Intermittent Fasting Transformational Technique: A Safe Fasting Strategy
Article Summary: In this informative article, you’ll get an essential transformational strategy that will turn out to be the booster for your health and aging, something that has been effective over the last two decades.
Lead-in: We all believe that breakfast is the most important meal in a day. But how many of you will second the argument that holding to such a claim is wrong. Besides, we may even find ourselves on the opposite side of each other if one told you that when you eat is more important than what you eat. For many people, feasting on chicken and chips is more meaningful than when they eat them, whether they’re doing it at night or midday.
Key Points Of The Article: Health Choices In Past What’s The Link Between Health And Lifestyle? Fat Burners versus Sugar Burners A Few Statistics Intermittent Fasting Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting Effectiveness Of Intermittent Fasting Eligible Persons For The Strategy What Should You Survive With? Best Foods To Eat When Breaking The Fasting Follow-Up Activities During Fasting
When Can You Expect Results?
Health Choices in Past Much of the nutritional dogma that we grew up knowing is now outdated. Eating several meals and snacking the whole day isn’t something to be proud of in this era. Functional nutritionists and nurse practitioners have experienced tremendous shifts in health and wellness, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and alarming rates of obesity. Many people have suffered from these conditions, not knowing that they’re preventable. It all starts with the choices we make regarding our nutrition, and these choices leave profound impacts on our health. The implications are more than we may realize.
What’s The Link between Health and Lifestyle?
Some few decades ago, eating less and exercising more was the dominant nutritional paradigm. This paradigm has been profoundly ineffective for most of those who have tried, except for a few exceptional female cases. The idea of calories in calories out alone isn’t practical. One of the few things health providers focus on when working with female patients is the relationship between lifestyle choices and their impacts on our healthy aging and weight gain. No doctor would believe nor support the limiting belief by most women that they have to accept weight gain as a normal aging function.
The national health and nutrition survey examines the data in regards to both children and adults, regarding their nutrition and escalating obesity rates and compares them with what happened in the 1970s, where women used to consume three meals a day with no snacks. In contrast, what American women are doing today is to eat the three conventional meals and topping them up with snacks all day long.
Fat Burners versus Sugar Burners
If you compared the statistics regarding nutrition for the traditional and modern American women, you might wonder why it turns out to be wrong when healthcare providers tell their patients that eating and snacking all the daylong is allowed. Heavy feeding pressurizes our pancreas and digestive system to the extent that they can’t work properly. When we overeat, the digestive system is already overtaxed, such that it can’t absorb the essential nutrients in food. Regarding the frequency of our meals, there emerges a heated debate over fat burners versus sugar banners. When we talk of a sugar burner here, we’re referring to someone who consumes a lot of carbs and taps into glucose as their main source of energy. This energy source is incredibly inefficient. If you’ve ever been keen on the sugar burners, they’re ever hungry, and they get hungry just a few minutes after taking meals. We can’t deny that they have significant dips in their energy levels that create a hunger situation. These individuals have double struggles, struggling with fat loss and weight simply because they have high insulin levels. If our insulin levels are high, we suffer from more oxidative stress, more inflammation.
Our fat burners have sustained energy, which they tap from their fat stores. Cognitively, these individuals don’t get hungry so often. They’re easy, and it’s easy for them to lose weight as they continuously exploit their fat deposits for energy. They sleep better, and their aging process is slow. QUESTION: Is meal timing important for weight loss? ANSWER: On-time meals and eating less is absolutely vital for our health. A Few Statistics When we get into some statistics of women on health and aging, we shall come to realize that two-thirds of them whose age is between forty to fifty years are overweight, with half of them struggling with obesity. We can’t proactively address these data without quick fixes.
Most women aging 50 to 6o years gain an average weight of 1.5 pounds per year. Various factors mostly cause this. Such factors include: Hormonal fluctuations as women have less lean muscle mass than men Mood disorders Sleep disturbances However, with proper strategies, we can offset this. Intermittent Fasting So, healthcare providers usually advise people to save money on potions, supplements, and powders that don’t offer long-term solutions. There is a better idea, which will absolutely help a great deal. There have been so many strategies used with obese patients, but none has been more effective than intermittent fasting.
So what’s Intermittent Fasting?
This refers to one going without food for a prescribed period. When you’re in this condition, you’re in the fasted state. There’s no doubt that most of you got up to a substantial breakfast this morning. When you eat, insulin is secreted by the pancreas to move sugars into cells. The sugar is stored in the liver and skeletal muscle. However, when we exceed the storage capacity for cells, the excess sugar is stored as fat. During intermittent fasting, our insulin level is low, and we can then tap into the fat deposits for energy. It’s safe and reasonably easy. Does it interest you? Let’s start it together then!
Benefits of Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting comes with numerous benefits. These benefits include: It gives us the ability to fuel fat loss The magic can as well help improve both self-esteem and interpersonal relationships For most women, this is a magic bullet that has helped them gain back their former selves The ornament fasting is simple, flexible, and, more importantly, it’s free. No need to part with your hard-earned money trying to lose those extra pounds.
How Effective Is It? Intermittent fasting is simple and flexible. For instance, by skipping breakfast, you can reduce your calorie intake by 20 to 40%. Doctors typically advise patients to observe this for eight hours a day. This may seem overwhelming at first, but there are some strategies to help you go about it.
The 20-40% calorie reduction translates to fuel fat loss. So, other than the fat loss, what are the other benefits of intermittent fasting? Here are some more benefits accrued from intermittent fasting: Fat loss, especially the visceral fat (around our major organs such as abdomen) improves our mental clarity due to the low insulin levels. It also spikes our growth hormone which helps us gain lean muscle mass. It also induces the spring cleaning for our cells. This is known as autophagy. This is only evoked when we inaudibly fast. Intermittent fasting also lowers our insulin levels that helps in mental clarity.
It also reduces blood pressure which improves our cholesterol profile. Besides, it reduces our risks of developing Alzheimer’s disease and cancer. It also protects our brain.
Who Is Eligible for Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is a wonderful strategy for a healthy lifestyle. But some people might try all they can to avoid this strategy. So, who is eligible for this strategy? You’re fine to start implementing the strategy is you’re not: Diabetic A child An adolescent An adult over 70 years Pregnant If you’ve chronic heart issues, renal or kidney issues If you don’t have food disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating. The strategy can easily evoke these tendencies. If you’ve got a high mass index You’ve not been hospitalized for two weeks If you don’t meet the above conditions, intermittent fasting isn’t your language.
What Should You Survive With?
Remember that you’re going without food; hence we know that nobody can survive without something roaming in the intestines. But you can consume various things such as: Plain tea Coffee Filtered water These things won’t break your fast. What Are The Best Foods For Breaking The Intermittent Fasting? But what should you eat once you’re ready for it? When you’re prepared to break your fasting, some foods are very advantageous for you. Here, real whole foods should be considered. That’s what your body deserves for now.
Ensure that you consume the following foods: Quality protein Organic meat or pastured meat Wild-caught fish Healthy fats Avocados Coconut oil Butter Grass-fed Nuts Note: Processed carbohydrates and healthy fats are beneficial for ladies in menopause. But you need to remember that observing the right quantity and quality is vital.
As you take the foods mentioned above, also consume things like: Low-glycemic berries Squash Leafy vegetables Sweet potatoes ( Avoid pasta and bread cautionary tale) quinoa
Follow-Up Activities Ensure that you limit your sugar and alcohol intake Keep off from any substance that could offset all the good things you’ve been doing Lastly, take a lot of water to keep yourself well hydrated
When Can You Expect Results? Once you start the intermittent fasting, you need to observe the progress for about 30 days for you to determine if it’s the best strategy for you. If it doesn’t work, it could be possible that you’ve got a chronic health problem. Before implementing the strategy, be sure to discuss it with your doctor. The strategy’s benefits are easy to manifest, and you’ll be able to enjoy them in six to eight weeks.
Bottom Line Hope this article has been helpful to you. You’re now equipped with knowledge about intermittent fasting. This fasting strategy is helpful for anyone ready to stick to the procedures explained above. Intermittent fasting is an effective way of gaining muscle and burning fat. If you’re interested in it and you wish to start, the article has provided you with all the information you need. Try it today and be ready to get surprised by its numerous benefits.
Introduction Are you a woman to start intermittent fasting? Do you have concerns and you’re wondering if it’s right for you? After reading this article, you’ll gain an in-depth understanding of intermittent fasting for women. That is a detailed guide so you can finally start living the healthy life you’ve always wanted and improve your figure!
Article Outline: In this article, we’re going to cover things such as: Why Intermittent Fasting Works Well For Women? Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting Mental Benefits Fat Loss Benefits Rejuvenation And STEM Cells Types Of Fasting When Should I Start Fasting? What Can You Eat During Your Fast? What You Should Know Before Breaking Your Fast? What To Eat After Breaking Fast? Exercising During Your Fast Side Effects How Often You Should Fast? Bottom Line
Why Intermittent Fasting Works Well For Women?
Some people think that women shouldn’t be fasting because of their reproductive organs. Some people might even consider it dangerous. Before you start taking such assumptions, let me tell you that it’s the exact opposite. The female body is designed to be able to go longer periods without food as a way of protecting a potential fetus. It has been proven that women can do better in an intermittent fasting regimen than men because of that. A study published in the journal of medicine and science that women utilise lipids better than men. Furthermore, they recruit fatter utilization during exercise than men. Also, they oxidize less protein and fewer carbohydrates, so their bodies don’t break down muscles as much as men do. Hence, it turns out women can have the best success with the intermittent fasting. Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting
Mental Benefits One of the biggest benefits of intermittent fasting in terms of the mental side is the fact that your body releases something that is called Ketone Bodies into your bloodstream. It might be a surprise for you, but ketones aren’t just about the keto diet. In fact, they happen to be an incredibly effective fuel for your brain. They have a unique ability to cross through what is called the blood-brain barrier and therefore modulate inflammation. Consequently, the usual fog you have around 2:00 PM is utterly eradicated because of the applied intermittent fasting regimen. The other benefit is, for instance, the boost of adenosine that enhances your sleep. There are, of course, other benefits. Nonetheless, there are so many of them that we need to leave them for a different article.
