The Hibernation Diet created by British pharmacist Mike McInnes and his son Stuart, a nutrition expert, promises to help us sleep and lose weight at the same time by using our biology and working with our bodies, rather than against them. The diet recommends taking a generous spoonful or two of honey at night - either as a warm drink, a smoothie or straight from the jar.
"The Hibernation Diet is about recruiting your own natural recovery system for weight control," Mike says. "You don't have to fight your body every step of the way to get a healthy weight. You need to learn how to make it work for you."
The key is kick-starting our body's recovery mechanism at night - speeding up fat-burning metabolism, easing stress hormones and helping us get a better night's sleep. Which is where honey comes in.
The Hibernation Diet is a strategy for optimising fat burning during sleep by fuelling the liver prior to bed. The authors have for some years been advising athletes to take honey prior to bed to optimise recovery.
The book is based on several years of research into recover biology. Although the theory and the biological principles are simple, they have been ignored up to now, not only by the medical profession, but also by those who offer advice to would-be dieters.
Simply, if the liver is fuelled prior to bed, recovery hormones are released to do repair, regeneration and construction of new tissue. These hormones are exclusively fat burning hormones. For this to occur, blood glucose must be stable, and for this to occur, the liver must be fuelled prior to bed. Honey, which contains fructose, is ideal for this purpose. Up to now few do this, the liver depletes, blood glucose falls and adrenal stress hormones (which do not burn fat) are released.
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