Diet and Exercise

Est. read time: 6 minutes | Last updated: November 30, 2025 by John Gentile

Contents

General Tips
Exercise
- General Tips
- Supplements
Intermittent Fasting

General Tips

Caloric restriction is the fundamental piece of weight loss
- To find your calorie deficit, find your Total Daily Energy Expenditure and subtract 500 calories to find your max daily caloric intake.
  - Keep track of daily total calories and weight loss (measure same time of day like morning) and adjust if needed (lower max caloric intake if not losing weight).
- For instance, though not necessarily healthy, a professor lost 27 pounds on a purely Twinkie diet to prove this point
- The average American diet doesn’t leave much room for calorie deficit, and to no one’s surprise, it’s harder to burn calories than to eat them.
Stress is the source of so many bad physiological factors, including weight gain. Try to reduce stress and be happy. Focus on your mental health before focusing on your physical health.
Having a plan, and planning ahead, makes you more likely to be successful. Meal prepping, counting calories and logging progress are all keys to success.
- This can also mean pre-planning what meals you’ll have for the day, especially if going out to eat or in scenarios where it could be easy to go off track in the moment.
Get 7-8 hours of sleep per night
Exercise is part of a healthy lifestyle. It’s not only great for weight loss, general health or as a fun hobby, it can also help in unexpected ways like treating depression
- General advice for adults is to try and fit in 150 minutes of exercise per week (e.x. 3x days of 50 minutes of exercise). If aiming for weight loss, or muscle/performance increases, this should be increased to 300 minutes per week, or even more.
Drink lots of water (between 1/2 - 1 gallon, or roughly 2 - 4 liters) for health & weight loss benefits
- Drink 1-2 glasses of water before meals to feel more full
- It was found that drinking 17 oz (500 mL) of water at one time increased metabolism by 24-30%
- Drinking cold water may be beneficial as your body needs to expend calories to heat it up
- Drinking 17 oz (500 mL) of water before meals can also reduce the amount of calories you eat as you feel more satiated

Exercise

General Tips

Intermix weight lifting, high-intensity interval training (HIIT), and low-intensity/long-duration cardio in your overall workout plan as each has its own benefits and changing things up shocks the body
- Also for weight lifting, intermix heavy lift days/exercises (low repetition count but high weight) with high-rep/lower-weight
Keep your heart rate up during exercise
- Limiting rest between workouts/sets greatly helps here
- Monitor your heart rate during cardio (long-duration and HIIT, or even weight lifting) to ensure you’re within your goals
Increasing physical activity can be greatly improved by your everyday, non-exercise choices like:
- Parking further away from work/shopping
- Skipping the elevator and taking the stairs
- Going out and walking more
- Getting a standing desk for work
- Fun outdoor activities

Supplements

Generally, you don’t need supplements, but where it may help as a pre-workout:

Caffeine + L-Theanine for balanced energy.
Creatine for muscle support and recovery (one of the most studied supplements ever in sports science).
L-Citrulline for increased blood flow (helps with the “pump” on heavy lift days).
A daily multi-vitamin if in a deep cut and worried about missing nutrients.

Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent Fasting (IF) is when you have a set, extended period of time when you are not eating (fasting) and a consolidated period of consuming all of your calories. It can be used with any diet- like Keto, paleo, vegan, etc.- as IF is not a diet but a time frame for calorie consumption and restriction.

Benefits

Weight loss while not losing muscle
Less appetite
Mental sharpness/focusing due to fasting “survival mode” and ketone production which is brain fuel
Cellular rejuvenation and nutrient up-tick that can lead to healthier skin & nails
All-around long lasting health benefits, see Effects of Intermittent Fasting on Health, Aging, and Disease The New England Journal of Medicine
Intermittent Fasting - YouTube

