How Safe Is Intermittent Fasting
The 12 hour intermittent fasting Keto or Ketogenic diet and other carbohydrate-restricted diets aim to achieve ketosis, which is an accumulation of acidic ketones in the blood. As much as the outcomes are great, ketosis can cause liver, brain, and kidney damage. It is unsafe for individuals with chronic disorders such as diabetes and heart disease. Your blood sugar should also be stable for you to follow this diet plan. Therefore, it is important to discuss with your doctor and seek guidance from a licensed dietitian before beginning 12 hour intermittent fasting.
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What Is The : 4 Method
Often referred to as the Warrior Diet, the 20:4 fast was created by health and fitness writer, Ori Hofmekler, in 2001. This is one of the more extreme intermittent fasting methods and is based on Hofmeklers observations and experience keeping fit while in the Israeli Special Forces.
The 20:4 fast is designed to reflect the eating patterns of ancient warriors and timing is the key. Its based on the idea that in primitive times, people spent their days actively hunting and gathering before an evening feast. Those who follow the Warrior Diet claim that by eating in the evening, the body utilises the nutrients in line with its natural circadian rhythm.
During the eating window, fasters are encouraged to consume up to 90% of their daily caloric intake or until they are completely full. There arent any guidelines around the types of food you can consume during the 4-hour period, however, it is encouraged you consume nutrient-dense whole foods where possible.
Meal Plan Template #3 3 Meals A Day When Working Out In The Evening/night
Meal One:
Super shake .
1-2 palms of protein
0.5-2 cupped handfuls of carbohydrates
1-2 fistfuls of vegetables if you have eggs
1-2 thumbs of fat
Meal Two:
1-2 palms of protein
0.5-2 cupped handfuls of carbohydrates
1-2 fistfuls of vegetables
1-2 thumbs of fat
Pre-Workout
2 scoops of branched-chain amino acids with 16-24 ounces of water, or 20-40 grams of whey protein. For added muscle gains, include carbohydrate protocol in Workout Nutrition section of the book.
Meal Three/Post Workout
Super shake . If you want to see more on how to make super shakes, you can check out my blog here.
You could also follow the protocols in the Workout Nutrition section in the book.
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The Proposed Health Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting
When it comes to weight loss, there are two thoughts behind why IF has the potential to work. The first: Periods of fasting produce a net calorie deficit, and so you lose weight, explains Rekha Kumar, MD, a specialist in endocrinology, diabetes, and metabolism at the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYorkPresbyterian in New York City. The other concept is more complex: This approach may prevent whats called the plateau phenomenon from happening, she says.
You may remember the famous, so-called Biggest Loserstudy, published in August 2016 in the journal Obesity. The researchers followed up with participants after six years, and despite the initial impressive weight loss, they regained most of the weight, and their metabolic rates had slowed, such that they burned far fewer calories than would have been expected.
Though more research is needed on the safety and effectiveness of IF, one of the touted benefits of this approach is it may prevent this metabolic sputtering. Most people who try diet and exercise to lose weight tend to fall off the wagon and regain weight. Hormones that promote weight regain, like hunger hormones, are kicked into full gear, and the thought is that IF may be a way to prevent this metabolic adaptation from happening, says Dr. Kumar. Normal periods of eating in IF trick your body into losing weight before the plateau happens.
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What Is An Intermittent Fasting Diet
In general, intermittent fasting refers to any eating schedule that alternates periods of going without food with meals. There are many different types of plans, including those that restrict calories for only certain hours of each day or certain days of the week. The main difference between IF and traditional calorie-restriction diets is that IF doesnt limit portions or foods, only when you eat them.
The review, which included more than 25 studies that looked at intermittent fasting in humans, found that IF consistently resulted in people consuming fewer total calories between 10 and 30 percent fewer than they had been eating at the onset of the studies which led to weight loss.
The review also included safety considerations and practical advice for how these diets should be implemented in everyday life.
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You Are Not Eating Enough Protein
If you find that your meals cannot carry you across your fasting period to your next eating window, then you might need to adjust your diet.
Consider including more lean protein in your diet. It does not matter the type of protein, vegan and animal protein, all are fine.
