In terms of nutrition, almost everything boils down to keeping one’s gut healthy and happy. However, neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman revealed how a certain fitness fad could be more harmful than good for the gut microbiome. In fact, things could go so wrong that one could deplete their gut bacteria.
In his podcast, along with popular endocrinologist Dr. Robert Lustig, the icon sat down to discuss the realities of intermittent fasting. While it is admittedly one of the most popular trends among fitness enthusiasts, every practice should have healthy limits. And the duo discusses the repercussions of instances where people go overboard.
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Intermittent fasting focuses on shorter eating windows and longer periods of fasting, or windows where you don’t consume food. Huberman confessed that he practiced a ‘pseudo’ fasting technique, where he simply moved his first and last morsel of food to a certain time. However, he observed that many followed a more stringent version of this.
“When you eat in that way, there’s a long stretch of time, sometimes longer for people that have a shorter eating window, longer fasting window that is, where you’re actually eating up your own intestinal lining.”
So is intermittent fasting a bad nutritional choice? Not necessarily. Huberman went on to reveal how not only could one replenish their gut bacteria, but they could also crank it up a notch higher than average.
“Provided that you eat enough fiber, and in particular high-quality fermented foods, low sugar fermented foods, it seems that the lining of the gut, and the gut microbiome, is replenished to a level that is greater than if you had eaten for longer periods of the 24-hour cycle.”
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And that’s why the method still works, provided you do it correctly. Celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger swore by intermittent fasting. The Terminator recommended limiting one’s eating window to about 8–10 hours, depending on the goals. This saves the hassle of calorie tracking, and you still end up with mostly satisfactory results.
Andrew Huberman also discloses the truth about calories and nutritional values
As fitness enthusiasts, one might find themselves pondering too much about the sugars, fats, and protein present in each food item. But everything has a good and bad version, and Dr. Huberman joined hands with Dr. Lustig to discuss this in detail.
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From what Dr. Lustig suggested, fats are particularly a nutritional group that goes misunderstood at times. One might want to avoid it, but there are good fats that are so essential for the body that they don’t get broken down. Whereas one is harmful enough that the body is unable to break it down and the other is super beneficial. A calorie in, therefore, cannot be accurately deemed a calorie out. And that’s why one needs to track calories with a pinch of salt.
