How Ricardo Cepeda lost weight in three weeks
Losing weight was apparently the hardest during the COVID-19 quarantine with gym, fitness studios, and other sports facilities closed.
The change in eating habits and lifestyle while indoors most of the time did not help either.
However, this is not the case for Descendants of the Sun star Ricardo Cepeda.
In fact, the 56-year-old actor was able to lose weight even on lockdown by religiously doing intermittent fasting (IF).
"During this quarantine period, it does not mean we have to gain weight. In fact, we can lose weight if you have extra weight to lose. You have control, you can choose how to eat, and one of the easiest ways that I found that helped me lose weight is intermittent fasting. The one that seems everybody is using is the 16:8 split. I tried the system and it's one of the easiest ways I lost weight," Ricardo said in a Facebook video dated April 18.
He and his partner, actress Marina Benipayo, follow the 16:8 split where they only eat during an eight-hour window, from 12 noon to eight in the evening, and fasts for the remaining 16 hours.
"During a 24-hour day, we sleep through the night and wake up sometime in the morning so when we wake up, we are already in a fasted state. [That's] a whole night we didn't eat food. And the way to do 16:8 is we start our eating window at 12 o'clock up to 8 p.m., that eight hours of eating. What Marina and I do, we eat a big meal, we do not overeat. It does not mean we have to eat the whole time during the eight hours. We eat the first meal at 12, then somewhere later, close to 8 p.m. is when we do our second meal."
There is a lot of data that supports the effectiveness of intermittent fasting in weight loss.
Based on the recently updated article written by Monique Tello, MD, MPH, a Harvard Medical School clinical instructor, in health.harvard.edu, intermittent fasting is essential in shedding off body fat because "between meals, as long as we don't snack, our insulin levels will go down and our fat cells can then release their stored sugar, to be used as energy. We lose weight if we let our insulin levels go down. The entire idea of IF is to allow the insulin levels to go down far enough and for long enough that we burn off our fat."
Aside from weight loss, studies have also found that intermittent fasting has many physiological benefits including improvement of glucose metabolism, lipid profile, and insulin resistance, and reduction of inflammation.
This is because fasting triggers a metabolic switch from glucose-based to ketone-based energy which means the body will use stored fat for energy instead of blood sugar, according to an in-depth review of the science of IF published in The New England Journal of Medicine last December 16, 2019.
Ricardo related how the diet plan has helped him shrink his belly in three weeks.
He recounted, "Sometime in my adulthood, I have two kids, responsibilities, eating, I got big. I had been going big in movies, and then when I started doing intermittent fasting, I lost the weight in only three weeks. It took me three weeks to lose that weight just by changing my eating period and my fasting period."
He then emphasized, "I'm 56 years old, supposedly with a slower metabolism, but by just adjusting that, I made my body burn fat and still eat food."
Another thing that makes intermittent fasting so popular is that it allows you to eat anything you want as long as you keep track of your feasting and fasting schedule.
Ricardo said, "Marina eats pasta bowl, while mine is meat sauce with almond bread with hard-boiled eggs. Sometimes, I eat burgers. I even eat quarantine food like sardines and instant noodles. We've been doing this type of eating since the quarantine started and we've been able to control our weight."
While there's no restriction in the food consumption on intermittent fasting, Ricardo shared that it's better to combine it with a low-carb diet (LC), if your goal is to lose weight faster and more effectively.
The two diet plans can make your body reach ketosis quicker as the low-carb diet involves drastically lowering the total carbohydrate intake and replacing it with fat.
"It's the combination of IF with LC that works for me," he said.
"I have been doing casual LC on and off since 2004. Everytime I hit my [weight goal] (or close), I would relax and add too much carbs. Then struggle back to LC to lose.
"This is why some people think it's a fad diet. Because too many of us do it on and off. It takes effort and discipline.
"In 2018, I started doing the combination of LC with IF and bam! Faster results! I don't want to be that heavy again. Body and joint pains gone. BP normal. Blood sugar normal. No other "theoretical" problems. Breathlessness gone. Learn to do LCIF correctly and it works. I chose it as a lifestyle not a fad."
More and more Filipinos swear by intermittent fasting because of its amazing health benefits. But it's not for everybody that's why it's best to seek medical advice first before trying any diet.
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