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How Many Hours Is Best For Intermittent Fasting

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Intermittent Fasting May Benefit The Heart

Intermittent Fasting Schedule: Guide to Best Hours for Intermittent Fasting Results

According to the Intermountain Medical Center, intermittent fasting plays a role in keeping the heart healthy.

This is great news considering heart disease is a leading cause of death around the world.

Intermittent fasting helps to lower blood pressure, which is good for the heart.

LDL and total cholesterol levels will also be improved.

Blood sugar levels will benefit from intermittent fasting as well.

Keeping the heart healthy will help to prevent heart disease.

If you have a history of heart disease in your family, intermittent fasting is something you may want to consider.

Why Am I Gaining Weight On Intermittent Fasting

Protein fills you up as well, helping you make it from the fasting window to the eating window. If you are consuming foods that are sugary and processed, your insulin levels spike, signaling your body to store fat. At the same time, this spike blocks leptin, the hormone that tells you that you are full.

Can I Exercise During Fasting

Yes. You can continue all your usual activities, including exercise, while fasting.37 You do not need to eat before exercising to provide energy.38 Instead, your body can burn stored energy for fuel.

However, for long-duration aerobic exercise, eating before exercise may increase performance.39 Its also important to drink fluids and replenish sodium around exercise when fasting. This is good to know if youre competing. Learn more

Read Also: Will I Lose Weight Intermittent Fasting

How To Begin 5 2 Intermittent Fasting

You will begin by eating normally for 5 of the days each week. By eating normally, we encourage you to eat a clean, healthy diet that is filled with whole foods, healthy meats and pastured eggs.

For the 2 fasting days, you will eat 1 meal consisting of 600 or 500 or 2 meals each day consisting of 300 or 250 calories each.

Again, you can also drink water, coffee and other drinks that have no calories.

The 5 Stages Of Intermittent And Prolonged Fasting

A Rookie

Cahill conceptualized his fasting stages according to which energy source the body is predominantly using at any given time .

He distinguishes between two primary fuel sources:

  • Glucose: a carbohydrate and sugar
  • Triglycerides: stored body fat

While most cells can use both energy sources, the brain is an exception because it cannot use triglycerides.

Other cells, such as those in the liver, kidneys, muscles, or heart, can use both energy sources.

While the body stores fat as triglycerides, carbohydrates are stored in the form of glycogen.

This molecule consists of glucose chains and water. Glycogen is stored primarily in the liver and partially in skeletal muscle.

As soon as the body needs blood sugar, it splits the molecule into smaller glucose molecules and relieves them into the bloodstream.

When glycogen is no longer available, the body must draw on fat reserves. For this purpose, triglycerides from the fat cells enter the liver, where they are broken down.

In addition to fatty acid chains, glycerol is produced, which your body can convert into glucose for the brain.

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How Long Should An Intermittent Fasting Program Last For

This wholly depends on your objective.

Your intermittent fasting program can last for a month, 2 months, 6 months, 1 year or you can have a fasting program that lasts forever as part of your on-going eating plan.

There are no set rules. Once you get into it, you will see what I mean. In fact, you may start to enjoyintermittent fasting actually. Hard to believe, I know. But you do. I do enjoy it. Okay, may be Im weird, but hey

I know that some people may want to know how long to do intermittent fasting for to see weight loss results. Then again, that would vary from person to person. In particular, how you manage your diet during the intermittent fasting eating window will play a huge role in your intermittent fasting results.

What you eat matters a lot during the eating window.

On the whole though, you will start to see intermittent fasting results in 2 weeks, if you fast for 3 days a week. You will get better weight loss results with intermittent fasting, if you add a workout to the plan.

/4 Intermittent Fasting Aka The Warrior Diet

In this method of intermittent fasting, you are on fast for 20 hours, and your eating window is just 4 hours. This diet is also known as the warrior diet.

