The Beginner’s Guide to Intermittent Fasting – What It Is and How to Do It

Intermittent Fasting is one of the most popular health and fitness trends in the world. It not only helps individuals to lose weight but it also helps to lead a healthy life.

Diet and exercise routines have taken a new turn in the modern fitness world. Intermittent Fasting is one of the latest additions to the diet and lifestyle changes that are recommended by weight loss experts.

What is Intermittent Fasting?

Firstly, you must know intermittent fasting is an eating lifestyle or pattern and not a diet plan.

A major aspect of intermittent fasting is when you eat in comparison to what you eat. As the name suggests, it is a fasting process where you schedule your meals into cycles of eating and fasting phases.

There are studies suggesting intermittent fasting, apart from its contribution to weight loss, also enhances metabolism and improves overall health.

What Intermittent Fasting Does?

Intermittent Fasting leads to major changes in the body both at cellular and molecular level. It stimulates hormones in the body to enhanceitsability to burn fats.

When you begin fasting, you force your body to get into Fasted state from the fed state, which decreases the insulin levels in your body.

Your body starts adjusting and releasing hormones to make stored body fat more accessible (for energy), which stimulates (fat burning) metabolism.

Additionally, fasting also leads the cells to stimulate rapid repair process in the body, which improves overall health.

Note: Fed state- Our body gets into the fed state when we start eating our food and lasts till it is digested and absorbed (3 to 5 hours approx). The insulin levels are high during the fed state, which prevents the body to access stored body-fats. During fasted state, the insulin levels in the body decrease rapidly, making stored body fat more accessible. Hence the body starts burning it, which contributes towards weight loss.

Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

During fasting, there are several changes that occur in your body, here are some benefits that you can get with intermittent fasting.

• Weight loss– Intermittent Fasting helps the body to burn stored body fats making them more accessible. It helps to lose weight by burning fats and without losing muscle mass.
• Decreases Insulin levels– As the body gets into the fasted state, the insulin levels in the body decrease rapidly. This makes the stored body fat more accessible and it becomes easier to burn fat.
• Releases HGH or Human Growth Hormone– Studies suggest that fasting enhances growth hormone secretion, which contributes towards effective weight loss and gain muscle mass.
• Cellular Repair-Fasting is also known to initiate rapid cell repair processes that allow longer and healthier life. It also enhances brain health, preventing diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
• Improves heart health-Intermittent fasting also helps to keep a check on the markers or factors that cause heart disease.
• Reduces Inflammation- There are studies that show intermittent fasting also reduces the markers that cause inflammation in the body, which also reduces the risk of chronic diseases.

Methods of Intermittent Fasting

While there are multiple ways of doing Intermittent Fasting- the basic factor is to create cycles of eating and fasting phases.

Here are two popular methods recommended by weight loss experts-

16/8 Method

This method is very simple where you keep your daily eating cycle limited to 8 hours and fast for the next 16 hours. One of the easiest way of doing it is skipping breakfast and having the first meal at around 12pm and then second meal at 8pm and then fast for 16 hours till 12pm next day.

Weekly fasting (Eat-Stop-Eat)

This is a recommended method that has been followed since ancient times for fasting. It involves fasting for a period of 24 hours, once or twice a week. Here you have one meal a day (dinner meal is recommended) and fast for 24 hours until the same time next day.

Note: There are different ways of intermittent fasting that you can follow. The sole purpose of intermittent fasting is to create a time frame, where the body focuses on burning stored body-fats. You can create your own routine by splitting your day or week into cycles of eating and fasting periods.

Things to keep in mind to make Intermittent Fasting Work

Intermittent fasting is a very simple method, you eat and fast for a particular time period and continue your daily life. However, there are certain additional tips that can enhance or support the results of Intermittent Fasting.

1. It is recommended to keep your daily calorie consumption intact. Even though you are eating for a fixed amount of time, you should make sure you get the recommended amount of calories.
2. Hydration becomes important even with Intermittent fasting, so make sure you drink enough water. You can add other liquids as well, just make sure you avoid sugar.
3. As the aim with intermittent fasting is weight loss, low carbohydrate diet will support the process. It allows the body to access stored body-fat for energy and enhance metabolism.
4. Individuals who are lean and have an eating disorder must consult a doctor before opting for intermittent fasting.
5. Intermittent Fasting is not recommended for pregnant women and children.

Conclusion

Weight loss has become a major concern, as there are major health risks that come along with unnecessary weight gain. Intermittent fasting is one of the easiest and simplest ways of losing weight, while preserving muscle mass. It is a simple lifestyle adjustment, which doesn’t need you to look for any diet plans. Intermittent fasting works best for your body and helps to have a healthier life.