How To Accelerate Weight Loss With Fasting
Folks, you know Im a believer in intermittent fasting for longevity, autophagy, mental clarity, fitness performance, metabolic health, and more. Dr. Jason Fung, a world expert on fasting, has stopped by the blog today to share a bit about fasting for weight loss. Enjoyand be sure to share any questions you have on the comment board.
Over the years, Ive shared with you the many ways intermittent fasting can benefit your health. So, it shouldnt be much of a surprise that fasting can also be really beneficial to those who are trying to lose fat. Yes, I said fat and not weight. Unlike some other kinds of weight-loss methods, which result in loss of water weight or muscle mass, fasting can effectively get rid of fat.
A Different Gut Microbiome Profile
Time-restricted feeding has also been shown to modify the gut microbiota, or the collection of microorganisms living in the gut. Like other aspects of our metabolism, our gut microbiomes ideally change routinely throughout a 24-hour period, according to a circadian rhythm that is largely dictated by when we eat. In fact, the daily cycling of the gut microbiome is thought to be a biological clock of sorts. This clock helps regulate metabolic activity in various tissues throughout our body, including our brain.
Weve known for a long time that what we eat can change our gut microbiota. But many animal studies have revealed that when we eat can also impact our gut microbes. According to a 2020 study, mice that fasted for 16 hours every day for 30 days showed increased levels of Akkermansia and reduced levels of Alistipes bacteria, compared to mice that werent subjected to fasting. More Akkermansia and less Alistipes are associated with reduced intestinal inflammation and decreased fat accumulation in the liver. Therefore, many of the benefits of fasting likely come from the alteration of our gut bacteria.
Lessons From Krystals Intermittent Fasting Weight Loss Journey
To give you a better idea of what intermittent fasting weight loss is like, Simple recently spoke with Krystal, a weight-loss influencer and intermittent fasting advocate. Krystal uses her platform of over 30,000 followers to encourage others to begin their path to wellness through the handle on Instagram.
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Tips To Make Intermittent Fasting Easier
1. Drink Plenty of Water
Squeeze a little lemon or lime juice into your water to help get rid of any cravings you experience. You can also drink coffee, tea, or other calorie-free beverages. After a few weeks, you will find that intermittent fasting keeps you from craving sugar entirely.
2. Take in Caffeine in the Morning and Early Afternoon
The caffeine in coffee and tea may actually make intermittent fasting weight loss a little easier since its good for curbing your appetite. Be careful not to overindulge, as this may lead to you feeling a little too wired. I also recommend these natural energy boosting tips to keep you going during the day.
3. Avoid Artificially Flavored Drinks
One type of calorie-free drink that should be avoided are diet sodas and other beverages that use artificial sweeteners like Splenda and Sweet & Low. Studies show that the can actually stimulate your appetite like a drink that contains sugar and causes you to overeat.
4. Dont Gorge at Your First Meal
The first meal after your fast should be the amount of food you typically eat. Binging will only make you feel awful and diminish the benefits you get from the fast.
To avoid this, try creating meal plans, at least for the first few weeks. This will help you get into the rhythm of eating regularly portioned meals during your eating window.
5. Minimize Processed Carbohydrates and Sugars
You can find some carb sources that will aid your weight loss journey here.
How Intermittent Fasting Works
For your body to go to the trouble of burning body fat for energy, two things must happen.
- You must be running low on glycogen.
- You must have a low level of insulin in your blood.
How do you get into these states? You stretch out the time between meals. In other words, you follow an intermittent fasting strategy.
If you are eating frequently throughout the day, you are constantly refilling glycogen stores and bumping up insulin.
Because there is a constant supply of glycogen, there is no need for your body to go to the trouble of converting fat into energy. Even if your body wanted to burn fat, it could not access it because the insulin levels never drop to a point where fat can be released.
When you stretch out the time between meals by practicing intermittent fasting, your body burns through some of the stored glycogen and insulin levels drop making fat a logical choice for your body to run on.
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Who Should Avoid Intermittent Fasting
While intermittent fasting is an effective approach to losing weight, it may not be suitable for everyone. Children, people with chronic illnesses, breastfeeding and pregnant women should avoid it. People with diabetes should also avoid it as it may lead to an abnormal drop in their blood sugar levels. In some cases, it may also lead to abnormal menstrual cycles or a decrease in fertility. If you are underweight or have eating disorders, you should avoid intermittent fasting.
