Being Too Hard On Yourself If You Slip When Intermittent Fasting
One slip does not a failure make! Sometimes youll have days when an IF regimen is extra tough, and you just dont think you can make it. Its totally okay to take a break if you need to. Give yourself a day to refocus. Stay on a healthy eating track but allow yourself treats like an awesome protein smoothie or a serving of healthy beef and broccoli and jump back in the next day.
Dont make the mistake of allowing Intermittent Fasting to consume your whole life. Consider a part of your healthy lifestyle and remember to do other important things for yourself, too. Enjoy a book, exercise, spend time with the family, and eat as healthily as you can. Its all part of the package of being the best you can be.
Intermittent Fasting Tips For Beginners
When people bring up the topic of intermittent fasting, all we ever hear is the word fasting and it can come off a little daunting. Is fasting even good for our bodies? When we are cultured to eat every single day on the hour as soon as we wake up, fasting can be a difficult concept to grasp. What does intermittent mean? Intermittent means to occur at various different intervals. Most people that interval fast follow a 16:8 ratio rule, meaning that you eat for 8 hours a day and fast for the remaining 16 hours. Intermittent fasting is incredibly beneficial for people that want to reduce bloating, lose body weight, and control poor eating habits. According to a 2014 study, intermittent fasting was found to decrease body fat by 3-8 percent over a 3-24 week period. You might want to incorporate fasting in your daily routine, especially if youre looking for a fresh approach to improving your eating habits. Here are 5 tips on how you should approach intermittent fasting as a beginner:
Are You Allowed To Drink Anything While Fasting
Yes, and you most definitely should. Dehydration can derail any weight loss routine, including a fast. Drink plenty of water throughout the day and if you need a pick-me-up, dont hesitate to reach for a cup of black coffee or tea.
You can even flavour your beverages with lemon or lime juice for a calorie-free boost. Once the fasting is over, feel free to get a bit more creative with your waters flavour with these creative ideas.
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The Easy Way To Do Intermittent Fasting
The easy way to do intermittent fasting is what I call 12:12 intermittent fasting.
This title simply means that for 12 hours of the day you fast, and 12 hours you consume all of your calories.
In other words, you have a 12-hour window of eating during the day.
This method is very simple to do.
In fact, I do this on a daily basis as do the people that follow my 0, 1, 2, 3 Strategy .
The 3 of my strategy reminds you to stop eating three hours before bed.
For instance, if you go to bed at 10:30 PM, you want to stop eating at 7:30 PM.
To create your 12-hour fast, you simply delay breakfast until 7:30 AM.
This easy way to do intermittent fasting will help you lose weight because it allows your insulin and blood sugar levels to drop overnight, which moves your body into a fat-burning state.
How To Choose An Intermittent Fasting Schedule
How to Choose an Intermittent Fasting Schedule
Posted 3 months ago
Tony ONeill, PT, DPT, MSc, RDN
Scientific Reviewer
Choosing an intermittent fasting schedule should be easy. Just pick the protocol with the most science behind it, right?
One problem with this method is that the science supports many forms of IF, meaning there is no consensus on the best protocol for supporting your health goals.
Another problem is that longer intermittent fasts dont work for everyone. One meal a day might work for some people, but others find it stressful and draining.
Some of the more well-known IF protocols include overnight fasting, 16/8, OMAD, 5:2, and alternate-day fasting. If this is unfamiliar jargon, dont worry! Well address these methods in more detail later in the article.
This article will help you find your optimal protocol of fasting and feeding, so you can settle into a sustainable routine.
Intermittent Fasting Defined
Intermittent fasting can be defined as temporary calorie restriction. When you practice IF, you limit your calories for a certain number of hours every day or for a certain number of days every week.
As a general rule, intermittent fasts start at 12 hours and end at around 36 hours of fasting. Any fast beyond 36 hours is typically considered an extended fast.
An intermittent fast neednt be a zero-calorie fast. Certain protocols allow for limited calories during feeding windows and still appear to help with obesity and other heart disease risk factors.
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Youll Regulate Your Appetite
Grazing can make it difficult to identify when youre hungry and when youre actually full. Contrary to popular belief, this can make it difficult for your body to keep up.
