How Intermittent Fasting Can Help You Lose Weight
There are many different ways to lose weight.
One strategy that has become popular in recent years is called intermittent fasting .
Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern that involves regular, short-term fasts or periods of minimal or no food consumption.
Most people understand intermittent fasting as a weight loss intervention. Fasting for short periods of time helps people eat fewer calories, which may result in weight loss over time .
However, intermittent fasting may also help modify risk factors for health conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease, such as lowering cholesterol and blood sugar levels 30002-0/fulltext rel=nofollow> 2,
There are several different intermittent fasting methods. The most popular ones include:
- the 16:8 method
- alternate-day fasting
All methods can be effective, but figuring out which one works best depends on the individual.
To help you choose the method that fits your lifestyle, heres a breakdown of the pros and cons of each.
What To Eat To Prolong Your Fast
Now you know how to break your fast, but what if you don’t want to end your fast just yet? When you’re first starting IF, or if you’re trying to graduate to a longer fasting window, there are certain things that can help get you over the hangry hump without sabotaging your results.
Noncaloric options that are widely accepted among intermittent fasting experts include seltzer water, coffee, and tea.
Miller likes Earl Grey tea in particular, as it contains bergamot extract, which can help suppress appetite. “Just be sure not to add stevia or noncaloric sweeteners, which may provoke an insulin response,” she says.
If you need something a bit more substantial to hold you over, or if you have a low body fat percentage , then sipping on a high-quality bone broth, or coffee or tea blended with coconut or MCT oil, during your fasting window are both great options.
“You can essentially ‘fool’ your body into thinking it is still fasting by having a fat like MCT or coconut oil because they don’t bump up your blood-glucose-regulating hormone, insulin,” says Pedre. “This works great to curb your appetite during prolonged fasting hours.” And while this may not preserve all of fasting’s benefits , it seems to be beneficial for things like weight loss.
Best Food To Break An Intermittent Fast
While Bullet Proof Coffee is a great way to break your fast, there are other foods youll want to consider eating to break your Intermittent Fasting period.
More details on what you can eat and drink while intermittent fasting here.
To maximize the benefits of IF, its essential to reap the bulk of your energy from nutrient-dense foods during feeding windows. Read this post to learn about fasting and feeding windows.
Choosing whole foods to build balanced meals will keep you energized during fasts and help your body process nutrients much more efficiently.
Break the fast with lean proteins
Some of my favorite proteins to include to break a fast are chicken, beef, pork, turkey, seafood, and eggs.
I often meal prep mini quiches for a quick grab-and-heat first meal option.
Breaking the fast with healthy fatsAs mentioned earlier, Bulletproof Coffee , coffee, grass-fed butter, nuts, seeds, nut butters, olive oil, coconut oil, and avocados are all terrific healthy-fat options to eat to break your fast.
Eat all the veggies you wantIm sure this isnt news to you but breaking the fast with a generous dose of veggies is always a great idea.
If you dont have time to make a meal, I love to make a Blueberry Muffin Smoothie or a Green Pineapple Smoothie to-go. Both have a nice serving of greens and they are full of nutrition.
Try to avoid canned fruits or juice because of the concentrated amounts of sugars per serving.
Recipe: Spinach and Bacon Mini Quiches
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Tip : No Solid Food During A Fasting Period
To ensure that your body uses your fat reserves as an energy source during fasting periods, you should completely avoid solid food during your fasting window. Especially with the 16:8 method, only water, unsweetened tea and black coffee are allowed.
If you decide to follow another method, you should eat a maximum of 500 kcal during a fasting day if you are a woman and 600 kcal if you are a man. These calories are best obtained from light soups or juices.
Why Food Matters When Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting activates a process called autophagy where your immune system destroys old, damaged cells, then recycles their individual components into new, healthy cells. Think of it as cellular spring cleaning.
Feeding these new forming cells with optimal energy sources is critical.
Healthy fats and complete proteins found in superfoods sourced from animals are the best foods to break an intermittent fast.
Failure to nourish your regenerating cells with whole animal foods can promote metabolic dysfunction and increase your risk of developing certain types of cancer.
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Average Intermittent Fasting Weight Loss Per Month By Gender
Curious to know whether there are any differences between intermittent fasting results for men and women?
Our survey shows that men reach slightly higher intermittent fasting weight loss results.
Women doing intermittent fasting mostly lose up to 7 pounds weight while more than half of men reach 7-13 pounds weight loss during the first month.
13% of men even report 20 lbs or higher weight loss in their first intermittent fasting month.
How Does The 1: 8 Diet Work
The 16:8 diet works on an hourly basis, so each day you eat within an 8-hour time frame and then fast for the remaining 16 hours. This works for weight loss as it “helps you eat fewer calories while boosting metabolism slightly,” says Sawyer.
She adds, “It’s a very effective tool to lose weight and visceral fat. After hours without food, the body exhausts its sugar stores and starts burning fat – sometimes referred to as ‘metabolic switching’.”