Fat Loss Benefits
This is probably the main reason why people decide to start intermittent fasting in the first place. This is a bit of a cause and effect kind of thing. Since your body is in a fasted state, your body is automatically stressed, just because of this thought alone. Stress triggers adrenaline which triggers hormone-sensitive lipase to start burning fat to kickstart lipolysis. Even though it might seem bad, the stress helps you with burning fat. If you think about it, though, extreme emotions like stress are often needed in our life to push ourselves further and benefit ourselves in some ways. Furthermore, a study has shown that women have a greater potential for burning fat from adrenaline than men. This is incredibly encouraging if you are a woman thinking about starting such a fast. Adrenaline is more potent at burning fat in women. Additionally, the journal of physiology published another study that found that women have a higher degree of what’s called the Maya cellular lipids. Essentially, they are microscopic bits of fat that are hidden between the muscle fibres. Women are going to burn more of it, and those cells transform themselves into the fuel.
Rejuvenation This is another BIG benefit of intermittent fasting. Who doesn’t want to look younger and have a purer skin? That goes especially for women. So if you’re paying attention to your skin, and looking for a good way to improve your overall look, here are some benefits that might interest you. First of all, intermittent fasting has numerous strong effects on STEM cells. Thanks to that, the rejuvenation is particularly noticeable after some time of fasting. When you start pushing your fast a bit longer, you can then get the real benefit of rejuvenation effects. The University of Southern California has published a study about the effect of fasting on the STEM cells. Their findings were extremely interesting as they discovered participants had more immune STEM cells in their bodies. As we age, our immune system does not work like we were young. Luckily, fasting can help as it has some sort of a recharging effect on it. It doesn’t mean it will come back to its young state. But it can boost it effectively. STEM cells are especially significant for your immune system as they are useful in many various situations and injuries your body might have. You end up having your cellular structure a lot stronger that is efficient and clean.
Another crucial thing to note (that also contributes to rejuvenation) is telomeres. The fasting process boosts the telomerase activity. All you need to know is that as you get older, your telomeres shorten. They have a direct impact on your young look and on the age of your body itself.
Types Of Fasting
There are primarily three kinds of fasting that are worth your attention. You should pick one that works best for you. There are 12-hour fasting, and 12-hour eating period, which is commonly called 12th-12th or restricted feeding. It might be a very useful framework to get you started with intermittent fasting. It’s fairly straightforward to implement, that’s why it’s so great for beginners.
There are some essential benefits that you can get from this specific form of fasting. One of them is the fact that every time you’re not eating, your gut microbiome gets a chance to reset. The more obvious benefit is the caloric reduction benefit that you’re going to have. Since you’re going to be spending 12 hours not eating virtually anything at all, you can balance your caloric consumption more effectively. Moreover, you can get a larger protein bolus. You still can have frequent meals.
The biggest problem that people face as beginners is the period, they have to go without eating. At least with a 12-12 approach, you can introduce the idea to yourself, and you can still have three square meals in your 12-hour eating period. Hence, you can still get those free frequent, larger protein boluses, that allow you to maintain muscle. Undoubtedly, this is a great advantage of that kind of fasting. Another kind of fasting that is worth mentioning is the 16-hour fasting period and 8-hour eating period. This falls into the category of mid-range intermittent fasting. The benefits of this form of fasting come mainly from microbiota. While fasting, you’re essentially resetting your gut biome. Bad bacteria usually die faster than good bacteria. When you’re fasting, you’re giving a chance for them to die and leave space for solely good bacteria in your organism.
Also, after 16-hour of fasting, you’ll likely get a light ketosis effect. Now, ketones aren’t just a macronutrient like we think in ketosis. Ketones can act as a hormone. They act as multiple different things, and they can change DNA expression. Hence, they can change who we are in terms of how our body metabolites.
Another great thing about this form of fasting is the fact that you can get insulin fast. Since you’re giving yourself a break from insulin, its levels get back down to baseline, and it gives your body a chance to recover and burn more fat. The third type of fasting that is worth your attention is a 24-hour fast. The benefit of this type of fasting is that it allows you to go into a deeper state of ketosis. Essentially, it’s all about getting yourself the big surge of ketones that you need in your body to heal.
The longer-term fasts are great when it comes to rejuvenation effects, as well as telomeres and everything’s STEM-cell-related. Please note that 16-hour fasts are more related to your body composition. When you first start fasting, you’re going to put your body into immense stress. For women, cortisol elevates and there’s a link between cortisol and oestrogen. So a lot of times when women first start intermittent fasting or even KIDO for that matter, they don’t lose weight.
In fact, they might even gain an additional pound or two, which is somewhat counterintuitive. As your body’s getting used to utilizing fats for fuel, cortisol and oestrogen elevate as a result, and vice versa. That means you’re going to have fat and water retention for a very short period. It’s crucial that you don’t get discouraged, especially if you’re just starting. For the first week, you don’t get virtually any results you thought you would.
When Should I Start Fasting?
To get the most out of your fast, your leptin levels need to be below. If you eat a big meal, your leptin levels go high, which for a short period is sufficient. Leptin is the communicator of your fat tissue with your brain. When leptin is high, your fat tissue is telling your brain that there’s plenty of fuel and it’s okay to turn on the metabolism. When leptin is low, the fat cells are telling the brain, “Hey, we’re low on fuel, so slow down the metabolism to preserve it”. Ironically, we need our leptin levels to be below for lipolysis to occur, so what we highly recommend is weaning off the food a little bit before going into your fast.
Also, you can go into a ketogenic diet for a couple of days before starting to fast. That is simply because carbohydrates spike your leptin, really high fats do not. So, if you eat a big carbohydrate-rich meal before you go into an intermittent fasting regimen, you’re not going to have as much benefit as if you were to eat high-fat food.
What Can You Eat During Your Fast?
Coffee There’s nothing wrong with having a coffee as long as you don’t add any creamers nor sugar to it. Tea Just like the coffee is fine to consume, you can also have your tea. Just make sure that you don’t add any sweeteners and creamers to it. Other Things You Can Consume You can consume many things as long as they are not too complicated. Things like apple cider vinegar is a great option. You can have your apple cider, you just need to add some water. That’s it! Minerals, as well as electrolyte drinks, are also fine to consume. Apart from that, you’ll need to wean off most of the foods.
Firstly, though, let me explain the common pitfalls. The leucine in branch chain amino acids triggers an insulin spike. When you are fasting, your insulin levels are low and that’s a major benefit. If you spike your insulin with anything, even amino acids, that’s taking away that benefit, and it’s stopping the autophagy process.
So, coffee with nothing added to it is fine, but any supplement often can break your fast, and you’ll lose all the progress you’ve made up until this point. The best thing we can recommend to you (if you find it a bit confusing) is to stick to the things you can eat that are mentioned in this article. Again, you’re fasting, so you need to put off most of the things you normally consume.
What You Should Know Before Breaking Your Fast?
As you fast, your cortisol levels are profoundly elevated. Most people think that cortisol is horrible, that it contributes to belly fat and has a lot of negative effects on your body. However, it turns out the cortisol can also be your best friend. In fact, cortisol does a lot of good to our bodies but when combined with food causes us to store fat.
Here are some things to keep in mind when you’re breaking your fast: at the end of a fast, our cortisol levels are high because of the stress level that is caused by fasting, so we become quite sensitive. So we need to do what we can to reduce our cortisol levels before we break our fast, especially for women, because they’re more prone to higher levels of cortisol. So, here are some things we recommend to do to lower it down!
You can, for instance, add a bit of salt to your water before you drink it. What that does is it brings down the aldosterone effect, which is a hormone that regulates fluid retention. Hence, it makes the cortisol come down. You’ll want to do that in the first few hours of your fast. The only thing that you can do is have some tea and put a little bit of sentiment in your tea. Simple sentiment. You see there’s something as cinnamon known as methyl hydroxy, Chalco and polymer. That mimics insulin in turn.
So, what that means is it allows your cells to become receptive as if there was an insulin spike. So, when you consume food, insulin spikes in the Selway cell doorway opens for food to come in. Now when you spike your insulin, of course, you’re taking in food. Cinnamon allows you to spike your insulin sound a mimic without actually eating food. So, what this means is when you do eat, it’s going to have less of an impact. And therefore, going to reduce the amount of food that’s going to get stored in a negative way. If you do this just a leading up before you break your fast, it can help you out a lot. Remember, the way you break your fast is as much important (if not more important) than the fast itself.
What To Eat After Breaking Fast?
Fasting seems to be very simple. You just don’t eat anything, right? But when you break your fast, especially for women, we have to pay particular attention to a few things. The first thing to pay attention to is that you’ll want to make sure you’re mainly consuming lean protein. If you’re going to eat red meat, keep it super lean. Ideally fish, shellfish, white meat or a pea protein shake. When it comes down to meat, you want to make sure you’re getting good, high-quality meat. We highly recommend you get Butcher Box meat because you can be surer of its quality. Butcher Box is a meat delivery system. So, they have grass-fed, grass-finished high, and all sorts of Omega three types of meat, whether it’s chicken, fish, beef, you name it, it’s worth checking it out. They usually sell their meat for cheaper prices than you would normally get in a regular store. It’s a great option because you’re ensuring the quality of meat is high and that you’re not overpaying for it.
When you break your fast you’ve got the lean protein. We usually recommend not adding extra fats. Protein is going to get assimilated. It’s going to allow your insulin to spike just a little bit, and then it’s going to come back to normal. Afterwards (an hour later), you can eat a more normal meal. Remember to pay attention to when you’re breaking your fast because it’s a highly strategic moment.
Another thing you can do, and that’s highly recommended, is breaking your fast with a little bit of bone broth directly, before you have a meal. That is going to allow your gut layer to rebuild the mucosal bit. Also, you should never mix carbs with fats as they can spike your insulin levels. They are perfectly fine if you consume them independently, but not together. After approximately 60 to 90 minutes you can eat your next meal and it’s where you’ll have much more flexibility. We highly recommend you buy some specific things beforehand as some things can help profoundly help you when you’re fasting.
Vitamin D, for instance, is proving to be one of the most powerful things that we can consume, especially when we’ve been fasting. Women seem to be more sensitive to vitamin D. Also, they seem to have issues with lower vitamin D than men do. Now, you’re going to get your vitamin D from eggs. You’re going to get it from fish, from shellfish, from some meats, or supplementation.
It’s also extremely important that you get satisfying amounts of zinc. If you’ve already put shellfish and fish to your list, you’ll be good to go. Fish contain a lot of zinc in them, and it’s a natural source. Zinc allows the receptors in our body to see and accept the thyroid hormone that’s floating through our body. We have an active thyroid, T3 hormone that flows through our body, but what if we don’t have any receptors that are willing to accept it, right? It’s just floating through doing nothing. Zinc is important for that, so get any foods that have zinc in them. Another thing you’ll want to get is any food that contains iodine. We recommend that women have some kind of seaweed or Nori for that matter. The last thing you can consider having is a couple of Brazil nuts. Normally we don’t have too much of an issue in mineral deficiencies. But when you’re fasting, it’s easy to get deficient because you’ve been fasting all day.