Eating larger meals less frequently allows your body to create ketone bodies. These ketone bodies help regulate and stabilize the hormones that give you food cravings, even after eating a meal.
This means youll recognize when youre feeling full and when youre truly feeling hungry.
So How Many Hours Should You Fast
When you explore the beginners guide to intermittent fasting, you may find these schedules very restrictive and difficult to follow. Its a good idea to start slow and fast for 12 hours and eat for 12, or fast for 14 hours and eat for 10.
For women, the 14:10 schedule is easier to follow. For men, this can vary as some men find alternate-day fasting easier to follow.
Working your way slowly will make it easier for you to adjust to a certain intermittent fasting type. You can eventually increase the fasting periods and decrease the eating windows.
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So Is Intermittent Fasting As Good As It Sounds
I was very curious about this, so I asked the opinion of metabolic expert Dr. Deborah Wexler, Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Diabetes Center and associate professor at Harvard Medical School. Here is what she told me. “There is evidence to suggest that the circadian rhythm fasting approach, where meals are restricted to an eight to 10-hour period of the daytime, is effective,” she confirmed, though generally she recommends that people “use an eating approach that works for them and is sustainable to them.”
So, heres the deal. There is some good scientific evidence suggesting that circadian rhythm fasting, when combined with a healthy diet and lifestyle, can be a particularly effective approach to weight loss, especially for people at risk for diabetes.
The Next Day I Felt Guilty And Went Back To My Fasting Routine I Skipped Breakfast And Broke My Fast At Noon With A Healthy
Afterward, I felt much better than I had for the previous 24 hours. The problem with sweets is that they’re high in refined carbs and sugar, neither of which fill you up or fuel your body long term.
My guess is that after I forgot to eat, my body went into starvation mode. Then, when I consumed heavy, rich treats, it went into overdrive and started craving more and more of them.
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Is Intermittent Fasting Right For You
Fasting, like eating a low carb-high fat diet, is another tool for weight loss and improving your health. But the effectiveness of these tools rely on whether you can do them consistently over the long run.
Here are some pros and cons to help you decide:
- Its simple and easier to stick to because you simply skip a meal when youre not hungry or too busy to eat.
- You can fit it into your lifestyle, i.e. schedule around special occasions, Holidays.
- However, theres the hunger . You need to develop the skill to ride the ebb and flow of hunger by being more mindful about why you eat. But because its a skill, you can learn it.
What if you achieved the health benefits you want from intermittent fasting?
How will that change you?
“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
If you’re looking for a simple, doable way to practice fasting, I get it. It shouldn’t have to be hard. Get my FREE email course below that shows you the easier way.
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Does Intermittent Fasting Have Different Effects On Men And Women
The quick answer is: yes, Intermittent Fasting can affect men and women differently.
Anecdotally, we have many women in our online coaching program that swear by Intermittent Fasting, while others have had adverse effects.
Lets dig into the science and studies.
A recent PubMed summary concluded thatfasting can be prescribed as a safe medical intervention as well as a lifestyle regimen which can improve womens health in many folds .
Now, in that extract, many of the studies cited are focused on specifically calorie restriction , and they also say that future studies should address this gap by designing medically supervised fasting techniques to extract better evidence.
Digging into the PubMed Archives brought me to the following conclusions :
One small study resulted in the following: Glucose response to a meal was slightly impaired in women after 3 weeks of treatment, but insulin response was unchanged. Men had no change in glucose response and a significant reduction in insulin response.
Another small study studied the effects on their menstrual cycles after a 72 hour fast which is significantly longer than any fast recommended in this article: in spite of profound metabolic changes, a 72-hour fast during the follicular phase does not affect the menstrual cycle of normal cycling women..
Precision Nutrition a great resource recommends not attempting Intermittent Fasting as a woman if:
- youre pregnant
- you dont sleep well
- youre new to diet and exercise
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.
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You Do Not Exercise Enough
Intermittent fasting and exercise go hand in hand. When you exercise, you burn fat and increase human growth hormone levels in your body, which helps build muscle and improve your metabolic health.