Keep yourself hydrated, include green tea or coffee during fasting hours. Try to include all essential nutrients like proteins, fats, carbs, and vitamins in your 4 hours eating window. For example, you could eat a bowl of mixed raw veggies and fruits such as carrot, cabbage, avocado, cucumber, sprouts, apple, pear, oranges, watermelons and add a protein source like fish, poultry, or tofu.

Our ancestors followed this when they had to go hunting they used to come back late in the evening and have a feast of what they had hunted.

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What To Eat On A 5 2 Intermittent Fast

Limiting calories on those 2 days makes it tough to create sustainable meals. Be sure to follow a clean, whole foods diet during the 5 days of eating normally. Then, choose balance whole foods such as: raw fruits and vegetables to help your stomach stay full longer. Pair this with fiber, such as oatmeal and plant-based proteins like flaxseeds and hemp seeds. A big green smoothie is also helpful.

You can also consider drinking water, coffee and other drinks that have no calories. This does help reduce the feelings of hunger and make it a little easier to transition.

Embracing the 5 2 Intermittent fasting method still reaps the health benefits of intermittent fasting.

Which Intermittent Fasting Is Best For You

The BEST Intermittent Fasting Schedule

Picking which intermittent fasting is best will depend on your health goals and what experience you have with intermittent fasting. if your main goal is weight loss, keep reading, we will talk about some specific tips that will help you achieve weight loss. Otherwise, if you are struggling with some health issues, some prolonged fasting may be something to consider. I recommend you learn about the 10-Day Transformation or Modified Fasting.

Take my quiz to determine which fasting method is best.

Read Also: Which Is Better Keto Or Intermittent Fasting

Firing Up The Fat Burning Furnace

As mentioned before the body starts to burn fat when the glycogen supply is depleted after about six to eight hours, but on top of that, intermittent fasting will also help spice up the metabolism.

Restricting the time period, during which you eat, makes your body burn more calories throughout the day. Because the longer you feed, the lazier your metabolism becomes. But fit your food intake into an 8-hour window and your body steps up to the plate, burning more calories day and night.

Leptin, the hormone that regulates fat storage as well as hunger signals, and ghrelin, another hormone that tells your brain the body is hungry, are also normalized by routine fasting.

Leptin is produced by fat cells and works by telling the brain to turn off hunger signals when body fat levels are sufficient for survival and reproduction.

Intermittent Fasting Can Be Hard But Maybe It Doesnt Have To Be

Initial human studies that compared fasting every other day to eating less every day showed that both worked about equally for weight loss, though people struggled with the fasting days. So, I had written off IF as no better or worse than simply eating less, only far more uncomfortable. My advice was to just stick with the sensible, , diet.

New research is suggesting that not all IF approaches are the same, and some are actually very reasonable, effective, and sustainable, especially when combined with a nutritious plant-based diet. So Im prepared to take my lumps on this one .

We have evolved to be in sync with the day/night cycle, i.e., a circadian rhythm. Our metabolism has adapted to daytime food, nighttime sleep. Nighttime eating is well associated with a higher risk of obesity, as well as .

Based on this, researchers from the University of Alabama conducted a study with a small group of obese men with prediabetes. They compared a form of intermittent fasting called “early time-restricted feeding,” where all meals were fit into an early eight-hour period of the day ,or spread out over 12 hours . Both groups maintained their weight but after five weeks, the eight-hours group had dramatically lower insulin levels and significantly improved insulin sensitivity, as well as significantly lower blood pressure. The best part? The eight-hours group also had significantly decreased appetite. They werent starving.

Also Check: What To Drink While Fasting On Keto

Is It Better To Intermittent Fast In The Morning Or Evening

Fasting in the evening and overnight, then eating early in the day is the pattern that has the most profound benefits. The research is clear that people who eat in the morning and afternoon have healthier blood lipid profiles and better blood sugar control and tend to weigh less than those who eat late in the day.

What Is Intermittent Fasting 1: 10

6 Popular Ways to Do Intermittent Fasting

14:10 is a type of intermittent fasting.