Research has shown this switch is a natural process that happens when the body runs out of energy from food. The body changes its energy source from glucose that’s stored in the liver to ketones, which are stored in fat cells. While the body is getting its energy from glucose it’s maintaining or gaining weight, but when the switch happens weight is lost.
Calorie-restricted diets like the Fast 800 work in a similar way. So what’s special about the 16:8 diet?
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Does Fasting Benefit People Who Don’t Need To Lose Weight Or Who Have Reached Their Goal Weight
Yes, Varady said, citing one of her studies that found fasting helps maintain a healthy body weight lowers triglycerides, which is important for heart health helps decrease blood pressure and improves blood sugar regulation.
A review of research in humans and animals, published in 2019 in the New England Journal of Medicine, found intermittent fasting has “broad-spectrum benefits” for health problems including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and neurologic disorders.
The powerful health effects appear to come from the body flipping a “metabolic switch” during fasting or shifting away from using sugar as its main source of energy and instead converting fat for fuel when a person’s stomach is empty.
Questions About How To Start Intermittent Fasting
Lets get started with some questions about what intermittent fasting is, common mistakes that people make, and how to get started properly
Ive been following the Paleo diet for the last 2 months and I am getting interested in trying an intermittent fasting protocol. Should I wait longer before starting a protocol? Or is it advisable to jump into one, being that its been a relatively short period of time with the new diet?Chris P.
This is a good question to start with.
As Chris said, there are different styles of intermittent fasting. So, the first step is deciding which one to do. To make it easy for you, I broke down the major types of intermittent fasting and how to do them in the beginners guide to intermittent fasting.
Personally, I do a daily fast where I eat all of my meals in an 8hour window and then spend the rest of the day and night fasting.
That said, its important to note that intermittent fasting isnt a diet. Its simply a schedule for eating. Or to put it another way, intermittent fasting is about when you eat, not what you eat. Of course, youll probably see better results if youre eating a diet of real, unprocessed foods in addition to intermittent fasting.
This brings me to the second part of Chris question. If you feel comfortable with your diet , then I see no reason to wait to start intermittent fasting.
Have you had any experience with skipping breakfast, but still having coffee in the morning?Darius B.
Can I have tea during my fast?My Mom
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What Is The 1: 8 Diet
The 16:8 diet is a form of intermittent fasting where you break the day into two parts: a 16-hour fasting period and an 8-hour period where you consume all your calories.
The 16:8 stems from the 8-Hour Diet book by author David Zinczenko and Peter Moore , former editor-in-chief of Men’s Health. The two created the plan off the back of the popular 5:2 diet, with the main difference being the longer fasting time between eating sessions. This, they say, gives the body the time it needs to process food and burn away extra fat.
The 8-Hour Diet by David Zinczenko and Peter Moore –
Suzie Sawyer , founder of Nutrition Lifestyle, says, “There are no restrictions on the types or amounts of food that a person can eat during the 8-hour window. This flexibility makes the plan relatively easy to follow.”
What Are Some Popular Intermittent Fasting Schedules
There are many different kinds of intermittent fasting diets. The 5:2 diet is one. On this diet, women eat less than 500 calories for two non-consecutive days a week. So, you might have a 500-calorie day on Tuesday and Thursday, and then eat normally on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. With the 5:2 diet, you dont need to eat certain foodsyou just limit how much you eat during certain periods of time.
Another popular one is the 16:8 diet. You only eat during eight hours of the day. You can choose when you want your eight-hour period to be, but most people tend to stop eating at a certain time in the evening, like 6 p.m., and then wait to eat again until 16 hours later . That way, youre sleeping for part of your fast instead of sitting around, thinking about the food youre not eating for a good part of the day.
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Theres also something known as the 24-hour fast . That requires fasting from all food for 24 hours once or twice per week, Angelone explains.
Its easy to assume that the duration of your fasting window will impact how much weight you lose, but thats actually not the case, according to Scott Keatley, RD, of Keatley Medical Nutrition Therapy. The timing of intermittent fasting or the duration of the fasting window does not seem to impact the amount of weight lost, he says.
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Drinks To Avoid While Fasting
It is always good to avoid drinks with sugar and artificial sweeteners. There isnt a rule that says you cant drink soda, juice, or milkshake during your eating window, but when it comes to your fasting period there are some drinks that you must avoid.
During your fasting time you should avoid:
Two main things that you need to remember for drinks while fasting is to make sure you are drinking enough fluids and to avoid drinks that contain calories.
Caloric drinks like juices, smoothies, diet soda can be consumed during your eating window, but if you can it is best to stick to water, tea, coffee, or mineral water.
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What To Eat When Intermittent Fasting For Health And Hunger Pains
- When choosing what to eat when intermittent fasting, itâs important to select whole, fiber-rich, protein-packed foods that youâll digest slowly and will keep you feeling fuller longer.
- Intermittent fasting doesnât restrict what you eat, so itâs crucial that you stay on track and avoid foods like refined grains and added sugars which will leave you feeling hungry and unsatisfied shortly after consumption.