Intermittent Fasting: The Best Strategy To Reset The Body
Intermittent fasting can be regarded as 18 or 24 hour time for the body without food. We can use this process and found out that there is no need to get panicked as you get to eat every day. All you have to do is have your dinner at around 6 pm and dont eat anything for your breakfast and stay hungry until noon. To accomplish the 24-hour fast, you will have to continue fasting until dinner the following day. This will help to reset the metabolism every time. It works because it affects both the insulin and growth hormones. As in the non-fed state, insulin level goes down and allows the body to access as well as utilize its fat reserves as fuel. Moreover, the growth hormone level goes up and allows the body to maintain as well as build lean muscle tissue.
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Concerns About Weight Loss And Fasting
While going entire days without food may seem to go against everything youve been taught about health and nutrition, some studies there are no adverse mental or physical effects through fasting. Depending upon the approach you take, you may find that a prolonged fast can become quite uncomfortable. For example, when studying individuals taking various approaches to intermittent fasting, the NIH found those who attempted alternate-day fasting reported great feelings of hunger. More so, those who tried the alternate-day fasting method did not lose significantly more weight than other groups.
Conventional nutrition says that in order to lose weight fast and keep your metabolism high, you should eat six meals throughout the day. This logic implies that our metabolic rate will slow if we go too long without eating, causing us to store fat.
While the idea of frequent snacks might be appealing to some, the science is painfully outdated. Eating every few hours does not give our bodies time to digest. In fact, fasting for short time periods can actually raise our levels of fat burning.
/7there May Be Hormonal Problems You Need To Check For
Sometimes, the root of a lot of health problems or hitting unexpected weight loss plateaus can be underlying hormonal issues. Hormones have a major role to play in controlling or sometimes, even accelerating our weight loss. If they are unregulated, it may be difficult for a weight watcher to lose weight and suffer from additional complications.
With Intermittent Fasting, a lot of times, hormonal issues can also arise out of slowed down metabolism and incorrect eating patterns.
Since IF is also a dietplan which makes a person prone to certain deficiencies, any hormonal issues must be checked out at once. Consulting a dietician or a medical practitioner may help you address the issue better and gain the maximum results.
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Stoking The Fire For Long
Weight loss is a top priority health goal for many of us. While intermittent fasting or nutrient restriction is often an effective way of achieving weight loss, there are other lifestyle factors that are key to maintaining your metabolic health long-term. These include things like exercise, adequate sleep and stress management.
You can help your body accelerate and maintain weight loss and your broader health with the following lifestyle interventions that complement fasting.
1. Eat more fruits and vegetables.
2. Exercise. While exercise is often not in and of itself a sufficient intervention for achieving weight loss, it health impacts go far beyond weight. Physical activity and structured exercise can help you maintain a healthy weight and prevent metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes. Exercise preserves your bone strength and cognitive function as you age. It also makes your body and brain better able to handle stress with adaptation responses such as increased production of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory factors. You can effectively improve your heart health and prevent chronic diseases including obesity with 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity or 75 minutes per week of vigorous aerobic activity. National recommendations for physical activity also include two days per week muscle-strengthening activity.
3. Maintain a balanced diet.
4. Avoid added sugars. and other simple carbohydrates
Does Intermittent Fasting Boost Your Metabolism
Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern that involves periods of food restriction, called fasting, followed by a period of regular eating.
This pattern of eating could help you lose weight, reduce your risk of disease, and increase your lifespan .
Some experts even claim that its beneficial effects on metabolism make it a healthier way to lose weight than standard calorie restriction (
4 ).
Studies have shown that when it comes to weight loss, intermittent fasting can be just as effective as traditional calorie restriction, if not more so .
In fact, a 2014 review found that intermittent fasting could help people lose an impressive 38% of their body weight in 324 weeks .
A 2016 review concluded that in people who have obesity or overweight, intermittent fasting may be a better approach to weight loss than very low calorie diets (
13 ).
There are a few different ways to try intermittent fasting. Some people follow the 5:2 diet, which involves fasting for 2 days per week. Others practice alternate-day fasting or the 16/8 method.
If you are interested in trying intermittent fasting, you can read more about it in this detailed guide for beginners.
Summary
Intermittent fasting is a powerful weight loss tool. It can also improve your metabolism and metabolic health.
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Increase The Effectiveness Of Intermittent Fasting
To say intermittent fasting is a popular weight-loss trend would likely be the understatement of the year.
Weight loss enthusiasts are flocking to this healthy eating plan thanks to its excellent weight loss results over short periods of time.
If you’re considering using time-restricted eating to help you lose weight fast, the following are a few hacks you should know to increase the effectiveness of your intermittent fasting diet.
Choose Your Best Protocol
Krystal began her intermittent fasting journey about a year ago, and she experimented with various protocols until she found the right protocol.
I alternate what kind of fasting I do. Sometimes I stick with a traditional 16:8 fasting period, other times I will do a longer time frame, she says. My longest fast was five days.