Have a look at the following tips to help you plan when to exercise depending on your fasting plan:
- If you fast on alternate days, then plan to exercise on the days you are eating.
- If you plan to engage in an intense session, such as heavy weight training, make sure you eat shortly before to avoid depleting your glycogen stores .
- Try to time your exercise so that you can refuel with healthy carbohydrates and proteins about half an hour after your workout.
- Remember to stay hydrated throughout exercising and stop if you are feeling light-headed or unwell.
You may consider taking supplements containing branched-chain amino acids before a workout if you plan to weight lift. BCAA supplements do not add up to many calories and help with muscle fatigue so that you can work out for more extended periods.
Fasting Tips For Runners
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Intermittent Fasting Is A Simpler Way To Lose Weight
Yo-yo dieting is not only ineffective at achieving long-term weight loss, but it can also be hazardous to your health. Changing your diet too frequently in a short amount of time can cause a variety of digestive problems, including weight gain and abdominal pain, so you should stick to one strategy and stick with it.
A major reason why so many individuals are finding success with intermittent fasting is because the method is so straightforward. All you have to do is choose one way of intermittent fasting and stick with it, eating healthfully and modestly during the meal intervals and fasting during the other hours of the day, as described above. Really, it doesnt get any simpler than that.
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The Secret To Success At Intermittent Fasting
Heres something that isnt talked about enough. If youre making a change in your life, your brain might freak out and make that change really difficult.
Lets say youre used to having a full breakfast every morning as soon as you wake up. But today is the day youve decided that youre going to fast until noon. Easy peasy, right?
Well, it might be. Or you might find yourself thinking about delicious breakfast foods. Your stomach may start growling. And the next thing you know, youre grabbing a Danish at 10:00 am because youre starving.
Thats your brain doing its job: protecting you from danger.
Youre trying something new by extending the time between meals. And your brain is freaking out. What if we cant get food ever again! What if food is always restricted? Where is my toast and bacon?
Thats why I find that it helps to ease into fasting, rather than jumping into 16/8 Intermittent Fasting on the first day. Easing into the program keeps your brain from freaking out and basically retrains it to expect that youll still be able to eat even when the first meal of the day is later than it used to be.
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Health Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting
There are very few studies on the 5:2 diet specifically.
However, there are plenty of studies on intermittent fasting in general, which show impressive health benefits (
After 12 weeks, the fasting group had:
- Reduced body weight by more than 11 pounds .
- Reduced fat mass by 7.7 pounds , with no change in muscle mass.
- Reduced blood levels of triglycerides by 20%.
- Increased LDL particle size, which is a good thing.
- Reduced levels of CRP, an important marker of inflammation.
Summary
The 5:2 diet may have several impressive health benefits, including weight loss, reduced insulin resistance and decreased inflammation. It may also improve blood lipids.
Top 6 Questions About Intermittent Fasting
1) Wont I get really hungry if I start skipping meals?
As explained above, this can be a result of the habits you have built for your body. If you are constantly eating or always eat the same time of day, your body can actually learn to prepare itself for food by beginning the process of insulin production and preparation for food.
After a brief adjustment period, your body can adapt to the fact that its only eating a few times a day. The more overweight you are, and the more often you eat, the more of an initial struggle this might be.
Remember, your bodys physical and cognitive abilities most likley wont be diminished as a result of short term fasting.
2) Where will I get my energy for my workouts? Wont I be exhausted and not be able to complete my workouts if fasting?
This was a major concern of mine as well, but the research says otherwise: Training with limited carbohydrate availability can stimulate adaptations in muscle cells to facilitate energy production via fat oxidation.
In other words, when you train in a fasted state, your body can get better at burning fat for energy when there are no carbs to pull from!
Ill share some of my experiences, now doing heavy strength training for 3 years in a fasted state:
Here I am pulling 420 lbs. at 172 BW after a 16 hour fast:
A post shared by Steve Kamb on Nov 21, 2018 at 10:43am PST
LeanGains digs into various options here, but here is really what you need to know:
4) Wont fasting cause muscle loss?
Also Check: How To Do Metabolic Fasting