Hence, your eating period is so small that you don’t get the aggregate. You don’t get all the minerals and vitamins that you need, so eat a couple of Brazil nuts. Another thing to keep in mind is that women have to get a certain amount of fat to support oestrogen. Some studies show that low-fat diets crush oestrogen levels. Men don’t need high amounts of oestrogen. Women also don’t need them, but you’ll need a decent amount. As you get older, oestrogen levels go down and by ratio, your progesterone levels are higher. Did you know that oestrogen makes it so that you’re not that hungry? And oestrogen makes it so you recover? It doesn’t mean you want to skyrocket it, but you don’t want it to get suppressed. For that, we recommend consuming cruciferous vegetables during your eating periods. This will support your oestrogen levels to the point where you won’t have to worry about that.
Exercising During Your Fast
The number one thing that you need to know about working out during fasting is to maintain your intensity. Don’t change anything because of the fact you’re fasting. You want to keep your workouts the way they normally are. Keep in mind that the calorie deficit is going to take the weight off of you. For instance, if you’re fasting from 9:00 PM to 2:00 PM, then a workout in the morning works perfectly fine. Plus, you don’t need to eat anything after the workout. So, you can keep fasting and then break it as usual. Keep in mind, that if you have the ability and the flexibility to work out in the early afternoon before you break your fast, you’re that much further into a fast, which means you’re that much more likely to burn more fat. Then it’s convenient to break your fast with some post-workout meals. You can then absorb a lot of nutrients that are crucial for your wellbeing.
Side Effects You will get cold: One thing that might happen as a side effect of fasting (especially when you’re just a beginner) is that you can get cold. When you get cold, it’s blood flows going to your fat tissue to convert it over to a usable form of Brown fat. This is not because your metabolism is slowing down. You’re getting cold because blood flow is getting diverted. You can get a headache: You can also get some headaches. unfortunately, they can be a bit of a constant type of thing. That’s mainly because your pain receptors in your brain are getting readjusted to glucose levels being lower. You don’t have to worry about that too much so it’s completely normal and to be expected.
You will get bloating: Another thing. that might happen when you start fasting is the bloating effect. When you break your fast, if you consume veggies, you will be bloated. If you consume high amounts of fiber, you also will be bloated. That’s mainly because your system is sensitive, and your gut biome is a bit different. You might find that you respond differently to different foods every week because your gut biome is changing so much. Don’t be alarmed, but that’s why we recommend that you consume simple, bland things and break your fast. You will be sleepless: Also, another side effect of fasting is that you can get a bit sleepless. That’s mainly because of the adrenaline levels that are increasing in your body.
How Often You Should Fast?
The last thing we’re going to cover is how often you should fast. Because some people believe that intermittent fasting is kind of a lifestyle and that they can fast every day. This is not the case at all, and especially for women, it can lead to an eating disorder and further problems. We believe that three days per week are completely enough when it comes to frequency of fasting.
Regarding long-term fasting (24 to 36 hour fast), we recommend fasting once two up to three weeks. That is to make sure you don’t exhaust your organism and reap all the benefits from this technique.
The Bottom Line Hopefully, after reading this article you have a much bigger understanding of the differences in fasting between men and women, and that you have a clear idea of how you can start. As long as you stick to the rules outlined in this article, you shouldn’t have any problems and further complications with intermittent fasting. Also, you’ll be sure that you’re getting the most of this technique and that you can look and feel better.
Intermittent Fasting in a Nutshell – Benefits and Tips
Intermittent Fasting in a Nutshell – Benefits and Tips
Introduction Have you been thinking about starting intermittent fasting? You’ve heard about all the benefits and its power, but you don’t know where to start? Well, if that’s the case, this article is for you. We’re going to dive deep into the science of this form of fasting. The article explains what it can do for you, your body, and mind. It also teaches you what you should be doing to reap all the benefits from it. So that you can live a healthy life and have the figure you’ve always wanted. If you see this article, then you probably know something about this form of fasting. Intermittent fasting has been very popular in recent days. But in case you haven’t heard about it, here’s a quick explanation of what it is: Intermittent fasting is simply a method of losing weight. It is an eating pattern that defines cycles between eating and fasting. Simply it’s not a specific diet of any kind, but rather a model, as to when to eat, and when to stop eating. It’s all about getting an optimized amount of nourishment and fat loss over certain periods. It is safe, and it’s reasonably easy to do. Are you interested? Then let’s dive into it!
Key points of this article: · Basic benefits of intermittent fasting, such as fat loss, and muscle gain. · Mental, focus and rejuvenation benefits · How to start fasting? · How much time should you fast before you start eating? · What you can consume during the fast and when you’re breaking it? · How to break your fast? · Should you work out? If so, how and when? · Different types of fasting (Choose the one for you!) · Fasting for men vs fasting for women · Common concerns · Putting it all together
Benefits of Intermittent Fasting
There are a lot of people that are attracted to this form of fasting. Also, a lot of people have been successful with it. But what are the main benefits of it?
Fat Loss That’s probably the most important advantage of this method. It allows you to burn a lot of fat from your body while maintaining muscle. That is why so many people have had those incredible results with it! It increases muscle tone and muscle density. Furthermore, it has a lot of smaller benefits that are worth mentioning here. One of them is the improvement of your vascular functions and your overall look. By applying this method, your skin can become much purer and clean. Other benefits include the improvement of nails and hair. Where do all those benefits come from? You might wonder that it’s simply not eating for some time, how can it improve so many things? Well, that’s mainly because of the release of catecholamines, adrenaline and norepinephrine. It allows your body to tap into your fat stores and preserve muscle in the process. That is the exact reason why this method is so powerful. Not so many other methods allow you to lose fat, and not lose any muscles at the same time.
Mental Benefits
Since you’re not eating, and since your body releases so many chemical compounds (like adrenaline) into your organism, your mind goes into survival mode. Now, before you get scared and give up on intermittent fasting, let me tell you that in fact, it’s very good. You end up being much more focused and determined to do the tasks at hand. If you’re highly neurotic, your thoughts stop rushing through your mind, and you can finally pay attention to essential things. Most importantly, however, your body starts producing ketone bodies. It doesn’t necessarily have to do anything with ketosis. Instead, ketones end up being an incredible source of fuel for your brain! Now you have to admit, that’s a lot of benefits for solely not eating for some time.
Cellular Rejuvenation Another major benefit of intermittent fasting is cellular rejuvenation. When you fast, your body produces something that’s called “autophagy”. It’s a process when your old cells get eaten and are replaced by newer, more efficient and powerful cells. It makes your skin look young and you end up living longer!
How to Start?
If you’re excited by all the incredible benefits of intermittent fasting and can’t wait to start your fasting journey, we have good news for you. It is easier than you thought! But there are a few things to consider when you’re just starting out. Let’s discuss them. Stopping your consumption straight away might be a big shock for your organism. That’s why it’s always good to eat something high in fibre. This can make you a lot more satiated. If you started fasting at 10 pm the day before, you might want to have some little thing to eat, that’s high in fibre the next day at 10 pm. That is to make sure you won’t have the annoying stomach rallies. Don’t worry, you’ll still have all the benefits of fasting. It’s simply to make sure, the whole process isn’t too uncomfortable for you. Furthermore, fat and protein are also good in small portions. That’s to make sure your body can produce the precious ketones we talked about earlier. We recommend eating something simple, and not overcomplicating it too much. Broccoli and coconut oil should do the trick.
How Long Should I Fast?
This is a highly popular question for people who are just starting. This is also very important as the period how long you fast is determined by what you’re trying to achieve. Hence, you must have an end goal in mind. The shorter you fast, the more composition effects you’ll get. The longer you fast, the more you’ll be tapping into the cellular rejuvenation effects. What we recommend for beginners is typically 16 hours fast. This technique is known as 16 eight fasting. This simply means that you’ll have a 16-hour fasting period, and then you can eat for the next 8 hours. In practicality, you probably won’t be awake the whole eating period, so you normally can eat for four or five hours. This adds up perfectly. It allows you to restrict calories and get the right metabolic effect.
But if You’re Motivated… Sixteen-hour period is a good start. That’s when you start getting the real benefits of fasting. After those 16 hours, the benefits start to grow exponentially with every hour. The longer you can endure from there, the bigger the benefits will be. We recommend working your way up to 18-20 hours. Please note, that at the beginning, it might be challenging to endure this much. If you can’t endure this much, we’d like to emphasize that 16 hours are perfectly acceptable for the beginners. The next thing we have to discuss is what you can eat during the eating windows.
What Can I Eat?
· Black coffee (no sugar, no milk) Black coffee is proven to have some benefits with regards to autophagy. It helps recycle the old cells from your organism and contributes to fat loss. So if you’re trying to achieve cellular rejuvenation, and lose fat quicker, add it to your list! · Tea (no sugar, no milk) Tea is also fine, and you can have it without any problems. Remember, though, just like in the case of coffee you cannot add any sweeteners to it. Because it can trigger an insulin spike that causes a metabolic response. Sticking to black coffee is fine as it will complement the fasting process perfectly. However, there’s one thing you have to keep in mind. If you have been considering consuming branch chain amino acids during your fast, then we have bad news for you. They can break your fast instantly, and they are not necessary during the fast. So, keep them out of the equation, and you’ll be good to go.
Breaking your Fast
That is a highly significant and strategic point in your fasting process. First of all, you need to make sure you provide your organism with all the essentials so that it’s in excellent condition. We recommend breaking your fast with a bone broth. It will allow your collagen to help restore the gut. It’s quite common that after fasting, you can temporarily weaken the gut mucosal layer. There’s nothing to be afraid of, though, because after eating the broth, it will absorb everything much better.
Another thing to keep in mind is to make sure that under no circumstances, you combine fats with carbs. This can cause an insulin spike and lead to the wrong metabolic response. You certainly don’t want that. Keep this in mind, and everything will be fine. The best way is to either have fat and protein or carbs and protein. Summing up, eating a bone broth after breaking a fast is a great practice. And also, don’t mix fat with carbs. Now let us move to the next section!
Should I Work Out During The Fasting Period?