- If youâre not sure what to eat when intermittent fasting, a good guide to follow are the foods recommended by the Mediterranean diet.
- This article is part of Insiderâs guide on How To Lose Weight.
If your goal this year is to get healthy or lose weight, chances are you may have considered intermittent fasting, an eating pattern that involves cycling between periods of fasting and eating.
While thereâs no technical restriction on what you can eat when intermittent fasting, some foods are better than others and will help you optimize your health and battle the hunger pains more easily.
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Foods To Limit Or Avoid During Intermittent Fasting
To be an intermittent faster who glides through their fasts with grace and poise , what you dont eat matters as much as what you do.
Some foods spike your cravings.
Others make you hungrier.
You probably have foods that, once you start eating them, you find it hard to stop.
These are the foods to try and minimize .
What do those foods look like? Generally they have a few things in common.
Theyre usually:
- Processed. They come in a bag, packet, or carton theyre miles away from how they started out lifefor instance, a bag of chips doesnt look like a potato a chicken nugget doesnt look like a chickenand they have many ingredients.
- Full of refined carbohydrates. For instance, fruit juice, soda, bread, candy, cake, and desserts are full of sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and refined flour.
- High in saturated and trans fats. Look for the words partially hydrogenated oil or hydrogenated oil on the labels to find these in your food.
These are the foods that, when eaten too often, can undermine your fasting efforts and stop you getting the outcome you want.
They dont contain much nutrition, but they do contain some powerful combinations of fat, salt, and sugar that cleverly influence your brain chemistry to make you want to eat more of them.
We know its not easy to give up foods like this. Simply try your best and see how it affects your progress if you eat fewer foods like:
What Can You Eat Or Drink While Intermittent Fasting
The article is verifiedSarah Jackson
Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern that has been shown to potentially be an effective weight-loss method for certain individuals. Its allure is the fact it focuses on when you eat, not necessarily what you eat, literally limiting your eating window throughout the day.
While there are no dietary restrictions, intermittent fasting isnt a free pass to indulge in calorie-dense food for 8 to 12 hours straight, even if its in your designated eating time frame outlined by the IF plan. To get the full benefit of this diet, it is still essential to eat the right foods.
The most common pattern is to fast for 16 hours, including sleep time, and eat for 8 hours, although there are different options for intermittent fasting. Regardless of what type you choose, your diet can still significantly influence your results. So, what can you eat or drink while intermittent fasting? This guide has everything you need to know before trying IF.
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While Others Had A Little More Of A Challenge
Of course, everyone is different, and some people find that fasting has been the exact opposite of good for their workouts.
Dean, a 30-year-old man living in New York practiced the 5:2 fasting method, meaning he ate normally five days a week and restricted his calorie intake to 600 two days a week. My workouts the day after fast days had mixed results, he admitted. Id have to have a cup of coffee before each workout, and honestly, I felt sluggish and ultra-full from eating real meals. I tried to work out on a fast day once and that was utterly worthless. Frankly, I dont advise the 5:2 method for anyone, and I quit pretty quickly.
However, Dean tried the 16:8 method and found it was a lot better for his body. Its great for CrossFit. I always feel ready to go and have enough fuel to recover, he said.
Carolyn Brown, a New York-based nutritionist, said the main thing she sees with exercise and intermittent fasting is that its completely specific to the individual. I wish there were a more one-size-fits all answer, but everybody is different. Some people are totally fine working out on empty stomach after waking up, and thats great.
Brown thinks experimenting with different fasting methods and foods is a great idea, and Tamir says that the key to a strong workout at the end of a fast may simply lie in what you eat for your pre-fast meal.
Intermediate Fasting Meal Plan
With this plan you will be eating only between the hours of 12 p.m. and 6 p.m. for a full 18 hours of fasting within a 24-hour period.
I personally practice this plan during the workweek. Im not a breakfast person, so I just enjoy a few cups of herbal tea to start my day.
Even though you are skipping breakfast, its still important to stay hydrated. Make sure to still drink enough water. You can also have herbal tea, The catechins in tea have been shown to enhance the benefits of fasting by helping to further decrease the hunger hormone ghrelin, so you can make it until lunch and not feel deprived.
Since youve increased your fasting period an extra four hours, you need to make sure your first meal has enough healthy fats. The burger in the 8-to-6-window plan will work well, and you can add more fats in with your dressing or top with an avocado!
Nuts and seeds make great snacks that are high-fat and can be eaten around 2:30 p.m. Soaking these beforehand can help neutralize naturally occurring enzymes like phytates that can contribute to digestive problems. Eat dinner around 5:30 p.m., and just like in the 8-to-6-window plan, a dinner with some sort of wild-caught fish or other clean protein source with vegetables is a great option.
- First meal, 12 p.m.: Grass-fed burger with avocado
- Snack, 2:30 p.m.: Nuts and seeds
- Second meal, 5:30 p.m.: Salmon and veggies
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