Proteins can help keep you full till your next meal. Furthermore, if you are exercising during this period, proteins are important for building your muscles and protecting your bone health.
Your meals should have healthy fats, carbs, leafy greens, and proteins.
What Is The 1: 8 Diet
The 16:8 diet is a type of intermittent fasting where you break each day into two parts a 16 hour stretch and an 8 hour period. For 16 hours every day, you consume nothing but water, coffee, tea and other unsweetened drinks. Then for the other eight hours of the day, you can eat all your meals and snacks.
The 16 hour stretch sounds like a long time, but if youre getting enough sleep, you should be asleep for about half of that time.
Sports Scientist Harry Aitken tells GoodtoKnow, Intermittent fasting is a dietary technique in which all food is consumed within a relatively small window of time. Fasting is going for a significant period of time without eating, and intermittent fasting simply brings in a small window of time where you are able to eat.
Intermittent fasting has been popularised and studies have gone on to confirm that it leads to weight loss and fat loss.
The 16:8 diet stems from the book 8 Hour Diet by author David Zinczenko and editor-in-chief of Mens Health Peter Moore, who suggested that a longer fasting time between eating gives the body the time it needs to process the food and burn away extra fat.
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May Improve Blood Sugar Levels
Intermittent fasting is generally associated with improving blood sugar control and insulin sensitivity . A pilot study done in 2017 showed that fasting for 18 to 20 hours a day could lead to weight loss and post-meal blood sugar control . This shows that fasting could be extremely beneficial to patients with type 2 diabetes. However, if you are suffering from this disease, please talk to your doctor before trying the 20-hour fast, or any other form of intermittent fasting.
Foods To Avoid On 16/8 Intermittent Fasting
During your eating window on any method of intermittent fasting, you should stick to the foods presented above. Foods that you need to exclude from the IF food list are:
- Candy
- Fried foods
- Low-quality snacks
All processed foods, junk food, refined grains, trans-fat, processed meat, candy bars should be excluded from your list of foods for the 16/8 intermittent fasting method or any other IF protocol.
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Chicken With Fried Cauliflower Rice
Total time: 35 minutes | Servings: 4
Ingredients:
- Kosher salt and pepper
Directions:
Per serving: 427 calories, 45 g protein, 25 g carbs , 16 g fat
Ways To Do Intermittent Fasting
There are several methods of intermittent fasting, varying in the fasting period and the calorie allowances. Since different methods may suit different people, you may want to experiment to see what works best for your lifestyle and preferences.
Before embarking on an intermittent fast or deciding how often to fast, it is important to talk to a medical professional about potential benefits and risks, especially if you have a medical condition.
Below are 7 popular methods of intermittent fasting:
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Why Am I Gaining Weight On Intermittent Fasting
Moreover, fasting causes the body to enter into a self preservation mode, altering your metabolism to conserve energy when caloric intake is severely restricted. Consequently, when you return to normal eating patterns the body begins stockpiling energy, resulting in rapid weight re- gain says Dr.
Best Foods To Eat When Intermittent Fasting
When intermittent fasting, the following properties characterize the best foods to eat:
- They are rich in nutrients, especially electrolytes
- Their carbohydrates are primarily limited to dietary fiber
- They are easily digestible and flatter the intestinal flora
On top of that, the following list of the 24 best foods to eat when intermittent fasting brings additional benefits to your daily life.
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Intermittent Fasting And Diarrhea After Eating
If you have just started intermittent fasting, it is often quite natural to excrete excess water and electrolytes through the gastrointestinal tract as soon as you break the fast.
Therefore, diarrhea on intermittent fasting is only an issue if it persists.
Against this background, a poor diet can cause diarrhea when fasting. The following food often contributes to diarrhea on intermittent fasting:
- Dairy
- Refined carbohydrates
- Legumes
If you do still suffer from diarrhea when excluding these foods, make sure you drink enough water. Moreover, broth, pickle juice, or sea salt can help to reabsorb the electrolytes you excreted.
Some Of The Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting
Long story short, our evolutionary past has contributed to optimal eating patterns. Through natural selection, and millions of adaptations over hundreds of thousands of years
Our bodies have figured out whats best for us long-term.
