Using the New Science of Signaling Exercise, Fastercise to Get  Surprisingly Fit in Just a Few Minutes a Day

By Denis Wilson, MD

The science of signaling exercise is amazingly simple yet delivers such powerful results that it will liberate many people, empowering them to transform their lives and help them reach their potential. Your body’s built-in mechanisms for burning stored fat will do the job for you. 

Signaling Exercise

Sometimes it can feel as though our bodies are fighting against us. But maybe we’re just having a big misunderstanding with our bodies. Some fitness problems boil down to simple miscommunication. In recent medical literature, terms such as signaling, perception, and response are showing up more and more. This research shows that our bodies respond to signals they perceive. Given the right signals and resources, the human body can grow, heal, think, sing, dance, paint, run, jump, and reproduce. The human body is incredibly complex, yet it is built to respond to simple signals to help make our lives as easy, successful, and pleasant as possible, automatically. 

Like the human body, machines and computers respond to signals they perceive. “If this, then that,” is a phrase at the heart of computer programming. If this signal is perceived, then that action is taken. This automation helps run the internet, cell phones, cruise control, air travel, space exploration, an endless array of home appliances and fascinating entertainment, and many other conveniences. If we send the right signals by pressing the right buttons in the right sequence at the right times under the right conditions, then wonderful things can happen. 

The complexity of the automation happening in your body on a daily basis far outstrips the technological “miracles” of computers, smartphones, and smart homes. There are so many amazing things that our bodies can do automatically. They clean our blood, make sure we get enough oxygen, digest food, refresh us with sleep, and maintain our body temperature, to name just a few. 

Sometimes, though, it can seem that our bodies also gain fat automatically. Imagine if we could send our bodies simple signals that directed them to automatically lose fat and build muscle instead. Fortunately, that is possible, and in my book The Power of Fastercise (Chelsea Green Publishing, October 2019), I explain in more detail both the science and the practical actions you can take to send such signals to your body. 

Fastercise Techniques

It is likely that many factors contribute to the current obesity epidemic. Perhaps the most significant factor is the signals we send our bodies, particularly the signals we send through the composition and timing of our diet and physical activity. By working backward from what new research reveals about the way the body functions, I identified a new set of signals—from the fastercise techniques of tightercise and shivercise—that encourages the body to burn fat and build muscle. 

I’ve seen great results with fastercise, and so has my daughter Allison. In my case, when I started fastercising in the spring of 2017, my body mass index (used as an estimate of obesity) was 23.9, which put me in the high end of the healthy range for a man. After a couple of months of fastercise, I had dropped about twenty pounds and my body mass index had shifted to 21, which is in the middle of the healthy range. Even though I wasn’t in the obese range before starting fastercise, I was surprised at how much better I felt as my body changed. 

For example, I found that I could move around a lot more easily and that I had greater range of motion. I no longer experienced acid reflux. And if I bent over to pick up something off the floor, my face didn’t remain red so long afterward. (I now think that the two latter symptoms may be related to excess fat around the internal organs.) I’ve also enjoyed more energy and enthusiasm, sharper thinking and better focus, more rejuvenating sleep, and greater resistance to illness. I also get far less winded now when I exercise, I feel stronger, and my skin has a more youthful appearance. 

In Allison’s case, she had run track and cross country in high school, working out for four hours most days. She said she felt invincible. Then she got married, graduated college, and last year she had a baby. She was left with thirty extra pounds postdelivery, she didn’t fit into any of her regular clothes, she had less range of motion in her movements and felt sluggish. 

When she looked in the mirror, she was disheartened by the appearance of her body. However, she had almost no free time to devote to fitness training. She had recently moved across the country and started a new full-time job. She was taking care of a newborn baby and working on launching a social media business and buying a house! 

But one day she noticed how much more fit I was looking and asked me what my secret was. I told her about fastercise, and she was intrigued. Fitness in just a few minutes a day? So, Allison started daily fastercise. She was able to easily incorporate it into her workday in a professional office setting at a Fortune 15 company. 

Now she reports: “I dropped thirty-five pounds over the course of three months. I weigh even less than my pre-pregnancy weight. I also built more muscle, both in size and definition, than I’ve ever had.” For Allison, the best part of fastercise is that she spent less than ten minutes a day exercising, splitting it up into one- and two-minute increments. 

When she ate a meal, she could enjoy every bite. “I feel fantastic and look fantastic! I even fit back into my high school clothes!” Allison says. She didn’t think it would be possible to lose weight given her job, her family, and other commitments, much less to lose it so quickly. But the pounds flew off and stayed off. Allison reports that she even took a break from fastercising over the holidays, with no rebound in her weight. 

Hunger as a Signal

Fastercise can eliminate hunger within eight to sixty seconds. Every time we push off hunger with fastercise and burn stored fuel instead of eating, we save money on food. Money saved is money earned. 

The ease, simplicity, and effectiveness of signaling exercise is absolutely flabbergasting, especially for busy people who don’t have the time, money, ability, or desire to spend hours in the gym or grocery store. In fact, by using the solutions I present here, many people will be able to spend less time and money losing fat than they’re currently spending gaining fat! 

