There is so much contrasting information surrounding intermittent fasting. Basically, it’s a strategy I use regularly to help create a calorie deficit in my diet in a more simple way. The most common way to achieve a fast, dependent no your own working life, is to pick a 6-10 hour eating window that best fits in with you and plan all your meals to be in this time frame.
There are other ways to fast, the 5:2 is also popular, this is where you fast for two days of the week, for example, your calorie intake on those days maybe as little as 500 calories but again, you tailor the diet and calories to what suits your body. My personal favorite and the fasting technique I use most is ‘eat stop eat’, this eating strategy is where you fast for a whole 24 hours once or twice a week. Alternate day fasting and the warrior diet, which is where you just eat one big meal a day, are two other ways to conduct a fast, showing there is definitely a way to fast to suit everyone.
Why do it?
People use IF to improve health, loose weight and many studies have shown, even to live longer. Fasting has been a human practice since hunter gather days, when unable to find food, we evolved to be able to function without food for extended amounts of time. Fasting is also embedded into many of the religions we have today, such as; Islam, Christianity and Buddhism. Most people do loose weight when using fasting methods, as long as you don’t over compensate for your drop in calories during your eating window.
Some of the benefits…
When you fast, your body adjusts to make stored fat more accessible for energy, human growth hormone levels increase dramatically meaning you will see improvements between fat loss and muscle gain. Other benefits include insulin sensitivity improves lowering levels of insulin, cells repair faster and genes related to protection against disease, such as heart health and cancer, begin to change, inflammations are reduced, brain health are also found to improve.
Some of the side effects…
Hunger is top of the list, weakness, slugishness of the mind, are also side effects you may encounter, these are all normal and like any new diet you should allow yourself time to adapt, try trial and error of a few different ways to fast to find the one that suits you best, consult your doctor or medical professional if you are worried about anything but most importantly LISTEN TO YOUR BODY!!
This really is just a brief summary of an enormous subject, one I am very interested in, if you do have any questions or want to talk about how I conduct my fasts, how it has worked for me, I would love to hear from you…
a blog by devaney 