There are so many diet methods out there and choosing the right one for you is the hardest part, so we can’t do nothing besides trying one and hope we can stick into it until we reached our weight goal. One of the most popular method is by doing intermittent fasting like Eat Stop Eat vs Leangains diets that are very similar to each other but also have some differences. In this article we will give you information regarding these diets, so you can choose wisely.
In this article, we are going to give you information about:
– What are Eat Stop Eat and Leangains
– What Eat Stop Eat and Leangains can offer to you
– How to do Eat Stop Eat and Leangains
– Eat Stop Eat vs Leangains
About Eat Stop Eat
For those who never heard about the diet method before, this diet is actually created by Brad Pilon which is an avid weight trainer as well as a nutritionist. This method is using a two-week plan and incorporates periods of fasting and weight training, so you can lose weight but will stay healthy. The protocol is actually quite simple, what you need to do is only fasting for example 24 hours and break your fast for the few next days and do the fasting again.
Eat Stop Eat Benefit
Doing this program will give you many benefits. First is increasing metabolism because if you do fasting 2 days in a week, our body will have time to metabolize nutrients and food. Second is detoxification since fasting will remove all those impurities in our body and reduce food related stress. Intermittent fasting like Eat Stop Eat also has been proven to prolong life and slowing down the aging process by eliminating frequent illness. The last but not least is weight loss for fasting will decreases body fat and overall body weight quickly.
Besides all those benefit, the method is also not suitable for everyone. For example those with diabetes because they cannot go long for periods without food for the fluctuating blood sugar level. Also, not all people will be able to stand 24 hours without eating.
Dieting with Eat Stop Eat
Doing Eat Stop Eat is fairly easy in term of choosing the food you can eat or not to eat because there is no restriction unless the amount of calories you can consume in a day. When not fasting, it is better to keep in mind about calorie intake since if you go overboard, your fasting days will go to waste. For women it is good to start with 2000 calories per day while man may want to take 2500 calories per day. Check other diet methods on Whole30 vs Atkins here.
The recommended food when not fasting including eating lots of fruits, vegetables, spices, and some carbohydrate as well as protein. It is important to keep the carbohydrate in each of your meal since you will need them for energy. Brad Pilon the creator is recommending 100 grams of protein each day, so you can eat 20 to 30 grams every 4 to 5 hours. If you are gaining weight in these days, it is also recommended to reduce your calories intake by 10%.
Fasting days is the easiest days because the rule is simple; you can’t eat or drink anything with calories, so the option will result to only water. This diet will also require you to exercise in those non-fasting days and it is better to do strength training for 3 to 4 times a week.
About Leangains
Another intermittent fasting diet method you can try is Leangains. This one is more like a method to gain muscle and lose fat rather than just for weight loss. The intermittent fasting diet is created by Martin Berkhan who is claimed to be a nutritional consultant, magazine writer and personal trainer. The method is very simple since it only consists of two phases; 16 hours of fasting, followed by 8 hours of eating which usually used to eat three meals.
Leangains Benefit
The benefit you will get from doing Leangains intermittent fasting including; first, reducing hunger when dieting because skipping breakfast will allows for bigger and satisfying meals, so after a few days doing the diet, your body will get used to the eating pattern and adjust it so it won’t feel hungry in the mornings. Since you will eat fewer meals, there will be less meal to prepare and it will also reduce the chance of screwing your macro counting.
No matter how tempting the benefit is, there is currently no studies about Leangains but there is about intermittent fasting and the result is showing that less calories intake will make you lose your body weight and not the intermittent fasting.
Dieting with Leangains
Leangains can be done for example by fasting that last through the night and during the morning hours, so your break hour will be around at noon of shortly after if you wake up at around 6-7 AM while afternoons as well as evenings are spent with meals. However, this is not a fixed requirement and you can modified it as you preferred according your daily routine. Some people who work until night may break the fat as late as 4-6 PM since they will also probably wake up later than most people.
The reason why people choose to do fasting earlier in the day and break later at noon is because it is easier to be done and we are sure most of us also prefer going to bed feel satiated since afternoon and evenings are time to unwind and eat.
You also need to train to build muscle and training is done on an empty stomach after ingestion of 10 grams if BCAA or anything similar, so this feeding is not counted towards the feeding phase. The pre-workout meal is required to give you an optimize result.
Comparison
Now, let’s compare Eat Stop Eat with Leangains. As you can see, the basic difference between these two intermittent fasting methods is on the fasting period because unlike Eat Stop Eat that use 24 hours fasting, Leangains use 18 hours fasting and 8 hours eating. Leangains will also need to consume BCAA or such first before doing training to get the maximum result while Eat Stop Eat is not and you can even not doing any exercise while performing 24 hour fasting.
Eat Stop Eat vs Leangains
| Eat Stop Eat | Leangains |
|---|---|
| - 24 hour fasting | - 18 hour fasting 8 hours eating |
| - No exercise on fasting day | - BCAA before training in fasting hours |
| - Still need to measure calories intake | - Calorie intakes are not specified |
| - Focus on weight loss | - Focus on weight loss and gain muscle altogether |
Conclusion
All in all, the decision is all yours to make. In our opinion, both of them may help you shed that extra pounds but Leangains is aimed towards those who want to build their body while ESE can be done by all people who want to lose weight. Logically, ESE will be more effective to reduce body weight since your body will go without calories intake in a whole days if done properly and not overeating when not fasting.