Intermittent fasting is rapidly becoming the new fitness and health trend. There’s obviously got to be some reason behind that right? So, in this blog we’re going to be discussing Intermittent fasting and why it’s being followed by so many people, the benefits and the different ways to go about IF.
What Is Intermittent Fasting?
It is an eating pattern that cycles through periods of eating and fasting. There are no specific foods that you ought to eat but when you have to eat them. People try IF for health purposes mainly so the IF diet must be composed of whole foods that are nutritious. Hence IF is not a diet exactly, but an eating pattern or habit.
Methods Of Intermittent Fasting
There are different ways to go about Intermittent Fasting. The most common ones are:
1) The 16:8 Method
This is also called the Leangains protocol. It involves skipping breakfast and restricting your daily eating window to 8 hours. For example 12 pm to 8 pm. Once you’re done with your eating window you will be fasting for a period of 16 hours.
2) Eat.Stop.Eat
This plan involves fasting for 24 hours at least once or twice a week. Your eating pattern should be regular for the rest of the days. How this works is, for example, not eating dinner one day and until dinner the next day.
3) The 5:2 Diet
In this method, you’re supposed to consume only 500 – 600 calories any two non-consecutive days of the week like maybe Monday and Wednesday. Your eating pattern on the rest of the days should be regular.
How Does IF Help With Weight Loss?
This is the most common reason why most people try IF. How Intermittent Fasting works is, it basically puts you on a calorie deficit by making you eat fewer meals a day, hence you’ll be consuming fewer calories per day. Additionally, IF could alter hormone levels to facilitate weight loss. How this happens is
– The levels of Human Growth Hormone (HGH) tend to increase by a lot, almost 5 times as much as the normal amount. This could benefit for muscle gain and fat loss.
– When you fast your insulin levels drop significantly thereby increasing your insulin sensitivity. This helps make stored body fat easy to access.
Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting
Apart from weight loss here are a few other benefits of Intermittent Fasting:
Insulin Resistance – Intermittent fasting can reduce insulin resistance, lowering your blood sugar by 3 – 6% and fasting insulin levels by 20 – 30% which could protect against type 2 diabetes.
Heart Health – IF may reduce “bad” LDL cholesterol, blood sugar and insulin resistance which are all risk factors for heart diseases.
Some studies show that IF could prevent cancer, improve brain health and could even reduce the pace of aging. However, the research for these are still in the early stages and nothing has been confirmed as yet.
At the end of the day, to reach your fitness goals what you need to be is consistent with your training and your diet, whatever diet you may be following. As long as you are consistent, the results will follow.