There’s nothing bad in working out during your fast. However, you can either work out during the fast or during the eating window. You can do whatever is best for you, but please note, that if you want to get a lot more physiological body composition effect, then you should consider working out during your fast. We recommend fasting somewhere around the middle of your fasting period. This way, your body still has energy from the last eating window, and you can work out without giving up on fasting. There are some things to keep in mind if you decide to work out after you’ve eaten. Although this might seem to be a good option, there are some contraindications to it. As soon as you break your fast, your blood is going into your internal organs. Hence, if you start working out, you’ll most likely detract from that. That’s why this method is not recommended, because you won’t absorb the essential nutrients. This is the reason we recommend working out during fasting. According to various studies, when you work out during the fast, you can burn much more fat than when you work out after it. That is mainly because Maya cellular lipids (which are bits of fat in your muscles) get evacuated when you work out during fasting. They proceed into the bloodstream where they get burned for energy, leaving the muscles intact. Hence, working out in this period is extremely powerful if you want to burn fat quicker and more efficiently. Different Types of Fasting
Intermittent fasting That is the one we’ve been discussing, to remind you, it’s usually a 16-20-hour period of fasting and then going into an 8 hour period of eating. However, the longer you fast, the better. The exponential growth of body composition effects and mind benefits grows with every hour you add to your fasting period. However, you should not push it past 48 hours (unless you have a reason to), because the effects start to diminish after the first 24 hours and fall to zero after 48.
Liquid fast
In this type of fast, you can consume liquids like coffee, bone broth, Bulletproof coffee etc. Basically, you can still have calories but in the form of liquid. This type of fasting is supposed to give your digestive system a break.
Dry fasting
This is one of the most extreme forms of fasting because you can’t consume any food nor liquid. You shouldn’t practice this form of fasting unless it’s once in 3-6 months. Your body consumes fat because it intends to make water instead, to keep your body hydrated (fat contains hydrogen). This is called molecular water. This is an effective method in burning fat, but it’s something you should not be practising often. Fasting For Men Vs Fasting For Women There are many similarities between men and women when it comes to fasting. One thing that women have to remember is that because of their reproductive system, the body will send hunger signals a lot more aggressively than in the case of men. In a survival standpoint, it’s more dangerous for a female to fast because she needs the energy to carry a child. Therefore, their body might go into more of a fighting response. For women, it’s okay to fast 12-14 hours for the beginning and work your way up to 16 hours. You can still get some benefits of fasting after 12-14 hours, but the process won’t be so uncomfortable. For men, however, the matter is fairly straightforward. You won’t get as aggressive hunger signals as in the case of women, so you can start your fast normally. Common Concerns
Am I going to lose muscle?
In the case of intermittent fasting, various studies prove the opposite. You won’t lose the muscles, instead, you’ll likely gain them. A study shows, when you compare the intermittent fasting with other types of fasting, the intermittent one has proven to be much more effective in fat loss and muscle gain. However, if you fast for longer periods (3-5 days), you might lose some muscle.
Will my metabolism slow down? If there are discrepancies between your calorie consumption after you’ve started fasting, your metabolism might change. However, if you keep your calories within their regular range, nothing is going to change in terms of your metabolism.
Will it affect my thyroid?
The study has proven that during fasting, your production of thyroid hormone might slow down. Summing up, fasting might have some effects on your thyroid, but the metabolism comes back to its original state when you get into the eating period.
When to take my supplements It depends on the kind of supplement. If the supplement contains any carbs or calories, it is likely to break your fast. That is why it is important, your supplements won’t have any caloric effect on your body. Make sure they don’t contain any of that. If they do, you might want to stick to solely vitamins.
Can I drink alcohol during the fast?
Normally, alcohol is not recommended, because of your metabolism that is prioritising alcohol over everything else. If you drink alcohol, you won’t burn the fat as fast as you would without it. That’s why we don’t recommend it. If you want to consume some alcohol, you must do it after you’ve eaten something.
The bottom line We hope this article has given you an idea about what intermittent fasting is. This form of fasting is good for everyone as long as you stick to the rules we’ve mentioned above. It’s a highly effective way of burning fat and gaining muscle, so if you’re interested in it, and thinking about starting, now you have all the information that you need. Give it a try and you might be surprised with its powerful effects!
How to Make Daily Intermittent Fasting Work For You
How to Make Daily Intermittent Fasting With the 16:8 Diet Work For YOU!
How to Make Daily Intermittent Fasting With the 16:8 Diet Work For YOU!
Introduction The idea of intermittent fasting. Have you ever wondered what it is? Perhaps you can piece together some clues about it, but never really ventured into knowing more. Have you also wondered if intermittent fasting could work for you? This article shows you how intermittent fasting, particularly the 16:8 intermittent fasting method, can work for you. So, wonder no more because you’ve come to the right place and this is the article for you! Ready to dive in? Whether you have no idea what intermittent fasting is or you’ve picked up certain bits and pieces of this technique along the way, let’s break it down and tap into what’s in it for you because if a method or idea does not work for you, then what’s the point, really? There are many dieting methods and in recent times, many more have surfaced. The key to using any method is the ability to generate desired outcomes. One of the main reasons people may fail to achieve their dieting goals is simply because the dieting technique did not work for them. So, think about it … if a dieting technique will likely not work for you, why embark on that path in the first place? Hence, let’s consider the case of the 16:8 intermittent fasting method and let’s also determine why it could be a beneficial path to embark on.
Key points of this article:
This article lays out information about the 16:8 intermittent fasting method as follows: What is the 16:8 method? How is 16:8 method different? How to make the 16:8 method work for you! Some frequently asked questions regarding the 16:8 method All the things you wanted to know, right? Great! Let’s get started! What is this 16:8 method? Yes, immediately you see the 16 and the 8 numbers, you probably think there may be some math involved. Well, not really or thankfully not much math. However, you would need to remember these numbers as you plan your day if you use the 16:8 method. What is fasting? Fasting is the absence of food or calorie intake and intermittent fasting is a technique through which the absence of food or calorie intake occurs intermittently or within specified intervals.
Intermittent fasting is popularly used as a way of losing weight and it’s quite different from a full day fast in which you are not consuming food or calories for the entire day. So, what are your goals regarding your weight? Do you want to lose some pounds or do you want to watch or manage your calorie intake? Have you been stuck doing diets that have failed? Are you ready for a change? If you are ready for a change, using an eating pattern such as intermittent fasting could help.
Okay, where do the 16 and 8 fit in? The 16:8 intermittent fasting method is intermittent fasting that is defined within specific and consecutive 16-hour and 8-hour timeframes or windows of non-caloric and caloric intake. Again, let’s break this down some more because the goal is to see how this can work for you! The method involves not consuming food or main calories for 16 consecutive hours and then, for the immediate 8 hours afterward, you can consume food or main calories.
Let’s use an example. If you use the 16:8 method, you will consume food for 8 hours of your day. For instance, let’s say you wake up at 6:00 AM, you do not have your first meal of the day or significant intake of calories until 10 AM. You can then eat for the next 8 hours – from 10:00 AM until 6:00 PM. Beyond 6:00 PM, no more eating for 16 hours. Yes, no more eating significant calories. But wait! You could consume something though, even after your eating window closes. We’ll discuss this shortly.
How is 16:8 Different?
Indeed, we can agree that there are so many diets out there, but what makes 16:8 different in a way that it can work for you. Firstly, it’s more of a method which defines cycles between eating and fasting, rather than placing specific emphasis on what you should eat. It’s more like a lifestyle and a model specifying when to eat and when not to. Does this mean that you can eat an entire grocery store? Well, as you guessed it … the answer to this question is no!
The 16:8 technique is different from other fasting methods such as partial week fasting when a person eats normally for a certain number of days of the week e.g. five days and then eats a very low-calorie diet for the remaining two days of the week. Yes, not eating food for an entire day may seem a drastic change for some people. On the contrary, the 16:8 method allows you to eat food every day! The 16:8 intermittent fasting protocol specifies a daily fasting routine which can be an easier routine for a person to adapt to, while the other fasting technique is a non-daily fasting routine and thus perhaps a bit more difficult to sustain. This is critical! Diets and eating plans are about finding what works and how to keep it going without much hassle or stress. How To Make The 16:8 Method Work For You!
Making the 16:8 diet work for you has a lot to do with knowledge regarding differences in fasting techniques. Indeed, the partial week fasting method could work for some people and numerous people will sing the praises of partial week fasting. Some people may have had success fasting one or two days a week.
However, constraints encountered by people who use the partial week fasting technique include the ability to switch from majorly full days eating during the week to a sudden decline in calorie content for one or two other days during the rest of the week.
Wow! Is it achievable? Well, yeah. Is it sustainable? This is the question you need to consider.
People can find one or two days of full-day low-calorie eating a hard thing to accomplish over and over again! What happens when things get hard? Yes, indeed! People are likely to quit!! Hence, why not make it less likely to quit and more likely that you’ll achieve your dieting goals?
Also, with the one or two full days of no eating, people are more likely to binge or overeat during the full-day eating period to compensate for the approaching no-food days and this could lead to a fast-moving a downward spiral, in terms of accomplishing your desired weight management or weight loss objectives. In essence, by bingeing on food during the full-calorie eating days, a person could potentially gain more weight such that the one or two days of no eating could have little or no impact on the dieting goals. So, less may be accomplished overall! Not a good way to proceed when the person’s eating style may adapt negatively to compensate for full fasting days.
So, how do you make the 16:8 intermittent fasting method work for you?
Here are 18 great ways to achieve this!
See it as a daily routine. You do it every day, soon it becomes a no-brainer and just part of your daily routine, as it should be. How do you create a habit? Practice and constantly do that activity! So, the top reason why this can be a great weight management or weight loss method for you is that it presents a daily fasting technique. You do this every day! Hence, each day is the same routine and the body may more easily adjust to the routine because it occurs repeatedly daily.
Think sustainability! Yes, think about the 16:8 method as a sustainable way to consume calories without feeling certain twitches and pangs in your belly during the day. The 16:8 intermittent fasting method has also become well-known and has been used for quite a long time. This does say something about how long-lasting the method could be, even for bodybuilders. While not every person is aiming to become a bodybuilder or trying to adopt bodybuilder techniques, the knowledge provided regarding the 16:8 method and using the method could provide a sustainable or long-term way of consuming calories. The 16:8 method focuses on managing calorie consumption without some of the typically associated constraints other dieting techniques may present. Neat, right?
A manageable technique. Daily intermittent 16:8 diet fasting can work for you by making the process of calorie consumption manageable. There are times during each day that you do not eat or consume calories. It’s as simple as that. No complicated math or jargon involved. This works for you because the simplicity of 16:8 is a more manageable approach.
You are in control. You can determine how to segment your daily 24 hours into 16 hours and 8 hours in such a manner that you ensure you are not consuming food or beyond low (main) calories for 16 continuous hours of the day and then starting up this consumption again for the subsequent 8 hours.
Less likelihood of bingeing. When you eat normal meals or binge during certain days of the week, switching to eating nothing for full days of the week is not easy and can lead to bingeing. It can also be quite unsatisfying and unsustainable.
