and repair DNA damage, increase longevity,

and reduce your risk of dying from chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease.

And she gives some great fasting tips in that episode for the average person.

I'll link to that article in the show

notes for this episode over at quick and dirty tips.com. But what if you're exercising heavily,

you're playing lots of sports, you're burning a high number of calories, or you're engaging in

any other type of higher than average physical activity? Does fasting still work, or is it just too hard on your

body to restrict calories and work on your fitness at the same time? Well, in this episode, I'm going

to give you six fasting tips for fitness fans. Discover how fasting can help you lose fat, gain

muscle, and recover faster, and learn how to combine fasting and exercise

without doing damage to your body. Now, let's jump into fasting. Here's why fasting works.

While the majority of exercise nutrition recommendations tell you you should shove carbohydrates

and protein down your goal at as soon as

possible after you finish a workout, there's actually quite a bit of evidence that not eating

can also have a recovery effect. There was one study on cyclists that found that three weeks

of overnight fasted workouts actually increased post-workout recovery while still maintaining

lean muscle mass, lower body

fat, and performance. And then another study on endurance athletes suggested that fasted training

...