Intermittent Fasting And Weight Loss
It was already mentioned before that intermittent fasting is often used as a weight-loss tool because it makes your body use stored fat as its energy source instead of glucose. According to the New York Times, time-restricted fasting could help you consume around 550 calories less than usual, which is difficult to achieve with the help of a conventional calorie restriction. A review published by a WHO regional office also confirms that time-restricted feeding can improve your health and add to weight loss. 2014 reviews show that following IF rules led to a 3-8% reduction in body weight after 3-24 weeks.
Saturated And Trans Fats
These two types of fat belong to the group of bad fats. Both saturated and trans fats can harm your body and are recommended to be avoided and substituted by healthy fats. Saturated fats are also called solid fats, due to their ability to become solid at room temperature. Dietitians recommend consuming no more than 13g of saturated fats per day. You can find this type of fat in animal meats and their products, dairy , certain vegetable oils , and processed foods .
Trans fats are not healthier than saturated fats. These fats are manufactured and were widely used in fast-food production, as they are relatively cheap and can be preserved for a longer time. It is best to avoid them completely. Trans fats usually occur in fried foods, some baked goods , cookies, crackers, pizza dough, fast foods, packaged foods, shortenings, and stick margarine . Always look for the words hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated fats or oils on the ingredients list and avoid those product that contain them.
Intermittent Fasting Can Help Weight Loss
IF makes intuitive sense. The food we eat is broken down by enzymes in our gut and eventually ends up as molecules in our bloodstream. Carbohydrates, particularly sugars and refined grains , are quickly broken down into sugar, which our cells use for energy. If our cells dont use it all, we store it in our fat cells as, well, fat. But sugar can only enter our cells with insulin, a hormone made in the pancreas. Insulin brings sugar into the fat cells and keeps it there.
Between meals, as long as we dont snack, our insulin levels will go down and our fat cells can then release their stored sugar, to be used as energy. We lose weight if we let our insulin levels go down. The entire idea of IF is to allow the insulin levels to go down far enough and for long enough that we burn off our fat.
Read Also: What Are The Effects Of Fasting
Do We All Experience The Same Benefits
No regime will be right for everyone all the time, says Collins. So much depends on what you eat, and to some extent when you eat it, he adds. It also depends on whether youre going to follow eating with activity or inactivity, and whether youve accumulated lots of calories throughout the day. Every persons body reacts differently to eating and fasting.
Another contributing factor is your circadian rhythm natural cycles of sleep and activity. Many digestive, metabolic and cellular processes follow a daily rhythm based on cycles of light and dark, just like your sleep patterns. Nutrition scientists are now investigating whether eating out of kilter with our circadian rhythm having a large meal at night when your body is signalling for you to sleep is not optimal for health.
Intermittent Fasting 12/1: I Lost 10 Pounds In 3 Weeks
I had outstanding success with intermittent fasting for 16 hours a day in May of 2018, when I lost 10 pounds.
Though I was really excited about the fast, easy weight loss in the beginning, by the end of the month Id fallen off.
A month later Id regained ALL that weight.
It was just too restrictive for my lifestyle. It wasnt sustainable.
Yes, I could lose weight really fast without doing terribly much other than eating reasonable foods at specific times, but that yo-yo effect of losing only to regain was one Id known all too well.
I wanted to get off that ride!
Though intermittent fasting 16/8 wasnt forever, I did learn a lot about hunger, appetite suppression, and self-control.
I wondered if fasting for fewer hours daily would give me most benefits of 16-hour fasts, with some additional flexibility in case I needed it?
In this post I reveal all that happened my third week!
*This post contains affiliate links
Recommended Reading: What To Eat While Fasting To Lose Weight
Intermittent Fasting Schedules To Follow
There are many ways to practice intermittent fasting for weight loss. The following are some of the most popular schedules:
Time-restricted eating: This involves consuming all of your meals within a period of 4-12 hours in a day. For example, you could choose to have your meals and calories between 8 am and 6 pm. Limiting your calorie intake to daylight hours is called eating with the sun. Time-restricted eating is particularly beneficial if you eat your meals before sunset. Not only does this help you eliminate bad habits like late-night snacking, but it improves your sleep and blood sugar control. Over time, time-restricted eating can lower your blood sugar levels, make you more sensitive to insulin, and reduce your blood pressure.
One-meal-a-day : This involves packing all of your days calories in a single meal that you consume within 1-2 hours. A small study conducted by Dr. Jason Fungs research group showed that fasting for 24 hours 3 times a week and eating only dinner on fasting days, eliminated the need for insulin in type-2 diabetic patients. This fasting approach also resulted in improved HbA1C, lower body mass index, and reduced waist circumference.
What intermittent fasting schedule is right for you? Find out here.