The potentially easier transition between fasting and non-fasting cycles. It’s like going from feasting situating to bare minimums without the ability to reasonably transition into the sudden change. Again, this can be difficult, so why do this to yourself? With the 16:8 method, your body is not left without acceptable sustenance for too long.
Tap into loss of body fat: The timeframe for your 16 hours of not eating spans from the last meal you had to16 hours post-meal. Adhering to thee hour-based intervals and maintaining the distinct 16-hour and 8-hour segments help the method work best for you. Besides, getting plenty of sleep encourages and promotes an individual’s overall health and also supports the loss of body fat during the intermittent fasting period!
Use low-calorie beverages. So, we hinted at this earlier on when we stated that you can consume something even during your non-eating 16-hour window. Although the emphasis of the 16:8 intermittent fasting method focuses on when you eat, what you eat should also not be ignored. For example, let’s say you stopped eating food or consuming calories at 6:00 PM last night and you get up at 7:00 AM. You can have low-calorie beverages such as a cup of coffee, tea or drink water at this time but don’t eat breakfast yet! You’d need to wait until a total of 16 hours have passed before having breakfast. However, you still have the awesome ability to carry on normally consuming low-calorie beverages during the day! Awesome, right. Yes, this works for you too!!
Minimize less healthy foods. With the use of low-calorie beverages, you can, in turn, put the brakes on less healthy foods and drinks during the day. Many people need to have some sort of calorie intake during the day but the trick is how to do so intelligently without feeling an intense need to eat a meal or binge on a stack of high-calorie food nearby.
Physiology, biology, and metabolism. We have probably tried one diet after another including eating foods that are high in carbs or variants of diets that are low fat, moderate fat, high fat, low protein, high protein, vegan, and loads of other dietary programs out there. Interestingly, the reason these types of diets may not have worked for you may not be due to lack of will-power but could be attributed to biology and a person’s physiology. Sometimes, the body just does not want to lose anybody fat, even if this is a healthy path or you.
Instead, the body typically seeks to maintain the status quo. So, how do you battle against physiology, metabolism and all the related revolutionary traits? What about hormones and triggers that are in place to prevent a person from extreme dieting that could lead to death. Yes, your body may decide it needs to step in and prevents you from losing any more fat if it feels you’ve already lost enough fat or weight. The 16:8 method works with your physiology, as you create a lifestyle you can adhere to, by easing the body into the fasting routine.
Willpower in the morning, anyone? Are you one of those people who feel energized in the morning, like you can take on the world? Well, willpower can be like that too in terms of energy and potentially being at its highest peak early in the morning. Even if you’re not an early riser, this can work in your favor too by helping you move towards your 8-hour eating effortlessly. So, by default, the morning hours of refraining from eating can work in your favor too! Thus, by using the 16:8 method you can tap into the peak of your willpower, which tends to shine in the morning hours before it morphs into a diminishing vibe during the remaining hours of the day.
If you’ve been a person who already skips breakfast or has eaten healthily in the mornings for a while and then seen the rest of the day progress in a downward spiral with bad eating habits and the consumption of unnecessary calories, just know that this has happened to many people. You’re not alone! In reality, it can be quite a frequent occurrence. Instead, switch out your typical breakfast with a low-calorie beverage. Later in the day, when your willpower may have diminished, you’ll be in your eating window, within which you can eat full-size meals.
Use a bridging snack. A bridging snack is simply a small food item used to transition between the 16-hour fasting timeframe and the subsequent 8 hours within which you can eat. A piece of fruit or something similar in size or quantity can be an adequate bridging snack. How does this help? Well, it eases you into your eating phase without pushing a lot of food into your body at once. Your bridging snack could propel you further into your eating window until you decide to eat a moderately sized meal. This could occur at about 2:00 PM, for example.
Use different meal sizes. With the 16:8 method, you could decide to have small meals or moderately sized meals. It’s your choice. Again, think about the control you have with 16:8! Some people alternate between small meals and larger-sized meals. Feel free to flip these meals around as you choose, to suit your lifestyle or any training and physical obligations you need to adhere to.
Monitor your hunger level.
As you use the 16:8 method, monitor and manage your hunger level. For example, if you have a meal at 3:00 PM to alleviate any hunger you may be feeling, you may begin to feel hungry or need a snack later in the day – perhaps at 5:00 PM. At this time, you can use your low-calorie or bridging snack options to take the edge off any hunger twitches you may feel. There are lots of options to help combat feelings of hunger such as tea, coffee, a banana, an apple, etc. These items simply help bridge the gap until it’s time for your next main meal, which could be before 6:00 PM. Also, by monitoring your hunger level, you can opt to split your last main meal of the day into two evening meals and then skip the low-calorie beverages or the bridging snack.
Ability to tweak your starting hours. Yes, you can! Still within the realm of control you have, while using the 16:8 method, if the eating window ends by 6:00 PM, for an example, and you notice that you have the potential to continue eating or perhaps even binge on cookies or biscuits at about 8:30 PM, you may need to adjust the start and stop time of your 16:8 hour structure. This would then allow you to plan your meals such as your evening meal at a time that works best for you. You can choose a timeframe within which you ensure that your meal targets a time that would alleviate any urge you may have to binge or snack on large amounts of unhealthy food.
Take advantage of sleep time! You’ve most likely already figured this out by now. Since you’ve determined what hours to eat and not eat, why not optimize usage of your sleeping hours too. This means your seep time is part of your non-eating hours. Another point to note regarding bedtime and figuring out your hours is the benefit of stopping the eating window a couple of hours before you go to bed. This helps in providing your digestive system with some time to wind down for the day, rather than taking a full belly to bed.
A variant hour strategy. If you begin living the 16:8 lifestyle and for some reason, it’s not quite working for you, you could vary the hour segments. What does this mean? Let’s look at an example!
For example, if the 16-hour fasting window seems too long to maintain or adhere to, you could restructure the hours, perhaps for a while, and see if this helps you stick to the specified eating and non-eating windows. This strategy could be easier for first-time users of the 16:8 method, especially if your typical day consists of eating very large high-calorie meals. Remember, if you suddenly shift into a new eating lifestyle, the body may need some time to adjust or understand what’s happening. So, an adjustment to your hours could pay off in the long run.
So, by compressing the time, you can have that piece of bridging snack fruit a bit earlier. Assume that you adjust the 16:8 method to a 14:10 variant instead. You have a larger window within which you can consume foods – in this case, 10 hours! This could reduce some of the stress you may have felt trying to adapt to a 16:8 window. With the longer eating window, though, you may need to have a meal that is more substantial quite earlier in the day to help you move through the 10 hours without overheating.
If you also use more calories than you take in, you will most likely lose weight. You also want to optimize the hour structure you use and not decrease your lean mass while maintaining the right percentages of calories, especially if you are active and require sufficient energy levels to complete your day.
Do & repeat. You can do this! After you have set up your hours and determined the hours that work suitably for you, all you need to do is maintain the schedule, only eat during your eating window and then repeat! Indeed, it is as simple as that.
Some frequently asked questions regarding the 16:8 method
Can you drink green tea or use milk in your coffee while within the fasting window?
Yes, you can drink green tea and use a bit of milk, within reason. Typically, a theoretical fast occurs without any calories, especially from cultural, spiritual or religious points of view. However, the 16:8 method focuses on the body’s composition and from the perspective of fat loss. Another thing to be aware of is the potential tendency to attach too much analysis to even the most minute detail. Sometimes these details, especially when the detail itself is in moderation, would have little or no impact effect on your overall goals.
Hence, a little milk in your tea could be worth it especially if it improves the taste of the tea. You most likely would not use milk in your green tea, but your black tea could need some milk. Again, moderation is essential! So, do not go ahead and have numerous cups of tea or coffee with milk during your non-eating window. The goal is to focus on the balance in energy levels and how you can primarily use intermittent fasting to maintain this energy balance.
Can I eat larger meals and do I need to change my lifestyle?
By restricting your calorie intake into a smaller window of consumption, you have the opportunity to eat larger meals, feel satisfied when eating these meals, continue to live your lifestyle, fulfill your social obligations or just carry on doing the things you already love doing. You can make the 16:8 method work for you so that you plan to have a regular meal with your family in the evenings or plan a night out on Fridays.
So, yes! You can have a good meal! You could decide to have a salad with a bit of meat. You could also decide to have dessert. Yes! Dessert too!! All these foods are possible with the 16:8 lifestyle and it can fit in with the different activities you already do during the day.
What if I have really important goals related to body composition?
You may be dedicated to certain body composition goals or perhaps you’re preparing for a certain competition or event such as a marathon or race or building some muscle. Well, you can certainly make adjustments that enable you to monitor the calories you consume for a specified length of time and then return to the 16:8 method when adequate to do so.
However, if you are just aiming to watch or reduce your body weight, or you got quite a bit of body weight to lose, trying the 16:8 method can be a way forward where you focus on eating good meals and work towards your goals. The key is to pace yourself through the process and set goals that are feasible and give you enough time to achieve the goals. Remember, Rome was not built in a day! Hence, going from being overweight to getting to losing weight and gaining six-pack abs in a short time frame is most likely not practical. So, focus on and set the right goals for your weight loss or weight management journey.
Why do people fail at dieting?
Sometimes, failure at certain methods fails because we did not set the right goals and expected to achieve certain things within an impractical date. This may make us want to give or think about why we even bother with the endeavor in the first place. Unfortunately, being in a place of despair after unfulfilled goals could create a worse situation including binging on unhealthy foods and potentially gaining more weight. No, binging on a bucket of cookies will not make you feel any better! Nothing good can come from that too.
Instead, you need to find an eating plan that is sustainable and is not extremely restrictive. Think in terms of a plan that can help you lose weight while you remain comfortable with your lifestyle. Hence, no drastic changes! You need a method that allows you to periodically indulge in traits that you want to occasionally enjoy. After all, life is meant to be enjoyed! You need an eating plan that enables you to eat full-sized meals, curbs hunger pangs and also allows you to see how your body changes over time regarding the plan. Achieve this and you are on a great path!
If your body is not responding to the eating plan, it’s time for a review or assessment to identify what the issue is. Watch and see how your body behaves. Sometimes, the body adds a pound or so due to the large meal eaten the previous night which could be causing some fluid retention. So, stepping on the scale and the number you see from that scale may not tell the whole story. Just remember, it’s a process and making the right choices during this process helps provide you with the best results. Sometimes, during the process, we simply need to take a step back and breathe. This gives us time to evaluate and not end up like many of the people who begin a diet and end up gaining more weight than they had started with. A lot of research has been done in the area of dieting and there is some consensus regarding the increased tendency for diets to fail if the diet is quite restrictive, especially diets that are very low in calories. In such cases, even willpower has its limits.
