What Is 1: 8 Intermittent Fasting
The 16:8 fasting plan is an eating schedule in which you fast for 16 hours each day and eat during an eight-hour window.
This eating schedule comes with all the benefits of other fasting schedules . Perhaps even better, you pick the eating window.
So what should that eating window be? “There’s actually infinite variability. It can be any time. Any time that you don’t eatthat’s fasting,” explains Jason Fung, M.D., fasting expert and author of the book The Complete Guide to Fasting.
If you can’t live without breakfast, slot your food earlier in the day .
If you prefer an early dinner, eat in the middle of the day .
If you’re someone who regularly goes out with friends for late dinners, schedule your eating hours later in the day .
Contrary to popular opinion, there are no rules around how many meals you have to squeeze in or whether or not you have to include breakfast. In fact, no data actually proves breakfast makes you healthier or weigh less.
Stages Of Fasting In The First 72
With the recent skyrocketing popularity of intermittent fasting, the word fasting has stopped being associated exclusively with religion and protest and taken on a connection with an impressive list of health benefits including improved mood, increased energy, sharper focus, and even clearer skin.
So its no surprise that you might be curious about trying out fasting for yourself. But like the intelligent person you are, you first want to find out as much as you can about what fasting will do to your body and how itll make you feel.
Because knowledge is power, here is a detailed description of what happens during extended fasts, including the stages of fasting, what you can expect during them, and why.
May Be Beneficial For Heart Health
Heart disease is currently the worlds biggest killer .
Its known that various health markers are associated with either an increased or decreased risk of heart disease.
Intermittent fasting has been shown to improve numerous different risk factors, including:
- blood sugar levels
The effects of fasting on heart health need to be studied more in-depth in humans before recommendations can be made.
SUMMARY
Studies show that intermittent fasting can improve numerous risk factors for heart disease, such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels, triglycerides, and inflammatory markers.
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May Reduce The Risk Of Cancer
Numerous animal studies suggest that intermittent fasting may reduce the risk of cancer. Such an effect may be the aftermath of weight loss, reduced inflammation, and insulin levels, which are caused by this eating pattern.
A 2019 review in people with cancer states that fasting reduced some of the side effects of chemotherapy and increased its effectiveness. The review suggests that fasting may deprive cancer cells of nutrients, making them more susceptible to the toxins in chemotherapy .
Plan Your Fast According To Your Social Schedule
Intermittent fasting and food times need to fit into your schedule to prevent limiting your lifestyle. Thus, its important to consider your social life as you decide which meals the 6 hours will include, and plan ahead.
Whether its lunch with a friend or a night in with your partner, you dont want to miss out or break your fast early and lose valuable progress.
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So How Long Should You Fast For
Bottom line, the ideal fasting window will vary depending on the individual.
“What matters more, I think, is the duration of fasting that works for you,” says Pedre. “If you can’t stick with it or it isn’t working for whatever reasonsay, you can’t concentratethat’s a sign benefits are starting to drop off and you may need to scale back.”
Muscle Growth And Repair
A study of healthy adults found that 48-hour fasting increased human growth hormone secretion by up to 400%. It also increased the frequency of growth hormone bursts throughout the day.
HGH increases muscle mass and stimulates faster muscle repair. It may also speed up the healing process for wounds and more serious injuries. HGH is so effective that taking it externally is banned in professional sports and is considered doping.
It seems counterintuitive, but occasionally going without food for two days may actually help you build muscle, not lose it.
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Lowers The Risk Of Type Ii Diabetes
Since being overweight and obese are two of the main risk factors for developing type II diabetes, intermittent fasting could have an effect on diabetes prevention due to its weight loss effects. It can also potentially influence other factors linked to an increased risk of diabetes. A 2014 study showed that intermittent fasting can lower blood glucose and insulin levels in people at risk of diabetes .
Intermittent Fasting Weight Loss
One of the main benefits of an 18:6 intermittent fasting is weight loss. There were many cases of weight loss success with intermittent fasting 18:6, as well as those where people were not that satisfied with the 18:6 intermittent fasting results. So, at the end of the day, the result depends on how well you adjust to this eating pattern, and what your choice of food is.
There are a lot of ways in which intermittent fasting can help you lose weight. Here are some of them :
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But During Starvation Things Are Very Different
When you practice intermittent fasting, your body reacts to what it sees as an environmental stress by changing the expression of genes that are important in protecting you from, well, stress.