What Are The Benefits Of The 12
Greek Physician Hippocrates and Athein and philosopher Plato are among the early proponents of the benefits of fasting to improve health, thousands of years back. Plato fasted for better physical and mental productivity. And according to Hippocrates, our food should be our medicine, and to eat when you are sick is to feed your sickness . Fast forward to today, modern science agrees that having a full stomach all the time is not ideal.
After eating, many new proteins are produced in the brain, and during fasting, the body also produces few new proteins. Therefore, cells are prompted to obtain protein from non-essential sources, convert them, and use the amino acids to make new proteins needed to survive.
The benefits of intermittent 12-hour fasting include:
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Intermittent Fasting Might Work For You Too
So, there you have it, the three reasons why intermittent fasting for 12 hours yielded better results for me than intermittent fasting 16 hours.
It may be tempting to suggest that any one of these reasons outweighs the others , but for me, theyre all equally as important.
Any diet plan I embark on must be sustainable.
I cant feel guilty or like a failure every step of the way.
Thats no way to live!
Even though intermittent fasting makes eating fewer calories easier, it wont do all the work for you.
Intermittent fasting really only works as much as YOU do.
And without public accountability, for me, its just too easy to fall back into old patterns.
You yes YOU have really helped me stay on track and pull it all together.
A Word Of Caution About 24
Its a fact that some of these IF plans are more advanced and not recommended for everyone.
Further, even the author of Healthy Happy Warriors says, there is little scientific evidence to back up the validity of this .
Yet, there are doctors, professors, health gurus, and studies published either claiming IF is safe, or that it is as effective than regular reduced-calorie diets.
Still, while IF has its benefits, it is still controversial in many circles. First, the original studies on IF were conducted on rats .
Of the studies that were done, found no significant differences in fasting glucose and fasting insulin but saw a significant increase in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels. However, a meta-analysis of four other IF studies noticed a decrease in LDL cholesterol.
Any diet must be sustainable. The best diets are those a patient can maintain. People are often looking for this one magical something that is going to work, and the point is, theres no one right diet for everyone.
— Alisa Scherban, Yale Health Nutritionist
Thus, many scientists say there arent enough high-quality human studies to conclusively claim similar benefits in people. The Harvard School of Public Health adds that it is unclear if intermittent fasting is superior to other weight loss methods for losing weight and decreasing appetite .
Also Check: How To Do Keto With Intermittent Fasting
Your Body Will Adapt Give Your Body Time To Acclimate
When are you first starting out, you may experience some hunger pains. This is because you taught your body that you are going to feed it first thing in the morning. If you extend intermittent fasting by 20-30 minutes a day, within a few weeks you can extend your fasting period from 8-9 hours to the 12 hour fasting window.
Same things happens in the evening. Perhaps you have taught your body that when you sit down to relax after dinner, you like to have something sweet to eat. By reducing this back by 20-30 minutes a day, you can optimize your 12 hour intermittent fasting window.
Chow Down In Sync With Your Circadian Clock
This is not the first research to show that the timing of meals can make a difference to our waistlines. As we’ve reported, a study several years back found that dieters who ate their main meal of the day before 3 p.m. lost about 5 pounds more than people who ate a dinner meal late in the evening.
And as scientists learn more, it’s clear that our bodies are timekeeping machines. Not only do we have a master clock in our brains, but there are also clocks in all the organs of our body from the pancreas to the stomach and liver.
Daylight is a main cue to reset our master clock each day, but it’s the first bite of food we take in the morning that may be an important cue to reset other clocks in our organs.
“When the timing of meals does not match with the sleep-wake cycle well, there’s a disconnect between the different clocks that we have in basically all the cells of our body,” Frank Scheer, director of the Medical Chronobiology Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told us several years back.
“When the clocks in our body are out of sync,” our bodies don’t work as efficiently, and this may lead us to store more fat, explains Panda. “And over a long period of time, that can lead to Type 2 diabetes, obesity and increased risk for heart diseases,” Panda says.
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Seven Ways To Do Intermittent Fasting
There are many different ways of intermittent fasting. The methods vary in the number of fast days and the calorie allowances.
Intermittent fasting involves entirely or partially abstaining from eating for a set amount of time, before eating regularly again.
Some studies suggest that this way of eating may offer benefits such as fat loss, better health, and increased longevity. Proponents claim that an intermittent fasting program is easier to maintain than traditional, calorie-controlled diets.
Each persons experience of intermittent fasting is individual, and different styles will suit different people.
In this article, we discuss the research behind the most popular types of intermittent fasting and provide tips on how to maintain this type of diet.
There are various methods of intermittent fasting, and people will prefer different styles. Read on to find out about seven different ways to do intermittent fasting.
