Is intermittent fasting safe?

You have to eat lots of smaller meals frequently throughout your day to speed up your metabolism. Fasting forces the body into starvation mode leading to loss of muscle. Skipping breakfast makes you fat. Fasted training does not build muscles.

These are common myths that you must have heard some time or the other. The whole 3 meals a day concept in fact is nothing but a big fattening myth. Intermittent fasting on the other hand is a completely safe concept that is extremely effective in boosting your health.

That is because you are not asked to change your diet or avoid any particular food items. In reality intermittent fasting is nothing but a change in meal timings. You now have a set window during which you must consume the calories that your body needs. Where is the harm in that?

Once you start fasting like this, you will be surprised to see how you are not as hungry as you usually are while still having plenty of energy in reserve. Besides if you do feel hunger pangs, then you can always consume green tea or lime water. In most such cases however, such hunger pangs are easily suppressed by drinking a glass of water.

Check out For Intermittent fasting pros

Does intermittent fasting work for weight loss?

A 2005 study done by the American Society for Clinical Nutrition proved that intermittent fasting brings about not just metabolic health benefits but also weight loss. So the easiest answer to the question, does intermittent fasting work for weight loss, is yes!

The simplest reason it is that when your body is in a fasting stage, it ends up relying on the fat storage to produce energy. Instead of using the food that you usually consume (the 3 meals a day lifestyle) as fuel, your body learns to target excess fat for use as an alternate source of fuel. Doesn’t take a genius to see how this could result in weight loss.

On paper, weight loss is a simple concept. Eat less than your body needs. When you are eating 3 (or more) meals a day, the only way you can be well within your caloric needs are to count calories and watch what you eat. This works but you need to be extremely well disciplined to follow such a regime.

But when your eating window is restricted to 8 hours a day (or whatever you decide for yourself), then there are only so many calories that you can intake during that time. As a result you end up eating less or in other words, you eat only about what you really need without over indulging yourself.

Want to know Intermittent fasting pros and cons, Read here.

As to the question of, how much weight can you lose with intermittent fasting? It all depends on how seriously you adopt it into your daily life. The safe rate of weight loss, as recommended by physicians is between 1-2 pounds a week.

Intermittent fasting is a great lifehack

Apart from bringing about great benefits for your health, intermittent fasting benefits your overall lifestyle. When you are only eating once or at best, twice a day, you do not need to worry about what to eat and how much to eat. Not only does it save you money, it also frees up extra time in which you are free to pursue other interests that you might have. All the energy that you spent otherwise planning your meals can now be channeled to other productive ventures.

Similarly, if you miss a workout you do not have to start panicking and counting your calories. As a part of intermittent fasting, you are eating lesser times a day so that worry never arises. Most people are surprised by how easily this style of fasting fits into their daily lives and once they see the advantages they never go back.

How much weight can you lose with intermittent fasting?

The question “How much weight can you lose with intermittent fasting?” is often asked. The answer is since it is not a diet that requires extensive planning or shopping for particular food items, slipping into the intermittent fasting mode is super easy.

In the beginning most of the people who adopted this lifestyle did so by fasting for 24 hours, twice a week. That is 2 days out of 7, they would not eat anything. While that is still a strategy that is ideal for maintaining weight (post weight loss) and for overall health, other daily schedules have proven to be much more effective.

One of them was the 8-hour window we mentioned above. You fast for 16 hours (including sleep time) and eat for the rest of the 8. When you want to start the fast depends entirely on your own personal situation.

For example, if you have a regular 9 to 5 job then you might chose to skip breakfast altogether (who has the time for it anyways?). Instead you could start the eating window with a lunch at 12 PM or 1 PM and end the window with a dinner at 7:30 or 8:30. To be frank that is really an ideal way to eat as majority of your day is covered well. You can easily squeeze in a mid day lunch, an evening snack and an early dinner into this 8 hour window.

If you are looking for rapid weight loss then you can shorten this to a 6-hour window, however it is not recommended until you have eased yourself into an intermittent fasting lifestyle over time. You can however speed up weight loss by eating clean, following a diet plan like Keto or Paleo.

If you feel apprehensive or encounter difficulty starting with this, then it is better to start slow and do it a few times a week, like on every alternate day. After a couple of weeks your body should get used to it and then you can increase the number of days on which you fast, bringing to up to a full 7 days a week in time.

Before you leave, check out our home page: Intermittentfastingpros.fitness.blog

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started