Nowadays people have started to re-discover their dietary interventions, and one of them is intermittent fasting.
Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern where you cycle between periods of your eating and fasting. Generally, people compare intermittent fasting with starvation. But, fasting differs from starving in one crucial way that is control.
Intermittent fasting is not a diet, it is a pattern of eating for a healthy life. It is the voluntary withhold of food for health and better life. For example, food is easily available to you, but you choose not to eat. This can be for few hours or days. You can start or stop fasting for any reason or no reason at all.
Intermittent fasting is not something queer or curious, but is part of our everyday lives. It is not concerned about which food to eat, rather when you should eat those food for leading a better and healthy life.
Intermittent fasting is actually easy to do. Most people already fast everyday while they sleep. You can do intermittent fasting by skipping breakfast, eating your first meal at noon and your last meal at 9 pm.
Here are some of the benefits of intermittent fasting for you:
Weight and body fat loss
If you want to lose your fat, without going to the gym or having a strict diet plans, intermittent fasting is the right thing to do. Fasting allows the body to burn out all the excess fat in our body. Body fat is merely all the food energy that is stored inside us. If you do not eat, your body will simply eat its own fat energy.
Fasting drains your body of its glucose reserves which is the main energy source from food. Generally speaking, intermittent fasting will help you in making you eat fewer meals. Also, intermittent fasting enhances hormone function to facilitate weight loss. Lower insulin levels and higher growth of hormone levels increases the breakdown of body fat.
Improves mental health
Intermittent fasting improves various metabolic features which is highly important for the mental health of a human being. It includes reduced stress, reduced inflammation and a reduction in blood sugar levels.
With the increasing age, there is less flow of blood to the brain. Intermittent fasting helps in putting a brake on the aging process, keeping you mentally sharp and healthy.
Possibly longer life
Ability to extend lifespan a bit longer than usual, is one of the most exciting thing about intermittent fasting. Studies have shown that intermittent fasting extends our lifespan in a similar way as continuous calorie restriction.
Given the known benefits for metabolism and all sort of health benefits, intermittent fasting surely can help you live a longer and healthier life.
Prevents cancer
Cancer is a terrible disease for the uncontrolled growth of cells. Intermittent fasting is seen being very much beneficial for cancer patients as it helps to control the metabolism of people.
Particularly for breast and skin cancer, when you are done with chemotherapy, intermittent fasting slows the progression by increasing the levels of infiltrating lymphocytes-cells sent by the immune system to attack the tumor.
Beneficial for heart health
Heart disease is currently the biggest issue everyone is going through in their lives. The risk factors of heart is generally associated with either an increase or decrease in heart diseases.
Intermittent fasting is beneficial for improving numerous different risk factors including blood pressure, total and cholesterol, blood triglycerides, and blood sugar levels.
Eases depression
Intermittent fasting is also seen to be beneficial for mood disorders such as depression. According to a source, people with depression reported an improvement in mood and mental alertness due to intermittent fasting.
When your body is empty, it is probable that your mind starts thinking lots of useless things. The same happens when you consume too much of food. But when you do intermittent fasting, your body starts functioning properly and so does your mind.
Prevents from diabetes
Diabetes has been common in people these days. According to a research, intermittent fasting has shown to have a major benefit for insulin resistance and lead to reduction in blood sugar levels. In human studies, intermittent fasting has helped in reducing fasting blood sugar by 3 to 6 percent.
Likewise, being overweight is the main risk factor of having diabetes. Intermittent fasting improves a number of risk markers for chronic diseases, including lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol and reduced insulin resistance, especially for the over weighed people.
How to do intermittent fasting?
After knowing the benefits of intermittent fasting, probably you want to give it a try. But, first be sure to consult your doctor or a registered dietitian to help you out with it. It will help you to ensure that it won’t affect any medications you are taking or increase any health issues you have.
Most of the people choose 16:8 method because it allows you to eat whatever you want for an 8 hour window and then fast for 16 hours. During the fasting period you can drink water, tea or coffee except the heavy foods. Experiment with the eating and fasting intervals is supposed to work out best in you.