It’s astonishing how easy it can be to lose fat and gain muscle, strength, resources, and control when we work with the body rather than against it. The science and application of fastercise put fantastic fitness within easy reach of almost everyone: seasoned athletes, fitness enthusiasts, and even those who dislike exercising or have physical limitations. Whatever your fitness goals are, fastercise can help you achieve them. 

Hunger is also a great exercise meter. When we get hungry, we know we’ve burned enough calories to run out of easily available fuel. When we are feeling hungry and we fastercise, usually our hunger goes away. If it doesn’t, then our built-in “exercise meter” is indicating that our glycogen is depleted, or we’re dehydrated, or we didn’t fastercise hard enough or long enough to mobilize our energy stores. 

When we answer hunger with tightercise, our appetite can be gone by the time we let our muscles relax. The great thing about using hunger as an exercise meter is that it can save us from wasting too much time or energy exercising unproductively. Exercising too much can deplete glycogen stores and intermediates of the citric acid cycle, which we need to help with burning fat and preserving muscle. Overtraining can also potentially lead to fatigue and injury. We can use hunger as a guide to do just the right amount of exercise at just the right time to serve our purposes. Sweet! 

Focusing on Shivercise

Shivercise simulates the small shaking movements of our muscles we do when we shiver in the cold, an action that uses up ATP very quickly and warms our bodies. Shivercise involves very quick contraction and relaxation of opposing muscles in an alternating fashion, just as you would do when you shiver naturally. 

How fast is fast enough? 

You may wonder how rapidly you need to move your muscles while shivercising in order to get the benefit. Shivercise essentially boils down to a race between how fast the body can use up ATP and how fast the mitochondrial process can make it. Your goal is to shivercise fast enough to leave your mitochondrial process in the dust. 

As you pull ahead in the race, your breathing will increase, and your muscles may start to burn. As soon as you build up a big enough lead, your need to breathe will increase to the point that you’ll want to gasp for and catch a deep breath. If you don’t get winded enough to catch a deep breath within two minutes or so, you probably aren’t moving fast enough. 

As you continue to shivercise every day, you may find that it becomes harder and harder to get winded enough to catch that deep breath. This is a good sign that you’re developing more and more fat-burning machinery. (Your mitochondria are getting larger and more numerous.) Another good sign that you are fastercising fast enough is that your hunger disappears within about a minute. Usually, the more intensely you shivercise, the longer your hunger will stay away (provided you have enough glycogen and hydration). 

Focusing on Tightercise

Unlike shivercise, tightercise is all about holding our muscles fast (still) and tightening them as hard as we can. Here are some tips for getting the most out of tightercise.

It’s just stretching. 

Sometimes we don’t feel like exercising, and it can be impossible to find the motivation to do a workout. One of the beauties of tightercise is that it requires only a few moments of effort tightening our muscles hard, as we do when we stretch in the morning, and you know how good that can feel. 

Sometimes I don’t feel like tightercising; however, I remind myself that it’s not a workout, it’s just stretching! I start tightening my muscles with the idea of re-creating the enjoyable sensation of a good stretch. Before I know it, I’m done and feeling energized. 

Snack on storage. 

When you start to get hungry and you tightercise, you signal your body to mobilize stored energy and your body is immediately satisfied. You just directed your body to snack on its storage. If you want, you can push off your hunger with tightercise again when your hunger returns. It just takes a matter of seconds every so often to keep your body satisfied snacking on storage. Tightercise followed by a deep breath or a yawn can cancel hunger, prepare us for physical activity, or prepare our bodies for the fasting associated with sleep. 

Nurture your tightercise habit. 

Our bodies respond beautifully to training. Transitioning from a dependence on food to a dependence on stored fuel takes some conscious effort. When we’re dependent on food, eating can become so habitual that it can get to the point of being almost unconscious. We can be chewing and swallowing food almost before we know it, and keep eating even after our appetite is satisfied.

In a similar way, once we get used to canceling hunger with tightercise, we may spontaneously start feeling an urge to tighten our muscles hard as our bodies start to enter the non-fed state. I have caught myself tightercising for a few seconds without having consciously chosen to do so. I’ve even had the experience of realizing in the evening that I barely noticed my hunger for most of the day—I attribute that to habitual tightercise responses that I wasn’t even aware of in the moment.

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Note: For video demonstrations of how to Shivercise and Tightercise go to www.fastercise.com.

Well Being Journal adapted this article from The Power of Fastercise copyright 2019 by Denis Wilson, MD, used with permission from Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vermont, 802-295-6300;            www.chelseagreen.com. Referenced and indexed.

Denis Wilson, MD, is the author of Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome, Doctor’s Manual for Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome, and Evidence-Based Approach to Restoring Thyroid Health. He speaks at medical conventions and medical schools both nationally and internationally and trains physicians on the use of herbs and nutrients. His latest book is The Power of Fastercise (Chelsea Green Publishing, October 2019).