We have a well-preserved starvation program that kicks our cell into a completely different state when food, particularly glucose or sugar, isnt around. With intermittent fasting and exercise, you activate the AMPK signaling pathway. AMPK or 5 AMP-activated protein kinase is the brake to mTORs gas pedal. AMPK signals the cell to go into self-protective mode, activating autophagy and fat breakdown. It inhibits mTOR. At the same time, while you are fasting the levels of a molecule called NAD+ begin to rise because you dont have the dietary proteins and sugars around that normally convert NAD+ to NADH through the Krebs cycle. NAD+, a molecule whose precursor is Vitamin B3, activates the sirtuins, SIRT1 and SIRT3. . These sirtuins are proteins that remove the acetyl groups we talked about above from histones and other proteins. In this process, the sirtuins silence genes related to cell proliferation and activate proteins involved in creating new mitochondria and cleaning up reactive oxygen species.
Ketones, also produced during fasting, work as deacetylase inhibitors . This turns on genes related to antioxidant processes and damage repair.
Transform Your Whole Health
Intermittent Fasting: The Positive News Continues
Theres a ton of incredibly promising intermittent fasting research done on fat rats. They lose weight, their blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugars improve but theyre rats. Studies in humans, almost across the board, have shown that IF is safe and effective, but really no more effective than any other diet. In addition, many people find it difficult to fast.
But a growing body of research suggests that the timing of the fast is key, and can make IF a more realistic, sustainable, and effective approach for weight loss, as well as for diabetes prevention.
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Lower Insulin Means Greater Fat Loss
Intermittent fasting the practice of going without food for some period of time has many health benefits. It can help prevent heart disease, speed fat loss, and slow or reverse aging.
There are a number of physiological mechanisms involved. It reduces inflammation and oxidative stress, leads to increased numbers and quality of mitochondria, and increases autophagy, the cellular self-cleansing process.
Many of the beneficial effects are entwined with lower levels of insulin.
The function of insulin is to promote energy storage and the growth of the organism. When insulin is increased, fat is stored in fat cells, and other cells take up glucose from the blood.
Most importantly, when insulin is increased, lipids cant leave fat cells. Since fat loss is all about getting lipids out of fat cells to be burned, losing fat requires some attention to how diet, exercise, and fasting cause insulin to rise or fall.
Take a look at the following graph, taken from a paper by Volek et al. It shows that even small increases in insulin, within the normal range, virtually abolish lipolysis .
This is where intermittent fasting comes in, as one of its effects is to lower insulin levels and thus increase lipolysis. The question is: how long do you need to fast before insulin comes down?
Eating causes insulin to rise. The amount of the rise is dependent on a number of factors, such as type and amount of food eaten and the insulin sensitivity of the person doing the eating.
The 5 Stages Of Intermittent Fasting
Interested in Fasting?
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This post was updated on 5/19/22
Intermittent fasting isnt just a weight loss strategy It is at its best a healthy lifestyle informed by human evolution and the study of metabolism. It asks the human body to be much more efficient and self-protective than it is accustomed to in modern times.
What youll find in this article:
What is intermittent fasting | Intermittent fasting schedules | How to do intermittent fasting |What happens to your body during a fast? | The 5 stages of intermittent fasting | How to break a fast
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Tips For Success With 1: 6 Intermittent Fasting
Like any new way of eating, there is an adjustment period. The best advice is to not dive right into 18:6 if you’ve never fasted before. Start with a 12-hour fasting window, then gradually work your way up to 14 hours, then 16 hours. While fasting, make sure you are only drinking black coffee, tea, carbonated water, and plain water. Consuming a little bit of cream or stevia in your coffee can actually induce hunger, which will make fasting harder. And be sure to get at least seven hours of sleep a night to prevent cravings caused by fatigue. Choose nutrient-dense foods, and eat until you’re satiated but not stuffed, and focus on getting protein, healthy fats, complex carbs, and plenty of fiber.
Using an intermittent fasting app might be helpful to track your daily progress and inspire you to stick with it. But always remember the cardinal rule about fasting: if you don’t feel well, end the fast and try again the next day.
How To Start With 18/6 Intermittent Fasting
The 18/6 method is not a beginner version of intermittent fasting. If you are new to intermittent fasting, we recommend you pick a method with a shorter fasting time, such as 14/10 or 16/8 intermittent fasting.
Once you get used to a beginner-friendly form of intermittent fasting, you can gradually increase the time until you reach a daily fasting time of 18 hours.
When following 14/10 intermittent fasting, youâll likely eat three meals within the 10-hour-window: breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
When following 16/8 intermittent fasting, you may eat two or three meals, depending on your preference. The smaller your eating window gets, the more it makes sense to reduce the number of meals you eat.
Here is how your intermittent fasting journey towards 18/6 may look like:
- Follow 14/10 for two weeks with breakfast, lunch, and dinner between 8 am and 5 pm
- Switch to 16/8 and follow it for two weeks with breakfast, lunch, and dinner between 9 am and 5 pm
- Keep following 16/8 for another two weeks, but reduce the number of meals to two: breakfast and late lunch between 9 am and 5 pm
- Switch to 18/6 with two meals between 9 am and 3 pm
This is just one example of approaching 18/6 intermittent fasting. You can adjust the number of steps to get there and, as mentioned above, choose the fasting time that suits you best.