IF Tips

Fast at least 16 hours a day- 16 hours is the minimum to be in a fasted state and get benefits-, and work your way up to a 20 hour fast for exponential benefits
- A common time-frame is to fast from when you wake up until dinner time, that way your feeding window ends around when you expect to go to bed
- Prolonged fasting (24+ hours) can have increased mental benefits but decreased physical benefits. These may be beneficial to do every other month or so for cellular rejuvenation purposes.
- Dry fasting, where not drinking or eating during your fast, is extreme (don’t do more often than every 3 or 6 months) but is where your body burns extra fat to create molecular water from the stored cells
Work out in a fasted state rather than during your feeding window to burn a significant amount of fat
- For instance, working out when you wake up in the morning when you’re in the middle of your fast
  - Note you can also work out towards the end of your fasting window but you may see your performance/energy decrease, however this may increase your insulin sensitivity which can be beneficial if you’re focused on gaining muscle
    - A good plan is to do your heaviest lifting day (e.g. deadlifts, squats, etc.) on a fasting day
  - Also working out right after you eat may not be as great either since a lot of your blood is being sent to your digestive system to break down the food you just ate
- Weight lifting while fasting is also great, not only to buck any potential muscle loss, but more muscle means an increased metabolism
IF does not lead to muscle loss, rather it can actually have an even greater effect. See Effects of eight weeks of time-restricted feeding (16/8) on basal metabolism, maximal strength, body composition, inflammation, and cardiovascular risk factors in resistance-trained males, Journal of Translational Medicine
Shocking the body by not fasting some days- while still keeping to your overall diet & caloric goals- and then IF, you may increase results in fat loss
- If IF becomes a norm, you’re body’s used to it and you may see plateaus. From there, you need to break up IF days with non-fasted days to shock your body.
- Another shock would be to throw in a prolonged fast (24-48 hours) every month or so
- Doing the hard way can yield the best benefits like Why magician Penn Jillette fasts 23 hours a day to maintain his 100-pound weight loss
Drinking alcohol while fasting can be bad as your body prioritizes metabolizing the alcohol before anything else, so you will at least see reduced results as your liver will not burn fat as effectively. Drink alcohol after you’ve already broken your fast.

Long Term Fasting

Fasting 48-72 hours at a frequency of once per month can be useful for long term health benefits and weight loss
- IF is mainly a caloric restriction mechanism
- Long term fasting (> 48 hours) increases cell autophagy and other longevity effects. It even helps with stretch marks when losing weight.
Before fasting it will be helpful to hydrate, sodium load, and do 4-5 days of keto/low-carb
During long term fasting you can consume: water (+ salt to help revive electrolytes), black coffee, unsweetened tea, and apple cider vinegar.
- Low intensity workouts during a long term fast are OK, but high intensity may negate some of the positive fasting effects
To break a long fast, eat non-inflamatory things like lean meat
Beginners Guide to Prolonged Fasting - YouTube

Things You Can Eat/Drink While Fasting

Lots of water, of course
Black coffee or green tea with caffeine is great during fasts. However it should be with no sweeteners, creamers or additives. The caffeine also really helps the autophagy and overall feeling you have while fasting, see Coffee induces autophagy in vivo, Journal Cell Cycle
- Avoid supplements like pre-workout, BCAAs, vitamins in oil or anything with calories to not break a fast. Rather consume them during your feeding period to also be easier to digest

How to Break Your Fast

Fats & protein (e.g. keto) or carbs & proteins are fine, however, don’t mix fats & carbs after a fast since you are hyper insulin sensitive after a fast
Consume a higher fiber and higher fat meal before starting fast to feel more satiated but not affect metabolic effects
Bone broth can help rebalance the gut biome after a fast
Make sure to still get the right nutrients during your feeding period
Still consistently stick to the amount of calories you otherwise would consume in whatever diet you’re following (e.g. avoid binge eating) and not to eat too few calories
- Sticking to the amount of required calories to your diet is also key to not slowing down your metabolism, which correlates directly with less calories eaten
- In some cases, fasting actually increases metabolism, see A controlled trial of reduced meal frequency without caloric restriction in healthy, normal-weight, middle-aged adults, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition