There’s been a surge of chatter across web sites and forums lately about the impact of fasting as a weight loss technique. In my experience, most people can get derive weight loss benefit from fasting, as well as contributing to their positive overall health.
According to researchers, intermittent fasting seems to possibly reduce blood pressure, impact positively on insulin sensitivity, assist with repair of muscle tissue, help eliminate excess body fat, and limit harm from oxidation.
It’s thought that the reason fasting can help with all these issues is that once you start on a fast, your body triggers a range of restorative processes to maximize the use of the limited number of nutrients in your system. Large quantities of food tend to lull the body into thinking it needs to do proportionally less with what you’ve provided it.
Possibly, better use of nutrients forces the body to repair or revitalize tissue instead of creating new cells to replace damaged ones, and repair is less energy-consumptive than creation. In any event, tissues and cells are repaired and actually turn out to become more robust. Studies involving mice suggest greater longevity may be achieved on low calorie diets as well.
The Main Reasons Why Fasting is so Effective for Those Seeking to Lose Weight are Twofold:
- With little or no new food in your body, it is forced to revert to using stored reserves of energy to compensate for the lack of fat, protein and sugar entering your blood stream. These reserves are found in the fats that your cells store up, and in the carbohydrates that your muscles and liver have retained from earlier meals. In fact, if you eat before working out, your body will burn off the new energy from your most recent meal before using up the energy already stored in your cells. It’s therefore feasible to lose weight by dropping a large of amount of fat without too much exertion, simply by fasting for one meal period or even better, one or more days, as long as you maintain your regular routine of physical effort.
- You can still indulge in your favorite foods during the period of the intermittent fast. It seems counter-intuitive, but by skipping a couple of meals you drastically reduce your caloric intake in any given time period. As long as you do it sensibly, and do not replace all the calories you’ve skipped, there’s no reason why you cannot have whatever you like when you do eat again; just don’t splurge or you’ll undo all the hard work!
What’s important is to keep ensuring that your level of fasting can be integrated into your regular life routine.
My personal experience, after beginning intermittent fasts a few months ago, is that it is a very effective way of maintaining and acceptable level of body fat. However, you
My Two Preferred Techniques for Fasting are:
1. Skip breakfast. If you choose to miss this meal altogether, you end up eating nothing at all for 15 hours, which is more than half of every 24 hour period. Take your evening meal about 8pm, and after you wake have nothing more robust than coffee until about midday.
You need to be careful not to overindulge at lunch, though. Eat the same size meal as you normally would for lunch. In my case, missing breakfast saves me between 500 and 600 calories per day, and keeps my body burning stored fat for several hours longer than normal.
I really power up the fat burning process by including 60 minutes of walking in the mornings as well. You don’t need to ‘power-walk’ or walk fast; simply an hour of comfortable walking will be quite effective in helping you burn of extra fat.
2. A full 24 hour fast. 24 hours is not a long time to go without eating, and it’s easier than you may expect (I do drink green tea and/or coffee during this fasting period). A lot of our eating is from habit or emotional trigger rather than need for nutrition.
I find that a full day fast can often provide me with a surplus of both physical energy and mental clarity, and my daily routine is not adversely affected. Scientific studies indicate that growth hormone levels may increase if fasting is accompanied by exercise. As with skipping breakfast only, it’s important not to go overboard when you do resume eating. Just go back to normal meals the following day, and you must end up with a caloric deficit.
Of course, intermittent fasting to lose weight is not a stand-alone strategy, but done sensibly it can form part of an overall regime to help you achieve your physical fitness targets. I would really like to hear from anyone who has tried either not having breakfast or fasting for a full 24 hours, and find out from you what your experiences were, what effects your body underwent, and how much weight you lost.
Leave Your Response