From our hunter-gatherer past, days of feast or famine were very common. Oftentimes, even in current hunter-gatherer societies across the globe still practice fasting.
These cultures do it naturally, preserving the hunter-gatherer-typical consumption of calories because big hunts with large kills are not an everyday occurrence. They may go days without a large beast as prey, and survive off of gathered crops, fruits, nuts, and berries.
And this is the exact way modern humans have evolved to intake calories too, which is why your body responds very well from a health standpoint. Lets explore exactly how:
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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.
How Soon Will I See Results From Intermittent Fasting
The same is with intermittent fasting . Experts suggest that a person needs to follow the basic rules for at least 10 weeks to witness some positive results . Following the diet properly for this period of time will help you shed 3 to 5 kilos of weight .
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Mistake #: Youre Not Sure What Counts
So my wife and I are trying to start on the IF journey . Its harder than we thought. How can she do coffee in the mornings without throwing off the benefits of the fast? She doesnt care for black coffee, but the chokehold of caffeine has her in its stimulant grip, and I dont want to die in that ditch today.
I, too, live and die by that a.m. cup of coffee. But this person is overthinking it. The best thing to do is simplify your routine. Have your morning cup of coffee exactly as you like it and break your fast then. For example, if youre doing 16:8 , have your coffee at 8 a.m. and your last meal at 4 p.m.
Intermittent Fasting Good For Reversing Insulin Resistance And Muscle Building
You may start intermittent fasting because you want to reverse your insulin resistance. That objective might take you a little longer to achieve, so you could be fasting intermittently for say 5 6 months.
If your objective is to build muscle with intermittent fasting, then it may take you as long as 4 6 months or even longer. With muscle building, you will want to consider adding a workout regime to the fasting.
You also should consider doing your workout routine which must include resistance training towards the last 2 hours of the fasting window to accelerate the process.
In essence, I am saying the workout should be the last activity you do before you resume eating. That has been shown to be very effective.
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Here Is The Intermittent Fasting Diet Meal Plan
You may know that the intermittent fasting diet has become quite popular. Maybe we can even call this fasting meal plan a health trend. You may encounter information online saying that there is no specific meal plan for intermittent fasting. This is actually not so wrong, because people who follow the diet can continue their normal eating habits, provided that they do not eat outside of the specified hours. Despite this, we have seen a need that those who wanted to follow this diet might have for a detailed guide. So, we have prepared a daily plan for you. Before introducing you to this plan, lets briefly examine the question of what is an intermittent fasting diet in case for those who have just started researching this diet so that there is nothing we do not know.
How To Properly Do Intermittent Fasting 20/4
When people choose intermittent fasting 20/4, many assume that it just involves cutting down your feeding window to only four hours a day. While this is essentially what a 20-hour fast means, many people are unaware that Ori Hofmekler, the diets developer, created an initial 3-week, 3-phase plan.
According to Ori, this plan and its phases are necessary as they give your body a chance to get used to the Warrior Diet, improving its ability to utilize fat for energy. The plan is as follows :
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What To Eat On Intermittent Fasting And Keto
More and more people report excellent results when combining intermittent fasting with a ketogenic diet. Why?
Since the keto diet, just like fasting, reduces insulin, empties the carbohydrate stores, and burns fat through ketosis, it is an ideal match.
Because fasting taps into body fat for energy, it is the most ketogenic diet of them all.
To unleash the full potential of intermittent fasting through a ketogenic diet, you need a daily calorie intake consisting of 75% fat, 20-25% protein, and 5-10% carbohydrates.
Thereby, 1 gram of fat provides 9 calories, and 1 gram of protein or carbohydrates provides 4 calories, which reduces the amount of fat in relation.
To go keto with the previous lists, all you need to do is to follow these crucial points:
- Avoid foods at the bottom of the carbohydrate list
- Prefer fatty cuts over low-nutrient fillet meats
The fact that lean proteins strongly increase insulin levels was long unknown and doomed classic low-carb diets to failure .
Since the ketogenic diet is based on this fact, it can even improve the following health benefits of intermittent fasting:
- Insulin sensitivity