Unlike the popular 16:8 method, it has a new ratio of fasting and feeding periods. Intermittent fasting 14:10 has an eating window of 10 hours and fasting window of 14 hours.

One common approach to doing this is to eat normally in the hours between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. The period between 7 p.m. and 9 a.m. the next day is the fasting window.

During the feeding period, you can eat your usual meals and snacks. Likewise, during the fasting window, you are not allowed to eat any calories. However, you can drink water and unsweetened coffee or green tea.

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Hours Of Feeding + 12 Hours Of Fasting

You have to decide when to start fasting, add 12 hours and then starting feasting. I tend to go with the 9pm 9am fasting period and sometimes, will extend my morning by 1-2 more hours a few times a week.

This helps to keep my body guessing when I am going to feed it, which helps my focus and prolonging the detoxification process.

If You Need To Lose Weight A Diet That Focuses Mainly On When You Eat May Be A Good Way To Shed Pounds And Improve Your Cardiovascular Health

Anyone who’s tried different weight-lossdiets is probably familiar with their pitfalls. Low-calorie diets often leave you tired, hungry, and cranky. Low-carb or “keto” diets can cause cravings and constipation. Low-fat diets are also tough to follow and, contrary to popular belief, they do not seem to prevent cardiovascular disease.

Another diet trend, intermittent fasting, takes a different approach. Rather than limiting what you eat, this diet limits when you eat . For some people, that change may be easier to manage, says Dr. Eric Rimm, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Short-term studies suggest that people stick to intermittent fasting diets as well as or better than they do to other diets. And according to a 2019 review article in the journal Nutrients, intermittent fasting promotes weight loss and may reduce risk factors linked to heart disease, including diabetes, high blood pressure, unhealthy blood lipid levels, and inflammation.

“However, we don’t have much evidence about how well this diet works over the long term,” says Dr. Rimm, noting that there are just two long-term studies of intermittent fasting, each lasting a year. Nor are there large populations of people who’ve followed this eating pattern for years. That’s in contrast to two other diets linked to a healthy heart and healthy body size the Mediterranean diet and a vegetarian diet.

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Is 16/8 Intermittent Fasting Right For You

16/8 intermittent fasting can be a sustainable, safe and easy way to improve your health when paired with a nutritious diet and a healthy lifestyle.

However, it shouldnt be viewed as a substitute for a balanced, well-rounded diet rich in whole foods. Not to mention, you can still be healthy even if intermittent fasting doesnt work for you.

Though 16/8 intermittent fasting is generally considered safe for most healthy adults, you should talk to your doctor before giving it a try, especially if you have any underlying health conditions.

This is key if youre taking any medications or have diabetes, low blood pressure or a history of disordered eating.

Intermittent fasting is also not recommended for women who are trying to conceive or those who are pregnant or breastfeeding.

If you have any concerns or experience any adverse side effects while fasting, be sure to consult your doctor.

16/8 intermittent fasting involves eating only during an 8-hour window and fasting for the remaining 16 hours.

It may support weight loss and improve blood sugar, brain function and longevity.

Eat a healthy diet during your eating period and drink calorie-free beverages like water or unsweetened teas and coffee.

Its best to talk to your doctor before trying intermittent fasting, especially if you have any underlying health conditions.

Frequently Asked Questions Concerns And Complaints

The BEST Intermittent Fasting Schedule For Weight Loss

Im a woman. Should I do anything differently?

I havent worked with women on implementing an intermittent fasting schedule, so I cant speak from experience on this one.

That said, I have heard that women may find a wider window of eating to be more favorable when doing daily intermittent fasting. While men will typically fast for 16 hours and then eat for 8 hours, women may find better results by eating for 10 hours and fasting for 14 hours. The best advice I can give anyone, not just women, is to experiment and see what works best for you. Your body will give you signals. Follow what your body responds favorably to.

Also, if youre a female, there is an allfemale page on Facebook that discusses intermittent fasting. Im sure you could find a ton of great answers and support there.