Recommended Reading: How To Use Fasting For Weight Loss
May Aid In Cancer Prevention And Increase The Effectiveness Of Chemotherapy
Animal and test-tube studies indicate that fasting may benefit the treatment and prevention of cancer.
In fact, one rat study found that alternate-day fasting helped block tumor formation .
Similarly, a test-tube study showed that exposing cancer cells to several cycles of fasting was as effective as chemotherapy in delaying tumor growth and increased the effectiveness of chemotherapy drugs on cancer formation .
Unfortunately, most research is limited to the effects of fasting on cancer formation in animals and cells.
Despite these promising findings, additional studies are needed to look at how fasting may influence cancer development and treatment in humans.
Summary Some animal and test-tube studies suggest that fasting could block tumor development and increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy.
The Five Stages Of Intermittent Fasting
. In this state, your body starts to break down and burn fat.
Some of this fat is used by the liver to produce ketone bodies . The two main ketones, acetoacetate and -hydroxybutyrate , serve as an alternative energy source for the cells of your heart, skeletal muscle, and brain, when glucose isnt readily available. Did you know that your brain uses up some 60% of your glucose when your body is in the resting state? During intermittent fasting, ketone bodies generated by your liver partly replace glucose as fuel for your brain as well as other organs. This ketone usage by your brain is one of the reasons that intermittent fasting is often claimed to promote mental clarity and positive mood ketones produce less inflammatory products as they are being metabolized than does glucose, and they can even kick-start production of the brain growth factor BDNF! Ketones have also been shown to reduce cellular damage and cell death in neurons and can also reduce inflammation in other cell types.
As their level in your bloodstream rises, ketones can act as signaling molecules, similar to hormones, to tell your body to ramp up stress-busting pathways that reduce inflammation and repair damaged DNA for example.
Within 24 hours, your cells are increasingly recycling old components and breaking down misfolded proteins linked to Alzheimers and other diseases . This is a process called autophagy.
breaking down old immune cells and generating new ones .
Recommended Reading: Does Fasting Help With Ketosis
How I Break My Fast
I recommend breaking your fast with a high protein, low carb meal. This helps avoid mid day carb crashes, when you need to be most productive. My personal favorite is steak & veggies.
Other examples could be:
7. Gives you the ability to have a flexible social life & maintain results.
8. Allows more flexibility in your diet.
9. Increased energy and may produce better mental clarity during fasting periods.
10. Reduces inflammation in the body.
Intermitttent fasting has many great benefits. Whether you are practicing 18/6 or another type, many of the benefits remain consistent while others increase the longer you fast .
I have found the 18 hour fasting window to be the perfect length of fast for me before I get “hangry” and the 6 hour eating window still allows me to eat sufficent calories and protein to build muscle, but not enough to eat in a huge surplus to gain fat.
The length of intermittent fasting that is best for you will ultimately have to be decided upon by you. Test various lengths over many weeks and see which length is your optimal point.
Once you’ve got it mastered, you will become unstoppable in a fasted state! I do all of my highest-focus work while fasted.
There’s no way I could go back either.
Give it a shot and see what happens!
What Is 16/8 Intermittent Fasting
The practice of 16/8 intermittent fasting involves limiting your intake of foods and calorie-containing beverages to a set window of 8 hours per day. You abstain from food for the remaining 16 hours, though youre still allowed to drink water and other no-calorie beverages, like plain coffee or tea.
You can repeat this cycle as frequently as youd like from just once or twice per week to every day, depending on your preference.
The popularity of this fasting method has grown widely among those looking to lose weight and burn fat. 16/8 intermittent fasting is also believed to improve blood sugar control and enhance longevity.
While other diets often set strict rules, 16/8 intermittent fasting is easy to follow and may provide measurable results with minimal disruption to your diet. Its generally considered less restrictive and more flexible than many other diets and works with most lifestyles.
Summary
With 16/8 intermittent fasting, you restrict your food intake to an 8-hour window and fast for the remaining 16 hours. This practice may support weight loss, improve blood sugar, and increase longevity.
It is simple, safe, and sustainable to do 16/8 intermittent fasting.
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Stage 5 Fasting : Stem Cells And Immune Function
The final stage of fasting begins after a full three days without food.
Before you read about the benefits, note that a 72-hour fast is a serious undertaking. If youre going to try it, make sure you drink plenty of water, get plenty of electrolytes like sodium, magnesium, and potassium, and stop fasting if you feel lightheaded or otherwise unwell.
