 Hey everybody, Dr. O. In this video, we're going to talk about what I like to call hybrid alternate day fasting, but you might also hear it called modified alternate day fasting. Some versions of alternate day fasting actually allow you to eat around 500 calories on your fasting days. You get to consume up to 500 calories per day during your fast, and this number can even creep up as you get closer to your weight loss goal. I know I've had periods where I've done this where I've actually gotten up to probably eight or nine hundred, maybe even a thousand calories on my quote-unquote fasting days, just because I was really focused on building more muscle and performance and those types of things. So I would call this an extension of true alternate day fasting, but I'm not a fasting purist at all. If this works for you, then do it. That's all I care about is that you get sustainable weight loss and you find a program that works for you. There are people that think that it's not a fast. If you have anything more than water, I just really, I don't fall into that category. So here we see how this looks different than alternate day fasting. So notice you eat, then you do what I like to call a 500 calorie PSMF that's a protein sparing modified fast. So you don't always hear that with modified alternate day fasting. They will just say eat up to 500 calories, or some will even say eat up to 25% of your normal calorie intake. But I recommend that if you're going to eat on your fasting days, I recommend almost all of it be protein. So if you can find really good lean protein sources, you can find protein sources like chicken breasts and things like that, that are almost all protein. That's where I recommend getting your calories on your fasting days because the whole point is to preserve lean mass. So give your body some protein that it can turn into fuel rather than using the protein from your muscles as fuel. So you see here you eat 500 calories, eat 500 calories. That's what makes this a modified alternate day fast. And you can do any other iteration that you want of this. So what does the science say about this specifically? It's modified alternate day fast. Intermittent fasting and obesity related health outcomes. An umbrella review of meta-analyses of randomized clinical trials. So a lot of big fancy words, but they studied studies. So these were modified alternate day fast that went on for one to two months. And let me read something from the analysis here. A moderate reduction in body mass index in healthy adults and adults with overweight, obesity, or non-alcoholic phylover disease compared with a regular diet. So it worked. They found evidence which supports the role of intermittent fasting, especially modified alternate day fasting as a weight loss approach for adults with overweight or obesity. This is a very viable strategy that you can use. But what specifically is a protein sparing modified fast? Why do I recommend that over just eating less calories? So approaching the protein sparing modified fast. So the protein sparing modified fast has been shown to be a safe and effective method for losing a large amount of weight relatively quickly. Now with the protein sparing modified fast, they usually have you doing this every day where you consume 400 to 800 calories of almost pure protein every day. And they only recommend this for people that have at least 40 pounds of fat to lose because you're on a very, very strict diet. So I'm not recommending a true protein sparing modified fast. I'm still recommending that you eat normally and then you sprinkle in the protein sparing modified fast to help you preserve even more muscle during your fasting program. I think that works way better because if you're always in a calorie restricted state, then you're losing the benefits of fasting. The eating part of an alternate day fast is just as important as the fasting part. So another study, the protein sparing modified fast for obese patients with type 2 diabetes, what to expect? I wanted to point this one out because it said this is a safe and viable option for people that have pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes. So if you're concerned about fasting, complete alternate day fasting, then consider adding 500 calories or so, mainly of protein on your eating days. Great idea. Okay, so who is this the best strategy for? What are the key pros here? This is a great strategy if you just can't fast 36 hours, you have to eat something perfectly fine. Also, if you need to eat something because of medication, there are lots of people that want to fast, but they literally have to eat because of medication. This is the program for you. It's aggressive enough that you're still going to lose a lot of weight and lose a lot of fat quickly, but you can still take your medication and you can still have a little bit of food in your stomach on your fasting days so it makes it sustainable. So this is also a good strategy if you're more worried about performance and you're more worried about losing lean mass. So maybe you're getting closer to your weight loss goals and you just can't do a true alternate day fasting anymore, you'd be losing muscle if you did. Then start to sprinkle in calories and sprinkle in protein on these days. This is a great idea. I mentioned earlier that I even worked up to where I was getting close to 1,000 calories a day on these hybrid alternate day fasting programs when I was specifically worried about building muscle. So you might think, wait a minute, if I'm getting too lean for alternate day fasting, why don't I just switch to time to defeating? I still like this better. So why did I do that? Why did I eat 1,000 calories on my quote on my fasting days? I still believe in the benefits of calorie cycling. If I was doing time restricted feeding every day, I'd be eating about the same number of calories every day. I like eating less on my days that I'm not exercising so that I can eat more on the days that I do exercise. So that's why I liked that better, but you could certainly switch to time restricted feeding if you're getting too lean for this protocol. But that's just personally why I like to do it. I was eating in a calorie excess on the days I was training and then I was hungry on my fasting days, but I was well fed on the other days. So that's actually why I chose the hybrid alternate day fasting program over time restricted feeding. So what are the cons? Really only one. It will slow your weight loss a little bit. It'll slow your progress a little bit. If you're eating 500 calories every other day, instead of eating zero calories every other day, then at the end of the week, you will be in a smaller calorie deficit. So yes, it'll slow you down a little bit. But quitting because you can't actually complete a true alternate day fast is going to slow it down a lot more. So please keep that in mind. All right, so where do we go from here? Once you reach a body fat level where the alternate day fast is too aggressive for you, the modified alternate day fast is too aggressive for you, then we're going to look at our other protocols. So now in the next videos, we're going to talk about the 5-2 approach, something called the eat stop eat approach, and then we'll look at time restricted feeding. So I'll explain all those in the coming videos. I hope this helps. Have a wonderful day. Be blessed.