What about eating highly processed foods while on the 16:8 lifestyle?
With the 16:8 method, you can have treats or desserts. Such foods certainly can be rewarding. Just imagine eating a piece of cake. Quite satisfying initially, right? The issue with these types of foods is the tendency to not be able to stop off just one piece of cake or one serving of dessert. These foods are designed to make you want more of them. So, watch out!
If you can eat small quantities without taking your 16:8 lifestyle out of shape, it may be a good strategy to include very little of these types of food. After all, you want to make sure you enjoy your life which can include some of these foods as long as you are fully aware of the compelling pull towards binging that some of these foods have. So, what can you do? Well, know your triggers and watch your tendencies. If you do this diligently, you can plan quite successfully against sudden triggers that you may have placed right at arm’s reach!
So, perhaps it’s best not to eat these foods if it takes you down the wrong path. You have control and can decide to try a bit of these types of processed foods or treats and see if the outcomes are something you feel good about.
It’s all about what works for you and sticking to a sustainable health plan.
Some people prefer to cut that type of food entirely from the diet and this provides a mental state of mind that prepares them to be successful while using the 16:8 method. For some other people, moderation works well for them.
Summary Well, are you ready to proceed with the 18:6 intermittent fasting method? First things first, though. See if you can determine what hours work for you. You could also simply try diving right in with the 16-hour and 8-hour split and if it’s too hard, make adjustments and see how your body adapts. Find a plan that you can stick to. If it’s comfortable for you and you don’t stress out all day trying to adhere to it, then you’re more likely to be successful. You can make the 16:8 method work for you!
Also, monitor your progress as you proceed with the method. Start with Day 1 and assess how the day went. Successful? Okay! You can proceed with Day 2 and see how you progress. If Day 1 did not go as you planned, you may need to tweak the plan. Remember you are in control. We’re all human and the 16:8 method is not a magic pill that cures all dietary issues. However, this method has worked effectively for many people. You can make the 16:8 method work for you too!
How to Lose Weight in 2 Weeks – A Handy Guide for Intermittent Fasters
Did you gain extra pounds after the last feast at your friends’ place? Do you want to cut that weight quickly? Are you looking to experts for advice on how to lose weight in 2 weeks? If yes, then you’ve come to the right place at the right time! Our post talks over different tips to lose weight for intermittent fasters. Every tip in this post is natural and recommended by specialists. So feel free to give them a try as they pose no health risks to heathy adults.
HANDY TIPS TO LOSE WEIGHT FAST
Eat Low Carb High Protein Food Foods with low carb and high protein are apt for quick weight loss. Eating these foods even for a few days will yield clear results when combined with intermittent fasting. According to several studies, low carb high protein food is extremely effective for getting rid of spare calories. This is exactly why IF experts suggest eating vegetables, eggs, lean meats, and fish for those trying to cut weight fast. However, these foods don’t go in parallel with starchy carbs and sugars. Therefore, you must drop starchy foods and sugars from your menu to keep your diet plan effective. These are the foods to avoid for losing weight quickly: Bread Rice Potatoes Oats, etc.
Avoid Junk Food Processed junk food is extremely popular nowadays. The reason behind its fame is that it’s good in taste and can easily available. That said, fast food is also the primary reason for the onset of obesity, diabetes, and many other diseases.
Since your goal is to lose weight fast through intermittent fasting, our advice is to steer clear of junk food. If you can successfully avoid processed foods, then losing weight will be a breeze for you. Try replacing junk food with whole foods as they produce a feeling of fullness for long periods. Moreover, they help you eat fewer calories without serious effort and keep hunger at bay.
These are the mainstream examples of whole foods for those asking how to lose weight in 2 weeks: Fruits (berries, pears, bananas, etc.) Vegetables (carrots, broccoli, spinach, etc.) Whole grains (quinoa, brown rice, barley, etc.) Legumes (peanuts, peas, lentils, etc.) Seeds and nuts (almonds, tahini, walnuts, etc.) Calorie free beverages (coffee, black tea, green tea, sparking water, etc.)
Keep a Check on Your Calorie Intake
Your next challenge is monitoring your calorie intake. Since you are trying to lose weight fast, your primary focus should be on lowering your calorie intake. While there are several ways to cut calories, you shouldn’t bother yourself with those as you are already fasting intermittently. According to experts, intermittent fasting is a top practice to cut calories. Considering the fact that you are skipping meals, there’s very little to do for you in terms of calorie reduction. You can still make a few smart choices to up your weight loss plan a bit.
Here’s what we mean: Eat only at meals Eat more vegetables Take lean proteins Use a calorie counting gadget to keep your calorie stores in check
Make Exercise or Brisk Walk Part of Your Routine
Physical activity is a vital part of any weight loss plan. This is because it burns fats and fortifies all the major muscle groups. While there are many forms of it, gym workout and brisk walk are the most widespread. Many experts suggest doing both along with intermittent fasting to people that ask how to lose weight in 2 weeks. However, if you have a jam packed schedule, then joining only one of the activities with IF can help you reach your fitness goal. However, you must perform the chosen activity with high intensity for it to work. 30 minutes of deep workout 4-5 times a week or a brisk walk of 15,000 steps with a 16-hour fast is the most common routine for shedding 10 pounds in two weeks.
Stay Active Physically
Apart from the half hour you spend in gym or walking, do things that keep you active physically. Remember that physical activity outside the gym is as important as the gym itself. It is the key to burning extra calories and losing weight quickly. In fact, your physical activity outside the gym hours is what sets the pace of your weight loss plan. For example, a person that does a manual job burns 900-1,000 more calories daily than the person doing a desk job. So, if you have a manual job, count yourself lucky because it puts you in the best position to lose weight quickly.
And don’t worry if you don’t have a manual job. There are plenty of other ways to raise your physical activity. Simple lifestyle changes such as cycling or biking to work, taking stairs instead of elevators at work, and even cleaning the house can burn extra fat. Just stay in motion wherever you can.
Drink Plenty of Water
Drinking plenty of water is essential to lose fat. Besides, it has several other health benefits such as reduced toxins and improved energy levels. Plus, you get to lose excess water in your body! You know what this means? You’ll drop weight. Health specialists recommend drinking 8-10 glasses of water each day. The best thing about this tip is that you are allowed to use it during the fasting period. Yes, you can drink water and plenty of other beverages during your fasting window to stay hydrated. Black coffee and green tea are some other beverages that you can drink during the fasting period. The benefit of drinking black coffee is that it accelerates your body’s fat burning process, while green tea also yields the same effect.
Final Words So these were some handy tips for people that ask how to lose weight in 2 weeks. All of them are practical and yield quick results. Ultimately, it’s just the matter of how far you are willing to go. So try them out, take experts’ help if necessary, and most importantly, share your feedback with us because your feedback is what keeps us going. Good luck!
Intermittent fasting is a unique approach to eating where you alternate between periods of fasting and eating. It does not alter what you eat; rather it changes your eating pattern. The amazing principle core to intermittent fasting is that you can continue to eat healthy foods. It would be unwise for us to advocate eating ‘whatever you like’, as fast food / mass produced food is not quality nutrition. You must strive to take in quality and nutritious foods. A diet that requires you to stop eating enjoyable foods is one which is more difficult to adhere to.
Although there are several paths you can take on your intermittent fasting journey, most people prefer fasting for 16 hours daily or 24 hours twice a week. This practice is highly popular worldwide because it not only improves your health but it also reduces weight and simplifies your lifestyle. There are even some studies that indicate that fasting intermittently will have long-lasting effects on a person’s overall wellbeing. You would be surprised to know that humans are evolutionarily adapted to intermittent fasting being hunter/gatherers where food was not easily available. It could also be one of the reasons why they were stronger and healthier than the people of modern age. In today’s piece we will be discussing different methods of intermittent fasting and what benefits you can enjoy by following a systematic pattern. Let’s get started.
The most common methods of intermittent fasting:
There are plenty of options when it comes to intermittent fasting. From fasting for only a couple of hours a day to the longer fasts there are several methods that you can adopt. It is preferable to try each method to ascertain which one suits you the most, but we would strongly advise quickly settling into a routine in order to allow your body to adjust. Here we have outlined all the methods that many people have chosen to implement.
16:8 rule The core element in this approach is: 16/8. You eat meals within the 8-hour time window only and then fast for the next 16 hours. This method is generally adopted by the people who like to fast daily. They eat healthy fruits, vegetables and meat in the 8 hours and then do not go near any food for the next 16 hours. The best way to follow this rule is to eat two to three meals within the 8-hour period. Studies have shown the best way to achieve success is to eat between 12:00 – 20:00hrs only as the majority of time will be used by sleeping.
20:4 rule The 20:4 rule refers to the 20 hour fast after eating for a time period of 4 hours. For instance, you can eat everything from 3:00 pm to 7:00 pm every day and then fast for the next 20 hours. This rule is best for those who are overweight and want to lose the fat drastically. Eating one large or two smaller healthy meals in the 4-hour period would be a pragmatic approach.
24-hour fasts This approach involves fasting from lunch to lunch or dinner to dinner. For instance if you eat lunch on day 1 you would skip the same day’s dinner and breakfast the next morning returning to food at lunchtime on the second day. This technique is also known as nomad one meal a day and can be implemented 2 or 3 times a week.
5:2 fast In the 5:2 plan, you fast for two days after the five regular eating days of healthy meals. For example, you can eat normally from Monday to Friday and then fast on Saturday and Sunday. However, it is recommended that you take at least 500 calories on each fasting day. This method of fasting is advised by the majority of medical experts. In his book the fast diet Dr. Michael Mosley has also advanced this rule and argued that it has a significant effect on weight loss.
How intermittent fasting is conducive for weight loss?
Majority of people who try intermittent fasting because they want to lose fat. A 2014 review study unveiled that intermittent fasting weight loss plans can reduce weight by 3 to 8% in the 3-24 weeks which is highly-significant as compared to other weight-loss techniques. When you are fasting, you are basically reducing the calorie intake which then leads the body to naturally burn fat. Not only do you eat less but you also burn more calories simultaneously. Moreover, intermittent fasting also balances the levels of certain hormones such as norepinephrine to facilitate the weight loss.
Benefits of intermittent fasting
Though there are countless dividends associated with the intermittent fasting approach, the most obvious of them is weight loss. When you abstain from eating food you are basically cleansing and detoxifying your body. This abstinence not only rejuvenates you but also cleanses your stomach from unnecessary chemicals. Here we have unveiled the most pivotal intermittent fasting benefits that will be instrumental for your health.
