Sweating day and night on treadmill might not be good enough to help you achieve your weight loss goals. Constant hunger pangs do not let you stay away from all sorts of foods. Confused how to get back in shape before your brother’s wedding date? Well intermittent fasting is a hot topic in the market nowadays. Will it be working for you too will depend how prepared you are to take it up in your life.
ENLIGHTEN YOUR LIFE WITH INTERMITTENT FASTING
Fasting is not a new term for any one reading this post. But intermittent fasting is definitely new for many. Before going ahead to avail benefits of the same, it is important to understand what is intermittent fasting.
Fasting has been part of human civilizations for centuries. Earlier our ancestors used to do it due to the absence of food and then after fasting took the place in many religious ceremonies. For those who don’t know people who follow Islam fast for daytime during the month of Ramadan. Similarly followers of Judaism fast in their own way. Fasting is anyways good for health whether you have weight loss targets in your head or not. During fasts usually people consume fruits, juices and dairy products. This break from regular food which is either boiled or fried or cooked in some way or other helps your system get cleansed. Digestive machinery is said to be in constant cycle and fasting appreciates the fact and hence helps it work better.
No matter you have some spiritual agenda in your head or not, fasting once in a week with fruits and fluids enhance the longevity of your life. But when it comes to transforming life from a bulky body to a sleek shape fasting cannot be very effective. Now it is obvious the thought that how different intermittent fasting is must be pondering with every pulse of yours.
Intermittent fasting is all about alternating your diet for irregular periods of time. Refraining yourself to eat food in any form followed by eating food sounds simple enough. You do that every day, during their waking hours people eat and when they sleep they are fasting, right? It is not even kind of close to intermittent fasting.
The whole process of intermittent fasting is structured and you cannot just wake up to decide between eating and fasting. It is important that you know when your fasting period is on you will have to skip on every solid food as you are only allowed to have water, tea, coffee and other non-caloric drinks.
VERSIONS OF INTERMITTENT FASTING
For not everybody is same and we all follow a different lifestyle and schedule you have liberty of choosing any one of the following types of intermittent fasting. So many health and fitness experts have globally adopted intermittent fasting. You should follow any one of the following regimen to see the considerable difference.
· 12/12 method
This method is a great start for the beginners. Little would you know that you are already doing it in your day-to-day life. Think about your daily routine and answer whether you are not eating for 12 hours and then fasting for next 12 hours while you sleep. For example if you eat last meal of your day at 8 PM and then have your breakfast next morning at 8 AM you are already in.
· 16/8 method
This method is obviously a level up of the preceding one. Eating window here reduces to 8 hours and you fast for 16 hours. You can have to squeeze your meals to 2 or 3 depending about your convenience. However, eating late at night should be always avoided.
· 20/4 method
Yes you guessed it. This method is bit more intense as you are allowed to eat only 4 hours in a day and rest 20 hours you will be fasting. As mentioned above, you can have tea, coffee and water during your fast time. Depending on how it suits you better you can have one or two meals during those 4 hours.
· 5:2 diet (ADF method)
With every level up it will get intense. 5:2 diet is also referred to as alternate-day-fasting method. In this the person has to restrict his calorie intake to approximately 500 calories for each of the two days of fasting. For next 5 days of the week you can have whatever you want.
· Eat-stop-eat method
This is an extension of ADF method in which you are not supposed to fast consistently. You are supposed to choose one or two days in the week to have a full 24 hour fast. This last one is the most difficult and seems impossible to follow practically.
BEST BENEFITS INTERMITTENT FASTING (IF) OFFERS
· YOU WILL EAT LESS- For any person who wants to lose weight eating less is the biggest motivation. With restricted windows of eating you tend to eat less and with fewer meals you could lose weight comparatively easy.
· YOUR BRAIN WILL BE MORE ACTIVE- Who does not want a sharp brain? Get glad as IF can help you have a more active brain. Researches done on animals suggest that with fasting chances of short-term and special memory losses are reduced. Another set of researches suggest that brain damage and functional impairment can be kept at bay with intermittent fasting.
· GET A HEALTHY HEART- Intermittent fasting can help you foster heart health. There are number of risks involved with your heart that can be reduced by adopting IF. You can keep better control over blood pressure and cholesterol. There are clinical evidences that a month of fasting results in declines in total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and systolic blood pressure.
· COMBAT THE RISK OF CANCER- Studies suggest that intermittent fasting reduces the risk of cancer. 50 % of the rats who were put on fasting mode survived 10 days while only 12.5 percent of rats lived for 10 days that were fed as much as they wanted.
Besides being very fruitful for aiding weight loss IF is known to work on digestive problems like heartburn, acid reflux and other related problems.
It is however true that athletes and people with diabetes should avoid intermittent fasting. Rest of you all can avail the benefits of intermittent fasting. It is since done in plethora of ways will produce different results.
Enough of looking at Facebook posts of people’s transformation from fat to fab. Now it is your time to make people follow your Instagram hashtags of astonishing weight loss journey.
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