Intermittent Fasting For Women

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.