Over the last few months, I’ve written extensively about the benefits of intermittent fasting. This is what I have done in my private life for the past two years. I also work closely with many people who are currently using fasting.
Intermittent fasting is a dietary pattern that refrains from burning calories over a long period of time. Usually 12-40 hours. The results can be surprising to those who follow the rules exactly. This means a complete understanding that fasting consumes nothing but water, black coffee, or unsweetened tea. The important thing is to avoid anything that causes an insulin response, as insulin helps build up fat.
I met a good friend who just returned from a vacation at a resort in Mexico. During the last few months of fasting, he lost 27 pounds of body fat, which in particular indicates a significant reduction in his waistline. I used to not be able to walk on mountain roads at resorts, but this time I loved the breeze. In addition, he reiterated that the intermittent fasting approach is the easiest and most effective way to manage weight to date.
Here’s what you need to know about intermittent fasting and how you can benefit from it.
How Does Intermittent Fasting Affect Your Body?
Like many, I was fascinated by intermittent fasting not only because of the benefits of weight management, but also because of some other healthy aspects. If you eat food regularly, such as breakfast, lunch, supper, and evening treats, it makes sense to convey to your body the message that digesting food is a priority. Especially because it takes hours to digest dietary fats, the body is actively involved in the digestive process, from early morning breakfast to evening treats and for hours thereafter.
As a result, the body has minimal recovery from digestion and fasts for at most a few hours later in the sleep cycle, which is short-lived for breakfast to arrive immediately.
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This is an important consideration as the intestines contribute to health in many ways. This is especially true when it comes to strengthening the immune system that occurs during fasting. Autophagy is closely associated with increased production of immune cells. This is the body’s way of removing damaged cells in order to regenerate newer and healthier cells. A good analogy to autophagy is to put out the trash or clean up the debris. The debris in this case is made up of some of the damaged somatic cells that need to be removed to develop new cells.
Fasting also stimulates the production of human growth hormone. This helps remove body fat and retain muscle. This becomes more and more important to your health as you age.
How can I fast intermittently?
There are several ways to approach an intermittent fast. My approach is to fast daily and consume food only during a narrow time frame of 2 to 4 hours. I gradually increased this. Start with a large window and work your way down. At about 18 hours of fasting, the above benefits become gears and spin up.
The previous column outlines my typical daily approach to intermittent fasting: I imagine what I would normally have for a light meal (power bar, nuts, etc.) in addition to breakfast and lunch. , Consume these “after” my first meal at 6 pm that day I drink black coffee regularly throughout the day. It will satisfy me comfortably until my supper.
And if you want to flirt with a treat like Hot Fudge Sundae at night, I wouldn’t hesitate.
What’s more, even if you fast for hours before your workout, your workout is great without losing energy.
How is intermittent fasting different from other crash diets?
A reader recently wrote to me about an intermittent fasting. He writes: “I read a book about your nutrition, a healthy diet, and exercise. You oppose a crash diet because lack of nutrients reduces muscle mass. Well, calories using intermittent fasting I’ve read about zeroing your intake for a long time, but how is this different from the calorie limit of a crash diet? “
Insightful questions worth investigating.
First, the Crash Diet will significantly reduce your calorie intake from perhaps 2,000 calories per day to less than half that, and enter semi-starvation mode. When you significantly reduce your calorie intake, your body struggles to maintain optimal levels of blood sugar, called glucose. Blood sugar is important because the brain depends on glucose as its primary fuel source. Of course, the brain is the body’s top priority.
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Glucose is stored in the liver as glycogen. When eaten “normally”, when the blood sugar level drops, glucose is released from the liver and the blood sugar level returns to the original level. However, on a crush diet, the body is semi-starved and the liver glycogen supply is depleted. Therefore, when your blood sugar drops, your body warns you that your liver is not responding properly.
This then causes the body to take urgent action. The hormone cortisol is released, breaking down muscles into proteins and then into amino acids. Selective amino acids are transported to the liver and converted to glucose, which raises blood sugar levels. In other words, the body destroys muscles to make glucose, a process called gluconeogenesis.
Is there any advantage to crashing a diet over an intermittent fast?
Losing muscle mass is counterproductive, and even if you lose a lot of pounds, the fact that you’re losing a few pounds of muscle means you don’t look good, so a crash diet is always I fail. This is disappointing because when you start a crash diet with the goal of losing more than 30 pounds, in your mind’s eyes you imagine yourself returning to a body that had 30 pounds less fat. Your “new” crash diet body doesn’t look what you expected.
In addition, you tend to feel poor and you only think about food.
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When you are fasting intermittently, you do not lose calories or become semi-starved. On the contrary, I’ve lost weight, but I don’t want to lose any more, so I’m actually eating more than before I started an intermittent fast. Thus, I easily replenish my liver’s glycogen stores daily to maintain optimal levels of blood glucose and maintain muscle mass.
All you need to do is promise to eat at a set time and make a firm decision to stick to it.
Contact Brian Stanford (stamford@hanover.edu), a professor of kinematics and integrated physiology at Hanover College.
