Nowadays, there are many means of losing weight. But, over the past few years, intermittent fasting has risen to become one of the best ways of losing fat.
Almost everyone’s goal is to be healthy, look good, feel great and possess a body they are proud of.
Proper diet and exercise remain the surest way to achieve this.
What would your reaction be if you came across a particular tool that would improve your cardiac health, protect against neurodegenerative diseases, reduce insulin resistance and lower blood sugar levels, boost your metabolism for fat loss, reduce oxidative damage and inflammation in the body and help you maintain a healthy body weight?
Many studies have confirmed the effectiveness of intermittent fasting to lose weight and its benefits to all ages.
What is intermittent fasting?
Intermittent fasting is merely a way of losing weight, whereby you create regular durations of fasting and eating. Alternatively, intermittent fasting can be defined as a rhythmic means of eating, which comprises regular but short-term fasts before eating.
Apart from making you consume fewer calories in a day, intermittent fasting also enhances some hormones that are vital in regulating body weight.
Furthermore, if followed to the latter, intermittent fasting is beneficial, because it helps in detoxification of your body, and enhance your immune, as well as increasing burning of unwanted fats.
Methods of intermittent fasting
Many methods of intermittent fasting exist. Here are the most popular:
- 5:2 diet: for two days of a week, you should only eat approximately 500-600 calories, then continue with normal nutrition on the other days.
- 16/8: the method involves skipping each day breakfast, and eating within hours 8 hours. You only eat after morning hours.
- Eat stop-eat: each week, you should fast once or twice for 24hours.
The methods guarantee you to lose weight and unwanted fats, as well as lowering your calorie intake. However, you may achieve this only if you are not compensating the fasting periods by eating a lot at the no-fasting durations.
5 benefits of doing intermittent fasting
Enhances the capacity of your body to detox and repair
Apart from taking up a lot of energy from your body, the digestion process grabs almost the entire attention of your body. Therefore, your body does not concentrate on repair and detoxification of organs whenever you are regularly eating, due to digestion. However, several changes occur in your body when you are not eating, leading to the conversion of body fats to energy.
The changes occur in your nervous system and hormones, which cause changes in metabolism. Here are hormones affected:
- Insulin: intermittent lower insulin levels in your body, hence increasing burning of fats.
- Human growth hormone: the hormone increases when you are fasting, leading to repair and detoxification of the body, gaining of muscles and burning of fats.
- Noradrenaline: when fasting, the nervous system releases noradrenaline hormone to fat cells, hence enabling them to break fats into fatty acids, which get burned to release energy.
Prolongs the natural fasting state of your body
Naturally, whenever you are asleep, your body burns fat calories. However, the levels of insulin hormone increase when you wake up and start eating. As a result, fat storage takes place, instead of burning. Therefore, intermittent fasting prolongs the natural fasting state of your body, leading to more fats getting burned.
Regulates your appetite
Once you are used to intermittent fasting, especially in the mornings, your body regulates your appetite. Thus, you rarely experience strong hunger pangs. The body starts burning stored fats to release energy, instead of depending on foods.
Makes the energy levels stable
Intermittent fasting enables you to have stable levels of energy in a day, after its used to burning stored fats as a secondary source of energy. As a result, no cravings for foods, and you end up eating fewer calories.
Taking breaks between meals increases the lifespan
It is better for your health to eat one meal a day, rather than six. You must test your body. Skipping a meal is in the collective mind a bad thing, as many would make up for the next meal, eating as much or more in total. Research shows the opposite, according to Mattson: most people eat less, all things being equal.
Due to the lack of interest from the general public (things are changing, fortunately), studies are now limited to animals. That said, the conclusions are without appeal (the mice earns 40% life expectancy). Official recommendations will not change for years until the research is applied to humans and then heard by politicians.
So you can wait, and continue aging too fast, or start now by fasting, getting thinner in the process. For my part, I made my choice, and I continue today to fast on a daily basis while I reached my physical goals. In addition to regulating my weight, I potentially increase my lifespan, mainly by reducing my risk of Alzheimer’s and cancer.
Conclusion
Intermittent fasting is an effective means of losing fats and unwanted body weight. Also, there are other benefits of intermittent fasting. But, you should consult your doctor before starting the plan. Furthermore, you should be consistent with the plan to effectively lose fat.