Though five days might seem a bit overwhelming to a beginner, Krystal urges readers to find whats best for them. For her journey, Krystal admits, I read a lot about the health benefits of fasting, plus with following a ketogenic diet fasting came naturally as my hunger levels decreased.
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Intermittent Fasting Fat Loss And Muscle Gain
Although intermittent fasting is great for fat loss, its incredible formuscle gain as well. Not directly but the hormonal benefits are still there.
- Short-term fasting hasbeen shown to increase Luteinizing Hormone , which is a precursor totestosterone. In a study done on obese men, LH increased by 67% after 56hours.
- Another study found that obese men saw a 26%increase in GNHR , which is anothertestosterone stimulant.The same study found that men who were working out saw a 67% increase inGNHR, which led to a 180% boost in testosterone.
With cleverintermittent fasting you can effectively promote lean body composition by burningfat while intermittent fasting and building muscle when eating. The key is todo resistance training, eat enough protein, and time your food intake into thepost-workout scenario when youre most anabolic.
If you want to know how to build muscle and burn fat for longevity and performance with intermittent fasting, then check out my new book Metabolic Autophagy.
Stay Empowered
What To Eat While Intermittent Fasting For Weight Loss
While there are no restrictions on the type or quantity of food to eat while intermittent fasting, having a balanced diet helps if you want to lose weight and have specific weight loss goals in mind. It is also a healthy lifestyle practice you can inculcate.
Here are some foods you can include in your diet while intermittent fasting for weight loss:
- Plenty of fresh high-fibre, seasonal fruits and vegetables.
- Whole grains such as quinoa, barley, brown rice, and oats are great additions to your diet plan.
- Lean sources of proteins like eggs, chicken, fish, pulses, lentils, etc.
- Nuts, seeds, coconut oil, olive oil for healthy fats. They keep you full for longer.
- Complex carbohydrates such as jowar, bajra, etc. improve satiety.
- Hydrate adequately with water and beverages such as unsweetened tea or coffee.
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You’re Not Eating Enough
If you’ve hit a weight loss plateau after losing a few pounds, says Melanie Boehmer, R.D. of Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, you may be eating too few calories.
That’s because our bodies adjust to whatever we throw at them, she says.
“If, on average, youre only taking in 1200 calories, which is something none of us should be doing on a regular basis, your body is going to learn to function on 1200 calories,” she says.
Reduce calories slowly and aim for more moderate weight loss, says Boehmer. She advises cutting enough calories to lose about a pound a week.
“When we talk about losing weight, the goal is always to lose as much weight eating the most that you can so you dont create that metabolic inhibitor,” she says.
Does Intermittent Fasting Negatively Impact Female Hormones Or Fertility
The honest answer to this is yes AND noit depends on which kind of Intermittent Fasting you practice.
There are studies that have shown IF to have a negative impact on fertility rates. However, the studies weve read all use the alternate day fasting protocol . With an alternate day protocol, the likelihood of under-eating is significant. This type of restrictive caloric intake will undoubtedly have a negative impact on female hormone levels.
We recommend a 16/8 protocol because we eat every day, thereby reducing the risk of under-eating. We additionally encourage a 24-hour fast once a month, but thats the longest we recommend. With these types of fasting windows, we are able to reap all of the benefits of fasting without seeing any negative hormonal changes.
Most of the research available shows IF to be both healthy and safe for women in terms of fertility. We have heard from many clients who have conceived while living the FASTer Way. In addition, it is clearly documented that IF is an effective way to help women become fat burners, and excess fat is a contributing factor in hormonal imbalance.
The FASTer Way to Fat Loss will never utilize more than a 24-hour fast once a month. Other than this monthly full-day fast, we stick to the 16/8 protocol. Its the most sustainable and effective method with the fewest potential risks.
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How Many Pounds Can You Lose In One Month
Many of you may want to know how much weight you can lose in the first few weeks on an intermittent fasting plan.
After all, it is only natural to want to see the effects of your hard work in less time.
Unfortunately, there are no simple answers to this question.
The amount of weight that you may lose on any diet depends on several factors, including your age, gender, genetics, starting weight, calorie intake, daily calorie deficit, physical activity, and where you are in your health journey.
Additionally, healthy habits, including sleep, nutrition, stress management, and exercise , can affect weight change.
Ultimately, weight loss results while dieting will be different for different individuals and different bodies.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently recommend a gradual weight loss of 1 to 2 pounds per week or about 4 to 8 pounds in one month .
This is because individuals who lose weight at a steady rate may be more successful at keeping the weight off in the long run.
Simply because a diet promises its followers rapid weight loss, especially during the first few weeks, does not mean that the weight change will be permanent.
There Are Several Methods Of Intermittent Fasting Such As:
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