I could never skip breakfast. How do you do it?

I dont. Breakfast foods are my favorite, so I just eat them at 1pm each day.

Also, if you eat a big dinner the night before, I think youll be surprised by how much energy you have in the morning. Most of the worries or concerns that people have about intermittent fasting are due to the fact that they have had it pounded into them by companies that they need to eat breakfast or they need to eat every three hours and so on. The science doesnt support it and neither do my personal experiences.

I thought you were supposed to eat every 3 hours?

Here’s why this was a popular idea for a brief period of time:

Here’s the problem:

Free Bonus:

Also Check: What Are The Best Foods To Eat When Intermittent Fasting

Women And Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent fasting can cause hormonal imbalance in women if its not done correctly . Women are extremely sensitive to signals of starvation, and if the body senses that it is being starved, it will ramp up production of the hunger hormones leptin and ghrelin.

So when women experience insatiable hunger after under-eating, they are actually experiencing the increased production of these hormones. Its the female bodys way of protecting a potential fetus even when a woman is not pregnant.

So women have to set cunningly about it. And if you do so, you can get all the benefits of fasting.

One study of healthy young women found that a 10-hour eating window had an anti-stress effect, lowering cortisol and increasing parasympathetic* activity .

*) The parasympathetic nervous system is the “brake” that causes the body to calm down, and which is active when we relax, sleep, eat and meditate.

So if you are a woman or trying fasting for the first time, you might benefit from modified or crescendo intermittent fasting.

This is a more gentle approach that helps the body more easily adapt to fasting. Not all women need crescendo fasting, but it will ensure success in most.

  • Fast on 23 non-consecutive days per week

  • On fasting days, do yoga or light cardio.

  • Ideally, fast for 1216 hours.

  • Eat normally on your strength training/HIIT workouts intense exercise days.

  • Drink plenty of water.

  • After two weeks, feel free to add one more day of fasting.

  • Listen to your body.

  • Weight Loss / Weight Management From Fasting

    In general it takes between 6 to 8 hours for the body to burn through its glycogen supply. When glycogen is depleted the body will then turn to the energy stored in fat cells.

    Eating throughout the day makes it much harder for the body to burn fat. Extending the time between eating with 12 hour intermittent fasting will force your body to tap into stored fat reserves.

    Also Check: How Much Weight Should I Lose On Intermittent Fasting

    Tips For Intermittent Fasting

    • Increase the fluid intake a day or two before you start fasting.
    • Consume raw foods from vegetable and fruits to nuts etc. while avoiding processed foods, sugars, and dairy.
    • Initially fast for only a few hours, preferably during the morning as it helps the body to rev up for another day by eliminating the debris body might have collected while you slept.
    • Avoid taking any calorie-free drinks and beverages that use artificial sweeteners as they tend to stimulate your appetite just like any drink that contains sugar, which makes you overeat.
    • Avoid gorging at your first meal after the fast as binging will not only diminish the benefits of fast but also make you feel awful.

    It May Aid Weight Loss

    10 Types of Intermittent Fasting: Which One Is For You ...

    Various methods of intermittent fasting, including 20-hour fasting cycles, have been linked to weight loss.

    One study, which closely mimicked the Warrior Diet , found that people who consumed meals over four hours in the evening experienced more weight loss than those who consumed the same amount of calories in meals throughout the day.

    Whats more, those who ate one meal per day showed significantly reduced fat mass and greater muscle mass .

    A recent review of six studies concluded that various types of intermittent fasting, ranging from 3 to 12 months, were more effective at promoting weight loss than no dietary intervention.

    However, the review found that there were no significant weight loss differences between dieters using intermittent fasting or continuous calorie restriction , meaning that calorie restriction without fasting was equally effective .

    Additionally, although reducing calorie intake is the most common outcome of the Warrior Diet, some people following this eating pattern could technically consume too many calories during the four-hour overeating period and experience weight gain.

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