Reduction in insulin resistance intermittent fasting can prove to be remarkably effective in reducing the insulin resistance and lowering the blood sugar levels. Since type 2 diabetes occurs when blood sugar levels fluctuate. Intermittent fasting keeps can help to reduce severe fluctuations in blood sugar levels.
reduction in oxidative stress and inflammation in the body oxidative stress is the primary factor contributing towards aging and serious illnesses. Its’ unstable molecules adversely react with DNA and protein molecules in the body. Fasting enhances your body’s ability to resist the oxidative stress. In addition, it also enables your body to fight the inflammation thereby keeping some ailments bay.
improved heart health Intermittent fasting also lowers the levels of LDL cholesterol which are inflammatory markers and blood triglycerides. These compounds are contributing factors for heart-related complications.
removal of waste material from cells Autophagy is a process of waste removal that is initiated when we fast. In this process, unnecessary cells break down and the dysfunctional proteins are metabolised. Fasting increases the speed of autography and offers protection against common factors of ill-health.
Finally, though intermittent fasting offers exceptional health benefits it is not for everyone. If you have stomach disorders or are already underweight you should first consult with your doctor before making a lifestyle change. That said, we are confident that intermittent fasting can do magic to your body if you are overweight.
Intermittent Fasting – Top Benefits & Tips to Lose Weight
Intermittent fasting is an eating approach which involves skipping meals or taking extended breaks between meals. There are several types of intermittent fasting, out of which eat-stop-eat, overnight fasting, alternate day fasting, and whole day fasting are the most common ones. Intermittent fasting works best for people that don’t know how to lose weight quickly without medications. Plus, it’s clinically proven and has no side effects.
As someone who is trying to lose weight, intermittent fasting should be the first thing on your mind. Think of it as a weight management plan that’s all safe and natural. When you make it part of your routine, weight loss is a must. Below, we’ll look at the main benefits of this amazing weight management approach.
Intermittent Fasting Benefits
Changes Your Body’s Way to Utilize Energy The energy in your body is stored in the form of calories. When you go for long periods without eating, your body starts looking for ways to utilize the stored energy. To do this, it changes the way your nervous system works and alters the functioning of important hormones as well.
These are the changes that happen in your body when intermittent fasting: Decreased insulin levels which ultimate result in fat burning Increased Human Growth Hormone or HGH to facilitate fat loss Increased noradrenaline to burn calories Burns Calories
If you often find yourself searching what is the fastest way to lose weight, then your search ends today!
Intermittent fasting is hands down the fastest way to lose weight. All of its types revolve around weight loss through calorie burn, and you can opt for any type without worrying about side effects. Besides, several studies have shown it being extremely effective in weight management. For example, a study done in 2014 showed that intermittent fasting helped reduce 3-8% weight over the course of 3-24 weeks. Various other studies have also shown the same results. However, you must consult with a specialist before using this approach, particularly if you have a medical condition.
Keeps Your Muscles Intact
If you ask around, you will find that a lot of weight management techniques burn muscles in addition to fats. Now, this is not something you want if you’re in good shape. With intermittent fasting, you don’t have to worry about muscle damage as this approach is specifically designed to preserve muscles.
According to various studies, intermittent fasting does no damage to muscles, but is an excellent way of losing weight. The best thing about this technique is that it burns the same amount of fat as a traditional diet plans without dropping your favourite foods. Besides, your muscle stays in perfect shape so it’s a win win.
It’s A Simple Eating Approach
Honestly, intermittent fasting is a simple, yet the most effective approach to lose weight naturally. All it requires from you is to determine a fasting period and stick to it. No food restrictions or hard exercises are involved. The best thing is that if you’re a healthy person, you can do intermittent fasting whenever you want without requiring doctor’s advice. Moreover, you can personalize it according to your needs and enjoy your favorite foods without gaining weight.
Removes Belly Fat
Belly fat is arguably the most annoying thing in a person’s body. If it goes out of control, then suppressing it requires a lot of effort – both mental and physical. If you type online what is the best way to lose weight, plenty of answers will show up, with very few mentioning intermittent fasting. But the truth is that intermittent fasting is THE most effective way to lose belly fat or overall weight.
As mentioned earlier, intermittent fasting lowers insulin and escalates fat burning hormones in your body. This increases your metabolism which ultimately results in the belly fat loss. Next time your belly starts to bulk up, you know what to do.
Reduces Inflammation
Inflammation is a major contributing factor to obesity and several other diseases. Intermittent fasting reduces inflammation in your body, slowing down the ageing process and improving your overall health.
Therefore, you can enhance the effectiveness of your fasting routine by adding anti-inflammatory foods to your diet. These are the top foods to add to your list: Fruits Green vegetables Fish Olive oil Tomatoes Nuts
Improves Cellular Function
Intermittent fasting can significantly improve your cellular function. This leads to improving overall functioning of the body, which is essential for losing extra weight. Due to several factors, the cells in your body become damaged and turn into cellular junk over time. This cellular junk stops your body from doing its natural work. As a result, fat starts to build up in your body, causing unwanted weight gain.
Intermittent fasting initiates a process in your body called autophagy. This process is known for clearing out cellular junk to improve your body’s natural working. And when your body is working properly, there is very slim chance of gaining unwanted weight.
Intermittent Fasting Tips for Weight Lose
Switching from a regular diet routine to intermittent fasting can be tricky for beginners. However, there are several ways to make the road easier. These include: Daily Breakfast As an intermittent faster, you will be going for long periods without food. But you should always take healthy breakfast to stay energized for the rest of the day.
Low Carbs When intermittent fasting, don’t forget to lower your carb intake. Taking low carbs will decrease your appetite and improve fat burning process in your body.
These are the top low carb foods:
Fish Meat Nuts and seeds Green vegetables Eggs
Meal Plan To make your intermittent fasting successful, you must make a proper meal plan – one that doesn’t include binging on junk food. Having a meal plan increases the impact of intermittent fasting and improves your overall health as well.
Final Words So these were some top intermittent fasting benefits and tips for those asking what is the best way to lose weight. Next time you have weight problems, or see someone else with these issues, use this information to help them out. Good luck!
Intermittent fasting refers to an eating strategy that alternates between fasting and eating periods. The goal is to systematically starve the body long enough to trigger fat burning.
This results in weight loss and can help retain muscle mass. Intermittent fasting is a very natural and effective weight management technique.
While research is still underway and intermittent fasting may not be suitable for everyone, there is evidence that when done correctly, intermittent fasting can help lose weight, lower blood pressure, and cholesterol prevent or control diabetes and improve brain function.
How our bodies store energy
When we eat, carbohydrates or energy in food is broken down into glucose. Glucose is then absorbed through the intestinal wall, into the bloodstream. It is then transported to various organs where it serves as energy.
Glucose is stored in the liver and body tissue in the form of glycogen and fats. It acts as your reserve energy source. When the body is in fasted state, the liver converts glycogen back to glucose to keep supplying the body with energy.
The average inactive person takes about 10 to 12 hours to use up the glycogen stores. Someone who exercises use up their glycogen stores in much less time.
Once the reserve of glycogen in the liver is depleted the body taps into energy stores in adipose tissues. This is when fats are broken down into free fatty acids, which are then converted into additional metabolic fuel in the liver.
If the fasted state lasts long enough, the body burns fat for energy and burns that extra fat. Your body wants to keep hols of those fat reserves as our ancestors needed the energy for survival when we hunted and gathered our food.
How burning fat improves our health
Losing the extra fat is translated into a range of associated health benefits.
Intermittent fasting to reduce diabetes
Insulin is the hormone required for driving glucose into cells. Insulin level is regulated to match the amount of glucose in the blood that is high after a meal and low between meals.
Eating throughout the day keeps insulin levels high. Most of the time, constantly high insulin levels may desensitize body tissues causing insulin insensitivity which leads to prediabetes and diabetes type two.
Fasting helps keep insulin levels low and reducing the risk of diabetes.
Intermittent fasting improves brain health
Fasting also has a beneficial effect on the brain. It exercises the brain the same way physical exercise works our muscles.
Intermittent fasting promotes the production of neurotrophic factors, which support the growth and survival of neurons.
Intermittent fasting is not suitable for everyone. Those who should not fast are children, teenagers, pregnant or breastfeeding women, people with eating disorders, diabetes type one, advanced diabetes, or serious medical problems.
Intermittent fasting can also be unsafe if overdone, or if not done correctly. There are several approaches to intermittent fasting, but the easiest achieve is perhaps the one that simply extends the usual night time fast. This is a daily fasting cycle of 16 hours followed by an eight hour eating window.
The eating window is usually sustainable for intermittent fasting to be safe and effective. It must be combined with balanced meals that provide good nutrition. It is important to stay hydrated and know your physical limits while fasting the fast must be broken slowly overeating after fast, especially of unhealthy foods must be avoided.
Intermittent fasting is a fantastic way to start losing weight in a natural and healthy way.
Intermittent Fasting – An Effective Approach to Lose Weight without Hitting the Gym
Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern which involves phases of eating and skipping meals. Unlike traditional diet plans that are designed to control your calorie intake, intermittent fasting uses a timed approach to eating. It is a popular way of losing weight without going to the gym, but should only be used with doctor’s recommendation, particularly if you have a medical condition.
If you are a foodie, then intermittent fasting may seem difficult to you initially. After all, it’s not easy to cope with the cycles of eating and fasting. However, having the necessary information about this approach can help you make a quick start.
Below, we’ll look at different aspects of intermittent fasting to help you get started.
Define a Purpose
Since intermittent fasting has several uses, you should have a clear purpose in mind for it to be effective. After defining the purpose, consult with your specialist to see if it can help you achieve your goal.
Choose a Method
Your next challenge is choosing the right method. Normally, there are five intermittent fasting methods for people that ask how to lose weight without hitting the gym. These include:
Alternate day fasting: Requires you to fast every other day.
Overnight fasting: Involves a 12-hour fast every day.
Eat-stop-eat: Involves one or two 24-hour fasts a week.
Whole day fasting: Requires you to eat once a day.
Leangains: Involves 16 hours of fasting and 8 hours of eating whatever you want every day.
Typically, it takes a month to see if a method is working for you or not. For healthy, well-nourished people, it’s safe to change plans on their own but if you have a medical condition, then you should take specialist’s advice before doing so.
Remember that deciding a method does not mean deciding which foods to eat or avoid. It simply means you have to pick the time for eating/skipping meals. In terms of diet, you can eat whatever you like. However, the true secret to losing weight without hitting the gym lies in hi fiber and healthy diet.