Skipping Meals Can Cause Headaches Dizziness And Nausea
Long periods of fasting can lower your blood sugar levels and leave you feeling lightheaded, dizzy, with headaches, and/or nausea.
If you have a medical condition, talk to your doctor to make sure it’s safe to try intermittent fasting. People with type 1 diabetes and/or on diabetic medications may be more susceptible to unwanted side effects or struggle with controlling their blood sugar levels .
Your body will also need some time to adjust, so try choosing a day of the week or period of time that you dont need to be very active or deeply concentrate when first starting a fasting practice.
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Start Slow Take Your Time To Get To A Full 12 Hour Fast
There is no reason you need to start out fasting for the full 12 hours. This is not a sprint, its a marathon. It takes time for your body to adjust to not eating especially if you typically have an evening snack or grab breakfast right when you wake.
For me, I typically take my evening supplements around 9pm. Then, I wake up slow and take my time getting ready in the morning.
Could Help Lower Cholesterol
Your cholesterol might also improve after intermittent fasting when consuming a healthy diet during your non-fasting periods.
Better lipid profiles have been found after intermittent fasting including lower overall cholesterol, lower LDL , and lower triglyceride levels in healthy and overweight populations .
The majority of studies investigating intermittent fasting’s effects on cholesterol have focused on those fasting for Ramadan, so intermittent fasting may be an effective dietary method to improve your cholesterol, but further studies are needed to explore the differences in short-term vs long-term metabolic changes associated with fasting. .
If you’re concerned about high cholesterol try adopting healthy lifestyle habits like incorporating exercise and a diet low in saturated and trans fats, and rich in high fiber foods.
Also Check: What Is Fasting To Lose Weight
Restrictive Eating Can Influence Disordered Eating
Any diet that supports skipping meals or restrictive eating can trigger some not-so-great food relationships. Especially when the positive weight loss effects are directly impacted by not eating, or restricting food intake.
This isn’t a great mindset to go into fasting with and can lead some people to take intermittent fasting too far, developing disordered eating patterns, or getting caught up in a yo-yo dieting cycle.
Not to mention that not eating enough calories each day to meet your basic needs can lead to nutrient deficiencies, decrease your immunity and create havoc in your body.
Make sure you’re being honest with yourself before trying any kind of fasting practice and consult with your practitioner beforehand as a mindful or intuitive eating approach may be a better option.
Whatever your reason for wanting to intermittent fast, remember to incorporate basic nutrition principles including calorie control and a balanced diet to set yourself up for success.
Going rouge during your non-fasting periods can sabotage any hopes you have for reaping the health benefits when intermittent fasting.
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Why Haven’t You Seen Intermittent Fasting Results While Following The Diet
However, while research shows that many folks are trying their luck with IF, people often find that they’re not seeing optimal intermittent fasting results as quickly as they expected.
If you’re not witnessing a trimmer waistline and bloat-free belly, don’t quit just yetyou may be guilty of committing these five mistakes.
Find out how you can improve your IF experience and reap the results you’ve been dreaming of before throwing in the towel with our guide below.
Stop the following 5 bad habits so you can finally see the intermittent fasting results everyone raves about.
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Benefits To Metabolic Health
Good metabolic health means having optimum levels of blood sugar , fat , good cholesterol , blood pressure and other markers that indicate your risk of heart disease, stroke and other chronic conditions.
Certainly, from a metabolic point of view we definitely see benefits in intermittent fasting, says Dr Collins. Youre better at clearing, storing and utilising carbohydrate and fat when youre on an intermittent fasting regime, so there are improvements in insulin sensitivity, blood lipids and other cardiovascular risk factors.
Such improvements are evident in lean people as well as those who are overweight, he says. This is possibly because healthy-weight people can still carry harmful deposits of fat in their internal organs, including the liver.
But the effects of weight-loss are difficult to untangle from other processes at play during fasting. Dr Collins is conducting more research to find out whether metabolic health can be improved in people on intermittent fasting programmes without reducing their overall calorie intake.
Is Intermittent Fasting Safe
Some people try intermitting fasting for weight management, and others use the method to address chronic conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, high cholesterol or arthritis. But intermittent fasting isnt for everyone.
Williams stresses that before you try intermittent fasting , you should check in with your primary care practitioner first. Some people should steer clear of trying intermittent fasting:
- Children and teens under age 18.
- Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding.
- People with diabetes or blood sugar problems.
- Those with a history of eating disorders.
But, Williams says, people not in these categories who can do intermittent fasting safely can continue the regimen indefinitely. It can be a lifestyle change, she says, and one with benefits.
Keep in mind that intermittent fasting may have different effects on different people. Talk to your doctor if you start experiencing unusual anxiety, headaches, nausea or other symptoms after you start intermittent fasting.
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