Intermittent fasting has been becoming very popular all over the world for some time now. Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern in which a person eats food at a fixed time throughout the day and fasts in the remaining hours. Under this pattern, a person eats food only during 8 hours of the day and has to fast by drinking only water in the remaining 16 hours. Apart from this, many times people try to lose weight by fasting on alternate days (one day gap). Let us know what are the advantages and disadvantages of intermittent fasting for weight loss.
How does intermittent fasting work?
Intermittent fasting can help you lose weight but it can also affect your hormones. This is because body fat is the body’s way of storing energy (calories). When you don’t eat anything, your body starts using stored energy. For example, this causes changes in your nervous system activity and also changes in many important hormones like—
Insulin: Insulin levels increase when you eat and decrease when you fast. Lower insulin levels help burn fat.
Norepinephrine hormone (noradrenaline): Your nervous system sends norepinephrine to your fat cells, causing them to break down body fat into free fatty acids that can be burned for energy. Intermittent fasting can speed up the fat burning process. Research shows that intermittent fasting and all-day fasting reduce body weight and body fat, but more research is needed to determine long-term effects.
When can intermittent fasting be successful?
If you want to lose weight with intermittent fasting, you have to keep many things in mind.
Good quality food: If you are doing intermittent fasting, try to eat home-cooked meals, fruits, vegetables, salads and mostly whole foods like oats, porridge, quinoa and sprouts instead of packaged and processed foods.
Calories: During the period when you are not fasting, do not eat so much that the calories lost during fasting get accumulated again in your body.
Follow the pattern: Any weight loss method requires you to follow it for a long period of time.
Patience: It may take some time for your body to adjust to intermittent fasting. Take some time to set your eating schedule.