Eat Stop Eat by Brad Pilon is a simple and flexible strategy for fat loss without muscle depletion that does not require complicated meal plans and scientific calorie counting.
It has nothing to do with traditional diet methods and relies on an intermittent fasting strategy instead.
This review of Eat Stop Eat will uncover the program to reveal to you how it works and what the benefits, pros, and cons are.
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Eat Stop Eat Introduction
The Eat Stop Eat strategy is based on short periods of fasting followed by normal “eating days”, a far cry from traditional meal planning which also allegedly yields better results in terms of hormonal balance, fat loss, and lean muscle without all the headaches, restrictions and complications of traditional diet plans.
It is quite a bizarre idea to take in at first, especially if you worry about metabolic slow down and muscle loss. However, what Brad Pilon is talking about is not fasting as traditional intended, or starvation, which indeed would result in metabolic slow down with muscle depletion, rather short 24-hour periods of fasting once or twice a week at most.
Intermittent fasting is nothing new, but Brad Pilon also produces research and scientific evidence to back up his claims at the end of the program. The idea of intermittent fasting goes back to thousands of years ago as it allegedly mimics the natural lifestyle and “workouts” that our ancestors used to do while going about their daily business.
How Does It Work?
The idea is that back in the old days our forefathers’ bodies were naturally adjusted to a pattern of food abundance followed by a brief period of “food layoff”.
The result was that far from becoming depleted and exhausted from a day of fasting, they were in fact lean, muscular, and strong as their bodies evolved to this feeding cycle.
What actually happens is that during these brief fasting periods your metabolism does not have time to slow down, resulting in no muscle loss but only fat loss from your own storage.
This is due to a process that converts fat into free fatty acids, or FFA, and releases them into the bloodstream as a source of energy. As a result, energy levels are expected to stay high and steady, after an initial period of adaptation.
This means no low energy levels, as your insulin levels stay regular and do not go up and down as it happens when you are dependent on a readily available food source, all while burning fat. Eat Stop Eat is not just about burning fat and looking better but more importantly about how to reset your metabolism and energy levels in an effective and healthy way.
However, one drawback is that the program does not offer a proper workout blueprint even though it encourages you to do weight training. The reason for it is that the workout aspect is secondary to the diet part, this means that you can implement Eat Stop Eat together with your current workout schedule.
If you are worried about the calorie deficit of the fasting day while following a workout plan, the program addresses the issue with a schedule of “eating days” which provide plenty of opportunities for your muscles to recover from the workouts while burning fat along the way.
As a matter of fact, Brad Pilon does not recommend gulping down protein shakes like there is no tomorrow, but he advocates a more natural approach, like 70 to 120 grams of proteins from natural sources, not buckets of shakes.
Eat Stop Eat Flexibility
What is good about this program is that there is no need to obsess over food and meal planning, no need to spend hours figuring out calories in and calories out.
You can eat just about anything and follow a normal, healthy diet with the occasional treat, as long as you apply the few fundamental ideas of intermittent fasting.
What happens normally is that it is the ready availability of food we have acquired in modern times that makes us overweight.
Standard diet plans reflect this conundrum because they rely on a constant supply of small, restricted meals in order to achieve a calorie deficit and be effective.
However, it is this constant need for calorie counting and planning that makes them difficult to stick to and makes many people relapse and give up.
The point is that while the traditional calorie counting approach also works, it does require strict discipline throughout. Failing that, it can only work temporarily because too complicated and impractical to implement in the long run.
The Eat Stop Eat program makes a clean swipe of these complications by tackling the problem outside the box, using the natural response of our bodies to the cycle of feeding and fasting, burning fat while keeping metabolic rate high, just like our ancestors experienced.
Eat Stop Eat Results – What can You Expect?
The big benefit of this program is that there is no need to worry about food cycling and meal planning, it is really super simple and minimalist. As a result, you can expect safe and sustainable results.
This is because your metabolism stays high during the brief 24h fasting periods, causing fat loss while keeping your energy levels high.
Testosterone also stays high and in fact, it gets even higher, hence the ability to workout even in the fasting days.
Here a concise summary of the main benefits.
More time and flexibility for social life.
No need for protein shakes.
No need to eat unusual “healthy foods” or supplements.
No need to avoid carbs.
Because it is based on brief, intermittent fasting, you can follow any diet you like.
More energy and less dependency on readily available food.
Brad Pilon is a lifetime athlete who always had in mind a method to keep body fat on track, naturally increasing hormones without losing lean muscle.
He is actually a Doctor with a scientific background who has worked for mainstream fitness magazines and the health supplements industry, traveling the world and having the privilege to use state of the art testing equipment to further his studies, an experience that gave him insider knowledge in weight loss and muscle building.
He is a real and genuine author whose name pops out everywhere on Google searches and he has accrued a reputation over a long time, so he is a trustworthy candidate as an expert in the way to lose fat and build or keep lean muscle naturally.
Eat Stop Eat Components
The program format reflects the simplicity of its theory. It is basically a no-nonsense PDF eBook now expanded into a new edition and ready for download. Eat Stop Eat does not offer the usual extra free perks you usually find in these kinds of fat loss plans to entice you in.
The reason behind this is that the author believes the product is already as good as it gets in its current layout, so you do not need any additional, useless perks. This is a minimalist program, everything you need is in the main PDF. Here is what you get in this new, improved edition:
A new, expanded manual, of which about 25 pages are on references, scientific data, and evidence. The program itself is easy to read and down to the point.
Eat Stop Eat tackles the issue of body fat, muscle, and metabolism in one roll with a super simple, yet effective method which consists of one-day intermittent fasting periods, with or without working out. Brad Pilon’s system mimics what our ancestors did without knowing a thing about diet, meal planning, and calorie counting.
Eat Stop Eat can help you achieve a lean, low-fat physique without the need for scientific calorie counting or a master’s degree in meal planning. The one-day fasting periods actually reset growth hormone and testosterone while keeping insulin levels low and cortisol levels balanced. These positive effects on hormones trigger fat loss but not muscle depletion.
More than a diet plan, it is more a lifestyle program designed with a unique and minimalist approach that results in better health, low body fat, and lean muscle. The most important thing is that it breaks the vicious cycle of daily dependency on readily available foods, leading to a lean and athletic physique without care of calories and meal planning.
My name is Deborah Foster and I am a Weight Loss Coach with a background in Nutrition Coaching and Personal Training. I specialize in helping women and men break through the yo-yo diet cycle and lose weight for good, without being miserable in the process.
