It’s a dietitian’s dream: imagine being able to eat whatever you want most days of the week, limiting your intake for one or two days at a time, while losing weight. Believe it or not, intermittent fasting doesn’t just benefit your waistline. This is because fasting helps stabilize blood sugar levels, reduce inflammation and keep your heart healthy. There are a wide variety of approaches to intermittent fasting, and many studies support the multitude of benefits for your health and overall well-being. Whether it’s fasting a few hours a day or skipping meals for two days a week, intermittent fasting can be an easy way to improve your health and achieve your weight loss goals.
What is intermittent fasting?
Intermittent fasting, also known as cyclic fasting, has grown in popularity in recent years as more research emerges that uncovers new benefits of intermittent fasting. In a 2016 Cell Metabolism study titled “Fasting, Circadian Rhythms, and Time-Restricted Feeding in Healthy Lifespan,” the authors discuss how fasting helps humans relying less on their glucose stores for energy and turning to their ketones and fat stores instead. Therefore, intermittent and periodic fasting has benefits ranging from prevention to improved treatment of diseases. Even fast-mimicking diets, which are not true fasts, can create beneficial changes similar to those caused by fasting.
However, intermittent fasting is not a new concept. It has been used for centuries in times when food was scarce, and it even plays a central role in many major religions. In fact, once a year Muslims observe Ramadan, a month of fasting from dawn to sunset. It’s difficult to define intermittent fasting because there isn’t just one correct way to practice it. In fact, there are many variations of intermittent fasting that are used around the world. Each of them follows a different eating pattern that is often strictly followed in order to achieve physical or even spiritual results.
How does it work?
Extensive research into the concept of intermittent fasting suggests that it works in two different ways to improve various facets of health. First, intermittent fasting causes a decrease in oxidative stress in the body’s cells. Second, the practice of fasting improves the body’s ability to deal with stress at the cellular level. Intermittent fasting activates cellular stress response pathways similar to very mild stressors, acting as mild stimulants of your body’s stress response. As this happens regularly, your body is slowly strengthened against cellular stress and is therefore less likely to age and develop diseases.
The most common types of intermittent fasting are:
– Alternating-day fasting: This involves eating only one day out of two. On fasting days, some eat nothing at all and others eat a very small amount, usually around 500 calories. On days without a calorie fast, we eat normally (but healthily!).
– The warrior’s diet: This diet consists of eating only fruits and vegetables during the day, then having a large meal in the evening.
– The 16/8 fast: For this method, you fast for 16 hours each day and limit your diet to eight hours. Most often, this simply involves eating nothing after dinner and skipping breakfast the next morning.
Eat-Stop-Eat: Practice the “Eat-Stop-Eat” method by choosing one or two days of the week that you fast for 24 hours, then eat nothing from dinner overnight to dinner the next day. On other days, you should have normal calorie days.
– Diet 5: 2: For five days of the week, you eat normally. During the remaining two fasting days, you should limit your calorie intake to 500-600 calories per day.
5 benefits of intermittent fasting
1. Promote weight loss
One of the main benefits of intermittent fasting is its ability to speed up fat burning and help shed pounds. In fact, many people prefer intermittent fasting over traditional diets because it doesn’t require you to meticulously measure your food and track calories and grams consumed.
Fasting leads to increased fat burning and rapid weight loss by forcing your body to use fat stores for fuel. When you eat, your body uses glucose (sugar) as its main source of energy and stores what is left as glycogen in your muscles and liver.
If you don’t provide your body with a steady flow of glucose, it begins to break down glycogen for use as fuel. After glycogen is used up, the body looks for other sources of energy, such as fat cells, which it then breaks down to fuel the body.
A 2015 study looked at the effects of one-day fasting on body composition and found that, on average, it reduced body weight by 7% and body fat by 5kg. Fasting for a whole day gave similar results, but with a reduction in body weight of up to 9%. (4) The effect of a full day’s fast on your precious muscle stores is less clear. Another study of the 16/8 intermittent fasting method found it to significantly reduce body fat while maintaining muscle mass and strength.
2. Improved blood sugar
When you eat, carbohydrates are broken down into glucose (sugar) in your bloodstream. A hormone called insulin is responsible for transporting glucose from the bloodstream to cells, where it can be used for energy. Insulin doesn’t always work effectively when you have diabetes, which can lead to high blood sugar levels associated with symptoms like fatigue, thirst, and frequent urination. Some studies have shown that intermittent fasting benefits blood sugar levels by keeping it well regulated and preventing spikes and drops. In one study, participants with diabetes fasted an average of 16 hours per day for two weeks. Not only did intermittent fasting lead to weight loss and decreased calorie intake, it also helped significantly lower blood sugar.
3. Keeps your heart healthy
One of the most impressive benefits of intermittent fasting is its beneficial effect on heart health. Studies show that intermittent fasting improves your heart health by reducing certain risk factors for heart disease. In one study, fasting was shown to influence several components of heart health. It increased the good HDL cholesterol and lowered the bad LDL cholesterol and triglyceride levels.
4. Reduction of inflammation
Inflammation is a normal immune response to injury. Chronic inflammation, on the other hand, can lead to chronic disease. Some research has even linked inflammation to diseases like heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer. A study published in Nutrition Research followed 50 people who observe Ramadan and found that they had reduced levels of certain inflammatory markers during the Ramadan fast. Another study in 2015 found that a longer duration of nighttime fasting was associated with decreased markers of inflammation. In the journal Rejuvenation Research, alternate-day fasting has reduced markers of oxidative stress.
5. Decreased hunger
Leptin, also known as the satiety hormone, is a hormone produced by fat cells that helps signal when it is time to stop eating. Your leptin levels decrease when you are hungry and increase when you feel full. Because leptin is produced in fat cells, overweight or obese people tend to have higher amounts of leptin circulating in the body. However, too much leptin in circulation can lead to leptin resistance, making it more difficult to effectively deactivate hunger signals. Lower leptin levels could result in less leptin resistance, decreased hunger, and potentially even greater weight loss.
The best way to practice intermittent fasting
As described above, there are many types of fasting with different options that can fit any schedule or lifestyle. It’s best to experiment and find the one that works best for your individual needs.
For beginners, the easiest place to start is the 16/8 intermittent fasting method, a time-limited form of eating. This is usually about not having a snack in the evening after dinner and not having breakfast the next morning. If you don’t eat anything between 8 p.m. and 12 p.m. the next day, for example, you’ve already fasted for 16 hours.
Remember, intermittent fasting should be viewed as a lifestyle change rather than a diet. Unlike traditional diets, there is no need to score points or calories or log foods in a food journal every night.
To get the most of the benefits of intermittent fasting, be sure to fill your diet with whole, healthy foods on the days you eat, so that you incorporate as many nutrients as possible into your day. Also, always listen to your body. If you experience weakness or fatigue when you go a whole day without eating, try increasing your intake a bit and have a light meal or snack. You can also try one of the other intermittent fasting methods and find what works for you.
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