Make a Calorie Plan
After choosing a suitable method, your next step is to make a calorie plan. While intermittent fasting has nothing to do with your calorie intake, this does not mean you should leave your caloric needs unchecked.
Remember that your primary goal is weight loss – this is why you’re on intermittent fasting to begin with. So focus on taking fewer calories than you consume. If you are struggling to determine your caloric needs, search the market. Several tools are available in the market to help you make an effective calorie plan. If nothing seems to work, then consult with a specialist to determine your caloric needs.
Make a Meal Plan
Since intermittent fasting is about losing weight without going to the gym, your meal planning plays a key role in it being effective. For example, if you’re trying to lose weight but your diet only revolves around unhealthy junk food, then it won’t help you achieve your goal. If anything, it will put it even farther.
Meal planning in intermittent fasting is easy. It doesn’t require you to be extra cautious with your food choices. All you need to do is make a plan that sticks to your calorie count and fulfills your body’s overall needs.
These are the top food suggestions for intermittent fasters:
Potatoes
Avocado
Fish
Beans and legumes
Eggs
Berries
Nuts
Whole grains
Intermittent Fasting Effects on Human Body
Fasting has been an essential part of humans’ life since ancient times. Earlier humans used to go for days without eating as the food was scarce. This forced fasting strengthened their immunities and prolonged their lifespan.
Intermittent fasting is the modern day forced fasting. It enables you to go extra hours without food. Now this is extremely useful for people asking how to lose weight without hitting the gym.
Intermittent fasting is a natural and effective way to lose weight. It has various effects on human body, including:
Improves your body’s ability to store fat by reducing insulin.
Prolongs lifespan by changing the working of certain cells.
Keeps your blood cholesterol under control.
Improves muscle growth and your body’s ability to use fat by increasing human growth hormone (HGH) levels in your body.
Improves your body’s ability to recycle old or damaged cells.
Reduces inflammation.
Helps in reversing type 2 diabetes.
Increases your overall energy levels.
Are there any side effects of intermittent fasting?
Intermittent fasting is the secret to losing weight without hitting the gym. It has almost zero side effects on a healthy person. However, people with medical conditions shouldn’t try it without doctor’s advice.
In the beginning phase, you may experience mental or physical sloth as your body has yet to adjust to this new routine. But after the adjustment, it’ll go back to being normal.
Here is the list of people that may get side effects from this eating approach:
Breastfeeding moms and pregnant women
Diabetes patients
Low blood pressure patients
Foodies or the ones that are underweight
Is it safe to exercise when fasting?
The primary goal of intermittent fasting is weight loss. And combining it with exercise may sound like a great option. However, your body needs glycogen to fuel exercise.
Glycogen is a type of glucose that provides energy to your body for performing different functions, including exercise. Now, when you are fasting, the glycogen levels lower down in your body, allowing its ability to do exercise.
Not only this, the low amount of glycogen causes your body to break down protein, which is a muscle building block. This may result in muscle damage and other serious problems. This is why doctors advise against combining hard exercise with intermittent fasting.
Final Words
So this was the necessary information about the importance of intermittent fasting for people asking how to lose weight without hitting the gym. The bottom line is that you don’t need to add or eliminate certain foods for it to be effective. Just make sure to eat the healthy ones without breaking your fasting plan to lose weight. Good luck!
There are different types of diets that help to improve health but these diets don’t allow you to eat all kinds of foods, these diets restrict you from eating your favorite foods. There is an eating or fasting pattern that does not restrict eating any kind of food known as “Intermittent fasting”.
What is intermittent fasting?
Intermittent fasting is not a diet, it is a pattern of eating or fasting.
It’s a method for planning your meals with the goal that you benefit from them. Discontinuous/intermittent fasting doesn’t change what you eat, it changes when you eat.
How does IF work?
Intermittent fasting and eating patterns work in 2 different ways.
Intermittent fasting reduces the levels of insulin, a hormone involved in the regulation of blood sugar. Decreased levels can maximize fat burning to promote weight loss.
2. Intermittent fasting increases the levels of nor-epinephrine, a hormone, and neurotransmitter that boosts up your metabolism to increase calorie burning all over the day.
What are the types/methods of intermittent fasting?
There are 3 different methods of intermittent fasting:
Alternate-day fasting
Complete alternate-day fasting
Modified alternate-day fasting
Periodic fasting (Eat-stop-Eat)
Daily time-restricted feeding
Alternate-day fasting:
Alternate day fasting is a method where a non-fasting day(normal eating-day) followed by fasting day. Alternate-day fasting is a supreme form of intermittent fasting, and it may not be reasonable for beginners or those with certain medical conditions. It may also be hard to keep up this type of fasting in the long term. There are 2 sub-types of alternate-day fasting:
1. Complete alternate-day fasting: No calories are consumed on a fast day.
2. Modified alternate-day fasting: A person eats 25% of usual energy needs on a fast day.
Periodic fasting (Eat-Stop-Eat):
Periodic fasting includes any period of successive fasting more than 24 hours, for example, 5:2 diet, it’s a type of fasting plan where you eat normally 5 days and fast any 2 days a week.
During the 2 fasting days, women generally consume 500 and men 600 calories instead of complete fasting.
Daily time-restricted feeding:
Daily time-restricted feeding involves eating just during a specific number of hours every day. It is also called the 16:8 method or the Lean gains diet-16 fasting hours cycled by 8 non-fasting hours. This timetable is thought to use the circadian rhythm.
What are the health benefits of intermittent fasting?
There are many following benefits of IF:
Weight loss, fat loss:
Numerous studies showed that intermittent fasting leads to greater weight loss and fat loss in people with obesity than regular calorie restriction, for example, Intermittent fasting can decrease weight by up to 8% and reduce body fat by up to 16% over 3–12 weeks.
Several researches showed that intermittent fasting can help your body to maintain muscle mass (less muscle loss) more efficiently than the standard method of continuous calorie restriction, which is more fascinating about intermittent fasting.
Several studies showed that intermittent fasting may encourage weight loss through the following mechanisms:
1. Restricting your meals and snacks to an exacting time window may normally decrease your calorie intake, which can help weight loss.
2. Prolonged high levels of insulin can lead to dyslipidemia and obesity. Intermittent fasting reduces the levels of insulin and decreased levels of insulin can maximize fat burning to promote weight loss.
3. Intermittent fasting increases the levels of norepinephrine that boosts up your metabolism to increase calorie burning all over the day.
Prevents heart diseases and improves heart health:
Intermittent fasting has cardioprotective effects which lower the risk factors that are responsible for heart diseases such as, bad LDL cholesterol (20-25%), blood triglycerides (up to 30%), blood pressure, inflammatory markers, blood sugar, insulin resistance, and body weight, ultimately IF protects the heart from different diseases.
An investigation was conducted in 16 obese people who were at high risk of heart diseases because of high blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, triacylglycerol, and total cholesterol levels. The results after 8 weeks showed a significant reduction in all these factors and ultimately reduced risks of heart diseases.
Another study was conducted in 110 patients (77 females; 33 males); age 34-40; body weight 129-131 or plus; BMI 45.5 plus. These patients were hospitalized for 3 weeks for the treatment of the utmost obesity with a strict fasting diet. The blood pressure, lipid profile as well as parameters of glucoregulation including glycaemia, insulinaemia, and insulin sensitivity were evaluated at the beginning, during and at the end of the study.
The results after 3 weeks showed a remarkable decrease in systolic and diastolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, basal glycemia, and insulinemia.
Protects against type 2 diabetes:
Intermittent fasting lowers insulin resistance, lowering blood sugar and fasting insulin levels, which protects against type 2 diabetes. It also helps in losing weight which is a risking factor for type 2 diabetes.
A study was conducted in 10 patients of type 2 diabetes and the result showed that intermittent fasting helped significantly decrease blood sugar levels and body weight.
Another investigation conducted in the Intensive Dietary Management clinic with three type 2 diabetes patients. The results showed the efficacy of therapeutic fasting to decrease their insulin resistance, termination of insulin therapy while keeping up control of their blood sugars. Likewise, these patients were also able to lose remarkable numbers of body weight, reduce their body waist and also reduce their glycated hemoglobin level.
Prevents cancers and lowers cancer risks:
Intermittent fasting prevents cancers and lowers the risks of cancers by stimulating different processes such as autophagy, short-term starvation, and also stimulates the effects like antioxidants.
Intermittent fasting stimulates a process called autophagy which degrades and recycles the old or damaged parts of the body cells such as, misfolded protein, cell organelles (mitochondria, peroxisomes, and endoplasmic reticulum), and promotes cessation of cell division, presentation of surface antigen, protects against genome instability and prevents necrosis, all these functions of autophagy helps in preventing cancer and many other diseases such as, cardiomyopathy, diabetes, liver disease, neurodegeneration, and autoimmune diseases.
Intermittent fasting is itself a short-term starvation process that promotes starvation and retard the growth of tumor cells as well as promotes stress and apoptosis (cell death) in tumor cells. IF is a treatment for many types of cancers which protects the normal cells from harmful side effects of chemotherapy drugs and helps to get rid of tumor cells. Intermittent fasting also increases the effectiveness of chemotherapy drugs.
Intermittent fasting exerts antioxidant like effect that significantly decreases in the mitochondrial generation of reactive oxygen species (cancer-causing agents) and ultimately lowers the risks of cancer.
Improves brain health:
Intermittent fasting increases the brain hormone called brain-derived neurotrophic factor that helps the growth of new nerve cells and increases the resistance of neurons in the brain to dysfunction and degeneration. It also protects against Alzheimer’s disease (Neurodegerative disease), ameliorates brain health by improving brain structures, synaptic functions, and age-related deficits in cognitive functions through different ways such as, increasing BDNF, protein chaperone, autophagy, reducing oxidative damage, and increasing stress resistance.
Anti-inflammatory effects :
Several studies showed that IF reduces inflammatory markers and improves many inflammatory and chronic diseases.
Antibiotic effects: IF promotes autophagy that helps to eliminate intracellular pathogens.
Extends life span/lengthens life span:
Intermittent fasting can extend lifespan and inhibit the occurrence of many age-associated diseases. IF exerts anti-aging effect by mechanisms such as reducing oxidative stress, enhancing the activities of antioxidant enzymes catalase, glutathione peroxidase, and superoxide, and down-regulating/down-streaming insulin/insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) signaling (IIS) pathway. IF promotes autophagy that’s another anti-aging factor.
Anti-aging effects of intermittent fasting have been shown in several studies on rats and they were lived 36–83% longer on IF diet pattern than other rats that were included in the studies.
Another study was conducted in fishes with IF and without IF, results with IF showed the extended lifespan of the fishes.
